NOM - "Gathering Storm"

From Frank Rich in the New York Times:

WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic “The Village of the Damned” with the Broadway staple “A Chorus Line”? You don’t need to use your imagination. It’s there waiting for you on YouTube under the title “Gathering Storm”: a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism.

Nice, isn't it? Well, funny anyway.

Far from terrifying anyone, “Gathering Storm” has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from “the homo storm” strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A “New Jersey pastor” whose church has been “turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch” declares that he likes gay people, “but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.”

NOM is the National Organization for Marriage. "NOM, NOM, NOM." A good mantra, don't you think. Try it out. It works.

As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.”

Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right’s two major arguments against marriage equality. The unanimous ruling of the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court proved that the issue is not merely a bicoastal fad. The decision, written by Mark Cady, a Republican appointee, was particularly articulate in explaining that a state’s legalization of same-sex marriage has no effect on marriage as practiced by religions. “The only difference,” the judge wrote, is that “civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law.”

Well, I'm glad the judge explained that so clearly. Maybe the folks amongst us who didn't get it, will now have their eyes opened.

The battle is won. The question is no longer "if", but "when". That's not a great consolation for gays in other states who want to get married now, but it should, at the very least, give hope to all of us in favor of full equality in marriage laws. It's coming. Maybe not soon enough, but it's coming.

As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.

UPDATE: As suggested by IT in the comments, here are two videos which rebut the video above, one humorous and one factual. The humorous video is effective, as is Colbert's, and the other is useful for talking points against the lies in the original video.

From Daily Kos.



From The Friends of Jake.



As to the original, I think "res ipsa loquitur", "the thing speaks for itself", applies, as its nonsense is so obvious. Of course, I could be wrong.