Maggie Gallagher

As we continue with our end of the year fund-raising, I'm taking a look back at some of my favorite posts from the last year - you can see the last batch here.

• IHOP Classes Canceled Due To Holy Spirit
• Maggie Gallagher Just Doesn't Trust Men Who Want Children.
• Huckabee: A Right-Wing True Believer
• The Perfect Holiday Gift For All The Bigots In Your Life
• So Much For Richard Land's "Apology"
• Understanding Rod Parsley's Financial Woes
• "Quit Shoving Your Morals Down My Throat, Buttars"
• Carrie Prejean Speaks At the Values Voter Summit

As I've said before, we rely on your support for the work that we do here in tracking, analyzing, and exposing the Religious Right and it is your donations that make our efforts possible. 

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Maggie Gallagher says that those who fought for marriage equality in Maine wasted their time and money because the voters in the state were smart enough to know that it is gays who are the real bigots and haters:

The $4 million spent to pass gay marriage in Maine was wasted. Even Americans in liberal states do not believe that two guys pledged to a gay union are a marriage. Politicians can pass a bill saying a chicken is a duck and that doesn't make it true. Truth matters.

Americans have a great deal of goodwill toward gay people as friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. Most of us do not want to hurt them or hate them or interfere with anyone's legitimate rights to live as they choose. But we do not believe gay marriage is a civil right; we think it is a civil wrong. And we do not appreciate the increasingly intense efforts to punish people who disagree with gay marriage as if we were racists, bigots, discriminators or haters.

Case in point: Don Mendell, a school guidance counselor at Nokomis Regional High School in Maine, now faces ethics complaints for his decision to appear in a TV ad for the Yes on One campaign in the closing days of the contest. If substantiated, the ethics complaint could lead the government to yank his license as a social worker and, therefore, threaten his livelihood. What kind of movement spurs people to act like this? Meanwhile, a teacher of the year who campaigned for gay marriage faces no such threat to her livelihood. Is gay marriage really about love and tolerance for all?

The people of Maine are certainly entitled to wonder.

Earlier today we mentioned that Peter LaBarbera was heading up to Maine, but before he left he made time for a check-in with Janet Porter, as did the National Organization for Maine's Maggie Gallagher.

LaBarbera explained that he was heading to Maine in order to expose the "radical agenda" of groups that are trying to influence the vote on marriage equality andy rally pro-family forces to defeat them to prevent them from brainwashing our children in the public schools.  LaBarbera and Porter urged listeners to donate money to the effort and LaBarbera twice issued a special call for financial assistance for Brian Camenker who is "in a severe financial pinch right now," pleading with listeners to make a donation.

Starting around the 4:00 mark, LaBarbera says he believes they will win in Maine and goes on to compare the fight against marriage equality to the fight against reproductive choice, saying those who oppose the "homosexual activist agenda" are on the front lines of the culture war and are standing up against this abomination, comparing homosexuality to child sacrifice and bestiality in the Old Testament and vowing never to back down against those who "are willing to rob our religious freedom in the name of promoting that perversion in the name of civil rights."

LaBarbera was then followed by Maggie Gallagher, who likewise sought to raise money from Porter's listeners, though she estimated that NOM would raise nearly $10 million this year, and spent most of her time claiming that those a who support marriage equality are "lying to the people of Maine about what gay marriage means":

• Glenn Beck stands by his assertion that President Obama is a racist.  And I stand by my assertion that Glenn Beck is a joke.
• Hal Turner: FBI informant?  Apparently.
• Alvin McEwen continues to explain how religious right groups distort legitimate research to demonize the gay community.
• Box Turtle Bulletin: Matt Barber is not exactly an intellectual giant, but sometimes he’s so illogical and ridiculous that you just have to laugh.
• The Louisiana Democratic Party's spokesman responds to Sen. David Vitter's comment that it is Southern senators who are keeping the GOP committed to "core conservative value": "Last time I checked, you don't find core Southern values in the places David Vitter has been found. If David Vitter can lead his party back to their conservative values, maybe Larry Craig can give them tips on bathroom etiquette and Mark Sanford can recommend a really good restaurant in Buenos Aires."
• Sarah Posner: A rabbi, Tony Perkins, and Maggie Gallagher walk into a bar ...
• Finally, even Bill O'Reilly and Michael Steele are getting tired of the Birthers' absurd crusade.

• Our latest Right Wing Watch In Focus is now on-line: "Right Wing Attacks on Sotomayor Gain Little Traction."
• Alvin McEwen explains why people should care about Paul Cameron's shoddy research and his influence on the Religious Right.
• Good As You points out that Maggie Gallagher seems to have a history of inaccuracy.
• Glen Beck gets more ridiculous by the day.
• The Texas Freedom Network reports that FOX News aired a piece on the growing controversy over revising social studies curriculum standards in Texas and, of course, got it wrong.
• Finally, in today's Birther news: G. Gordon Liddy says that not only was President Obama not born in America, he's actually an "illegal alien" while Alex Koppleman thoroughly debunks the central premise of Liddy's argument. Elsewhere, David Weigel reports that John McCain's presidential campaign looked into the allegations and dismissed them as baseless, while Lou Dobbs continues to discuss the issue despite the fact that CNN President Jon Klein has been telling Dobbs' staff to knock it off and now the Southern Poverty Law Center is calling on CNN to remove him from that air.

Yesterday, Jim Burroway pointed out that professional anti-gay activists had quickly sezied on the arrest of Frank Lombard and begun "using this horrific crime as 'proof' that all gay people are unfit to be parents."

This sort of thing is to be expected from the likes of Paul Cameron, but I have to admit that I am a little surprised to see it also being made by Maggie Gallagher in this column saying that she has a deep suspicion "of men who want to get close to children while depriving them of mothers":

Adoptions are government acts. What did his fellow social workers who approved this adoption know? What did they overlook? What questions didn't they ask because, well, he was "in the club" -- one of them?

Adoption is the way we strip a child of his or her natural protection -- his mom and dad -- and the government steps in to give this baby a new and better father or mother. Preferably both, I say. But I'm old-fashioned.

I have a bias in favor of mothers. I have a suspicion (let me be frank -- I'm not proud, but it's true) of men who want to get close to children while depriving them of mothers. Yes, let me be politically incorrect: On the whole I would prefer two mothers to none at all for a child.

How do children do who are raised by only fathers? Not that well, actually -- on average, I hasten to add.

Maybe gender doesn't matter at all. But maybe it does. Are we allowed to ask? To wonder?

Yes, I know, women fail babies too. But I would be happier if children were not deliberately deprived of mothers by other adults in their lives.

Gallagher proceeds to tie the issue to Michael Jackson, while seemingly fully aware that her questions are bound to generate controversy but vowing not to be silenced:

I'm old-fashioned. Biased, even, but I already admitted that. I think fathers are immensely important to children -- unless and until the fathers indicate they do not want a mother in their child's life. Then I revert to an old-fashioned, even primitive, instinct: Babies ought to have mothers.

Will anyone run this column? Are we allowed to ask the question, "How in the world did this happen?" Could it be that the social work profession, committed to gay rights and family diversity, did not look very hard at Frank Lombard -- did not look beyond class and race and orientation to see if anything was amiss?

I do not know what went wrong in this instance. I do know that we should not let fear of homophobia prevent us from at least acknowledging the facts and asking questions.

One thing I have never understood about the conservative movement is its knee-jerk willingness to hail any person who happens to gain media exposure while expressing conservative views and immediately turning them into the face of the movement.  

They did it with Joe the Plumber and now they are doing it with Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who stated her opposition to marriage equality when asked about during the Miss USA pageant last week.  Since then, she’s been hailed in just about every right-wing media outlet, including World Magazine, WorldNetDaily, OneNewsNow, and Townhall, praised by the likes of Harry Jackson, Roy Moore, Day Gardner, and Gary Bauer, and recently “hired one of the country's premier Christian PR firms, A. Larry Ross Communications—which represents such evangelical powerhouses as Rick Warren” to deal with all the media requests.

As Politico reported earler this week, Prejean has become the Religious Right’s newest star:

Miss California may have lost her shot at becoming Miss USA after expressing her opposition to same-sex marriage, but she’s nevertheless emerged as a star.

After getting booed by the beauty pageant crowd and berated by one of the contest judges on Sunday, Carrie Prejean is suddenly a conservative sensation, a poster girl for the right who has bloggers, talk show hosts and Republican pols singing her praises.

…

An Alabama state legislator introduced a House resolution praising her for speaking out against gay marriage. In a press release, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins stated his “admiration and support” for her and lauded “her fortitude in the face of continued baseless personal attacks.”

“There’s a lot of people cheering you tonight that you stood on your principles, that you put the principles above winning,” Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity told Prejean when she appeared on his television program. “Not enough people do that. And I admire you a lot for it.”

...

“I would like to nominate Miss California as the new face of the marriage movement. Much better than mine!” National Organization for Marriage President Maggie Gallagher wrote on National Review’s The Corner.

The praise from Gallagher is especially interesting because, as Good as You noted, earlier this week she was Twittering that she was about to meet Prejean for lunch – a lunch which must have been quite a success because Gallagher’s fantasies about turning Prejean into the face of the anti-gay marriage movement are about to come true:

Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who offered memorable opposition to same-sex marriage and a young, attractive new face for the movement against it, will appear tomorrow at a press conference hosted by the National Organization for Marriage at the National Press Club, according to a press release from the group.

She'll be launching a new ad, the second in what the group says is a $1.5 million campaign.

The ad, the release says, will address:

What happens when a young California beauty pageant contestant is asked "do you support same-sex marriage?" She is attacked viciously for having the courage to speak up for her truth and her values. But Carrie's courage inspired a whole nation and a whole generation of young people because she chose to risk the Miss USA crown rather than be silent about her deepest moral values. "No Offense" calls gay marriage advocates to account for their unwillingness to debate the real issue: gay marriage has consequences.