WASHINGTON – The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has been called out for using deceitful tactics in New Hampshire. NOM is using a photograph from an Obama campaign event in St. Louis to mislead New Hampshire voters into believing they have more supporters than they actually do. The news was broken by Jeremy Hooper on his Good as You blog as he revealed the extent of NOM’s duplicity.
Hooper wrote, “In order to beef up the reliably poor attendance evidenced by their own rally photos, the National Organization For Marriage adorns its newly-launched New Hampshire for Marriage site with a collage featuring a small photo from their own effort combined with an unidentified shot of a sweepingly large crowd.
“Now, being a NOM geek,” Hooper continued, “I knew right away that the bottom right shot was bogus. And being on to their typically duplicitous games, I know that this organization will go quite far in the effort to put one over on America. But quite frankly, even I’m shocked by how far this one goes.”
The truth of the matter is that NOM lifted a Reuters photo of President Barack Obama speaking at a campaign rally at the Gateway arch in St. Louis more than three years ago.
Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign has sent a letter to NOM President Brian Brown calling out the group.
He wrote, “Your organization has sunk to a new level of deception by manipulating photographs from an Obama campaign event in St. Louis to trick Granite Staters into believing support for the National Organization for Marriage is much greater than it really is. And while I know that NOM has never been above misleading the public to further its cause, this new phoniness is an example of just how far you will go to make people believe your pursuit – the denial of equal treatment under the law – is supported by New Hampshire voters and Americans in general.”
Solmonese concludes his letter by writing, “The fact that you had to “steal a crowd” from someone else’s event to create the illusion that people support your cause is evidence that you and your cohorts are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Americans want the truth. And the truth is voters in New Hampshire want the legislature to leave the popular marriage law alone and focus on the economy and budget matters.”
