Thursday, June 19, 2014

NOM: Lying with Pictures

So yesterday, June 19, 2014, The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and some other anti-LGBT folks threw a "March for Marriage Discrimination". Er, sorry, just a "March for Marriage", where various speakers extolled the virtues of treating LGBT citizens and their families and children like second-class citizens.

As one might expect, they tweeted a picture of the group of "brave marriage defenders" on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building. It appears to be taken at the back of a large crowd, as the Capitol Building is some distance away. But it took only a moment's study of the zoomed-in image to realise it has been photo-manipulated.

First, I'll note how conveniently white the sky is around the Capitol Building. There are quite dramatic clouds off to the side, but the center of the picture is oddly devoid of any detail. This in and of itself isn't evidence of photo-manipulation.

However, the following details aren't quite so innocent.

This is actually the first detail that caught my eye. What in the world is wrong with this man? His elbow and his bicep are both individually larger than his head. His right wrist, hand, and thumb are also quite odd.

Here, some sort of stretching has resulted in the evenly-spaced pillars on this part of the building to come out uneven. There's also a cloning artefact in the tree.

Look at the woman (At least, I think it's a woman) in the green top and black pants standing in front of the man in blue. Where is the rest of her left leg? I'm also not quite certain she has a whole head.

Last, let's look at a couple of other pictures of the rally taken by other folks and compare the relative sizes of the tall black speakers and the Capitol Building. The NOM picture would appear to have been taken much closer to the speakers, and yet the Capitol Building appears to have retreated, as it is significantly smaller in the NOM image. I note as well that when the Capitol Building retreated, it appears to have left one of its stair-flanking trees behind with the crowd!

I can only conclude from this brief review of the images of the event that NOM has intentionally combined a close-up view of the crowd (or, perhaps, more than one image of the crowd) with a more distant image of the Capitol Building to suggest that the crowd was much larger and took up much more space on the lawn than it really did.

Lying with pictures is still lying, folks. Why is it that the anti-LGBT crowd needs to lie to support their cause? Is it because it is otherwise insupportable?

9 comments:

  1. Couldn't this be a panoramic photo from a mobile phone?

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    1. That also made the building shrink, but not the speakers or the tree?

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  2. what's the actual count? Police should have that information.

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  3. Looks like a poor quality panorama taken with a mobile phone. I get similar stretching and clipping on my iPhone 5C.

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  4. I really think this should be withdrawn from Unfundamentalist Christians as there is reasonable doubt.

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    1. They are claiming TEN TIMES the number of people that were really there! Where is the reasonable doubt in that?

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  5. http://www.bilerico.com/2014/06/nom_dramatically_inflates_hate_march_attendance_fi.php

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  6. I was there for the first hour in my Sr Missionary Position habit and passing out our Sister of Perpetual Indulgence Rosary of Five Sorrowful Clerical Errors. I'm fairly good at crowd estimates and thought it was much closer to 1,200 than 2,000. and 70% Hispanic. SF Archbishop Cordileone opened with a few lines in Spanish and then delivered in English the RC double-speak of treating us with love and respect while appealing to their distorted theory of Natural Law. Blessedly i spared myself the ignorant rants of Rick Santorum and his ilk. The National Portrait Gallery and its current exhibit American Cool refreshed me.

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  7. Rosary of Five Sorrowful Clerical Errors
    By the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
    and the refrain before the AVE Prayer is
    Deliver Us from Clerical Arrogance & Ignorance.
    It's a Rosary composed in the Extreme Times of Pope Benedict’s Bigotry
    and one in Solidarity with all our Roman Sisters who counsel Dialogue over Pontifications.
    It is also a Rosary of Malformed Clerical Consciousness.
    AVE PRAYER
    Hail O Divine Mother
    Source of wisdom and delight,
    Blessed are you among the deities,
    And blessed are all of us
    Your loving companions.
    Holy Maiden,
    Wise Womyn,
    Crone
    Protect us from
    these bigots and earth defilers
    and Guide us all
    to liberation and equality.
    Now in this hour of our need.
    AhMen, AhhWomyn, AllTransfolks too!

    A Rosary of Five Sorrowful Clerical Errors
    1. Denying a Woman Her Right to Choose
    2.Demanding the Faithful NOT practice responsible Birth Control nor reasonable Divorce. 3. Thinking that Love & Marriage are the exclusive rights of one man and one woman ONLY. 4.Trying to Legislate your narrow morality in a pluralistic society and hence promulgating Hate Crimes in the name of your religious beliefs.
    5.Trying to Restore Papal Infallibility after Pope John XXIII and Vatican II declared that the Collegiality of All the FAITHFUL is the true workings
    of the Holy Spirit in our midst.
    Nasty Bonus Error: Criminal Clerical Cover-ups of Priestly Pedophillic Abuse.
    the Refrain after each Error is announced:
    Delivers Us from Clerical Arrogance & Ignorance!
    followed by the Ave Prayer in the Occupy style
    of one line at a time with full congregational response!
    (For more SPI Rosaries of Realities contact sistersoami@yahoo.com)

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