Washington D.C., Apr 30, 2009 / 23:48 pm
The National Organization for Marriage on Thursday launched a new advertisement highlighting the efforts of some gay “marriage” advocates to characterize defenders of marriage as liars and bigots. The ad warns of the “devastating consequences” the establishment of same-sex “marriage” would have on religious liberty and claims proponents want to “silence opposition.”
The ad, titled “No Offense,” also refers to attacks on beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean, Miss California, after she expressed her support for marriage between a man and a woman.
Asked a question about same-sex “marriage” by Miss USA pageant judge Perez Hilton, an openly homosexual gossip blogger, Prejean replied:
“I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anyone out there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be.”
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) ad reproduces that reply, as well as Hilton’s YouTube video calling Prejean a “dumb b----.”
The NOM ad also says the organization was attacked as “liars and bigots” for “expressing concern about how same-sex marriage would impact religious groups.”
It then excerpts an MSNBC Hardball appearance by Joe Solmonese of the homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign.
Solmonese said “It’s no longer palatable in this country or okay to be an outright bigot. If you want to deny us these rights, you need to do it by lying and misrepresenting.”
The ad’s narrator then says:
“Gay marriage activists attack people for supporting marriage because they don’t want to debate the consequences of same-sex marriage. They want to silence opposition.”
It then adds, “some of the nation’s foremost legal scholars” warn that same-sex “marriage” can create “widespread legal conflicts” for individuals, small businesses and religious organizations.
The NOM web site presents a copy of a nine page April 20 letter to the Connecticut House of Representatives by law Profs. Thomas C. Berg, Carl H. Esbeck, Robin Fretwell Wilson and Richard W. Garnett.
The professors’ letter, referring to the book “Same-sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts,” said “legal scholars on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate agreed that codifying same-sex marriage without providing robust religious accommodations will create widespread and unnecessary legal conflict—conflict that will work a ‘sea change in American law’ and will ‘reverberate across the legal and religious landscape.’”
The “No Offense” ad is the second produced by NOM’s $1.5 million ad campaign.
“Our mission is to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it," the group's executive director Brian Brown said Tuesday. "We want to highlight the very real effects on our liberties and especially on religious organizations, businesses, and individuals."
According to CNN, Brown said that NOM is concerned that those who oppose same-sex “marriage” are being cast as bigots like those who opposed racial integration.
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The ad is viewable at the NOM web site http://www.nationformarriage.org