HRC To Watchdog National Organization for Marriage
The Human Rights Campaign and the Courage Campaign, a California-based progressive alliance, announced today that they’ve launched a new website devoted solely to tracking the political activity and shadowy funding behind the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nonprofit group that’s famous for backing initiatives to ban same sex marriage around the country. From the press release:
“„WASHINGTON – As the National Organization for Marriage, or NOM, embarks on a fall election campaign to defeat candidates who support full marriage equality, the Human Rights Campaign, in collaboration with the Courage Campaign, unveiled “NOM Exposed,” a live, interactive website which reveals NOM’s deep anti-gay affiliations, its long connections to the Mormon and Catholic churches and its quest to keep voters in the dark about its financing. The site is at www.NOMexposed.org.
“„At the same time, HRC announced the formation of the NOM Project to follow the ongoing political work and propaganda of NOM as it attempts to influence elections and legislative campaigns across the country. The project will be led by Kevin Nix, a longtime LGBT advocate and political and media consultant. A former communications director at both Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and the Family Equality Council, Nix also worked at Media Matters in the 2004 presidential cycle.
In addition to bringing together a lot of information and investigative work about NOM’s activity in a number of states, one of the site’s first tasks appears to be tracking another bus tour backed by NOM called the “Vota Tus Valores” tour. The new tour, which launched yesterday and plans to weave its way through the state of California for a ten day stretch, is the product of a joint effort of NOM, the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, American Principles in Action and the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List.
While Republican candidates in the state have been having a hard time attracting Latino voters to their cause, the tour’s ostensible goal is to support former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina’s campaign for U.S. Senate by talking up her opposition to same sex marriage and abortion.
