National Organization for Marriage (NOM)

The National Organization for Marriage was founded in 2007 by Maggie Gallagher (a syndicated columnist and former president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy) and Robert P. George (Princeton University legal and moral philosopher, co-author of the Manhattan Declaration). Brian Brown became NOM's executive director in 2007 and president in 2010. NOM's founding timing was strategic: the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had required the state to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, and a wave of state legislative and ballot battles over marriage definition was building. NOM was designed to coordinate and fund the defensive coalition. NOM's most significant campaign was California's Proposition 8 (November 2008), which amended the California constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, reversing the state Supreme Court's May 2008 ruling that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry. NOM contributed significant funding to the Yes on 8 campaign. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) mobilized its members in support of Prop 8 through coordination with NOM and the California Catholic Conference; LDS members contributed an estimated $20 million to the campaign, approximately half its total funding. Rick Warren (Saddleback Church) recorded a video message urging his congregation to support Prop 8 — a significant endorsement given Warren's carefully cultivated bipartisan image. In 2012, a court-ordered disclosure of NOM's donor lists revealed that the anonymous donors funding its campaigns included major Republican donors, Catholic institutional funding, and the LDS Church. NOM's internal strategy documents, leaked in 2012, revealed explicit racial wedge strategy: plans to 'drive a wedge between gays and blacks,' to recruit Black and Latino leaders to front anti-gay-marriage campaigns, and to use social media to generate Black and Latino opposition to same-sex marriage as a way of splitting the Democratic coalition. After Obergefell v. Hodges (June 26, 2015) made same-sex marriage a constitutional right nationwide, NOM reoriented toward the 'religious liberty' legal strategy — supporting legislation and litigation designed to allow individuals and businesses to refuse services to same-sex couples on religious grounds. Robert P. George's role connects NOM to the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Declaration, Princeton's James Madison Program (which has hosted numerous Federalist Society-aligned legal scholars), and the broader network of conservative Catholic intellectual institutions that have provided legal and philosophical infrastructure for the Religious Right.

Documented themes

• Anti-LGBTQ
• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy

Connections from National Organization for Marriage (NOM)

• influenced → Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) as Galvanizing Force (2015) — The National Organization for Marriage coordinated and funded anti-same-sex-marriage campaigns across state legislatures and ballot initiatives from 2007 through Obergefell (2015), including the Prop 8 campaign (California, 2008). NOM's decade of state-level battles made same-sex marriage the defining culture war issue for evangelical voters — setting up Obergefell's defeat as the galvanizing grievance that drove evangelical mobilization for the 2016 election.

Connections to National Organization for Marriage (NOM)

• Howard Ahmanson Jr. funded (2008) — Howard Ahmanson Jr. contributed $900,000 to California's Proposition 8 campaign in 2008, making him one of the initiative's largest individual donors. The National Organization for Marriage was the primary organizational vehicle coordinating anti-same-sex-marriage ballot campaigns in California and other states. Ahmanson's donation illustrated the path from Reconstructionist theology — which he had funded through Chalcedon Foundation for decades — to mainstream electoral politics. What Rushdoony had articulated as biblical law prohibiting homosexuality, Ahmanson translated into a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar investment in a state constitutional amendment. Katherine Stewart's research documents how Ahmanson's funding network connected dominionist theology directly to the legal and electoral strategy of anti-LGBTQ organizations.
• Rick Warren promoted (2008) — In October 2008, Rick Warren recorded a video message urging Saddleback Church's congregation to support California's Proposition 8 — the ballot measure banning same-sex marriage. The endorsement was significant precisely because of Warren's carefully cultivated bipartisan image: his support for Prop 8 demonstrated that the 'civil' lane of evangelical cultural engagement and the harder-edged NOM/FRC lane were theologically identical on sexuality, differing only in rhetorical style.

Sources

• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 140–165
• NOM's Strategic Plan Exposed — Human Rights Campaign (2012)
• Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality — Jo Becker (2014), pp. 1–340