The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage continues its sore loser campaign aimed at New York state lawmakers who supported the Marriage Equality Act that legalized same-sex marriage in the Empire state.
In its latest retaliation, the NOM is buying billboards attacking Republican state senators who voted in favor of the law in June.
“Roy McDonald, You’re Fired,” screams the group’s first billboard, which went up recently in the district of Albany-area Sen. Roy McDonald.
“This is not going to end,” vowed NOM President Brian Brown, who said the group is spending about $40,000 on the initial run of billboards.
In the coming weeks, the group hopes to have billboards in the districts of Sens. Mark Grisanti of Buffalo, Stephen Saland of Dutchess County and James Alesi of upstate Monroe County.
The billboards are NOM’s latest attempt to turn back the clock and force a public vote in hopes of amending the New York state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
In July, the NOM announced it was spending $150,000 on mailings targeting GOP Senators McDonald, Grisanti, Saland and Alesi, and Democratic Senators Shirley Huntley, Joseph Addabbo and Carl Kruger who previously voted “nay” in 2009.
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NOM President Brian Brown said the campaign is designed to “hold accountable the legislators who betrayed marriage and settle for nothing less than a vote of the people on marriage.”
But The Wall Street Journal has called NOM’s “Let the People Vote” campaign nothing more than “deceptive advertising.”
NOM’s four-year strategy to overturn marriage equality in New York includes:
- Elect pro-marriage majorities in November that will approve a marriage amendment in both the Assembly and Senate during the 2013 legislative session.
- Protect anti-gay marriage candidates in 2014 elections, so that the amendment can be approved in the 2015 legislative session.
- Successfully pass the ballot measure when it goes before voters in November 2015.
But the likelihood of NOM being successful at any of those efforts, however, is nil.
While the NOM has promised “to commit at least $2 million in elections in 2012″ targeting the seven state senators, it makes no mention of how it plans to infiltrate the Assembly.
The New York state Assembly is dominated by Democrats, who currently hold a 48-seat majority in the chamber, who have controlled the Assembly since 1975, and have voted in favor of marriage equality four times.
And in liberal leaning New York, support for marriage equality reached a record 58 percent in two independent polls earlier this year.
But that will not stop NOM from its futile efforts — anti-gay marriage is big business for the NOM, and Brown, who reportedly earns $172,100 to fight against marriage equality.
