Gay marriage opponents caught using Obama rally photos
America’s National Organization for Marriage was attempting to downplay its use of Obama rally photos on the launch of a new website yesterday.
NOM’s site NHforMarriage.com, which exists to oppose equal marriage in the state of New Hampshire, was rolled out with a montage of images including one portraying a huge crowd that, it turned out, was not made up of NOM supporters.
The gay blog Good As You first pointed out the image misappropriation, alerting readers that the photo NOM chose to take pride of place on its homepage was actually a copyrighted Reuters photo of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign rally in St Louis.
It sat alongside a separate, up-close photo of a much smaller crowd of NOM members with Defense of Marriage Act-backing placards.
Site author Jeremy Hooper wrote: “Being on to their typically duplicitous games, I know that this organization will go quite far in the effort to put one over on America. But quite frankly, even I’m shocked by how far this one goes.”
A second photo collage shows NOM’s President Brian Brown seemingly addressing a large group of supporters.
But again, Hooper traces the image of the crowd to a speech Barack Obama gave, this time in Ohio in 2008.
Brown took to his blog to try to rebut the allegation of wrongdoing.
Referring to what he termed the “gay activist community”, he wrote: “NOM using a common use photo in the public domain is considered a great scandal, yet they can redefine marriage — the most important social institution of society against the wishes of New Hampshire voters — and nobody is supposed to object?”
NOM has, however, removed the picture from the homepage and replaced it with an image depicting a more modest group of supporters “to avoid the distraction”.
Read Good As You’s original post here.
