As Joe points out, there was a clear winner, and it wasn’t the wingnut:

I’m still working my way through reading the Prop 8 decision and writing a post on it, but for now, here’s what NOM’s bigots had to say, courtesy of Towleroad.

First up, Brian Brown:

“As sweeping and wrong-headed as this decision is, it nonetheless was as predictable as the outcome of a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition game,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “We have anticipated this outcome since the moment San Francisco Judge Vaughn Walker’s first hearing in the case. Now we have the field cleared to take this issue to the US Supreme Court, where we have every confidence we will prevail.”

And then John Eastman:

“Never before has a federal appeals court – or any federal court for that matter – found a right to gay marriage under the US Constitution,” said constitutional scholar John Eastman, who is chairman of NOM. “The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the most overturned circuit in the country, and Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the author of today’s absurd ruling is the most overturned federal judge in America. Today’s ruling is a perfect setup for this case to be taken by the US Supreme Court, where I am confident it will be reversed. This issue is the Roe v Wade of the current generation, and I sincerely doubt the Court has the stomach for preempting the policy judgments of the states on such a contentious matter, knowing the lingering harm it caused by that ruling.”

Aw, boo boos. The fact that this is the first time a federal appeals court has “gotten it” is absolutely irrelevant. That’s kind of how courts work. It took a “first time” and a “never before” to desegregate our schools, to give women reproductive freedom, and a host of other things that are now simply understood as part of what it means to be an American.

State by state, politician by politician, voter by voter…

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire announced her support for gay marriage legislation on Wednesday, potentially putting the state on track to become the nation’s seventh to fully recognize same-sex unions.

Gregoire, a Democrat in the final year of her second term, is backing legislation to be introduced before the Washington state legislature, which reconvenes next week.

“It is time in Washington state for marriage equality,” Gregoire told a news conference in the state capital of Olympia. “It is time, it’s the right thing to do.”

The article points out, though, that passage isn’t assured, as some Democrats have sided with wingnuts. And of course, the hate groups will be traveling to Washington:

Brian Brown, president of the 800,000-member, Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage, told Reuters his non-profit group would lobby against marriage equality in Washington state.

“The people of this country believe that marriage is a union of a man and a woman,” Brown said in a telephone interview. “I expect the legislature in Washington state will stand up for this commitment and vote to protect marriage.”

“The people of this country” are not represented by you, Brian, and the sooner you realize that, the healthier you’ll be.

It’s never a good idea to assume that Brian Brown or NOM are telling the truth, but Joe has this fundraising letter from them posted at his blog, and if what the NOMsters are saying is indeed true, then they’re a little short on cash right now:

Dear Marriage Supporter,

Please help us overcome a looming shortfall!

Increasingly virulent and frequent attacks from the same-sex marriage lobby have depleted our emergency funds, and we need your help!

As 2011 draws to a close, everyone at the National Organization for Marriage is excited about the election year ahead, which we believe will be full of huge victories for traditional marriage.

But unless we raise additional funds quickly, we will be faced with hard decisions about where to begin scaling back our efforts for next year. NOM does not have the resources to accomplish everything we need to do…and with the many new and critical marriage battles upcoming in 2012, this is the exact wrong time for us to have to scale back.

Friend, will you make one emergency year-end gift of $25, $50, $100 or even $1,000 if you can afford it, to NOM right now to help us eliminate our budget shortfall before the end of the year?

Please, please, please? Brian’s loafers are quaking at the prospect of having to get a real job that doesn’t pay him simply for being a bigot.

Anyway, if you read the entire letter from NOM, it will fill you with holiday cheer.

We know that the people who run the National Organization for Marriage are nothing if not flaming, dishonest hypocrites. That’s a given. But it’s a little bit rich to see Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage attending a fundraiser for Newt Gingrich, who abandoned his first wife while she was suffering from cancer to marry a newer model, and then started a years-long affair with Callista, while he was on a witch hunt against President Clinton, only to eventually leave Wife 2.0 and marry Callista, and the rest is history.

I mean, we know that the National Organization for Marriage doesn’t actually support anything beyond hatred for gays. I get that. But you’d think they’d see how bad this looks. Here’s what happened:

Last night NOM president Brian Brown attacked a Mother Jones reporter and shoved him out of the room as Occupy Wall Street protesters invaded a $1000/plate fundraiser for Newt Gingrich.

And here is that reporter talking to Keith Olbermann about the incident:

WOW.

Anti-gay organizations and politicians like Rick Santorum have long argued against marriage equality by saying it would create a slippery slope leading to the legalization of polygamy. It turns out they were wrong, as they tend to be about virtually everything.

On July 20, 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world to legalize marriage equality for same-sex couples. On Nov. 23, 2011, British Columbia’s highest court ruled that Canada’s 121-year-old criminal law banning polygamy is constitutional. Canada is significantly more liberal than the United States, and British Columbia is more liberal than most of Canada — yet the imagined slippery slope failed to materialize. If Vancouver isn’t buying it — it won’t happen in Kansas.

Wake up fundies — your arguments are baseless and useless.

Social conservatives are very dishonest about this topic. First, they conveniently fail to point out that the issue of polygamy has been around significantly longer than the the issue of marriage equality for same-sex couples. Indeed, the Mormon church had to officially abandon polygamy to pave the way for Utah statehood.

Clearly, this is a longstanding topic of debate that preexisted gay issues in a political context. Arguments for and against polygamy historically have, and will continue, to be fought on its own merit, irrelevant to and regardless of LGBT marriage equality. This point is factual and incontrovertible.

Social conservatives have once again failed to demonstrate the danger of allowing LGBT couples to wed. The Canadian ruling places one more of their flawed and felonious arguments in history’s dumpster. What bizarre talking point will their depraved imaginations come up with next?

Say what you will about Maggie Gallagher — seriously, go ahead, say what you will — but you can’t say she doesn’t like to help, and isn’t that what the spirit of Thanksgiving is about?

Maggie knows that there are millions thousands at least nine or ten NOM supporters out there who will be spending Thanksgiving this year with their families and that, apropos of absolutely nothing, they will feel the need to tell all their normal well-adjusted family members about how much they hate gays and the gay marriage and the whatsits and the Kids These Days. She also knows that it’s no fun for her minions when Uncle Dave looks at them over the decanter of giblet gravy and says something to the effect of, “Seriously, what’s wrong with you? Why do you spend so much of your time fixated on gay people? What the hell difference does it make to you whether or not my gay son and his partner are married? God, you need a hobby, and probably some therapy, you dumb bigot.” [Total Uncle Dave comment right there.]

So Maggie to the rescue, with this handy video about how to tell everybody that A. You super hate gays and B. It’s your special privilege as a weird fundamentalist of some sort and it doesn’t mean you’re a bigot. These are the three simple steps, after which I have provided example sentences in italics:

1. State your position briefly. [God hates fags.]

2. Refute the charge of bigotry. [No, I didn't say I hate fags, I said God hates fags. I'm not a bigot. Let me show you some verses in my pop-up Bible that I don't really understand.]

3. A call to tolerance. (Repeat as necessary… “or until they bring in the pie.”) [Why won't you tolerate my bigotry?! I only want to use my voting power to deny a minority their constitutional rights based on my pigheaded, hateful version of my religion, nothing more! I AM THE VICTIM HEEEEEEEEEEEERE!!!!!!!, etc. Oh, look, pie!  NOM NOM NOM!]

Here’s the video:

Because Maggie is using such a time-honored template for defending bigotry, if you are a white supremacist or misogynist or any other kind of hate-filled goon, feel free to cut out words like “fag” and “gay” above and insert other epithets in Maggie Gallagher’s Handy Guide To Holiday Bigotry. It’s sort of like a Mad Lib!

For the rest of you who are not backwards, hateful oafs, HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM TRUTH WINS OUT.

Note: this op-ed was originally published in the Wisconsin Gazette.

Earlier this month I visited Milwaukee to attend the Call to Action National Conference, a gathering of progressive Catholics from around the country, and introduce pro-LGBT attendees to the organization I work for, Truth Wins Out.

Many readers will understandably balk at the words “progressive,” “pro-LGBT,” and “Catholic” appearing in the same sentence. However, these words and concepts are far more compatible than many people realize.

Not that equality-minded people could be blamed for thinking otherwise. After all, the Catholic Church and its affiliates vociferously push an insidious anti-gay agenda. New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was the most outspoken opponent of the state’s marriage equality law. Minnesota’s Catholic bishops are leading the charge to add an anti-gay amendment to that state’s constitution, calling the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples a “top priority” in 2012 and using tax-exempt church resources for political purposes.

The Knights of Columbus, a lay Catholic group, bankrolls the National Organization for Marriage, which fights against the civil rights of LGBT people across the country. In fact, in 2009 the Knights spent more money fighting marriage equality than they did on all other social programs, such as food banks and food drives, combined.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops formed a Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage in order to organize and galvanize opposition to same-sex marriage nationwide. (Dan Avila, the bishops’ Policy Advisor for Marriage, was forced to resign this month after publishing a column in which he stated that homosexuality was caused by the devil.)

And the Catholic Church even has its own “apostolate” for gay people, called Courage, which counsels members to abandon their natural sexuality for a lifetime of celibacy and endorses the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, a leading proponent of “ex-gay” conversion therapy.

But the bigotry of the Catholic hierarchy is only part of the story. In fact, the beliefs of the rank-and-file Catholic faithful couldn’t be more different. Recent polls have repeatedly shown that a majority support granting same-gender couples the freedom to marry.

A survey released in March by the Public Religion Research Institute, billed as “the most comprehensive portrait of Catholic attitudes on gay and lesbian issues assembled to date,” found that a large majority of American Catholics – a whopping 71 percent –support civil marriage equality for same-sex couples. It further states that “Catholics are more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall” and that “Catholic support for rights for gays and lesbian people is strong and slightly higher than the general public.”

Perhaps most revealing, though, is the PRRI’s finding that “less than 4-in-10 Catholics (39 percent) give their own church top marks … on its handling of the issue of homosexuality.”

Social justice has long been an important component of the Catholic faith tradition. The Church is outspoken in its support of labor unions (Pope John Paul II even asserted the fundamental principle of “the priority of labor over capital” in a 1981 encyclical.), immigrants and financial reform, as well as its opposition to capital punishment. American Catholics appear to view the issue of LGBT equality as one of social justice as well, consciously rejecting the bigotry of their religious leaders in much the same way they reject the official prohibition on contraception (98 percent of Catholics use forms of contraception banned by the Church).

So let’s resist the impulse to stereotype all Catholics as anti-gay extremists. After all, our community knows the sting of prejudice all too well. Instead, work together with pro-equality Catholics, as Truth Wins Out and many other organizations are doing already.

Let’s speak out together against the Catholic Church’s institutionalized bigotry and work towards a society that’s truly just for all people.

Maggie Gallagher, whining about gays and stuff:

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the gay rights movement, the gay marriage movement, really does believe you’re like a racist if you think marriage is the union of husband and wife,” explained Maggie Gallagher, co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage. “They want to rip Genesis out of our Bibles.”

Maybe I should leave it to one of my Christian friends to say this, but it’s adorably quaint listening to a representative of the Religious Right say this, since the entire “family values” Christian Right pretty much ripped the Gospels out of the Bible as the first order of business for their movement. Isn’t that sort of the basis for the religion they claim to follow?

Am I right, John and Kathy?

[h/t Jeremy]

This is NOM’s latest episode of “Grown Adults Bitching and Moaning,” and it features a man named Damian Goddard, who used to be a sportscaster in Canada, where marriage equality has been the law of the land for a while now. Apparently this never turned him into one of Maggie’s Super Victims, but then something happened on Twitter related to New York marriage equality and he shot his mouth off and, as a public figure, presumably embarrassed the hell out of his organization. So he got fired.

When he starts crying about how awesome his wife has been through all of this, the first thought that entered my head was, “huh, yeah, I wonder if same sex married couples ever go through life experiences where one is the rock for the other through hard times. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder!”

Play the tiny violin for dude, please.

[h/t Joe]