Is It Time for NOM to Shut Down?

NOM's pathetic turnout

I have long suspected that the National Organization for Marriage (is in reality a front group for either a few wealthy anti-gay bigots or the Mormon Church and/or Roman Catholic Church.  This reality would explain NOM's hysteria over refusing to report the names of its donor as required by many state campaign finance laws, including those in Maine where NOM has been found to have violated the law.  Brian Brown and others at NOM who have been making a very nice livelihood peddling anti-gay animus consistently allege that the organization has "broad based" and "numerous financial supporters."  If that is the case, few of these supposed legions of supports showed up for NOM's much ballyhooed "March for Marriage" in Washington, DC.  By all reports, attendance was pathetic despite NOM's promotion of the event, including offering free buses to would be participants.  As The New Civil Rights Movement reports, every news out let that has written about the event has lowered their estimates of the number of attendees in direct opposition to NOM's claim that 10,000 were at the failed event.  Here are some highlights:

[A]lmost all news reports including those from reporters on the ground estimated the number of people at NOM’s anti-gay hate march at 2000. The march, organized by the National Organization For Marriage, was thoroughly panned across most of the media.

World Magazine reported, however, that NOM claimed the number of people at the march was 10,000, as The New Civil Rights Movement pointed out earlier today. And the Deseret News (initially) put the number at 5,000.

Friday evening after a lengthy email conversation with The New Civil Rights Movement and several posts from critics and activists on social media, Kellner and the Deseret News changed their reporting to read “several thousand people present.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports the “crowd appeared to number between 1,000 and 2,000; there was no official estimate.”

The Washington Times also reported on how many people attended the march.  “Hundreds.”  “Hundreds march in defense of traditional marriage,” the Washington Times’ headline reads.

[C]learly if the nation’s top-funded and number one organization attacking the rights of the LGBT community and same-sex couples cannot even muster up 5,000 or 10,000 people to come to a rally in Washington, D.C. — even after providing free busses — then clearly America has grown tired of them. NOM’s rhetoric and tactics are so far removed from the mainstream that only 2,000 want to show up to support their cause? The rally will go down in history as evidence they lost the battle for marriage.

Like virtually everything else that NOM puts out, it is clear that the 10,000 attendees claim is a lie.  NOM needs to either shut down or start being honest and admit that it is nothing more than a front group that exists to hide the identity of a few large donors.  The Catholic Church and groups like the Knights of Columbus remain high on my suspect list of the handful of individuals/groups that fund NOM.