The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) a group which has been designated as a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Project (SPLP) is changing it’s strategy, or is it. Maybe this is just more of their previous strategy. In the past, their standard operating procedure has been to pour tons of money into states where that money could be used to spread lies and misinformation and scare the voters away from approving same-sex marriage. This worked well for them in California and Maine. Additionally, NOM was responsible for the massive funds that were used to unseat three of the Iowa Supreme Court Judges who had voted the State’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Hey, if you don’t like what a judge has to say, just get rid of them, and get a judge in there who agree with your position on something!

But now it seems NOM is turning its attention to the Federal battle over DOMA. Note how, in this blog post, they represent this as “just news” and don’t indicate their involvement at all. Imagine!

NOM must care about the Federal DOMA because once it falls, their attempt to maintain discrimination against same-sex couples will be essentially over. Even now, their battle is futile at best. Enough states support same-sex relationships, but as long as there is no Federal recognition of those relationships, these couples are still second class citizens. Section 3 of DOMA has been declared unconstitutional in the courts, and by the White House as well s the Justice Department. There are only a few levels of the judiciary appeals system where an overturning of this could occur, and so anyone who is anti-gay will keep fighting this with the hopes of a win at some higher level of the Courts, even if that is unlikely. Still it is their only real chance. Once DOMA is gone, legally married couples in states that allow such marriages will have all the rights of straight couples. As more states accept same-sex marriage or civil unions, the trend for acceptance will simply continue, until the day that a case like Loving v Virginia brings same-sex marriage to every state. Full marriage Equality could be 5-10 years away, but the defeat of DOMA could easily be within a year or two if we can get more progressives elected at both the state and Federal levels.