By Adam Bink

Some more coverage and analysis from yesterday’s events in St. Paul, where despite the largest turnout of the tour for NOM, equality supporters still had greater numbers:

• Video highlight: watch Arisha spar with Brian Brown over what he thinks of Larry Adam’s “lynching” sign, Brian’s attempts to change the topic to signs he finds “inappropriate”, and why he tried to get our NOMTourTracker.com videographer arrested in Annapolis:
• Yesterday, Arisha wrote:
  

  We also met with Father Michael Becker, a Catholic priest whose main argument against homosexuality was centered around the practice of anal and oral sex. According to Father Becker, anal and oral sex lack dignity because they abuse their partners as instrumentalities of pleasure for non-procreative potential.

  He said it, not me.

  We’ve taped an interview with Father Becker over his, ahem, views. And they’re doozies, to say the least. Watch below:

• Yesterday, Brian Brown said:

“We’ve taken great pains to make clear what were all about. We view ourselves as a new civil rights movement … committed to something that in the 1960s was key: the right to vote.”

As I wrote on Tuesday, it’s a laughable, even appalling statement. Civil rights is all about extending rights, while Brown supports amendments like the 2004 Federal Marriage Amendment that would, for the first time in our nation’s history, amend the U.S. Constitution to restrict rights rather than extend them. And as Chris Geidner points out, civil rights leaders like Julian Bond pointed out at the National Equality March that he believes the spirit of the 1960s movement is with the side for equality, not Brown and his cohorts (and I would add Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights hero in his own right, and many, many other leaders to that list, as well).

• Craig Cady raises the question of whether it’s more strategic for equality supporters attending NOM events to remain silent and let NOM’s own twisted logic speak for itself, particularly given that NOM’s goal is to make themselves look like an oppressed minority. See Brian Brown’s e-mail from yesterday:

I thought I had heard and seen it all, but the radicals reached a new low yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin. NOM and its supporters gathered peacefully in Madison to pray for marriage and to stand in support of marriage remaining a sacred union between men and women.

We were honored to have Bishop Robert Morlino of the Diocese of Madison address the crowd. Bishop Morlino spoke of the need to love one another even as we disagree on the issue of same-sex marriage. Yet when he led the crowd in the Lord’s Prayer, the gay marriage radicals screamed and booed him.

I actually agree with Jack Craver’s response, which is that if the message and delivery are done well, it can be better than silence. I would point to the rally organized in the Minnesota State Capitol rotunda yesterday and the positive, calm chant the pro-equality supporters said. Here’s the video again:

Very powerful and a positive frame, as is the rest of the speaker’s address. I’ve been to other rallies where we’ve calmly sung “This Land Is Your Land” over homophobic speeches. There are ways besides silence to win the message of the day, and our side is finding them.