#531: Brian Brown

Brian S. Brown, best known for being the guy who actually wept when New York legalized same-sex marriage, is the president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), succeeding Maggie Gallagher in 2010. He has actually said that he has many friends who are homosexual, and just as Catholic bishop Nicholas DiMarzio here, he has a tendency to try to convince himself that he is actually serving homosexual people’s best interests. Apparently NOM is supposed to be the anti-gay-marriage organization ”with a friendly face,” which is an admirably virtuous stance given how much they suffer as victims of the demonic requests for equality from and restrictions of their God-given rights to discriminate people by the vicious gay lobby. According to Brown, the gay lobby is eventrying to take away his rights to vote, but doesn’t provide any evidence for the claim. (He makes a similar claim here; here, on the other hand, he attempts to invoke a comparison with slavery, and here he tries to claim that a ban on gay marriage is motivated by a libertarian attitude).

NOM claims to be very popular, but has had some trouble with the ideas of truth and honesty in advertising – this one is pretty spectacular. Here’s Brown inadvertently saying something true, however. The alleged popularity of the group didn’t engender much success in the 2012 election, however, even though they promised to defeat Obama.

Brown and NOM have been (of course) involved in various campaign strategies to remove supreme court judges they don’t like, and they have initiated several boycott campaigns of companies that don’t succumb to bigotry (their boycott of Starbucks is discussed here).

When one of the leaders of NOM, Louis Marinelli, defected to the gay rights side Brown was none too pleased. He wasn’t too pleased with Dan Savage’s arguments either, and challenged Savage to a debate; the result is here (it's actually somewhat illuminating). Here is his reaction to the Proposition 8 ruling.

There is a useful Brian Brown resource here, and a NOM resource here.

Diagnosis: Brown is apparently a very sensitive person who overcompensates with unhinged hatred and lunacy. He’s pretty zealous and must be considered rather dangerous.

#139: Maggie Gallagher

A.k.a. Margaret Gallagher Srivastav

Writer and commentator Maggie Gallagher, a syndicate columnist for Universal Press Syndicate and author of five books, is best known as the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. Guess what their stance is on e.g. gay marriage. She is also former president of the National Organization for Marriage (now run by Brian Brown), an organization attempting to organize opposition to recognition of same-sex couples in state legislatures (their ads have garnered some fame; they simply must be seen). She is obviously against abortion and believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned (believing that most people who support legal abortion do so reluctantly because they think it is a necessary evil), and received some minutes in the spotlight during the Schiavo case (she thinks legalizing euthanasia diminishes the value of life among the sick and elderly, though her reasoning is less than translucent). Similarly, gay marriage, according to Gallagher, diminishes the value of heterosexual marriage (the argument is, well, non-existent. It’s an assertion). A nice portrait is here.

According to Gallagher “once the principle [of same-sex marriage] is in the law, the next step will be to use the law to stigmatize, marginalize, and repress those who disagree with the government’s new views on marriage and sexual orientation”, and as evidence she cites efforts by liberals to revoke the tax-exempt status of churches who oppose same-sex marriage. In other words, religious freedom means protecting religious people’s right to discriminate those who disagree with them. Her arguments against gay marriage are sometimes … slightly paranoid, when they are not simply insane: see here, here, and here.

She also believes that abstinence-only sex education should be the sole curriculum taught, and advocates discontinuing all safer-sex education in public schools.

She was the subject of some controversy after receiving tens of thousands of dollars from the Department of Health and Human Services during 2002 and 2003 for helping the George W. Bush administration promote the President's Healthy Marriage Initiative. During this time, Gallagher testified before Congress in favor of “healthy marriage” programs, but never disclosed the payments. All in all Maggie Gallagher is the kind of person who would actually benefit from an Intro to ethics class, but who would never sign up for one.

Probably not related to the sad, pathetic once-comedian Leo Gallagher, but could have been.

Antidote.

Diagnosis: Paranoid fanatic, who likes collecting arguments – no matter how bad (since she is unable to discern good from bad arguments) and machine-gunning them forth whenever she has the opportunity. Virulently blathering idiot, in other words. Her direct impact is uncertain, but she seems to wield some political power.