The National Organization for Marriage has been touring the nation for the past month speaking out against marriage equality, and the group is set to make a stop in Pennsylvania next week.
The organization’s “Summer for Marriage” bus tour will pull into the State Capitol Building in Harrisburg at noon Aug. 13.
The NOM contingent has been met with counter-protests in many of the cities on its 19-state tour, but statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality PA is urging LGBTs and allies to stay away from the rally.
Ted Martin, executive director of Equality PA, said the NOM visits, which have reportedly been sparsely attended, only give the activists fodder for future anti-gay efforts.
”The rallies bring out a very small number of people who say some pretty offensive things,” Martin said. “I think they’re starting to take a cue from one of their contemporaries, Westboro Baptist Church, who know that the best way to get the response you want is to provoke the other side.”
Martin acknowledged that while NOM’s message is frustrating, engaging them in confrontation is futile.
“It doesn’t prove anything and it doesn’t move us forward,” he said. “I want to yell and scream at them too — my partner and I were married in California, so I have a vested interested in this — but while it may make you feel good for a little bit, it doesn’t move us forward.”
Throughout its tour, NOM has reported on its website that marriage-equality supporters have booed bishops, bullied and intimidated participants and threatened children.
One NOM supporter brought a poster to a rally in Indianapolis that depicted a Bible quote with two nooses, although NOM has since denounced that message.
“They’ve learned how to play victim, how to get a rise out of folks. And then they say they’re being drowned out and pushed around, even though it wasn’t our folks who brought signs with nooses,” Martin said.
Martin has participated in a series of conference calls with executive directors of other statewide LGBT advocacy groups, organized by the Equality Federation, since NOM announced its tour.
Martin said the consensus was to counter NOM with creative, LGBT-affirming events, rather than stage protests and, after talking with LGBT advocates from across the state, especially in the Harrisburg area, Equality PA decided to host an educational forum the night before the NOM visit.
The agency will stage a screening of “Stonewall Uprising,” which chronicles the birth and progression of the modern LGBT-rights movement, at 7 p.m. Aug. 12 at The Midtown Cinema, 250 Reily St., in Harrisburg.
Tickets are $7, and proceeds will be split between Equality PA and the LGBT Community Center Coalition of Central Pennsylvania.
Following the film, guests will be invited to participate in a community discussion on LGBT activism in the state, with a special focus on engaging youth.
NOM’s words will be captured by the Courage Campaign Institute’s NOM Tour Tracker, a group of people who have been following the agency’s tour, collecting interviews and filming the rallies. Courage Campaign spokesperson Todd Stenhouse said the Tour Tracker group will film in Harrisburg but it does not help organize or participate in any counter-protests.
While NOM has chosen to target Harrisburg, Martin encouraged all Pennsylvanians to show a united front at the Aug. 12 event.
“No part of Pennsylvania is an island that’s separated from this,” he said. “Philadelphians have a vested interested in what goes on in the rest of Pennsylvania and in Harrisburg because, if NOM had their way, we could have a constitutional amendment adopted [to ban same-sex marriage], which affects all of us.”
For more information about the film screening and discussion, search for “Screening of Stonewall Uprising” on Facebook.
To learn more about previous NOM tour stops, visit www.nomtourtracker.com.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].