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NOM’s ‘Dirty Money’ And Dirty Tactics Revealed In Shocking New Exposé

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NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, is accused of skirting campaign finance laws, money-laundering, and being funded by literally a handful of major donors, according to a new, extensive, and shocking exposé by E.J. Graff at The Advocate. In “Dirty Money,” Graff points to NOM’s increasingly harsher rhetoric, greater willingness to attack homosexuality and LGBT people, totuting its ability to protect donors’ identities, and state-by-state lawsuits attempting to overturn financial disclosure laws.

“In internal documents (which came to light because of a lawsuit that NOM brought against campaign finance disclosure, NOM v. McKee), NOM wrote, ‘One key advantage we now have is the capacity to protect the identity of our donors,’” Graff reports.

“NOM puts its hundreds of thousands of dollars into state campaigns in ways that protect its donors from being identified,” Graff writes:

Its campaign finance philosophy is that the best defense is a good offense: With the help of James Bopp, the lawyer who brought the notorious Citizens United lawsuit to the Supreme Court, NOM has repeatedly launched lawsuits arguing that states’ campaign reporting laws are unconstitutional efforts to chill free speech, even though it has just as repeatedly lost.

Watching NOM closely is Fred Karger, a gay California Republican who believes that NOM is a secret cabal actively conspiring to undermine campaign finance laws. Karger writes to state election commissions to convince them of the same. At Karger’s prompting, California, Maine, and Minnesota are investigating NOM’s campaign finance tactics.

Each year, according to NOM’s tax filings, two or three donors give NOM between $1 million and $3.5 million apiece; another two or three give between $100,000 and $750,000; and 10 or so others give between $5,000 and $95,000. In 2009 the top five donors made up three fourths of NOM’s budget; in 2010 the top two donors gave two thirds of the year’s total donations; and in 2011 the top two donors gave three fourths of NOM’s total income. But those funders’ identities are a mystery. Their names are redacted on NOM’s federal tax returns. Under federal campaign laws, none of those names have to be disclosed.

But if, as Karger alleges, those donors are actually using NOM as a way to contribute to state issue campaigns, that would be illegal. The states in which NOM runs campaigns (via locally registered groups) require donors to publicly disclose their names and addresses and sometimes their employers. The allegation is that NOM establishes state campaign organizations against marriage equality as pass-through groups, with local partners that do little. NOM solicits major donations from its large contributors for these campaigns and donates to the local fights so that NOM, not the individual, will be listed as the donor. If true, that’s fraud and “financial structuring,” the technical term for money laundering. (Calls to the four state organizations asking for comment were not returned.)

And then there’s the matter of just how unhinged and on-edge NOM president Brian Brown appears:

When asked why so many more people were willing to be listed as donors to the marriage equality campaigns than to the other side, Brown was impatient and exploded with anger at how LGBT extremists — condoned, in his view, by the marriage equality movement at large — attacked his side with “a campaign of intimidation, hatred, and attacking donors.” Gay extremists, he said, are attempting to “punish people…for exercising their First Amendment rights to speak up and stand for what they believe in, to donate to what they believe in…. They want to hurt people. They want to hurt people! Put that in the article! They want to hurt people!”

When questioned on this, Brown became ever more emphatic. “I don’t think you understand the reality that donors on our side get death threats, I don’t think you understand the reality that it’s not a joke when a guy [Floyd Lee Corkins] comes into the Family Research Council with a gun, I don’t think you understand that creating an environment in which it’s OK to demean human beings because of their views is wrong. I can respect people and I support their constitutional right to give and to support their position to advance gay marriage. What we are asking for is the same respect. And at this point we are not getting it.”

And then comes the truth that NOM is really not willing to publicly promote, but that sits at the heart of the anti-gay organization:

The head of NOM’s nonprofit educational arm, the Ruth Institute, Jennifer Roback Morse, promotes her stance with a prominent article headlined “Why Opposing the Gay Lobby Is Not Antigay.”

However, since Maggie Gallagher ceased being NOM’s board chair, the Ruth Institute has skated over the edge of being actively antigay. Last year Carlos Maza of Equality Matters attended the Ruth Institute’s annual training program for “emerging leaders” in how to talk about marriage and LGBT issues. He writes, “What I saw at the conference — selling a book that labels gay people as pedophiles worthy of death, distributing Bible quotes to college students similarly calling for gays to be killed, hosting entire speeches devoted to condemning gays and lesbians as deviant sinners — represented a brand of antigay extremism that I assumed even NOM would have shied away from.” He listened to a lecture from antigay author Robert A.J. Gagnon announcing that homosexuality was “self-degrading,” inflicts “measurable harm,” is unhealthy, emotionally dangerous, unacceptable to God, and leads to depression, substance abuse, and disease. The weekend, Maza writes, taught “that gays and lesbians — including me — are unstable, dangerous, and unworthy of raising their own families.” The reading list included materials saying that lesbians and gay men are in a “rebellion against God,” that our relationships are inherently “unstable, unhealthy, and promiscuous,” and relying on such discredited authors as George Gilder and Paul Cameron.

Graff notes an important point, one with which we agree: since Gallagher’s supposed resignation, NOM has become increasingly hate-filled and “religious” — and it seems clear Brian Brown is, if not the cause, at the very least the messenger.

Graff’s article in The Advocate is important and one that many need to read. For all those who think this is a simple case of differences of opinion in the culture wars, Graff proves it’s anything but.

 

Image of dollar bills by Revisorweb via Wikimedia

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‘Tone Deaf’: An ‘Exhausted’ Trump Ripped for Iran Speech Focused on Ballroom and Drapes

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March 2, 2026

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While making his first remarks to the nation from the White House about his military attack on Iran that began on Saturday, President Donald Trump came under fire for taking time to discuss his $400 million ballroom and drapes.

“We have a lot of great service members here with us, too, in this beautiful building, isn’t it? Beautiful?” Trump told the audience. “We’re adding on to the building a little bit. We’re improving the building. See that nice drape?”

“When that comes down, right now, you see a very, very deep hole, but in about a year and a half from now, you’re gonna see a very, very beautiful building. And there’s your entrance to it, right there. In fact, it looks so nice, I don’t think I’ll even, I think I’ll save money on the doors, ’cause it can’t get more beautiful than that.”

“I picked those drapes in my first term. I always liked gold, but I think we can save a lot of money. I just saved… I just saved curtains. But, uh, it will be. It will be spectacular. It’ll be the most beautiful ballroom,” he said.

READ MORE: Why Drivers Should Brace for a Rapid Gas Price Surge This Week: Expert

Critics blasted the president’s remarks.

“American troops are dead and Trump is on TV talking about the drapes…” remarked The Lincoln Project.

“Trump just explained about the attack on Iran that ‘I don’t get bored. There’s nothing boring about this.’ Despite that, he is now talking at some length about gold drapes and ‘the most beautiful ballroom,'” commented columnist Niall Stanage.

“In a war that’s already killed four Americans, Trump says it could last beyond 4-5 weeks because he doesn’t get ‘bored,'” observed Scripps News’ Simon Kaufman. “Moments later, he moves on from Iran and talks about ballroom renovations and drapes.”

“Trump demonstrating his mental disfigurement by bragging about his ballroom and chuckling immediately after claiming that ‘we grieve’ for 4 US soldiers killed in the war he just initiated,” wrote journalist John Harwood. “Trump does not possess empathy and does not grieve for any other person’s misfortune.”

Noting that the president sounded “exhausted and not good,” foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen observed “the difference” in Trump’s “demeanor and affect when talking about the war and then the ballroom is so different.” She also said that “it is evident the war is becoming more of a s — — than he expected.”

“It’s worth noting that Trump is putting infinitely more effort into selling his ballroom to the American people than anyone in his administration is on selling the attack on Iran,” wrote conspiracy theories expert Mike Rothschild.

“Trump started an unnecessary war in the Middle East with no real strategy, there’s already American military loss of life and this guy is obsessing over the damn drapes and his $400 million gilded ballroom project,” remarked former political commentator Tara Setmayer. “How is this making America great????”

“Bragging about his ‘beautiful ballroom’ while he’s supposed to be explaining the somber decision to go to war,” wrote The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser. “It’s one of the most politically tone deaf things I’ve ever seen from a POTUS, including this one…”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall’ as He Workshops War Goals With Journalists: Report

 

Image via Reuters

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Why Drivers Should Brace for a Rapid Gas Price Surge This Week: Expert

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3 hours ago

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March 2, 2026

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Gas prices could surge this week as President Donald Trump’s military action in Iran and a seasonal jump in driving combine to push pump prices sharply higher.

According to Patrick De Haan, the head of Petroleum Analysis at GasBuddy, gas prices are expected to start climbing on Monday. Over the coming week, De Haan expects the price of gas at the average station to rise 10–30 cents per gallon, but “potentially 30–85 cents per gallon jumps at individual stations.”

If things go “bad at every turn,” De Haan said, consumers could potentially see prices rising by even more than 50 cents per gallon, MarketWatch reports.

MarketWatch adds that there is “little doubt that the military strikes launched this weekend by the U.S. and Israel on Iran, one of the world’s largest crude producers, will lead to a spike in oil prices” — and that the bigger question is how hard that will hit American drivers at the pump.

READ MORE: ‘Emergency’ Voting Proposal Is ‘Divorced From Legal Reality’ Say Experts

De Haan notes that Trump’s military action in Iran “is adding volatility and risk premium, but it’s landing on top of an already firming market.”

He says that gas prices have been rising for four straight weeks, and 36 states saw average gas prices “rising over the last week “with the national average up to $2.94/gal.”

Citing De Haan, MarketWatch adds that without a doubt, “the Iran attack looks to be the biggest pricing event for gasoline since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.”

“Americans will be very anxious about what the conflict could mean for oil prices, given how President Donald Trump made low oil prices his ‘signature policy,’ De Haan said.”

READ MORE: Comer Changes Tune After Lutnick Allegedly Lied

 

Image via Shutterstock 

 

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Trump ‘Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall’ as He Workshops War Goals With Journalists: Report

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4 hours ago

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March 2, 2026

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President Donald Trump has communicated to the American people through multiple channels about the objectives of his “Operation Epic Fury” — the large-scale military campaign now underway against Iran — though critics contend those objectives continue to shift.

According to The Economist’s Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom, “Trump is basically calling up every journalist in his phone to workshop different timelines and goals for his war.”

Overnight, Carlstrom wrote that in the past two days, Trump told several different media outlets about various goals for the war.

He told The Washington Post that the aim is “freedom for the people” of Iran, Carlstrom wrote.

Trump told Axios that maybe we can “end it in two or three days” with a deal.

He told The New York Times that it might be “four to five weeks,” and said that he has “three very good choices” for who might take control in Iran.

But then, Carlstrom wrote, Trump told ABC News, “actually, nevermind, we killed those choices.”

“He doesn’t sound convinced by any of it,” said Carlstrom. “He’s throwing spaghetti at the wall. Ultimately I suspect he just wants to say he ‘solved’ a problem that has vexed every American president since Jimmy Carter.”

“But there’s no clear idea what that looks like and no plan for how to get there. And there are plenty of possible scenarios in which Trump declares victory and leaves the region with an absolute mess,” he warned.

Others appeared to agree.

New York Times conservative columnist David French, an Iraq War veteran, responded to Carlstrom, saying: “This is an absolute mess.”

Historian Timo R. Stewart wrote: “Throwing spaghetti at the wall is an apt summary of the White House’s chaotic messaging related to the war that has just begun.”

Journalist Alan Friedman added, “No one ever accused the Trump administration of having a clear strategy on matters of tariffs, trade wars, invasions, kidnappings, threats against Greenland or his new war of choice against Iran. He is making it up as he goes along, folks. Hard to believe, but this is improv.”

National security expert Marc Polymeropoulos wrote, “I’m sure someone will say this is deliberate deception, part of his brilliance….”

 

Image via Reuters

 

 

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