Great Email

I get emails from time to time about the progress of prop. 8 and just how marriage in general is doing in this wicked world. I got this email tonight, and loved it. I thought everyone could use the encouragement and know that we cannot give up, because that is the oppositions only way to win. Enjoy these great words of wisdom and the spreading of good news that marriage will defeat the evilness of gay marriage!


Let me step back from the news headlines and tell you what is really happening
out there.

The ultimate goal of the architects of gay marriage in this country is to get
inside your head and make you feel despair. Make you feel alone. Make you feel powerless. They need
you and me to give up. That's the only way they can win.

They know that only one thing stands between them and their peculiar drive to
end
marriage as we know it: the good sense and good will of the American people.

Even with all the enormous powerful assets on their side: a news media almost
uniformly sympathetic, an enormous war chest of money fueled by wealthy donors, a network of
powerful
people capable of punishing anyone who disagrees, backed by angry netroot mobs licensed to hate good
Americans who speak up for marriage: They cannot take their case to the American people and
win.

Not in California, not in
New York, not in
Connecticut, not even in Vemront. As NOM's
president, Maggie Gallagher, kept reminding the news media during their "big mo" message meme: One
thing that hasn't changed is the opinions of the American people. Only one-third of Americans in the
latest (March 12) CBS News poll said they support same-sex marriage.

This is a movement dedicated to imposing gay marriage on you and your children,
whether you like it or not.

(Now I know by the way that not all gay people or gay marriage supporters think
like that. And even for those who do, in the midst of this vigorous battle for God's truth, we
are charged with the task of nurturing charity in our hearts towards the people with whom we
disagree.)

It's clear now that the last two weeks
Iowa-Vermont-DC-New
York-New Hampshire were a
one-two-three-four punch that was part of a coordinated strategy with one single goal: to
engineer a story line that the marriage debate is over--gay marriage advocates have won. It's
over. Despair is the only option.

Instead something extraordinary happened: You didn't give up, you fought back!

In New Hampshire, thanks to
Cornerstone Policy Research, hundreds of people crowded the capitol to protest the gay marriage
bill. Kudos to Kevin Smith's leadership. Thanks to you NOM was able to reach out and help spread
the word in New Hampshire using sophisticated
technology--and the people of New Hampshire responded
to the call to speak truth to power! Gov. John Lynch of New
Hampshire just announced he's with us on marriage.

In nearby Rhode Island, Catholic
Online reported that "Gov. Donald Carcieri announced he would throw his support behind the
Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for
Marriage (NOM)."

Well I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way, but the feisty NOM Rhode Island
chapter, under the leadership of new executive director Chris Plante, generated local headlines with
a Providence press conference and rally to announce NOM's
new "Gathering Storm" media campaign. Thanks Gov. Carcieri, and all the good people of
Rhode Island who stood up for marriage!

In Connecticut, thousands of calls are flooding the legislature to protest SB
899, a bill that supposedly "implements" the Connecticut court decision by repealing protections
against using public schools to propagandize for gay marriage. Once again you helped us swing
into action to help in this fight. Within 24 hours of learning that the bill was being taken up
NOM hit the airwaves with a brand new radio ad. (You can hear the ad, and all of NOM's ads, here.
Help us take this message to
the next level--can you donate $10, $40, or $80 to put a marriage ad on the radio today?)

And yes, we're working on New York and New Jersey too--more on that in the
future.

In Iowa, we are working with Congressmen Steve King to contact thousands of
Iowans to personally urge them to call their legislators and let them know: Same-sex unions are not
marriages. Iowans want the chance that Californians and people of 29 other states have claimed
for themselves: the right to take this issue out of the hands of judges and politicians and to
decide
the future of marriage themselves.

Do not believe the sophisticated media spin: The battle in for marriage in Iowa
and elsewhere is not over. We have not yet begun to fight!

Speaking of the media campaign, it has been an enormous success: Millions of
people have viewed our "Gathering Storm" ad, which you can see here. In fact, we broke into the
top 100 videos on YouTube in the entire
country. Thank you. (Stephen Colbert even made fun of our ad last night. The "Colbert
Report"--now we've really made it into the big time! Thanks, HRC!)

(Help us spread the word! Believe me, we understand that not everyone can give
money. We appreciate all you do: your prayers especially, your words of encouragement, your
courage in speaking out in your own community, your willingness to email and call politicians and
alert your friends. But the battle for marriage is urgent now: We need your help. If God
has given you the means can you give $10, $50, or $100, today to protect marriage?)

This first ad in our $1.5 million media campaign helped us kick off our much
larger goal: recruiting two million for marriage . (A side note: No, we don’t call it "2m4m,"
that's what MSNBC's gay-marriage advocate and sometime journalist Rachel Maddow called it--amazing
how much stuff they just make up while calling our side "liars," isn’t it? Silly
stuff.) The response has been so tremendous so far, I'm thinking of renaming it: ten
million for marriage!

(If God has given you the means, can you reach down and spare $2 a
month for marriage? Just $2 a month can help us find two million Americans to work with you
to defend marriage. Or if God has given you the means, can you spare $20 a month? Or even $200 a
month?)

Another amusing side note: At the same time that HRC's Joe Solomonese called us
liars and bigots on national TV for noting that same-sex marriage has consequences for
religious liberty, the Washington Post published an story on... how scholars agree that
same-sex marriage has consequences for religious liberty. ("Faith Groups Increasingly Lose
Same-Sex Marriage Battles," April 9.) Nice timing, that Joe!

The gay marriage advocates interviewed by the Washington Post were
unashamed about cutting off religious people's rights: "We are not required to pay the price for
other people's religious views about us," said Jennifer Pizer, director of the Marriage Project for
Lambda Legal, a gay rights legal advocacy group.

Finally, the Washington Post acknowledged that even worse may be to
come: "Some legal analysts suggest that religious groups that do not support gay rights might lose
their tax exemptions because of their politically unpopular views. Jonathan Turley, a law professor
at George Washington University who supports same-sex marriage, said current law 'puts us on a
slippery slope that inevitably takes us to the point where we punish religious groups because of
their religious views.'"

We're telling the truth about what gay marriage is going to mean--for children
and for faith communities. That's what’s making the Human Rights Campaign go ballistic.

Finally, I'd like to close by sharing with you an extraordinary interview Maggie
Gallagher did with Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher:
Rod Dreher: Maggie, you and I are on the same side
of the gay marriage issue, but I am pessimistic about our chances for success. You, however, are
optimistic. What am I missing?

Maggie Gallagher: Vaclav Havel mostly. "Truth and love wlll
prevail over lies and hate." On that basis Havel took on the Soviet empire. Where is that invincible
empire now?

Same-sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: "there is no
difference
between same-sex and opposite-sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree."

Political movements can--sometimes at great human cost and with great output of
energy--sustain a lie but eventually political regimes founded on lies collapse in on themselves.

I don't think of myself as optimistic: just realistic. What does losing marriage
mean? First the rejection of the idea that children need a mom and dad as a cultural norm--or
probably even as a respectable opinion. That's become very clear for people who have the eyes to see
it. (See e.g. footnote 26 of the Iowa decision.)

Second: the redefinition of traditional religious faiths as the moral and legal
equivalent of racists. The proposition on the table right now is that our faith itself is a form of
bigotry.

Despair is gay marriage advocates' prime message point. All warfare, including
culture war, is ultimately psychological warfare. You win a war when you convince the other side to
give up.

So now you want to decide we've lost on an issue where, in the March 12 CBS News
poll two-thirds of Americans agree with us. I mean, does this make sense?

...People are flocking to the National Organization for Marriage
(www.nationformarriage.org), not because we try to scare them about how bad things are going to
be--but because we offer them a chance to come together with other people of all races, creeds and
colors to stand up for a core and timeless good.

Here's what I know that maybe you can't see: There are enormous untapped
energies
out their waiting for someone to organize them effectively.

RD: It's my view that our side has lost this battle, at least in
the long run, because we've lost the culture. Bottom line: I believe we should retreat to a
strategically defensible position while there's still time. You disagree. What's wrong with my
analysis?

MG: Rod, you are bargaining with yourself by saying "give up
marriage and focus on religious liberty protections." The proposition on the table is your faith is
a
form of bigotry and Americans don't grant religious liberty protections to bigots.

Conceding the main point--that our marriage tradition is a good and honorable
thing that deserves respect--is not going to help you win any religious liberty protection.

We need to build effective grassroots organizations in blue states. Or we are
going to lose marriage. And religious liberty.

Abandoning the 60 percent or so of Americans who agree with you on marriage
isn't
going to help you win any fight at all.

We need to do a lot of things but one of the key ones is: we have to find the
people who care about marriage and organize them into an effective force. Especially in blue states.

We don't do that, the churches are going to get rolled.

I don't have time for pessimism. The stakes are too high.
Hope is a virtue. Despair is not only a temptation, it's the
greatest lie of them all. Because we know who wins in the end, don't we?

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be your voice for God's truth
about marriage.

Keep me in your prayers. You are in mine.

God bless you,

Brian S. Brown
Executive Director
National Organization for Marriage
20 Nassau Street, Suite 242
Princeton, NJ 08542
bbrown@nationformarriage.org