The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

By now we're used to outrageous fundraising emails from the anti-gay right -- "If you don't send us at least $100 by midnight tonight, hordes of oversized drag queens will overrun your child's elementary school and teach them about fisting!" and suchlike. Messages with these kinds of exaggerated claims have long been effective at scaring recipients into sending their hard-earned cash to anyone who promises to keep the gays away and maintain the comfort of the status quo.

But in an email sent to supporters today, the paradoxically-named "National Organization for Marriage" outdid itself in the absurdity department. NOM's Brian Brown, the nation's premiere proponent of marriage discrimination, begged members to send up to $1,000 so that his group could continue working tirelessly to expose the "biggest lie of all" about same-sex marriage.

What is this lie, you ask? Why, the "terrible lie" that marriage equality is (Dun dun DUN!) "simply about couples who just want to love each other, receive civil protections and leave everyone else alone," of course.

Seriously. More, including a screen grab, after the jump.

The "evidence" NOM claims to have uncovered that exposes this so-called lie comes from remarks made last week by President Obama. Brown's email reads:

...[the President] said in a press conference that "one of the extraordinary measures of progress that we've seen in this country has been the recognition that the LGBT community deserves full equality, not just partial equality, not just tolerance but a recognition that they're wholly a part of the American family."

You mean, marriage equality will make Americans more --*gasp*-- equal? Quelle horreur!

This has to be the most laughable attempt at outrage-provoking and scandal-mongering that I've seen from equal marriage opponents in a long time. I can't think of a single rational person whom this "argument" could persuade to write that check Brown so desperately needs. Then again, with NOM swimming against the current of social change and getting pushed further and further off the deep end, I'm not so sure their dwindling cadre of supporters can really be described as rational at all.

Here's a screen grab of Brown's email: