NOM Warns Parents Of Lurking Threat Of Gays In College

Commentary | NOM, the National Organization for Marriage, is out with a new video to help parents handle the looming threat of gays in college, leading nice heterosexual children astray with their ambient homosexuality.

NOM is fighting a losing battle, with same sex marriage support making massive gains over the past few years. And, as more states decide to extend the same rights to all citizens regardless of sexual orientation, the organization has released a “Thanksgiving message” to its fearful supporters warning that college gays, particularly Resident Assistants, may be gay around young adults in college and confuse them with their relatable humanity.

NOM is big on not appearing to be anti-gay, framing its positions as just anti-gay marriage. The organization’s site urges its supporters never to say “ban gay marriage” despite the fact that the stated goal of NOM is exactly that, suggesting advocates of anti-gay measures couch their bigotry in terms that foist the wrongdoing on gay people:

“Our base loves this wording. So do supporters of SSM. They know it causes us to lose about ten percentage points in polls. Don’t use it. Say we’re against ‘redefining marriage’ or in favor or ‘marriage as the union of husband and wife’ NEVER ‘banning same-sex marriage.’”

And it seems part of NOM’s fear is that people will realize that acceptance of the fact other people are gay will undermine their position — which is the basis for the clip. In it, NOM’s Jennifer Roback Morse coaches parents on how best to deal with the fact that, when kids go off to college, they may meet and befriend gay humans with a cautionary tale about “pressure” from those sneaky gays.

ThinkProgress quotes Morse in NOM’s video about gay people in college as saying:

“I think a lot of our students are encountering this type of situation in their dorms and on their college campuses… What I want to say to you, is that the other side has RAs in the dorm where your young people are going to school. There’s no TV message that is going to do the job of countering that type of influence. Somebody’s got to be there talking to young people one at a time in the places where they’re hanging out and doing the things that they’re doing. There’s no mass media strategy by itself that will solve this problem.”

Morse urges parents to talk to kids about college gays and discern whether they’re being “pressured” by the existence of gay people at their school:

“And this holiday season, when your young people come home from college, ask them about this. Ask them if they have a gay RA in their dorms… So please, talk to your young people about this and see what kind of pressure they may be under that maybe even they don’t realize how much it’s having an impact upon them.”

You can watch NOM’s warning to parents in this clip: