Tag: maggie gallagher

A dozen groups fighting against marriage equality are touting a controversial study about gay and lesbian parenting that was funded by two conservative organizations.

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.

In the wake of the Washington State Legislature’s vote in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to overturn California’s Prop 8, which rescinded marriage rights for same-sex couples,

representatives of the National Organization for Marriage were put on the defensive in a number of media appearances.

A major theme at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., was that the Republican Party should once and for all erase the line between social and fiscal issues and further the argument that conservative social policies benefit the economy.

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 new leadership change at the National Organization for Marriage announced Thursday has provoked curiosity and speculation as to why Maggie Gallagher was swapped out for constitutional lawyer John Eastman to serve as NOM’s board chairman.

Seven years ago the new head of the National Organization for Marriage, John Eastman, testified at a House impeachment hearing in Denver called by then-first-term-Rep. Greg Brophy. The staunch social conservative lawmaker from Wray drew national attention when he targeted Denver Judge John Coughlin as an "activist judge" who took it upon himself to make pro-gay laws from the bench.

She has been a fierce presence in the trenches of national culture wars over the past few years but now Maggie Gallagher, National Organization for Marriage co-founder and chairman of the board, is stepping down. NOM announced Gallagher will be replaced by John Eastman, legal defender of social conservative causes, former Clarence Thomas Supreme Court clerk and Dean of Chapman University Law School in California.

Religious conservatives reacted sharply to a vote Friday night in the New York Senate to legalize gay marriage. The National Organization for Marriage pledged to spend $2 million to defeat four Republicans who voted for the bill. And religious right leaders warned that God would punish New York for passing the bill and accused Republicans of taking bribes in exchange for their vote.

Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage was recently a guest on the radio program Religion, Politics, and the Culture to talk about her organization’s strategy to prevent states from legalizing same-sex marriage and to pass anti-gay marriage amendments in states that don’t already have them.