Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled senate in Michigan passed legislation that required schools to adopt anti-bullying policies but exempted bullies who have a “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.” Outraged over the loophole, Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D) delivered an impassioned speech rebuking the Republicans for “explicitly outlining how to get away with bullying.” Whitmer’s speech went viral and this morning she appeared on MSNBC with Thomas Roberts to discuss the legislation:

WHITMER: They say they care about First Amendment rights of speech, but we all know that no state can abridge your freedom of speech under the United States Constitution. This is a subterfuge, where I believe it is based on homophobia or, you know, creating rights for people. What this is about is protecting all kids. Every single kid in every walk of life. And that’s who we need to be thoughtful of as this legislation moves forward.

Watch it:

Whitmer is hopeful that the House — which is set to consider the legislation — will remove the religious and moral exceptions. Republican House Speaker Jase Bolge said he is working on changes to the bill that will “bring everyone to the middle of the road and provide protection to all students,” but still opposes language that would “enumerate specific groups for additional protection.” Research has consistently shown that legislation that specifically protects on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a far larger deterrent than blanket prohibitions against bullying.

Last month, ProtectMarriage.com and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) — the groups that supported the passage of Proposition 8 in California — lost their suit for exemption from California’s campaign finance disclosure laws. U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. ruled the groups’ “limited evidence is simply insufficient” to support their claim “that disclosure of contributors’ names will lead to threats, harassment or reprisals.”

In his opinion filed on Friday, England dismissed the groups’ efforts to compare themselves to such historically maligned organizations as the NAACP and ruled that only “small, persecuted groups whose very existence depended on some manner of anonymity”:

Plaintiffs do not, indeed cannot, allege that the movement to recognize marriage in California as existing only between a man and a woman is vulnerable to the same threats as were socialist and communist groups, or, for that matter, the NAACP. Proposition 8 supporters promoted a concept entirely devoid of governmental hostility. Plaintiffs’ belief in the traditional concept of marriage, to disagreement, have not historically invited animosity. The Court is at a loss to find any principled analogy between two such greatly diverging sets of circumstances.

Finally, Plaintiffs’ exemption argument appears to be premised, in large part, on the concept that individuals should be free from even legal consequences of their speech. That is simply not the nature of their right. Just as contributors to Proposition 8 are free to speak in favor of the initiative, so are opponents free to express their disagreement through proper legal means.

England argued that even if Protect<arriage and NOM fit into the historical circumstances of the NAACP, they “would need evidence of thousands of acts of reprisals, threats or harassment, spanning much more than the short period of time covering California’s ballot-initiative process to prove contributors to such a massive group are entitled to anonymity.” He added: “Plaintiffs’ contributors’ names were actually disclosed years ago and yet Plaintiffs have produced almost no evidence of any ramifications suffered in the almost three years post-disclosure.” “Accordingly, from a practical perspective, it makes no sense to buy in to the argument that disclosure may result in repercussions when there is simply no real evidence in the record that such repercussions actually did occur in the past three years. Plaintiffs’ evidence is, quite simply, stale.”

Read the full opinion here.

When Democrat David Weprin lost his September race for Congress in New York, the National Organization for Marriage egregiously gloated that the entire election had been decided on the issue of same-sex marriage. NOM had spent over $50,000 to defeat Weprin because he supported New York’s marriage equality law as a member of the state Assembly, and even resorted to attacking him for “defying Jewish law” through mailers and robocalls. But now NOM has lost a similar effort in Iowa and is completely silent so far.

In this special state Senate election, the DC-based group spent around $40,000 supporting Republican Cindy Golding, again trying to paint the entire election as being about the singular issue of same-sex marriage. But this time they failed — in fact, Democrat Liz Mathis won with a healthy 55 percent of the vote. NOM has not even mentioned the election today, with the exception of its cultural director, Thomas Peters, who turned tail after the race and blamed Golding for being “a weak candidate.”

Alvin McEwen points out that despite NOM’s grotesque campaign spending and new self-victimizing campaigns, its leaders have “gone into hiding.” There have been no public appearances by Brian Brown, Maggie Gallagher, or NOM’s radical new chairman, John Eastman, suggesting the organization is prioritizing its spending power. The group’s immense funding comes from a select few donors, but its attempts to keep them anonymous by fighting state campaign finance laws are failing left and right. And in Iowa, NOM spent the last day on the defense, separating itself from anti-gay robo calls it claimed to know nothing about. It’s no wonder the organization is trying to garner sympathy through its self-victimizing — they know that support for their issue is floundering, as is the power they thought they had to enforce it.

NOM is a corporate bully, a vindictive outside force with a singular agenda that becomes less popular with every passing day. No doubt, this week’s failure was a lesson in humility. But as long as NOM keeps funneling money into states to advance its anti-gay prerogative, it should continue to be seen as the solitary tyrant that it truly is.