With the general election phase of the 2012 campaign looming and the general ratcheting up of racial and cultural tensions among Americans by Democratic constituency groups, there has been a lot of focus on race baiting on the left. It is only fair then that when organizations on the right engage in such divisive tactics that they be called out in equal measure. To that end, let’s turn our attention to a recently uncovered internal document from the National Organization for Marriage that explicitly outlined a strategy to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks.”
The memo, obtained and released by Buzzfeed politics, outlines the NOM’s strategy of dividing two key pro-Democratic blocs with the intention of dividing these groups against one another and throwing the Democratic party into chaos.
The memo defines in the most cynical of terms NOM’s campaign against gay marriage. NOM advises supporters to “find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.”
The memo cites as their logical basis for this tactic as California’s 2008 “Prop 8” ballot initiative that banned same sex marriages. There, despite record high black turnout (10 percent of the electorate) in a state that Obama won with 61 percent of the vote, Prop 8 passed with 52 to 48 percent. Many analysts in the post-mortem analysis of what happened with that statute attribute its failing to black Democrats who, by and large, remain hostile to gay marriage.
This tactic is as insidious as those who seek to leverage the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin for political leverage and should be treated with the same level of scorn. That’s intellectual consistency 101 – but don’t hold your breath for a denunciation of NOM from the traditional marriage advocates any time soon.
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Follow Noah Rothman @Noah_C_Rothman
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