New web site outs National Organization for Marriage donors

Newsweek reports: The National Organization for Marriage will come under close scrutiny today with the launch of a new Web site that will detail supporters and backers of the organization, whose goal is to fight against same-sex marriage. (NOM, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., was founded in 2007 “in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures,” as its Web site states.)

The new Web site, NOMexposed.com, is the creation of the the Human Rights Campaign and the Courage Campaign, one of the country’s fastest growing, Web-activist organizations.

“We want to out NOM for what it is—a secretive player in antigay politics, which is posing as an offshore company for antigay religious money,” says Michael Cole, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign.

After months of poring through public documents including court and tax records, the Web site details NOM supporters like the Mormon and Catholic churches, as well as Opus Dei. It also posts items about organizations and individuals that have publicly expressed antigay rhetoric and activity and their relationship to NOM. The site includes a graph to show the phenomenal growth NOM has enjoyed over the last three years, going from a budget of $500,000 to $10 million in three years.

The D.C.-based NOM, has been fighting hard to keep its donors and supporters private. This month it filed suit in New York and Rhode Island, its latest in a serious of legal challenges in various states to protect the identity of its donors and, according to NOM president Brian Brown, engage in independent expenditure activities and issue ads like many other nonprofits.

The Courage Campaign’s Rick Jacobs expects NOM to fight NOMexposed.com, which has a convenient map that one can click on that chronicles NOM’s political activities in each state. “They [NOM] will take a page from their victim playbook and say they are under threat from us while they are accepting millions of dollars to take people’s rights away.”

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