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Maggie Gallagher Gets Anita Bryant Award For Unparalleled Bigotry At Congressional Anti-Gay Hearing

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on April 15, 2011.

04/15/11-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
And the award goes to. . .Maggie Gallagher for her unprecedented hate mongering and bigotry. That is the word from GetEQUAL on this day when the Republican House will be focusing on job creation- oh sorry- on inviting bigots and homophobes to Congress to discuss the ongoing efforts to punish and hurt hard working, tax paying American citizens through a good number of justifications ranging through the usual gamut of nonsense, disproven ‘facts’ and the usual bigotry. GetEQUAL plans on presenting Maggie Gallagher, the chair of the National Organization for Marriage, with the Anita Bryant Unparalleled Bigotry Award sometime in the near future.

She beat out Senator John McCain, who will not be at the hearing, Michelle Bachmann, Pastor Rick Warren and Sarah Palin.

Robin McGehee, the director of GetEQUAL, stated

“In presenting this award to Ms. Gallagher, we are recognizing the bigotry that she has pioneered over the past few years – malice that has put her ahead of the pack in the world of professional bigots who draw a paycheck each day from the hatred they stir up among the ‘radical right’ wing of the American public. At a time when Americans overwhelmingly support marriage equality it takes a very special person like Ms. Gallagher to stand up and fight for discriminations and bigotry. It’s gratifying to be able to draw attention to the unrelenting hatred that Ms. Gallagher and others at the National Organization for Marriage have been contributing to American life.”

Ms Gallagher got an award certificate at the hearing, but the prize will be presented to her at a future date. The award and prize come from the 1977 pieing of Anita Bryant, who was then the leader of the group Save Our Children. (Video can be seen here)

GetEQUAL Activist Michael Dixon stated

“I have seen the video of the four ‘self-proclaimed homosexuals’ who delivered the pie to Anita Bryant in 1977. It is truly an honor to walk in their footsteps as GetEQUAL recognizes and rewards the tireless efforts of Ms. Gallagher – the woman who has picked up the mantle of hatred and prejudice from Ms. Bryant – and worked so hard to promote bigotry and discrimination against an entire class of American citizens. I hope we can unite her with her pie as soon as possible – I have always believed that bigots should get their just desserts.”

When the actual award will be delivered is still yet to be determined.

More as it develops.

Addendum:

For the live hearing, please visit here. Just be warned, the GOP is already lying through its teeth.

Addendum II:

House Speaker John Boehner was more than willing to defend the hearing in the hours before it happened saying:

“There are a lot of committees, a lot of hearings. As I made it clear from the beginning of this year, the committee process is important to this institution, and I think addressing any question — serious question — in American society is legitimate.”

Of course, addressing the serious questions about marriage might be nice if the opposition in this case was using actual facts rather than the usual lies such as ‘marriage has always been between a man and a woman’. In fact, many societies had genderless marriages.

The Washington Blade wrote about the other two witnesses in this hearing:

Another expert who’s scheduled to speak is Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of center’s program on the constitution, the courts, and the culture. A former law clerk to U.S. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and a high-ranking legal adviser in the Justice Department for former President George W. Bush, Whelan has written several anti-gay tracts as a scholar at the center.

Whelan, who didn’t immediately respond to the Blade’s request to discuss his testimony, has been critical of the Obama administration for what he said is not vigorously defending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” against litigation in court and — in essay titled “The Most Egregious Performance Ever by a Federal District Judge” — found fault with U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision last year that determining that Proposition 8 in California was unconstitutional.

“Walker’s course of conduct would be sufficient cause for national scandal in any case,” Whelan wrote. “That it comes in a case that aims to radically remake the central social institution of American society makes it utterly intolerable.”

But another scheduled witnesses at the hearing, Carlos Ball, a gay law professor at Rutgers Law School, told the Blade he plans to argue in his testimony that Obama rightfully determined that DOMA is unconstitutional and that the president shouldn’t defend the law in court.

“It is unusual for an administration to decide not to defend the constitutionality of the statute, but it is by no means unprecedented,” Ball said. “The first President Bush did it; President George W. Bush did it as well. In my view, any administration has a constitutional obligation to make an independent judgment on the constitutionality of certain statutes, especially when there is no clear law on whether the statutes are constitutional or not.”

Additionally, Ball said he plans to testify that DOMA is a “constitutionally indefensible statute” because the states have traditionally enjoyed the prerogative of regulating marriage.

“What the plaintiffs in these DOMA lawsuits are saying is not that they have a federal constitutional right to marry — that’s not the issue,” Ball said. “These couples are already married under the laws of their states. What that their arguing is that the federal government should not discriminate against their marriages when it comes to federal governments. The administration has concluded that it’s unconstitutional to treat differently, and I think they’re absolutely correct.”

The fact that we currently have Justice Antonin Scalia working hard to win the favor of big business and showing obvious contempt for ethics, along side his good friend Justice Clarence Thomas, should be a good indicator of the fact that Whelan is hardly a good judge of what constitutes ethics. It is not surprising that this committee hearing has more witnesses for bigotry and homophobia than it does against.