NOM, Your Roots Are(n’t) Showing

Carrie Prejean is working with the National Organization for Marriage to "protect traditional marriages." (AP Photo/Denis Poroy, File)

Remember "The Gathering Storm"? The infamous ad was produced by the National Organization for Marriage, a 501(c)(4) non-profit that was one of the largest single donors in support of California's Proposition 8. NOM is now working to oppose same-sex marriage in other states. The ad has been the subject of so many parodies that a search for its title only brings up spoofs. Featuring ominous Weather Channel-inspired special effects, the ad presents a racially diverse, well-dressed group of people—from a "member of a New Jersey church group" to a "California doctor" to a "Massachusetts parent"—who appear on the screen to explain how same-sex marriage will negatively affect their lives.

The ad’s diverse cast and invocation of Jesse Jackson's "rainbow coalition" phraseology shows that NOM wants to present its movement as a grassroots one, equal in scope and energy to the marriage equality movement. But a closer look at NOM reveals that its driving forces are very different from those behind the grassroots waves of protest in opposition to the Prop. 8 decision.

The members of NOM’s coalition are not ordinary people; they're actors hired for the purpose, whose audition tapes the Human Rights Campaign discovered and posted online (the videos are no longer available, because NOM made a copyright claim that resulted in their removal from YouTube). The people running NOM—its president and its board of directors—are even less members of any grassroots movement or "rainbow coalition." They're rooted firmly in the conservative establishment, and any suggestion that NOM is on par with other, truly grassroots campaigns is dubious at best.

NOM's president is Maggie Gallagher, arguably one of the country's most prominent social-conservative voices. She has written five books in support of conservative "family values" ideology. In addition to heading up NOM, she is president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, a socially conservative think tank, and she has been a nationally-syndicated columnist for the past 14 years. She also had close ties to the Bush administration: In 2005, the Washington Post reported that Gallagher "had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote" an initiative that would encourage "marriage as a way of strengthening families." She then, the Post notes, did not disclose this connection when writing a column that praised the Bush administration's proposal.

Gallagher co-founded NOM in 2007 with Robert George, a professor in the Princeton University politics department who is now the chair of the NOM's Board of Directors (their national headquarters are also located in the town of Princeton, NJ). A prominent figure in his field of constitutional law, George has written a long list of books and articles on morality and the law. At Princeton, he founded the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, under whose aegis conservative speakers and scholars are brought to campus to lecture and hold seminars; the program also sponsors fellowships, prizes, and postdoctoral positions. Max Blumenthal noted in The Nation in 2006 that the Madison Program receives funding from sources as diverse as former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes and groups backed by the Catholic organization Opus Dei.

In addition, George is on the editorial boards of the religious conservative magazines Touchstone and First Things and is on the boards of other conservative organizations such as the Institute for American Values and the American Enterprise Institute. Like Gallagher, George has spent his entire career with the movers and shakers of religious social conservatism. His position as an Ivy League academic and his high level of involvement in a number of established organizations and publications afford him, like Gallagher, access to the base of the religious right that simply would not exist if NOM were a true grassroots organization.

Other members of NOM's board come from similar backgrounds: Chuck Stetson is chairman of the board at the Bible Literacy Project; Ken Von Kohorn fills the same role at the Family Institute of Connecticut; Luis Tellez is president of the Witherspoon Institute, a Princeton-based conservative think tank (where George is also a fellow), and is a member of the Advisory Council of George's Madison Program. The newest addition to NOM's board is science-fiction novelist and devout Mormon Orson Scott Card, who is not the head of a think tank—probably the closest NOM gets to the grassroots. But Card’s activism takes the form of publications such as a 2008 op-ed in the Mormon Times in which he said, "Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage."

The true grassroots are on the other side of the marriage debate—they include organizations like Join the Impact, which was, its website states, founded by "two friends emailing back and forth about the California passage of Proposition 8." It used Facebook, Twitter, and its own website to organize more than 300 protests against Prop. 8 last year. More have taken place since then to support marriage equality in other states.

To be sure, there are establishment advocacy groups working for marriage equality, such as the Human Rights Campaign or the American Civil Liberties Union, but their leaders are certainly less involved in every piece of the progressive pie than are Gallagher, George, and their colleagues in the conservative one. At the very least, it can be said with absolute certainty that none of these groups have presidents who received funding from the Bush administration.

Just because groups like NOM invest millions of dollars in flashy ads like "Gathering Storm," and have high-profile leaders like Gallagher and George does not mean they must have a huge groundswell of support. But their high-profile leaders pop up again and again in different roles; it's really the same few people running the show. The situation is similar to April's so-called Tax Day "tea parties," which were widely regarded as "astroturfing:" claiming to be grassroots, but sponsored and publicized by organizations such as FreedomWorks (led by Richard Armey), establishment Republican figures such as Newt Gingrich, and conservative media outlets such as Fox News. Similarly, the National Organization for Marriage and its ilk in the anti-same-sex marriage camp do not represent ordinary Americans. Instead, they represent a painfully out-of-touch brand of social conservatism that is increasingly sidelined in a nation embracing progressive change.

Emily Rutherford is a staff writer and editorial intern at Campus Progress. She is a sophomore at Princeton University.

Related Stories

• Gender-Neutral Housing Comes to Princeton
• Campaign Communications Director, Repower America
• Toke Up Marijuana Laws
• Send a Health Care E-Card
• The Battle for Pittsburgh

Story Tags

• prop_8