Finding The Forest For The Weeds

My husband loves to task me...and by "task me" I mean make sure that I have something to do and something to write about at all times. Sometimes this is a good thing, especially when I scan the news and can't find it in myself to emotionally connect with yet another wing nut spouting the same over-the-top garbage that we have all heard before. In those moments, I appreciate his ability to focus me. But some days.....oh well, I'm just gonna say it....it drives me nuts. Today was  one of these days when Jay has emotionally connected with a topic I thought long dead and yelled from across the house for me to come take a look.....Josh Weed, the Gay, married to a woman, councilor, and father of three is back in the news with a recent appearance on Nightline.

"Hey have you seen this video?", Jay says to me with excitment. "What video I ask?", wondering what in the world  could have made him so animated. Did Mitt Romney get caught toe tapping in a mens room?....Did NOM finally and permanently self-destruct?......no?   I came from the breakfast table to Jays computer to see what all the fuss was about and looked at the screen to see Josh Weed and family staring back at me with the headline Gay. Mormon, and Happily Married.  "Oh that story...I saw that weeks ago. why is that back again?"

And that simple comment was the one that opened the door to a debate that suprised me in the intensity of MY emotional reaction to it and incited a debate that still rages on in our home. but first....some background....

Connections: NOM...The LDS Church and Lies

The National Organization for Marriage is back in the news (is it ever not?). This time for heading up a tour around the U.S. in a bus covered in stock photos of opposite sex families and American flags. The same great people that brought you the Prop 8 Trial Tracker now give us the NOM Tour Tracker. So far the "Summer for Marriage Tour" has been and unqualified failure marked by low turn outs. I guess without a marriage initiative to scare the pants off of people its hard to get your message out....but then, Nom had to get its face out there somehow.

In California and Maine, Nom's profile had been inescapable. They were THE driving force behind the anti-marriage equality movement. Commercials like the "Gathering Storm" set the tone for Noms tactic of scaring people into believing that gay marriage would somehow result catastrophic consequences. At the time of prop 8 in California, it was also known that the Mormon Church was also a big backer of the movement, donating vast amounts of money and..."volunteers"(wink)... to the cause. We saw the same plays repeated with success in Maine, leading most of us to gape in wonder that it could happen a second time with the same lies. Everywhere you went...Nom was there...Maggie Gallagher becoming the ever present face of discrimination against gays in America second only to Anita Bryant. But where did NOM itself come from?

While watching 8 The Mormon Proposition, I learned the answer to that and an interesting fact that was not apparent to me in the campaign against Prop 8. read on...