National Organization for Marriage launches New York campaign, pledges election funds for 2012

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation’s premier pro-marriage group, has begun a $500,000 advertising campaign in New York to fight against same-sex marriage advocates.

The organization has also pledged $1 million to all legislative efforts in the interest of defending marriage, promising to support all Democratic State Legislators who vote to uphold a conventional definition of marriage and to stand against Republican Legislators who vote in favor of redefining marriage to support LGBT unions.

Brian Brown, NOM president and spokesman for the newly launched campaigns, argued that New York Governor Cuomo and gay marriage advocates have been targeting key players from both parties in an effort to “coerce legislators to support their agenda” on behalf of same-sex marriage.

“We want to be sure those courageous Democrats and Republicans who cast their votes of conscience in favor of traditional marriage will have a strong supporter,” Brown explained, and defense against any “radical gay activists” that might “come after them” as a result.

After successful campaigns against same-sex marriage in Maryland and Rhode Island, Brown expects NOM campaign efforts to have a similar effect in New York. “Once our message got out and legislators heard from their constituents, same-sex marriage was stopped dead in its tracks,” Brown claimed.

The organization has certainly lived up to such claims in the past. NOM has a solid history of defeating Republican supporters of gay marriage equality and have launched campaigns to bring down a number of such advocates including Bill Binnie in New Hampshire, Tom Campbell in California and other legislators in Minnesota and New Hampshire.

As for New York? Brown said, “NOM has defeated every pro-gay marriage Republican we’ve ever targeted, and we’re quite confident we will do so in New York, should that become necessary.”