NEW ORLEANS: Anti-Gay Hate Groups Infest Annual Astroturfing Convention

This week in New Orleans, hundreds of conservative lawmakers from around the country gathered for the annual American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) convention, where lobbyists from the nation's largest corporations issue their marching orders on which big business-friendly bills they expect to see passed. Think Progress reports that this year's event featured the distribution of vicious and lie-filled anti-gay propaganda from Christianist hate groups.

Among the materials handed out to every attendee were anti-LGBT pamphlets from the Family Research Council, including the “Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality” and the “Top Ten Harms Of Same-Sex ‘Marriage’”. The supposed myths included “people are born gay,” “sexual orientation can never change,” “homosexual conduct is not harmful to one’s physical health,” and “homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals.” In its second pamphlet, the FRC told conference-goers that expanding marriage to include same-sex couples will somehow mean “fewer people would marry,” “fewer people would remain monogamous,” and polygamy will soon result.

Think Progress notes that convention rent-a-cops assaulted two of their reporters and illegally confiscated their cameras.

NOM Is Astroturfing Facebook

According to NOM defector Louis Marinelli, NOM is paying people to plant anti-equality comments on Facebook pages.

As social media manager for the National Organization for Marriage, Louis J. Marinelli, the then 24-year-old behind the "Protect Marriage: One Man, One Woman" page, was asked to put together a "SWAT team" of people to comment in favor of NOM's content and opinions. "There was a system where we would track what they did and they would accumulate points.... We were working on a program where they would redeem those points for prizes," said Marinelli. The group also planned to create media teams in key 2012 election states who would be asked to take online actions as well as attend events or write letters to editors, according to Marinelli. When he resigned on April 7, he said about 15 people were on the online astroturf team.

The author of the above-linked story says that NOM has refused multiple requests to comment on the issue.