Love And Money. Especially Money: America’s Right-Wing’s Ridiculous Anti-Marriage Equality Arguments
I’ve been working to try to understand the recent arguments America’s Right Wing has been trying to make against marriage equality. If you have been following the reports from Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal trial that will determine the constitutionality of Proposition 8, or have read, “Gay People Cannot Be Allowed To Marry Because Straight People Cannot Be Trusted?,†my piece detailing the, dare I say, “ridiculous†arguments America’s Right Wing is using against same-sex marriage, you’ll know what I’m talking about. But even well before Prop 8, America’s conservatives have been actively involved in maintaining second-class citizenship for gay and lesbian Americans.
Whether you have or you haven’t been following along, let me share with you (even more of) the reasons why I say America’s Right Wing’s anti-marriage equality arguments are, indeed, ridiculous.
Love And Money. Especially Money is part four in our week-long series, America’s Right-Wing’s Ridiculous Anti-Marriage Equality Arguments. Come back tomorrow for the final installment: part five: The Purpose of Marriage.
Part Four: Love And Money. Especially Money.
America’s Right Wing is blessed with a rich and deep treasure, and treasurer. The Church, be it Catholic, Christian, Evangelical, Baptist, or Mormon, has endowed the creators of the hate-fest against the LGBT community with unabashed riches. That the Mormon Church could spent $27 million to buy the results of California’s Prop 8, and that Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage continues to refuse to divulge its funding sources is amazing. That politico-religious hate-based organizations like Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defense Fund, the Family Research Institute, the American Family Association, and others are not only able to exist but to thrive is troubling, and terribly disturbing.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971, is “a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.” It lists more than a dozen “Active Anti-Gay Groups” and in their “Intelligence Files,” they write,
“For Christian Right leaders, the gay rights movement and its so-called “homosexual agenda” are the prime culprits in the destruction of American society and culture. In the words of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, the battle against gay rights is essentially a “second civil war” to put control of the U.S. government in the right hands, meaning those who reject gay rights.
“The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident gay rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing homosexuals as “perverts” with “filthy habits” who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and “convert” them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging “facts” about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the “bestial” black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.”
The question really has to be, who is funding all these hate groups, be they more “mainstream,” like the National Organization for Marriage, or more radical and, by definition and design, according the the SPLC, a true “hate group,” like the Family Research Institute?
It’s no surprise that four of the top ten stories in the list of Top Ten Religion Stories of 2009 were about gays — and not necessarily in a positive, supportive way. And it’s also no surprise that the donors who supported the efforts to repeal Prop 8 were aghast, (so aghast they brought a lawsuit,) that their names were in the public domain.
How, exactly, is it that the Mormon Church was able to spend a reported $27 million in support of California’s Prop 8, not to mention all the volunteer work and in-kind donations they provided?
Californians Against Hate believes that the Mormon Church actually created the National Organization for Marriage.
“The Mormon Church appears to have created the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in the summer of 2007 to qualify California’s Proposition 8 for the November 2008 ballot. They set it up as a Mormon front group, exactly as they did with a very similar organization called Hawaii’s Future Today (HFT) in that state in 1995. HFT was established to pass a constitutional amendment in Hawaii to ban same-sex marriage. Sound familiar? They have now expanded NOM into seven more states, specifically to fight same-sex marriage in those states.”
By it’s own admission, “NOM was the largest contributor to qualifying Prop 8 to the ballot and is helping raise funds to defend its constitutionality.”
NOM describes itself as “a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.” In other words, “give us your money because marriage and religion are in danger from the gays.”
But imagine what will happen when same-sex marriage becomes law. What will happen to NOM? Will it disappear? Their entire business model is dependent upon “protecting marriage” as one-man, one-woman. That will be a challenge to them, but the closer we get to the visible possibility of marriage equality, the more money NOM will make, because of the fear they are able to instill in America’s wealthy Right Wing.
Make no mistake. The religious wars (better known as “the Crusades”) waged by the Holy Roman Empire have given way to a far less-violent but costly and hateful war against the LGBT community. The Church in America can afford to hide and spend untold millions against gays, same-sex marriage, and the “homosexual agenda.”
Love And Money. Especially Money is part four in our week-long series, America’s Right-Wing’s Ridiculous Anti-Marriage Equality Arguments. Come back tomorrow for the final installment: part five: The Purpose of Marriage.
(image: kevindooley)
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
