The National Organization for Marriage clowncar juggernaut was inTrenton today. The notoriously well-funded, (anti-gay) N.O.M crew is on tour spreading rancor from state to state.
The good folks at Garden State Equality (I'm a member) did a great job of showing up our angry rivals, although I grudgingly concede the style points to their tricked-out Winnebago festooned with stock photos of faux families.
The real action was inside, where we had /real/ families!
The weather-obsessed National Organization for Marriage is taking their anti-equality road show to Trenton today, gathering outside the state house at noon. It's part of their 23-city 'Summer of Marriage, One Man-One Woman' Tour of battleground states.
But Blue Jerseyans who can make it down are invited inside the statehouse - at 11:30am in Committee Room #6 of the State House Annex - for a Town Hall-style meeting of New Jersey families with kids (as opposed to the folks bussed-in outside). They'll talk about their lives and their challenges as they raise and support their children in a state that doesn't fully recognize their families. Garden State Equality (disclosure), co-sponsoring what's inside, asks that you not engage the NOM people outside. Walk past them to better things inside.
Just in time, GSE has a new video, which may get your blood boiling all over again, with replays of some of the wintertime Senate testimony acknowledging all over again that civil unions don't work. A few of you Blue Jerseyans may see yourselves in this video ...
The so-called National Organization for Marriage, which is currently running ads opposing allowing gay couples to marry in New Jersey, has gotten itself into a bit of trouble in Maine:
Earlier this month, the Maine Ethics Commission directed staff to determine whether NOM was skirting campaign finance laws in order to avoid disclosing the identities of contributors...
One of those critics, Fred Karger with the organization Californians Against Hate, filed a complaint with the Maine Ethics Commission earlier this year. Karger alleges that NOM was essentially "money laundering" by soliciting donations from opponents of same-sex marriage for the Maine campaign, all the while promising those donors their identities would remain confidential.
Under the state's rules governing ballot question committees, which are different from political action committees, anyone who donates more than $100 would have to be identified in campaign finance reports.
The latest is that NOM is suing Maine to get out of following the law. I'm not a lawyer so I have no opinion on the constitutionality of the Maine law, though disclosure of donors seems pretty routine, but it reflects badly on their tactics leading into an election.
This annoys me: the National Organization for Marriage is launching a new ad featuring the Miss USA contestant from California who opposes marriage equality. The ad is titled, "No Offense."
"No offense," as in, "Partaking in the flat-out gay-bashing our organizations used to great effect in the last few years is no longer acceptable, but we still oppose equality... No offense."
Look at their website and you'll find evidence of this (their emphasis):
Stirring their homophobic sheep into a rabid and very premature frenzy, the National Organization for Marriage is urging their supporters to flood Corzine and the legislature with calls and emails opposing equal marriage rights for all. On the page they set up so out-of-state supporters can contactall 120 New Jersey legislators, the default state in the personal information section is Connecticut. The NJ Family Policy Council also asked supporters to flood legislators with phone calls.
Here's the deal. After November's election, the makeup of the legislature shifted to be considerably less reactionary and more pro-equality than it is now. An email from Garden State Equality chairman Steven Goldstein to some core supporters explained:
In the 2007 elections, we picked up four votes for marriage equality in the Senate, vital in a relatively small body. By our count, in the incoming Senate, before we even start lobbying, we'll be 19 Senators who are solid "yes" votes or leans "yes" votes, with our needing 21 votes to win. In the incoming Assembly -- where vote counts in a larger body can vary more -- we can project at least 39 solidly "yes" votes or leans "yes" votes, with our needing 41 votes to win. We can also project clearing 41 votes in the incoming Assembly, but the worst thing in lobbying is rose-colored glasses.
It would be foolish to try to pass marriage equality legislation during the lame duck period, but these clearly overpaid and out of touch lobbyists somehow got the idea that that was the case. Probably because Senators Ray Lesniak and Loretta Weinberg recently introduced the complement to Assemblyman Reed Gusciora's marriage equality bill. They really believe it because they're even burning money on a 101.5 radio ad (almost identical to an ad run in Wisconsin in 2006) and annoying legislators with calls.
"At this point, they're just wasting their money with the phone calls. Somebody's giving them bad information," Codey said. "It's jamming our phone lines and we can't do our work here."
Goldstein explains why they're not responding in kind:
Quite frankly, it would be a snap for us to gin up three times the calls and emails to legislators that the right-wing is doing now. We've done that time and again over the past couple of years, to the point where legislators have called us begging us to stop.
The difference, of course, is that our calls and emails are really from New Jerseyans, and not from professional right-wing activists from places like Utah. The right-wing is in free-fall panic because the failure of New Jersey's civil union law to provide equality to same-sex couples -- as marriage would -- is moving new legislators to our side all the time. [...]
Friends, polls can gauge horse-race numbers, where we do well in New Jersey, but they cannot gauge intensity. The fact is, opponents of marriage equality in New Jersey aren't anywhere near as intense as we supporters in our socially progressive state. That's why our opponents have to bring in out-of-state ringers to do their calls and emails.
When your opponents are clueless and burning their resources, the best thing to do is stand back and watch:
We've made a conscious decision to rope-a-dope the right wing now. Let the right-wing exhaust itself silly during this lame duck. We'll turn the burners back on high after lame duck.
For now, Goldstein says his focus during the lame duck is passing a hate crimes bill:
The bill is as desperately needed, yet as noncontroversial as can be -- we haven't met anyone who opposes it. The state's hate-crimes law hasn't been updated in years, and an FBI report just came out ranking New Jersey #2, tragically, in the number of hate crimes among all U.S. states.
This isn't merely an LGBT bill, it's a bill to help all minorities affected by hate crimes.
