NOM’s head honcho, Brian Brown, addresses a small crowd in San Diego last May during a celebration of the elimination of marriage equality in California
(photo: Californians Against Hate Blog, used with permission)
The Bangor Daily News, earlier today, broke the news that the National Organization for Marriage and a relatively new player in the anti-marriage-equality game, the Washington DC-based American Principles in Action (AIPA), have filed a lawsuit in an effort to subvert Maine’s election transparency laws.
In an extensive follow-up for Friday’s edition, Kevin Miller, writing at The Bangor Daily News, begins with this recap:
AUGUSTA, Maine — A Washington, D.C.-based organization under investigation for its financial role in the campaign to repeal Maine’s gay marriage law has fired back with a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of a state election law.
The National Organization for Marriage is the largest contributor to the Question 1 ballot initiative, which seeks to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage law. As of the end of September, the organization had funneled more than $500,000 to Stand for Marriage Maine, which supports the repeal.
[ ... ]
Now, the organization has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Bangor alleging that Maine’s financial reporting requirements are unconstitutional.
(emphasis: mine)
Unconstitutional as in NOM and their out-of-state comrades-in-arms don’t want to play by the established local ground rules, so they’re attempting to ex post facto change the rules to suit their game plan. It’s positively brilliant that the media in Maine quickly got hip to their tricks and makes a point of noting, as does Miller, that the anti-equality forces rumbled their tanks and money wagons across the border in a blitzkrieg-like effort to subvert a bill passed by both houses of Maine’s democratically-elected representatives and signed into law by Maine’s Governor.
You can feel the pain and frustration in Brian Brown’s plaintive … for lack of a better word … whining:
“The reporting requirements become onerous and burdensome, especially when you are working in several states, and are an infringement of free speech,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s executive director.
[ ... ]
Brown argued in an interview Thursday that the reporting requirements — which include registering as a ballot question committee, appointing a treasurer and keeping detailed records for four years — are an undue burden. He also described Maine’s law as legally unclear and “patently unconstitutional” because it prohibited or discouraged free speech in the form of advocacy on one side of an issue.
He also accused the Ethics Commission members and Karger of waging a politically motivated “witch hunt,” despite the fact that the vote to order an investigation was bipartisan.
(emphasis: mine)
It appears Brown will tolerate no sunshine in the Pine Tree State if telling the truth — the whole truth — and complying with the law makes his and cohort Maggie Gallagher’s lives more difficult … and expensive.
Not once, since NOM and its cronies were brought up on charges — leveled by Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate — before the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics & Election Practices have the anti-marriage-equality forces acknowledged that the good guys, No on 1 : Protect Maine Equality, have never complained of any difficulty in playing by the very same rules and adhering to the letter of the law.
In Miller’s piece, Jonathan Wayne, Executive Director of the Maine Ethics Commission, explains the necessity of the state’s transparency laws.
“In the past couple of decades, a lot of important issues have come before voters as statewide ballot initiatives, including environmental issues, gambling, tax and spending limitations and hunting practices,” Wayne said.
“It’s common for national groups to want to get involved in these elections … and it is important for Maine voters to know who is attempting to influence these state laws,” Wayne said.
This, in a nutshell, is why these election campaign laws are so vital to the democratic process. No organization, however well-funded, should be allowed to simply make up their own rules or change the existing ones as they go. The National Organization for Marriage will, without doubt, continue to squirm and squeal and try court after court in their relentless quest to subvert justice and the will of Maine voters. And then they will dance the entire dance all over again in the next state in which they try to unduly influence an election.
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