“NOM is not a partisan organization or a stalking horse for either party,” wrote National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown in March. “We are a movement of people of every race, creed, color — and party — willing to stand up for marriage.”<
LEXINGTON, VA — The former head of the National Organization for Marriage said Wednesday that she disagreed with some specific wording in the group’s controversial anti-gay marriage strategies but that she did not find the strategies themselves inappropriate.
Phyllis Gardiner, an attorney for the Maine ethics commission who works in Maine’s attorney general’s office, told TAI that the Maine ethics commission’s long-stalled investigation into NOM is scheduled to get back into gear next month. What that investigation reveals is likely to shed even more light on NOM’s involvement in the anti-gay-marriage campaign and why the group has tried so vigorously to conceal its donors.
Civil rights groups this week blasted a confidential memo by the National Organization for Marriage which outlined a strategy of pitting the gay community against the black and Latino communities in order to score points in the group’s efforts to ban marriage rights for same-sex couples.
The National Organization for Marriage, the nation’s largest lobby against marriage rights for same-sex couples, faced criticism on Tuesday over documents unsealed by a court in Maine outlining a plan to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks” on the issue. LGBT rights groups in Colorado and the nation are calling the strategy hurtful, divisive and cynical.
The National Stonewall Democrats, the “national voice of LGBT Democrats” have launched a campaign urging gay and lesbian Republicans to not support “anti-LGBT GOP presidential candidates.”
The Human Rights Campaign’s watchdog project NOM Exposed, which tracks the spending and lobbying activities of the National Organization for Marriage, recently revised its strategy. According to a leader on the project, HRC believes NOM’s focus in 2012 will be centered on the national stage to ensure that same-sex marriage remains a primary issue in the presidential race; thus NOM Exposed will be closely following NOM’s federal election activities.
One day after The American Independent released an analysis of the National Organization for Marriage’s recently reported finances from 2010, which reveal that last year the organization spent more than $1 million more than it earned, NOM President Brian Brown emailed supporters asking for help covering what he terms a “looming shortfall.”
In 2010, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a tax-exempt nonprofit fighting legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the U.S., reported the highest individual donations it has received since its inception in 2007, according to NOM’s most recent income disclosures to the Internal Revenue Service. Just two individuals contributed more than $6 million to the organization’s political arm, accounting for about two-thirds of NOM’s 2010 revenue. Single donations less than $5,000 covered only 8 percent of reported revenue.
The weekend before thanksgiving, Colorado Springs-based evangelical group Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage will host a Republican presidential candidate forum in Des Moines centered on social issues. Focus on the Family staffer Tom Minnery said the hosts of the event don’t plan to “get into theology as such” because there wouldn’t be enough time for the candidates to “solve theological questions.” Primary campaign frontrunner Mitt Romney, who is Mormon, has yet to commit to the event.
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