NOM Targets N.Y. Republican Senator

Buffalo-area state senator Mark Grisanti is at the top of the National Organization for Marriage’s hit list for his vote in favor of marriage equality last week, reports upstate New York news channel YNN.

Grisanti, who is in his first term in the Senate, was one of four Republicans who joined 29 Democrats last Friday in passing the legislation establishing equal marriage rights for gay couples in New York State.

“Mark Grisanti’s vote was an absolute and total betrayal,” NOM president Brian Brown told YNN. “Mark Grisanti asked us in his first bid for the Senate in 2008 to support him. He promised that he would protect marriage as the union between a man and a woman. “He not only betrayed us, he betrayed his voters. He is at the top of our target list.”

Grisanti said that while he recognizes NOM’s right to pursue its agenda, he is comfortable with his vote. “It was a vote of my conscience, and it was a vote basically, definitely of fairness and a balance that personified what I stated on the floor, that same-sex couples should have the same right that I enjoy with my wife that I love,” he said.

NOM has pledged to spend $2 million in an effort to reverse the marriage law and unseat the legislators from both parties who voted for it.