New York: National Organization For Marriage Regurgitates Debunked 2009 Ad

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which is claiming it will spend $1.5 million to defeat New York’s upcoming same-sex marriage bill — including the politicians who vote for it —  has just put out an anti- “gay marriage” television spot — the exact same one they ran in 2009. Exactly the same from the revised ad, since the first one misspelled the word “marriage.” The ad itself was been debunked two years ago, and is merely hate-mongering and ignorance-reaffirming at its finest.

“The rights of people who believe that marriage means a man and a woman will no longer matter,” the voice-over in the ad falsely states. “We’ll all have to accept gay marriage whether we like it or not,” the ad warns.

When the original ad aired two years ago, The Advocate commented, “’Think same-​sex marriage doesn’t affect your family?’ asks the narrator, in twang-​inflected speech that sounds curiously out of step for the New York market. ‘Legalizing gay marriage has consequences for kids.’”

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese rebuts NOM’s claims. “We’re fighting for loving, committed gay and lesbian couples going down to the courthouse to get married, which has absolutely nothing to do with what is taught in schools,” Solmonese said. “The ad is a piece of fiction. School districts determine what is taught in schools.”

HRC’s NOM Exposed adds, “PolitiFact, a premier non-partisan fact-checking web site,  deemed NOM’s message about schools “false” on their Truth-O-Meter as recently as February. NOM aired the same ad in 2009 while opposing marriage equality in the Empire State.”

“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.”

Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper, who first discovered the ad was now running, adds, “Ignore the ‘new’ branding here.”

Alvin McEwen, who explores more, in-depth, about NOM’s ad, writes, “In the commercial aimed at New York, NOM also cites the story of children in California attending the gay wedding of their teacher as yet “another danger” of gay marriage. However, NOM conveniently omitted the fact that parents gave their children permission to attend this wedding.”

Perhaps it’s not marriage equality that will affect the education New York’s children receive, but NOM’s incorrect version of facts.

(Image, top: NOM’s original 2009 ad, with the word “marriage” incorrectly spelled.)