They’re here. They’re not queer. And they’re taking back the rainbow!
(graphic: mine … psssst … it’s not a video)
The always enjoyable Mark Morford, writing at the San Francisco Chronicle, takes on the National Organization for Marriage’s army of ‘mo-hatin’ zombies … and that whole fake lightning thing.
Fear the rainbow!
A storm is gathering. Are you afraid, Christian? Are you afraid *enough*?My favorite part has got to be the lightning.
The fake lightning, that is, flashing just off to the side, a cheap ‘n’ cheesy special effect that momentarily lights up the actors’ faces in the most sweetly melodramatic way as they stand there against the dark ‘n’ stormy backdrop like devout Christian zombies, delivering delightfully weird and wooden lines about being openly terrified of those openly terrifying gay married people.
Yes, it’s merely another series of strange, alarmist, deeply homophobic ads from yet another seething anti-gay group you’ve never heard of (the National Organization for Marriage, or NOM), ads which are running right now in five states in response to two stunning, watershed gay marriage upheavals in Iowa and Vermont, AKA two more states now shamelessly roaring down the highway to hell.
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But something is different. Unlike the comparatively sophisticated Proposition 8 ads funded by huge amounts of Mormon “panic cash” here in California, these low-budget spots reek of something else, something a bit more briny and stale and, yes, ultimately enlightening.
What’s most striking, what sets these ads apart from most homophobic campaigns of the past, is the palpable tone of desperation. It’s a feeling that these groups are, more and more, clutching at straws, scraping bottom, leaning on the most absurd, least tenable arguments imaginable, each one more shrill and desperate than the last in a losing effort to appeal to an ever-shrinking audience of increasingly indifferent, bored homophobes.
Morford adds, “The bizarre inscrutability of these crappy little ads is the surest sign yet that the barricades of intolerance are collapsing, the tone is shifting. Put it this way: hate groups like NOM have lost nearly all political power they enjoyed during the Reign of Bush.”
Tip: Andrés Duque
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