The gays aren’t the only ones to using recent events as a call to action to generate cash. The wedding planners at the National Organization for Marriage are doing it too!
Faced with losing the battle for marriage equality in Maine, NOM’s exec director Brian Brown sent this missive to supporters hoping to drum up cash for Stand For Marriage Maine, the Catholic Church-backed misinformation organization:
Let me be direct: Unless we act now, marriage will be redefined in Maine. Never before have voters had the chance to directly overturn the legislative enactment of same-sex marriage in any state in the country. If we lose marriage in Maine, we risk losing marriage everywhere.
I’m not asking you today for contributions for the National Organization for Marriage. NOM is dedicated to winning the marriage fight. Period. We don’t have a bloated staff or overhead. We were the largest contributor both to the Proposition 8 effort in California and to Stand for Marriage Maine. We put our money where our mouth is. But we have stretched ourselves as far as we can go.
It is now up to you to make the difference. We want your money to go where it is most useful in the fight. And right now, Yes on 1/Stand for Marriage Maine needs your support in a way that no state marriage group has needed it before.
I’m asking you to read the powerful e-mail below from my friend, Marc Mutty, chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine, and to think long and hard about what marriage is worth to you, your family, and your country—and then to give whatever you can today to Stand for Marriage Maine to protect this precious institution.
So what does Mutty’s message say?
We knew we were being vastly outspent from the fact that the No on 1 campaign was able to air their advertising upwards of 50% more than our Yes on 1 campaign ads. We had a clue that the other side was awash in money because of the dozens of paid staff members they have on board their campaign. But we never dreamed the situation was as dire as it is: our opponents have raised approximately $1.6 more than we have and are conducting a financial assault on the institution of marriage. Overall, they have raised an astonishing $2.7 million from gay marriage supporters across the country!
We are in desperate need of additional financial support or we risk losing because our opponents are attempting to buy themselves an election – and destroy the institution of marriage in the process.
Is NOM and S4MM really scared over losing the fight for inequality? They might be, if they’ve seen Maine’s polling data, which shows No On 1 leading with voters. But also, these groups aren’t the only one to use “dire” situations and “act now!” come-ons to generate cash; that’s been HRC’s shtick since they started a listserv.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
So we’re not quite convinced these groups think they’ve lost the fight that ends Nov. 3. But we’ll have plenty of fun on Nov. 4 publishing some of these lines as pullquotes.
Fitz
They don’t need to worry about a thing. The opposing side is spending their money on this hallmark-ads and gentle begging. The battle is Maine is lost.
AndTom
and the polls don’t mean jack either, in CA Aug and Sept showed No on 8 side having a slight edge the entire time.
Cam
Is it just me…or does that guy have a major case of “Gay Face”?
Also, to donate to help protect gay marriage in Maine……
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5841/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=2566
Fitz
@cam: donate for what? more pleasant hallmark-card ads?
Cam
@Fitz, I think this ad that rebuts the Catholic church’s contentions is a very to the point well done ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKBkVF6aexA&feature=player_embedded
naghanenu
You know wat screw the polls this happened in california.Im waiting till voting day
KyleR
And the mentality that some are showing in these comments are exactly why Maine and eventually in Washington is going to lose. ‘Oh, they have more of this or that’ so therefore we have lost. We will lose because people don’t care to offer the support where it’s needed. I would love to send money to Maine and Washington but I’m unemployed right now.
If we want to win we have to help them.
Fitz
@Kyle– I ain’t helping with another gentle, sweet, doomed-to-fail approach. Even if I was a gazillionaire. NCLR bent over and took it rough from the Prop 8 people, and fired back with “we love our gay daughter” ads. I think the same is happening in Maine.
Sam
You know. As much as I want to believe those polls saying we are slightly ahead, I will be believe it when I see it on November 3rd. Till then, I’m going to keep donating my time and money till the fat lady sings (or Maggie cries).
Maine, for equal rights and fairness, Please vote No on 1.
Sam
@Fitz: How would you do it differently?
SteveMD2
I’ve sunk $15K into supporting gay people in maine. And I do phone banking. And the results I see are impressive – so many lapsed Catholics, and Good christians who support gay people’s equality under the law.
You can support gay people in Maine by going to http://www.ProtectMaineEquality.org and donating whatever you can.
And celebrate on NOv 4, after the election. Victory is well within our grasp – because good religious people are beginning to understand how some religions deny the very humanity of gay people. And these people support equality under the law, even if their church will not (and has the right to not do so – enumerated in the marriage law) perform religious ceremonies.
And in the end, these churches will change. Perhaps because the money will stop flowing into their collection plates.
Wayne
Maybe somebody should remind the negative naysayers on this board that we are actually ahead in Maine, so maybe those efforts are not so weak after all. It was the same with The National Equality March, constant bitching from Miss Negative Nancy droning on and on that NO ONE is going to show up to the march. And yet a massive multitude of tens of thousands proved them wrong. Some people want everyone to be as miserable as they are. Don’t buy in to their self defeating bullshit.
Kiki
The assault on family structure and family values began in the 60’s and this is still another component of that assault and the downfall of the Man (Husband) Woman (Mother) union in our Society to insure the raising of children in a safe and sensible environment. It is just the latest in the continued degeneration of American Society
PopSnap
@Kiki
Oh, you mean the 50’s were so much better? The good ol’ days, when we could tell blacks to sit at the back of the bus and men came home and beat the mess out of their wife and kids with no legal recourse, mainly because she was too strung out on meds to feel anything.
If not the fifties, then there’s the forties, of course with Nazism and Hitler and thousands of young men and women dying daily because they were drafted to fight in a battle to protect their loved ones from being thrown into an oven.
Or maybe, your morality is so much better? Why don’t you read what your God demands you do to children as per Leviticus. Or did you not read where He says to stone children? And He doesn’t like it when women get raped: they sure as hell better not, lest they must marry their rapist. Lepers and the sick should be cast away or killed.
Leviticus 20:9
If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death.
How’s THAT for family values?
Fitz
Sam: I would bluntly say “Bigotry is wrong, don’t be a bigot”.
1EqualityUSA
To SteveMD who sunk 15 K into Maine and did phone banking…Thanks! What a peach!