The Snake Oil Show Hits Trenton

Hundreds of GSE supporters leaving the Statehouse Annex

                                                 

                                                                                                                          NOM’s fake family pics 

 

 

 

 

  

  

  

  

 

The July 20 Garden State Equality rally held at New Jersey’s historic Capitol building to counter the Jersey performance of National Organization for Marriage’s traveling dog and pony show revealed a number of interesting comparisons and a few insights. Most obvious were the numbers. Even on the small plaza in front of the Capitol – hardly more than an extra-wide sidewalk, NOM’s pathetic little crowd looked like a spoonfull of peas clustered on a pool table while GSE packed the huge Committee Room 6  in the Statehouse Annex with as many as 200 supporters.  

 

The differences were in far more than numbers. First lets consider appearance. The crowd at the GSE event was a cross-section of middle America – working and middle class families, lots of adorable kids, college students, professional people, the elderly, moms with infants in strollers, dads with a five or six-year-old in tow who urgently needed the men’s room – in short, a more “normal” American crowd would be hard to find. One looked in vain for stereotypes - men in leather – queens in outrageous make-up – and one found none. This was serious business, not party time or a costume event, and the demeanor of the crowd reflected that. NOM evidently had a different take on the day. Behind the speaker’s podium on the Capitol’s front steps stood a line of a half dozen middle aged men dressed in matching formal evening clothes – white summer dinner jackets, formal trousers with satin stripe, black bow tie and vest, looking like they were about to burst into a kick line singing “You’re the top, you’re the tower of Pizza, you’re the top, you’re the Mona Lisa” at any moment. Seeing this production-number- evidently-in-the-offing, some passersby understandably assumed that the NOM event as actually a gay demo. Not only did NOM apparently think a musical comedy atmosphere appropriate to an event that had to do with people’s civil rights, they are also clearly unaware that any etiquette book you care to consult will tell you formal evening clothes are never worn before 6 PM – but then, manners have never been NOM’s strong suit. Good manners blend poorly with a long history of lies and cover-ups.

Moving away from the speaker’s platform toward the fringe of what with notable generosity we can refer to as NOM’s “crowd,” we find the weirdness index climbing off the chart. Moving past the gnarled old ladies with too much make-up, the hairdos right out of 1970, and the fat men in cheap, garish, sport shirts, we come to the most bizarre entry in NOM’s freak fest. This would be the three ultra-orthodox rabbis  in full Hasidic regalia, looking exactly as if a time machine had just delivered them from a Polish ghetto of 1850, holding up large signs detailing how God hates gays and we are all going to burn. Anyone silly enough to try to engage this trio in debate was informed gays were responsible for every disaster from hurricanes to economic meltdowns. A more encyclopedic diatribe of hate would be hard to create. Let us put PC considerations aside for a moment and speak plainly; the ultra orthodox Jews follow a religious path most us would consider to be very strange indeed. That’s not a problem in our nation of universal toleration. Hey – I’m a Wiccan and a lot of people think that is even stranger. The saving grace of the Orthodox, traditionally, has always been that they do not try to force their beliefs on anyone else. This is the American way. Freedom of religion means freedom for me from your religion and vice-versa. The three rabbis constituted a comic but pointed illustration of how NOM’s supporters utterly fail to comprehend this basic tradition of our nation. Your religious beliefs – my religious beliefs – are just that; personal beliefs, not the law of the land. 

Next let’s consider the props – the event staging. GSE’s rally was certainly well-organized and provided with suitable printed signs and displays. It had what was needed and no more than that. It was “professional” but no one would call it lavish. NOM on the other hand, arrived in a small cavalcade of organization owned vehicles including a tour bus that were lavish indeed. Clearly a lot of money (mostly, according to Fred Karger’s investigations, Mormon Church money) had been spent on the full color, deluxe photo-murals covering all these vehicles from top to bottom. Perhaps inspired by circus wagons, the NOM traveling snake oil show depicted smiling, happy “straight” families who would, presumably, be threatened if I marry my partner Mike. What a wonderful symbolism is revealed by the discovery that all these images are entirely phony! They are, every one, stock images you can buy on-line from a stock photo website. If so moved, an LGBT organization could purchase the very same photos and rearrange them to appear to show queer families (which would be funny, if expensive, to pull off) This made a vivid contrast indeed to the very real families that spoke at GSE’s rally of the discrimination and inequality that has circumscribed their lives because of the ineffectiveness of the civil union law. As GSE chair Steven Goldstein said “marriage is the only currency the world recognizes.” 

 

  

As for the three loony Rabbis and the rest of NOM’s supporters who think they alone know the will of God, the great 11th century Persian philosopher Omar Khayyam offers this in his collection of poems, the Rubaiyat:   

And do you think that unto such as you;   

A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:   

God gave the secret, and denied it me? –   

Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.   

  

 

NOM's pathetic little huddle

 

  

   

 

  

 

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