Wednesday, April 1, 2009

OUT OF STATE ANTI-GAY GROUP ROBOCALLING IN VERMONT

From GREEN MOUNTAIN DAILY

The Princeton New Jersey based "National Organization for Marriage" - a national religious right group that works against LGBT rights across the country - is currently running robocalls in the state on the marriage equality bill.

While there is a compelling case out there that this organization is either a Mormon Church front group, or is at least largely supported by the LDS Church, they got started in California (where they were very active in the California Prop 8 fight) with money from the Catholic Knights of Columbus. In any event, it is - once again - a group with a religious agenda that they feel everyone should be legally bound to, no matter what state they live in.

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Footnote: Shay Totten/Blurt received one of the calls:

I didn't record the call because I answered the phone and just listened to the recording. I'm surprised for a couple of reasons. First, my state rep was one of the original sponsors of the legislation (Democratic Rep. Mark Larson), and second I'm a journalist. Thirdly, it not only had my rep's name, but his number, too.

This leads me to believe that the call list was probably not a political list, but one that contains most, if not all, households. And this has to be expensive.

Not sure that having an out-of-state group lobbying for their cause is going to help the in-state opponents of same-sex marriage. They are also behind an e-mail campaign to Vermont lawmakers. I've placed calls and emails to the organization to get more details about their efforts in Vermont and will post any responses I receive. They claim to have an ad running as part of their Northeast Action Plan to stamp out same-sex marriage efforts in New England. I haven't heard one yet in Vermont.

Several readers who alerted me to the calls they received had this same question: The ad specifically mentions that lawmakers should support Gov. Douglas. Did he give his blessing to this group to use his name? Probably not. His name also appeared on a rather hate-filled rant that landed on people's fax machines this week from a Utah-based group America Forever. This group also robo-faxed Vermont businesses before a public hearing on same-sex marriage last month.

1 comment:

  1. I deplore the way the bigots abuse marriage by calling their hate groups "Blah blah for marriage" when they actually mean "Blah blah for straight only marriage". Then they claim to be "protecting" marriage, which they somehow plan to do by banning people from taking part in it and even trying to forcibly divorce nearly 20,000 married couples. Sadly now that they've destroyed CA (FL and AZ were pretty much lost causes, I'm afraid) they're working on VT and NH. Hypocritical slime, every last one of them.

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