National for Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown speaks at NOM’s 2010 Summer for Marriage Tour, July 27, 2010 (Photo: Flickr/Lost Albatross).

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 throughout the nation are calling the strategy hurtful, divisive and cynical.

Four documents posted online by the Human Rights Campaign Monday evening describe an effort to pit the black community and gay community against each other.

The documents describe the controversial plan as the “Not a Civil Right Project.”

“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” reads one document. “Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party. Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key to raising the costs of pushing gay marriage to its advocates and persuading the movement’s allies that advocates are unacceptably overreaching on this issue. Consider pushing a marriage amendment in Washington D.C.; Find attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage advocates electorally.”

In another section, NOM describes its strategy for the Latino community.

“The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote,” NOM wrote, “and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity — a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”

The documents emerged as part of a lawsuit that NOM and the American Principles Project filed in Maine over campaign finance disclosure requirement. NOM spent significant money in Maine to pass a referendum repealing that state’s law legalizing marriage for same-sex couples. NOM sued to prevent the disclosure of its donors under Maine’s campaign finance law.

The Human Rights Campaign called the strategy by NOM to pit minority communities against each other “extremist.”

“Nothing beats hearing from the horse’s mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “Such brutal honesty is a game changer, and this time NOM can’t spin and twist its way out of creating an imagined rift between LGBT people and African Americans or Hispanics.”

Criticism by other groups on Tuesday was swift, with many calling the document a “smoking gun” that proved what they had suspected for years.

“I think that is an awfully hurtful tactic,” said Brad Clark, executive director of gay rights organization One Colorado. “It is terribly hurtful and terribly disappointing to pit one group against another like that. It is not a Colorado value and I don’t think that sort of thing works in Colorado. We have put together a coalition in Colorado that includes people of faith and people of color, so I just don’t think it works here.”

In fact, while One Colorado is known primarily as a gay rights group, it’s web site is full of information about racial equality and justice.

“This is a typical effort to try and divide communities and build divisiveness. It’s politics at its most cynical and craven,” said Colorado Democratic Party Chair Rick Palacio. “But as we see momentum for equality building across the country, I’m encouraged that the American people are rejecting these attacks and standing for an America that reflects our values of equality and freedom.”

Joanne Kron, executive director of Progress Now Colorado, said, “It is incredibly unfortunate that not only would NOM work to harm committed couples who want nothing more than to provide for each other, but now it is clear they also want to pit groups of people against each other.”

Freedom to Marry president Evan Wolfson said the idea of turning communities against each other for politics was hurtful.

“Exposure of NOM’s own strategy memos confirms that NOM will stop at nothing to push its agenda, pitting American against American, minority against minority, family members against family members,” he said. “These smoking-gun documents show how NOM has sought, in the most cynical ways imaginable, to bait the gay community in hopes of provoking a hurt response that would further divide, all in furtherance of the ugly and cruel anti-gay agenda.”

Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen accused NOM of exploitation.

“The stunning degree of crass exploitation and diabolical political tactics revealed in these documents is unconscionable,” said Besen. “This is a smoking gun that clearly shows a profound disrespect for the very minority groups that NOM is targeting. Clearly, divisiveness and dishonesty are what fuels the anti-marriage equality movement.

TWO’s communications director added, “Today’s revelations prove what we’ve known all along: that NOM is willing to say and do whatever it takes — blatant race-baiting, spreading malicious anti-gay propaganda, or using religious leaders as weapons with which to bludgeon LGBT people from the pulpits and in their parishes — in order to prevent loving, committed same-sex couples from winning the freedom to marry.”

Jennifer Chrisler executive director of the Family Equality Council pointed to a portion of NOM’s document that has gotten less attention.

“The National Organization For Marriage has just shown the depth of it’s contempt for our families,” said Chrisler. “Despite demonstrated efforts to recruit our children and dig up dirt on LGBT families they can’t find any proof for their hateful rhetoric, and it’s appalling that they would even try.”

Chrisler was referring to a strategy outlined by NOM to hire an “outreach coordinator” to “identify children of gay parents willing to speak on camera” about their “concerns.”

Gay Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger called on religious organizations connected with NOM to pull their funding.

“I hope that the Catholic and Mormon Churches who have both actively supported the National Organization for Marriage over the past four years will join me in repudiating their actions and stop any direct funding of NOM as well as asking their members to do the same,” he said.

Despite the criticism from LGBT groups, NOM stood by its strategy. In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, NOM president Brian Brown said the group has “worked extensively with supporters of traditional marriage from every color, creed and background,” including Dr. Alveda C. King, Bishop George McKinney of the COGIC Church, Bishop Harry Jackson, and the New York State Senator Reverend Rubén Díaz Sr..

“Gay marriage advocates have attempted to portray same-sex marriage as a civil right, but the voices of these and many other leaders have provided powerful witness that this claim is patently false,” Brown said. “Gay marriage is not a civil right, and we will continue to point this out in written materials such as those released in Maine. We proudly bring together people of different races, creeds and colors to fight for our most fundamental institution: marriage.”

Scot Kersgaard contributed to this article.

Boyles writes that if the people who run the Republican Party lost three more IQ points “we would have to water them,” and then turns his ire on Republicans Scott McInnis and Maes, who Boyles says stand little chance in the November election for governor against Democrat John Hickenlooper. McInnis and Maes are in a heated two-way race for the GOP nod in the Aug. 10 primary. Tancredo is running on the American Constitution Party ticket.

“First there’s Scott McInnis, whose act of charity is to give away a dead elk, followed by Dan Maes, who said he’d take the elk. Both of these guys are as good as tapped out,” Boyles wrote.

After railing on Republicans, Boyles sets his sights on a list of usual and unusual suspects that he berates for their opposition to Tancredo’s positions in the past.

According to Boyles, his list consists of those who “hate” former congressman Tancredo. He dismisses those on the list roundly, saying you wouldn’t want to have dinner with any of them anyway. The list includes Media Matters, the Denver Post, (Post columnist) Mike Littwin, the Colorado Republican Party, Progress Now, the Daily Kos, Hickenlooper, Gov. Bill Ritter, Bob Beauprez, the ACLU, Karl Rove and “a bunch of people in Mecca after Tom said he’d like to bomb them if they struck America again.”

“How can you hate a guy that people on this list hate?” Boyles reflects. “Are you kidding me?”

Editor’s note: Due to an editing error the original version of this post incorrectly stated Tancredo was seeking the GOP nod in the governor’s race.

“[McInnis] is asking the people of Colorado to trust him, but he is proving to be completely untrustworthy,” ProgressNow Executive Director Bobby Clark told reporters. “He has clearly misrepresented his record on a number of occasions and he won’t tell us basic information, like where his money is coming from.”

McInnis told talk radio hosts months ago that he wouldn’t release his tax returns because he feared taking “a beating.” Candidates for office are not required to release returns but doing so is a long tradition and an act of good faith. In the case of McInnis, long an oil and gas lobbyist and a champion of the industry as a candidate for governor, the calls have particular relevance for voters and media concerned about conflicts of interest.

“I’m not going to invite myself to my own beating,” said McInnis. “I’m going to give what I think the people want, not what the Denver Post wants.”

That’s the question Clark said the ProgressNow petition and a recent survey, conducted for the group by Precision Polling, were attempting to address.

“This should be [a major] issue,” Clark said. “Candidates should provide basic financial information. It is a simple request. Candidates for state-wide office always do it. It is highly unusual to refuse to turn over [tax returns]. So it absolutely should be an issue. If we are going to have accountable government, we need to know that these people are representing us. We need to know what their financial interests are,. We need to know who they owe favors to. We need to see that complete picture.”

According to the Precision Polling survey, 74.3 percent of 500 randomly selected Coloradans said they thought McInnis should release his tax returns. The poll reported 82.2 percent of likely voters said McInnis should disclose the list of corporate and organizational boards on which he sits.

McInnis released partial tax returns earlier in the year– four years worth of partial data. His opponent, Democrat John Hickenlooper, released decades worth of full returns, carting up boxes of paperwork from his basement and speaking frankly with media about his financial history. McInnis released his partial returns to an attorney’s office where media could inspect them. McInnis told the Colorado Independent he was protecting the financial data of his law firm partners but accountants told the Colorado Independent that all of the information related to the partners in the firm, Hogan & Hartson, could either be redacted or left out altogether depending on the forms McInnis released.

McInnis didn’t address the ProgressNow ralliers Tuesday. Clark said the group would send the signature by email to the McInnis campaign office.

Inside the forum, McInnis called himself the “only candidate in the race who is a water expert,” an apparent deadpan reference to the 12 “water articles” McInnis authored for the conservative Hasan Family Foundation for $300,000. The commission has been mocked in the press as a boondoggle. The articles, called “musings” by the author, read like pared-down encyclopedia entries delivered as rambling snippets, for which McInnis was paid $2000 per page. Reporters, mainly Jason Salzman a media blogger and Colorado Independent contributor, had been asking McInnis and the Hasan Foundation to produce the articles for weeks. The foundation posted them just this week on its website.

Yet McInnis said government transparency was one of his main issues. He said customers of Xcel, the state’s largest energy provider, deserved a full accounting of the costs the state’s new 30 percent renewable energy standard would generate for consumers.

Hickenlooper held a 30 minute conference with the press before speaking at the forum, which was sponsored by 9 News and the The Denver Petroleum Club.

McInnis, who was scheduled to appear after his speech according to sponsors, failed to do so. Spokesperson Sean Duffy told reporters that his candidate was unaware of the press conference. He said McInnis left to attend another speaking arrangement.

[Flickr Photo via McInnis for Colorado]

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Edit note: The original version of this post reported McInnis spoke to Denver talk radio hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman about “taking a beating” on his tax returns. It was in fact the Northern Colorado Keith and Gail Fox radio show on which he discussed releasing the returns.

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Was Jane Norton a health-industry lobbyist? If so, what did she lobby for, exactly?

From 1994 to 1999, Norton headed the lobbying department of Englewood-based Medical Group Management Association, “the principle voice for the medical practice association.” Norton was the executive director of the Office of State Government Relations and the Office of Strategic Relationships. Directly after her tenure at MGMA, Norton was appointed by Gov. Bill Owens to head the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment, a position in which she oversaw multiple state “planning groups” that engineered health coverage across Colorado, this time being paid by tax payers to work as the “principle voice” for health-care consumers.

Calls to MGMA confirm she headed the association’s lobbying department.

“Yes, this is the lobbying arm of the organization,” a spokesperson at the Department of Government Affairs confirmed. Human Resources staffer Jenny Morales said that the group Norton headed used to be called the Office of Strategic Relationships and is now simply called the Department of Government Affairs.

“In speaking with some of our tenured employees,” Morales wrote in an email, “Ms. Norton held a number of positions at MGMA. One of which was Director of Government Policy in 1994. When she left the Association, her job title was Executive Director Strategic Relations.”

Messages left for Norton today, with her campaign spokesperson and at her Denver Police Foundation office, have so far gone unreturned. But her relationship with the health industry and how it has shaped her view of health care and of reform will receive much greater scrutiny beginning tomorrow when she is scheduled to officially announce that she is challenging Democrat Michael Bennet for his seat in the U.S. Senate.

Already, unabashed liberal advocacy organization Progress Now is pressing the case. The group put out a release Monday morning on the matter, stating that staffers have searched U.S. Senate and Colorado Secretary of State databases but that Norton appears nowhere on the rolls of registered lobbyists.

“We call on Jane Norton to immediately come clean on her work history in ‘Government Relations’ for the for-profit health care industry,” Progress Now founder and CEO Michael Huttner is quoted to say in the release. “We also question why Norton did not register as a lobbyist when she was head of ‘Government Relations’ for a for-profit health industry lobbying organization.

“We want to know the full extent of Norton’s lobbying and whether she failed to comply with the law.”

At her campaign website, Norton describes her work for MGMA:

[R]esponsibilities included monitoring health care reform legislative and regulatory proposals in the 50 states on behalf of MGMA’s 18,000 clinic administrator members and 6,700 medical group members; and expanding relationships with industry partners and the nation’s medical schools.

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