National Organization for Marriage (NOM)

The National Organization for Marriage was founded in 2007 by Maggie Gallagher (a syndicated columnist and former president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy) and Robert P. George (Princeton University legal and moral philosopher, co-author of the Manhattan Declaration). Brian Brown became NOM's executive director in 2007 and president in 2010. NOM's founding timing was strategic: the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had required the state to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, and a wave of state legislative and ballot battles over marriage definition was building. NOM was designed to coordinate and fund the defensive coalition. NOM's most significant campaign was California's Proposition 8 (November 2008), which amended the California constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, reversing the state Supreme Court's May 2008 ruling that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry. NOM contributed significant funding to the Yes on 8 campaign. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) mobilized its members in support of Prop 8 through coordination with NOM and the California Catholic Conference; LDS members contributed an estimated $20 million to the campaign, approximately half its total funding. Rick Warren (Saddleback Church) recorded a video message urging his congregation to support Prop 8 — a significant endorsement given Warren's carefully cultivated bipartisan image. In 2012, NOM's 2008 tax return with its major donors' names was improperly released by an IRS employee and published by the Human Rights Campaign; in 2014 the IRS paid NOM $50,000 to settle NOM's suit over the leak. NOM's internal strategy documents, leaked in 2012, revealed explicit racial wedge strategy: plans to 'drive a wedge between gays and blacks,' to recruit Black and Latino leaders to front anti-gay-marriage campaigns, and to use social media to generate Black and Latino opposition to same-sex marriage as a way of splitting the Democratic coalition. After Obergefell v. Hodges (June 26, 2015) made same-sex marriage a constitutional right nationwide, NOM reoriented toward the 'religious liberty' legal strategy — supporting legislation and litigation designed to allow individuals and businesses to refuse services to same-sex couples on religious grounds. Robert P. George's role connects NOM to the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Declaration, Princeton's James Madison Program (which has hosted numerous Federalist Society-aligned legal scholars), and the broader network of conservative Catholic intellectual institutions that have provided legal and philosophical infrastructure for the Religious Right.

Themes this entry appears in

• Anti-LGBTQ
• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy

Connections from National Organization for Marriage (NOM)

• influenced → Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) as Galvanizing Force (2015) — The National Organization for Marriage coordinated and funded anti-same-sex-marriage campaigns across state legislatures and ballot initiatives from 2007 through Obergefell (2015), including the Prop 8 campaign (California, 2008). NOM's decade of state-level battles made same-sex marriage the defining culture war issue for evangelical voters — setting up Obergefell's defeat as the galvanizing grievance that drove evangelical mobilization for the 2016 election.

Sources

• IRS agrees to $50,000 settlement in leaking of conservative group's donor records — Fox News (2014)
• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 140–165
• NOM's Strategic Plan Exposed — Human Rights Campaign (2012)
• Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality — Jo Becker (2014), pp. 1–340