National Organization for Marriage: Deep in Debt and Donations Plummeting

If one wonders why the National Organization for Marriage is increasingly involving itself with overseas anti-gay efforts, look no farther than NOM's plummeting income and deep debt.  As the war for marriage equality increasingly is lost by NOM and its allies in America, outside of Christofascist circles (and it would seem the Vatican's minions in bishoprics), more and more people simple yawn and ignore NOM's theatrics.  Even more tellingly, they've stopped giving the hate merchants art NOM their hard earned money.  Hence to keep the money flowing so that Brian Brown and other similar leeches can live the good life, NOM has been forced to look for ignorant and bigoted audiences overseas foolish enough to make financial contributions.  A piece in Salon looks at NOM's increasingly desperate financial position where two individual donors gave half of its total monetary support.  Here are highlights:

The National Organization for Marriage — once touted as an anti-gay marriage political powerhouse — finds itself on the brink of financial collapse, new figures show.

The indispensable Mark Joseph Stern runs down NOM’s dismal numbers:

On Wednesday, the viciously anti-gay National Organization for Marriage finally released its 2013 tax filings—two days late, in direct violation of federal law. The results are nothing short of brutal. NOM raised $5.1 million last year—a 50 percent drop-off from its 2012 earnings. Two donors accounted for more than half of that money. And the group’s “Education Fund,” which churns out anti-gay propaganda and homophobic calumny, raised less than $1.7 million, a 70 percent decline from 2012. NOM closed out the year more than $2.5 million in debt.

How did the nation’s leading anti-marriage equality organization land itself here? Stern offers three theories:

• donors recoiled when NOM devolved into increasingly visceral anti-gay rhetoric that proved so offensive even some true believers couldn’t help but he embarrassed; 
• supporters are less likely to contribute funds for fear they’ll be exposed (nobody wants to go the way of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich); and 
• that amid a wave of marriage equality victories, NOM’s supporters just aren’t all that interesting in throwing money at a lost cause anymore.

I’d add a fourth factor: the group has shown itself to be woefully politically ineffective.

NOM’s ideal world looks a lot like the world of 2003-2004.  But that isn’t the world NOM is dealing with. Fast forward 10 years, and Democratic politicians show near-universal support for marriage equality, and public polling shows that a majority of Americans share their view.

Determined to reverse the tide of growing support for marriage equality, NOM has spent big on electing anti-gay primary challengers and general election candidates. . . . In 2013, NOM went all in trying to elect Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli, who had endorsed reviving Virginia’s anti-sodomy law, and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan of New Jersey, only to watch both candidates lose.

Underscoring the sad state of affairs with which NOM President Brian Brown is grappling, the group this year endorsed two pro-LGBT Democratic congressional candidates on the sole basis that their GOP opponents were gay . . . the poor track records of prominent anti-gay candidates NOM has backed in hotly contested races should give donors pause before they open up their checkbooks to help keep hate afloat.

Hence, as I said, NOM's move overseas where cretins, morons, bigots and dictators like Vladimir Putin and the leaders of certain African nations are still inclined to give NOM money.  It is instructive that the despicable (and in my view, mentally disturbed) Maggie Gallagher left NOM when she apparently realized that the cash cow was mortally ill.