Anti-gay-marriage group plans to "drive a wedge between gays and blacks"

It turns out that the same-sex marriage opponents at the National Organization for Marriage — the organization responsible for a 2009 ballot initiative overturning legalized gay marriage in Maine — are even more terrible than you probably assumed they were.

A newly released internal memo from an initiative called "Not a Civil Right Project" explicitly outlines plans to turn the black and gay communities against one another, stating, "The strategic goal of the project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies." The document goes on to detail plans to enlist black representatives opposed to same-sex marriage in order to "provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots."

The documents, unsealed as part of a court battle determining whether the organization must reveal its donors, were circulated this week by the Human Rights Campaign. "Nothing beats hearing from the horse's mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is," said the HRC's president. According to the memo, the strategy was inspired by the widespread support among African Americans in California for Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage.

For his part, the head of the National Organization for Marriage shot back, "African-Americans overwhelmingly oppose same-sex marriage." If this is really such a hard and fast reality, you'd think they wouldn't have to devise an elaborate strategy to encourage it. Then again, like the old saying goes, hate isn't going to just monger itself.