Thursday, August 08, 2013

NOM to be investigated in Iowa for refusing to disclose donors

The National Organization for Marriage continues to have a bad year. According to Freedom to Marry, the organization will be investigated in Iowa:

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board voted today to investigate the National Organization for Marriage, the virulently anti-gay group, for refusing to disclose the names of donors who funded its efforts to oust Iowa Supreme Court justices during the 2010 and 2012 elections. Marc Solomon, national campaign director of Freedom to Marry, released the following statement:

“For years, NOM has taken huge contributions from a few anti-gay donors in exchange for shielding their names from campaign finance authorities, whether or not that required flouting the law. Those days are quickly coming to an end. NOM’s desperate appeals to the US Supreme Court have been rejected, and soon the public will see who bankrolls NOM’s anti-gay campaigns,  which — according to NOM internal documents — include a goal ‘to drive a wedge between gays and blacks.' "

This investigation was spurred by a complaint by Fred Karger’s Rights Equal Rights in June arguing that NOM’s filings never revealed the donors behind its contributions of more than $600,000 in 2010 and its in-kind donations to help oust justices in 2012. In Maine, where Karger filed a similar complaint against NOM in 2009, the state’s highest court ruled in May that it must reveal the names of donors to its 2009 efforts to block the freedom to marry in Maine. Twice in 2012, the US Supreme Court rejected NOM’s requests to hear challenges to the Maine public disclosure law.

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