National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") Exposed

A new website has been launched by HRC and the Courage Campaign called "NOM Exposed"which seeks to publicize the anti-gay affiliations of the National Organization for Marriage, its shadowy yet substantial financial resources, and its efforts to circumvent campaign finance disclosure laws. In concept, I applaud with the site. The big question is whether or not anyone out side of the LGBT media will pay any attention to the disturbing facts and information made available. The mainstream media routinely gives Christianist bigots a pass and rather than ask any hard questions - e.g., asking FRC's Tony Perkins about his past white supremacist affiliations; asking Maggie Gallagher about how she's enriching herself through NOM - the norm is to merely provide the professional Christians a platform from which to disseminate hate. Sadly, we can expose NOM and other theocratic, anti-democratic, anti-Constitutions all we want in the LGBT media, but until it goes mainstream in the larger media I fear that we are wasting our efforts. Full page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other major newspapers or links on their websites is what is truly needed. Here are highlights from The Advocate on the new website:
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Based on months of analysis and research drawn from public records, NOM Exposed was created to lay bare what the Washington, D.C.-based organization itself tries to hide through lawsuits like its recent challenges to disclosure laws in Rhode Island, New York, and Florida. The site reveals the deep-pocketed donors, such as the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church, that have helped the organization amass almost $10 million in the three years since it burst onto the scene with the Proposition 8 battle in California. NOM Exposed also monitors the organization’s current campaigns to defeat equality in states including but not limited to California, New Hampshire, New York, Minnesota, and Iowa.
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Among the findings of NOM Exposed, according to a news release from HRC and the Courage Campaign:
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- NOM is a highly secretive organization that not only tries to hide the identity of its political donors from the voting public in state after state but operates in a way to discourage people from knowing who its key players and associates are.
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- NOM has deep connections to the Catholic Church hierarchy, to the Mormon Church, to evangelical right-wing pastors and churches, and to those who have a long history of antigay rhetoric and activity. These are individuals and organizations that oppose not only same-sex marriage but domestic partnerships, civil unions, hate-crimes protections, and even fertility treatments for women because some of those women could be lesbians.
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- Since 2008, NOM and its allies have engaged in a radical nationwide plan to flout long-established campaign finance disclosure laws. This is nothing short of a strategic, coordinated plan to hide NOM's political activities from voters. This effort has prompted several state investigations and resounding legal defeats for NOM.
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Like the majority of the professional Christian organizations today (such as The Family Foundation here in Virginia), NOM's principal stock in trade is lies and subterfuge. These groups and their leadership make the sleaziest prostitutes look downright virtuous.