NOM Wants Revenge After N.Y. Vote

Defeated opponents of marriage equality ostensibly spent Friday evening avoiding New York City's West Village, licking their wounds, and releasing statements on just how doomed the Empire State is following a historic victory for LGBT rights (“Passage of Same-Sex Marriag [sic] Bill Is a Disaster for the Future," one headline on the Conservative Party of New York State's website reads).

The National Organization for Marriage went a step further in announcing a reported minimum $2 million campaign in the 2012 election cycle to "hold politicians accountable for their vote" in hopes of "overturning same-sex marriage in New York." The Los Angeles Times had earlier reported the figure at "more than $1 million."

“Gay marriage has consequences for the next generation, for parents, and for religious people, institutions and small business owners. Politicians who campaign one way on marriage, and then vote the other, need to understand: betraying and misleading voters has consequences, too,” NOM president Brian Brown said in a statement. “We are not giving up, we will continue to fight to protect marriage in New York, as we are actively doing in New Hampshire and Iowa.”

Maggie Gallagher, NOM’s chairman of the board, said in the same press release, “The Republican Party in New York is responsible for passing gay marriage, and sadly it’s the families of New York who will pay the worst price of the new government-backed redefinition of marriage.”

NOM-sponsored campaigns to unseat legislators or jurists who have aupported marriage equality are nothing new. Last year the group helped fund a $1 million push in Iowa to oust three state supreme court judges who took part in a unanimous decision striking down the state’s anti-gay marriage laws. NOM and other groups have since been calling for a ballot measure on gay marriage in Iowa — a strategy it cannot use in New York, which does not have an initiative process and only a limited referendum structure.