Sheep's clothing

August 28, 2012 10:01 AM

Equality Matters' Carlos Maza goes undercover at the National Organization for Marriage's Student Conference
posted by roomthreeseventeen (68 comments total)

He encouraged his audience to visit pro-LGBT news outlets to "know what your opponents are thinking," joking about the number of ads for "gay hookup sites" and "pet grooming" he sees while browsing LGBT websites

Is "pet grooming" slang for something? I'm totally not getting this.
posted by Egg Shen at 10:05 AM on August 28, 2012 [9 favorites]

Jesus, how could he sit there listening to so much hate being spewed for four whole days?
posted by caddis at 10:07 AM on August 28, 2012

that's why he was on grindr! Researching the enemy!
posted by The Whelk at 10:07 AM on August 28, 2012 [27 favorites]

I somehow read that as Family Matters' Carl Winslow.

Imagine my disappointment.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 10:08 AM on August 28, 2012 [14 favorites]

Pet "grooming" as in marrying an animal I believe, and not a new talking point unfortunately:

Huckabee: "Well, I don't think that's a radical view to say we're going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we're going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what's been historic."
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:09 AM on August 28, 2012

Is "pet grooming" slang for something?

I suspect he means what he says. It's code for, "can you believe what those people are into?"

But it comes with the added, er, dog whistle of Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality.
posted by MuffinMan at 10:14 AM on August 28, 2012

Jesus, how could he sit there listening to so much hate being spewed for four whole days?

Well, it's probably a good idea to get acquainted with our country's future leaders.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:15 AM on August 28, 2012 [6 favorites]

Is "pet grooming" slang for something?

When we're not busying destroying your marriages by giving your wives fashion and relationship advice, we're out in the backyard fucking freshly-shorn animals.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:16 AM on August 28, 2012 [11 favorites]

At the beginning, he mentions something about how NOM is using "gay marriage" as a weasel term to avoid being labeled a hate group, but points out that the camp doesn't stick to the NOM script. Does that mean SPLC and others have an opening to go after them?
posted by zombieflanders at 10:17 AM on August 28, 2012

It's slang for time management, basically.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:17 AM on August 28, 2012

After hours that place has got to be a total fuckfest.
posted by Artw at 10:18 AM on August 28, 2012 [7 favorites]

ALLEN: This is a puzzling one, but very interesting. The lesbian households, they tend to be much more likely to marry in the rates, not just in numbers, in numbers and rates, but they’re much less stable than the gay households. And lots of theories about why that is. You know, getting on the same menstrual cycle, getting really attached to your own biological child and not being willing to share the biological child with your female spouse.


Just let that .....thought sink in there for a second. Contemplate what it takes to have that thought form and roll around in your mind.
posted by The Whelk at 10:23 AM on August 28, 2012 [22 favorites]

My friend Joel Derfner did one of these "undercover gay person" things at an Exodus conference in his book Swish. It seems like things have only gotten worse in the few intervening years.

How do people find so much time to hate others? I can barely make the time to go out to a concert or prune my rosebush.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:23 AM on August 28, 2012 [27 favorites]

The saw this on, like, the L Word or something?
posted by Artw at 10:24 AM on August 28, 2012

"Prune my rosebush" is not a euphemism for some bizarre kind of lesbian sex, I hasten to add. Just in case Rick Santorum is reading this.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:24 AM on August 28, 2012 [46 favorites]

So that's what "Heavy petting" means, I wondered why they where so against it in the 40s.
posted by The Whelk at 10:26 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Lesbians can't be good coparents since their menstrual cycles will sync up! And gay men are too promiscuous to be suitable parents. But put a woman and a man together and apparently they never get bored as their sexual effluvia negate one another, or something.
posted by DrMew at 10:29 AM on August 28, 2012 [4 favorites]

"Gentlemen, this is a cock. I have studied over one thousand images of these things - they come in an astounding range of shapes, sizes and colors, and you simply would not beleive the places I've seen them go..."
posted by Artw at 10:31 AM on August 28, 2012 [9 favorites]

Lesbians can't be good coparents since their menstrual cycles will sync up! And gay men are too promiscuous to be suitable parents. But put a woman and a man together and apparently they never get bored as their sexual effluvia negate one another, or something.

I think it's more that women produce excess amounts of heat and must be paired with a man's generous amounts of cool. You may be able to make a stable lesbian coupling by bleeding both women with leeches every third day.
posted by backseatpilot at 10:31 AM on August 28, 2012 [21 favorites]

Just let that .....thought sink in there for a second. Contemplate what it takes to have that thought form and roll around in your mind.

I tried but Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt rolled up and machine gunned the thought as it was forming.
posted by atrazine at 10:33 AM on August 28, 2012 [10 favorites]

related: the very very low expectations of conservative gays
posted by The Whelk at 10:37 AM on August 28, 2012 [7 favorites]

I think it's more that women produce excess amounts of heat and must be paired with a man's generous amounts of cool. You may be able to make a stable lesbian coupling by bleeding both women with leeches every third day.

I'm pretty sure women are wet and cold, and men are hot and dry. Basically, dogs' noses and cats noses, which is why straight marriages are just inherently unstable and really shouldn't be allowed.
posted by jb at 10:39 AM on August 28, 2012 [2 favorites]

Traditional marriage, mass hysteria!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:39 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Damn, that was highly disturbing.

But what I saw at the conference - selling a book that labels gay people as pedophiles worthy of death, distributing Bible quotes to college students similarly calling for gays to be killed, hosting entire speeches devoted to condemning gays and lesbians as deviant sinners - represented a brand of anti-gay extremism that I assumed even NOM would have shied away from.

Sickening. :(
posted by zarq at 10:40 AM on August 28, 2012 [4 favorites]

which is why straight marriages are just inherently unstable and really shouldn't be allowed.

Ah but the output of energy is immense! Properly harnessed, unstable straight marriages could fuel our ships to the stars and beyond!
posted by The Whelk at 10:41 AM on August 28, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's very straightforward. You know how when gay marriage is legal, people will start wanting to marry their dog? Well, pet grooming is sort of a "gateway" activity that leads to animal marriage.

So long as gays are allowed to post ads for pet grooming, it will continue to encourage those suffering from deep-seated other-species attraction.

Speaking of deep-seated, I really wonder, I really really wonder how many of the people there are either closet homosexuals or don't even realize their homosexual. I mean, basically, just the term "deep-seated same-sex attraction" sounds like something only someone desperately trying to fight their own orientation would come up. I mean, I don't consider myself to have a deep-seated opposite-sex attraction. I just like being with women.

The term just suggests an unhealthy relationship with sexuality (and maybe even gender, etc).
posted by nosh, daven, shtup at 10:53 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Egg Shen: " Is "pet grooming" slang for something? I'm totally not getting this."

A lesbian co-worker says that "they're saying the pet grooming industry is one whose higher end stores are stereotypically presented as predominantly run by gay men. Think florists or hairdressers."

I'm not gonna ask her about the bestiality thing.
posted by zarq at 11:00 AM on August 28, 2012 [2 favorites]

I don't get this article. Like this:

I looked around, expecting other students to at least appear unsettled by distribution of the notoriously violent anti-gay biblical passage. Nobody seemed to be reacting.

Why would you expect a reaction? Have I missed something? Is NOM suppossed to be an overtly secular organisation or something? Because what with all the Christian trappings --- the highlight of the weekend was a Church service --- why would they not refer to the Bible as the ultimate authority in justifying their position?

I'm completely serious here. I mean, if it is clearly-Christian affiliated, then the whole thing seems like kind of a nothingburger.
News at 11: Anti-gay activists say exactly the same things, cite exactly the same crappy studies and dubious research in private as in public.
posted by Diablevert at 11:00 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Is NOM suppossed to be an overtly secular organisation or something?

Yes. Here's their mission statement page.

They are also incorporated as a 501 (c) 4, "Social Welfare League," rather than as a religious organization.

So, yeah, this is a bit of hypocrisy on their part. Every now and then, they also make a big show of reaching out to the Jewish community...
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:08 AM on August 28, 2012 [5 favorites]

Theoretically at least these guys are "pro-marriage" and not a hate group. Theoretically.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

My friend Joel Derfner did one of these "undercover gay person" things at an Exodus conference in his book Swish.

Swish is an excellent book BTW.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:13 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

The lesbians-can't-be-coparents-because-of-synced-periods B.S. is dripping with misogyny in addition to cherry-topped homophobia.

(Hate is always smiling. I have to remind myself that everyday.)
posted by whimsicalnymph at 11:17 AM on August 28, 2012 [4 favorites]

Sidhedevil: " Every now and then, they also make a big show of reaching out to the Jewish community..."

They've learned to only do so with the fundie ultra-orthodox, because the rest of us recoil in horror.
posted by zarq at 11:18 AM on August 28, 2012 [7 favorites]

Just let that .....thought sink in there for a second. Contemplate what it takes to have that thought form and roll around in your mind.

Unpossible. The thought is bouncing off my skull and making a thin, screamy sort of sound. It's very unpleasant.

Also, maybe we're broken, but in a decade of living together, gingerbeer and I have synced up maybe twice a year, menstrual-cycle-wise.
posted by rtha at 11:22 AM on August 28, 2012

Related: Dan Savage debates NOM's president, Brian Brown. Let's just say that it doesn't go well for Brown.
posted by ReginaHart at 11:22 AM on August 28, 2012 [12 favorites]

Re: pet grooming

I read this as a conservative attack on same-sex relationships because they cannot produce children through "conventional" means, and thus they have to "settle" for having companion animals instead of human babies.

I don't agree with this point of view, but that's what I got out of the reference.
posted by dhens at 11:26 AM on August 28, 2012 [4 favorites]

Hate is always smiling.

When you're around. When you're not looking hate is yelling at the bathroom mirror, demanding to know why everyone around them cannot see the inherent rightness of everything it says and the inherent wrongness of the slightest deviation from anything it says.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:37 AM on August 28, 2012 [4 favorites]

Re: pet grooming

I read this as a conservative attack on same-sex relationships because they cannot produce children through "conventional" means, and thus they have to "settle" for having companion animals instead of human babies.


To be fair, most of their information about gay couples comes from watching Best In Show.
posted by tittergrrl at 11:51 AM on August 28, 2012 [10 favorites]

Gay marriage leads to sex with ducks, yeah ducks, sex with ducks.

/Garfunkle and Oates link. If you read the article, you deserve a palate cleanser.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:52 AM on August 28, 2012 [3 favorites]

He says later on in the article that the battle lines between the two side of the culture war are somewhat blurred. I think, rather, that the fronts of the culture war are not strictly set between left and right but teeter back and forth. The front corresponding to stable, lasting marriages isn't really a front so much as a field hospital that no one's fighting over but which has had every line of supply cut by the sharply entrenched marriage equality front.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:59 AM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Prune my rosebush" is not a euphemism for some bizarre kind of lesbian sex, I hasten to add.

What does it say about me that I am disappointed to hear this? It's actually such a nice turn of phrase. it would make a lovely euphemism.

Also, speaking of euphemisms, you know how Dan Savage redefined Santorum in popular usage? I think someone should come up with a definition for what this hate-mongering NOM actually stands for.

I'm thinking mole rats for the M, but I'm flexible.
posted by misha at 12:09 PM on August 28, 2012

Don't let the haters ruin nom.
posted by Artw at 12:11 PM on August 28, 2012

NOM actually stands for.

Not Out Men?
posted by jaduncan at 12:12 PM on August 28, 2012 [8 favorites]

I think someone should come up with a definition for what this hate-mongering NOM actually stands for.


NOM NOM NOM actually works by itself.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:12 PM on August 28, 2012 [3 favorites]

Or man, of course.

Usage: "oh, he's a total NOM".
posted by jaduncan at 12:12 PM on August 28, 2012

Oh, I'm sorry, Father, but once you legalize gay marriage, it's a slippery slope to legalize all conceivable forms of marriage.
posted by redsparkler at 12:15 PM on August 28, 2012

legalize all conceivable forms of marriage.

This, ironically, is pretty much their existing stance.
posted by jaduncan at 12:18 PM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

The lesbians-can't-be-coparents-because-of-synced-periods B.S. is dripping with misogyny in addition to cherry-topped homophobia.

Synced periods, of course, unless one of them is raped. Then their date of ovulation will magically change/ stop.

I was just thinking again recently that, given the mindset of right-wingers in the US, how easily the country could slide into a Nazi-like - or Taliban-like if you’d prefer I not Godwin – type of regime.

And I wonder if it would really be all that far for my conservo relatives/ friends to go from private anti-Muslim/Mexican/whoever comments and “liking” Chik-Fil-A on Facebook to supporting such an extremist takeover.
posted by NorthernLite at 12:38 PM on August 28, 2012 [3 favorites]

Is "pet grooming" slang for something? I'm totally not getting this

You know what kinds of pets need to be groomed, thoroughly and often? Yeah, that's right, Poodles! Need I say more?

On the topic of bestiality:

Fact: You Can Get AIDS Through Heterosexual Sex
In January, Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield said on a radio program, “Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community ... It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall ... My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.”

So it is you, you bad, bad, gays who brought the scourge of AIDs to the world by one guy fucking a monkey and then fucking a guy.

Also on the topic of bestiality (although in this case it looks to be heterosexual bestiality) the
1,000,00 Moms are disgusted by the Skittles walrus commercial because it is taking bestiality lightly.

I was intrigued by the (new to me) idea that polygamy is actually more moral than homosexual marriage. I can see how to certain types of people (middle-age men with boring wives and dull sex lives) the idea of one man and a bunch of nubile young chicks would sound more moral. Way more moral!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:53 PM on August 28, 2012 [2 favorites]

I was intrigued by the (new to me) idea that polygamy is actually more moral than homosexual marriage.

It's in the Bible, see?
posted by Sidhedevil at 12:57 PM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yes, I can see that it is in the Bible along with stoning adulterers and sacrificing your own children. But I had not heard anything positive about polygamy from the far Right crowd. Now I have. A hint of things to come?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:01 PM on August 28, 2012

I somehow read that as Family Matters' Carl Winslow.

Imagine my disappointment.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 10:08 AM on August 28 [9 favorites +] [!]

God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve Urkel.
posted by resurrexit at 1:04 PM on August 28, 2012 [9 favorites]

This, ironically, is pretty much their existingwide stance.
posted by davejay at 1:11 PM on August 28, 2012

When I got my driver's license, I was able to drive a car, and now I've gotten my M1, so I can ride a motorcycle, even though lots of people think riding a motorcycle is stupid and dangerous and should be outlawed. It is a slippery slope, too; soon I'll be riding a lawn mower on the 405, or riding on the shoulders of a small child to get to work.
posted by davejay at 1:12 PM on August 28, 2012 [13 favorites]

I present the next talking point before it becomes mainstream: a Brazillian registrar has just allowed a polygamous civil union.
posted by jaduncan at 1:17 PM on August 28, 2012 [2 favorites]

or riding on the shoulders of a small child to get to work

If you're Newt Gingrich, then that's just the American Way.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:23 PM on August 28, 2012

It's so strange that Christians continue to use Leviticus to prop up their homophobic rhetoric... Paul I can see, but Leviticus? I guess it's reassuring that they clutch at straws like that.
posted by jiawen at 1:31 PM on August 28, 2012

davejay: "...riding on the shoulders of a small child to get to work."

You know, we probably could make a killing hiring out small children to carry commuters to work on the 405.

"Tired of sitting in traffic for hours twice a day? Ride in comfort with our exclusive luxury Valet service. With small feet that slip in and out of traffic jams only our Valets provide the fastest door-to-door experience in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area."
posted by zarq at 1:35 PM on August 28, 2012 [3 favorites]

Someone ought to create NOMM: the National Organization for (more) Marriage.
posted by alexei at 2:03 PM on August 28, 2012

I hope he saved the registration list so he can use it in the future as a Coming Out Bingo Card.
posted by dry white toast at 2:17 PM on August 28, 2012 [6 favorites]

Just let that .....thought sink in there for a second.

I am pretty sure the cognition required to even ponder that would have resulted in levels of neural fuckup that might have killed me. It's so far from what I consider 'modern' that it no longer is bipedal or has thumbs and may in fact be on the edge of surrendering its spine, so devolved is the level of thought required.
posted by mephron at 2:41 PM on August 28, 2012

In related news: Getting Teens to Join God's Army.
posted by ericb at 3:21 PM on August 28, 2012

Just let that .....thought sink in there for a second. Contemplate what it takes to have that thought form and roll around in your mind.

Oh come on people, it's not that hard to extrapolate wildly from a limited data pool to reach one or more "observations" that shore up the wishful thinking you are using in lieu of a hypothesis. I direct your attention to reams of "C" and "D" grade scientific literature out there that is full of exactly this kind of crap. And if there are people who can get that way about protein expression in saccharomyces cerevisiae, is it really a shock that there are people who can get that way about Teh Gay? Really?

Go back to yesterday's FPP about autism. It would not be hard for someone skilled in the art to hammer out a PERL script that swapped some keywords around in that editorial so that it made the case that homosexuality was an autoimmune disorder . It wouldn't be factually correct (though it would probably be at least as coherent as "hardcore taters") but once you've let facts go in lieu of "The Truth" it's not like you're going to care, or even notice.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:22 PM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's so strange that Christians continue to use Leviticus to prop up their homophobic rhetoric... Paul I can see, but Leviticus? I guess it's reassuring that they clutch at straws like that.

In my experience, unless they are an actual biblical scholar chances are good that the average Christian's view of the bible can be summed up as a giant book falling from the sky and the thunderous voice God saying "here thou goest". The notion that "the bible" is a single discrete document, completely unified in voice and intent is accepted by a whole lotta Christians.* Until you can disabuse people of that notion there will always be a good reason (in their view) for anti-gay sentiment. Always.

*Again, just my experience. And I do have a bit of experience in this regard. When I was a Mormon missionary up in Alberta Canada I encountered a lot of people who appealed to the bible in exactly this way. I'm not saying that that there aren't Christians who have a more educated, nuanced approach to biblical text and canon, but I am saying that after having met thousands of different Christians over the course of a 2-year proselytizing mission that a healthy majority of them really do believe that the bible is and has always been one single infallible text that is not open to interpretation.
posted by Doleful Creature at 4:16 PM on August 28, 2012 [6 favorites]

One of the saddest things is how it ends with him talking to a woman who's there because she wants to strengthen families and marriage, and instead is exposed to a barrage of anti-gay bullshit. The work we do every day strengthens families and marriages, all families and all marriages, rather than inventing imaginary threats based on anti-gay animus.

And the depressing thing is that until we get a lot of talking heads basically chanting it like they have, those words are still going to be a fucking dogwhistle for hating gays.
posted by klangklangston at 4:51 PM on August 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

I sort of thought that was the silver lining, klang. He goes there expecting to have to hide from all of the other attendants, make like they were all on one side and he on another. He expects them to already be as crazed as the leaders and speakers of NOM, but based on his conversation with the girl at the end realizes that the attendees are coming from places that aren't as heatedly focused on these issues. They get that exposure in conferences like these, sure enough, but go home to what's hopefully a more sane and Jesusy environment. At home they even share many of the same values and bases for family and relationships as the author.

So I thought that was a good part, that he realized the crazed world of NOM doesn't have quite as far a reach as they'd like you to believe they do. As it looks like they do if you're neck-deep in the muck tracking their progress like he was. And good that he realized the line that divides pro- and anti-gay marriage people, the normal folk that is, not the organizers-against and other various anti-gay leaders, might not be as strict and formidable as he thought going in.
posted by carsonb at 6:40 PM on August 28, 2012 [2 favorites]

["Flayed Man" accidental derail deleted; carry on.]
posted by taz at 11:14 PM on August 28, 2012

Doleful Creature: The notion that "the bible" is a single discrete document, completely unified in voice and intent is accepted by a whole lotta Christians. Until you can disabuse people of that notion there will always be a good reason (in their view) for anti-gay sentiment.

As a formerly-religious Jew, it's obvious that the vast majority of Christians are perfectly used to ignoring the inconvenient parts of the bible. I don't think I've ever heard a pastor propose punishing Sabbath violations with death, or banning all shrimp, or allowing parents to sell their children into slavery. One day, not too long from now I hope, the bits of the bible that condemn homosexuality will be added to the list of parts almost everyone ignores.
posted by vasi at 2:19 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]