NOM to Release TV Ad in New York

The National Organization for Marriage will escalate its fight against marriage equality in New York with a TV ad that falsely claims pending legislation would allow marriages between same-sex couples to be taught in schools.

The Human Rights Campaign released a statement about the advertisement set to air in the state, where NOM ran the same ad in advance of the marriage equality vote in 2009. The ad, which refers to Massachusetts in order to argue that a similar fate awaits the school children of New York, was declared "false" by the fact-checking website PolitiFact as recently as February.

"Independent fact checkers will quickly determine, as they did previously with other NOM propaganda, that things don't quite add up in this New York commercial," said HRC's NOM project director Kevin Nix. "Fear and fiction is the mother's milk of this secretive, virulently anti-gay organization."

The ad is part of a $500,000 buy announced this week by NOM in New York, where the marriage equality bill failed two years ago in the state senate with no Republican support in a 38-24 vote. In a repeat of its pledge in Maryland, where the marriage equality bill failed to advance this year, NOM last week said it would spend $1 million to defeat any GOP senator who votes for the bill this year. NOM president Brian Brown plans to join the antigay Democratic state senator Ruben Diaz Sr. in a Bronx rally this Sunday against marriage equality.

Meanwhile, advocates for marriage equality plan to raise at least $1 million to air the own statewide TV ads. New Yorkers United for Marriage Equality, a bipartisan coalition that includes HRC and four other LGBT organizations, is working with Gov. Andrew Cuomo to pass the bill, which would legalize marriages between same-sex couples and have no impact on school curricula, before the legislative session ends in June. A recent poll showed that 58% of New York voters support marriage equality, a message that advocates and the governor are highlighting in order to win the six additional votes the bill needs in the Republican-controlled senate.