Mike Tidmus

The anti-equality side’s first ad (video: maine4marriage at YouTube)

Back on 3 September, I put up a couple of ads from Protect Maine Equality’s No on 1 campaign. Now the anti-marriage-equality side has struck back with something mighty familiar to Californians: outright lies and shameless distortions. The video above is the first ad from the bad guys — a coalition of the usual, deep-pocketed, mainly out-of-state suspects that includes the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the Knights of Columbus, Focus on the Family, the Catholic Church and others cowering behind a transient facade known as Stand for Marriage Maine.

The Baptist Press weighs in on the significance of these ads:

The ads from both sides of the campaign are being monitored closely and could very well determine who wins in November. Last year in California, TV ads — particularly ones that highlighted the issue of public schools — were credited with helping the pro-Prop 8 side erase a 17-point polling deficit in only six weeks and win 52-48 percent on Election Day.

Protect Maine Equality wasted no time in issuing their response:

NO on 1 Response Ad: “Clearing Up Distortions”
(video: ProtectMaineEquality at YouTube)

Sorry, Protect Maine Equality. That’s weak — purdy, but weak. Bonus points for labeling the opposition “outsiders” intent on harming Maine’s children, but putting children first is too abstract an argument to offset the false, but plausible, notions planted by your opponents in the minds of Maine voters that:

Unless Question 1 passes, there will be real consequences for Mainers. Legal experts predict a flood of lawsuits against individuals, small businesses and religious groups. Church organizations could lose their tax exemption. Homosexual marriage taught in public schools, whether parents like it or not.

Contradicting such a crass untruth seems a no-brainer, but, alas, what Stand for Marriage Maine has lobbed at the state’s marriage equality advocates is not a simple lie — it’s a cluster bomb of bunkum, balderdash and baloney.

No on Prop 8 attempted to respond with the following ad when exactly the same nonsense was peddled to voting parents in California. No on 8′s ad, by the way, features the Californian most likely to be in a position to call bullshit on the bad guys’ lies about what would be taught in public school classrooms if marriage equality remained in effect — the State Superintendent of Public Schools, Jack O’Connell.

Prop 8 has nothing to do with schools (video: No on Prop 8 at YouTube)

Unfortunately, compared side-by-side with the response from Protect Maine Equality, No on 8′s ad could conceivably fall into the Hard Hitting category. On top of the televised ad, bloggers hit back, the truth was told in editorials that appeared in major California newspapers, and, still, the anti-marriage-equality side got away with simply dismissing our side’s claims as false.

If Protect Maine Equality No on 1 is going to win, they’re going to have to grease up, get down deep in the mud, and wrestle every bit as dirty as NOM’s Maggie Gallagher and Mark Mutty of Stand for Marriage Maine, neither of whom seems constrained by that whole not bearing false witness thing.