The Supreme Court has decided not to hear the National Organization for Marriage’s challenge to Maine’s campaign finance laws:

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a constitutional challenge to a Maine law that requires those seeking to raise and spend money in state election campaigns to organize as a political action committee for that activity, and make significant disclosures about their financial operations.   That was challenged in a petition, National Organization for Marriage v. McKee (11-599), after the state law was upheld by the First Circuit Court.

Though this may be perceived as a non-event, it represents a huge defeat for the anti-gay organization’s secrecy and as well as its self-victimizing claims that supporters of “traditional marriage” are persecuted for their beliefs. NOM was one of the top fundraisers supporting Maine’s Question 1 in 2009, a people’s veto of marriage equality legislation that ended up passing. For three years, NOM has used this lawsuit to keep the sources of its funding hidden, but now the organization has no other avenues to appeal, having lost every step of the way.

Though their identities remain unknown, NOM has a select group of donors that fund most of its operations. In the meantime, it purports to have a broad base of “members,” even though it doesn’t collect any money from membership dues. It is particularly fortuitous that NOM faces this loss in addition to its similar setback in Washington state, as both states are planning for referenda to approve marriage equality this year. Unfortunately for Brian Brown, John Eastman, Maggie Gallagher, and the rest of the NOM crew, free speech does not come without the cost of accountability, and the world might soon see just how NOM has paid for its.

Via Aksarbent, a coalition of anti-gay churches took out a full-page ad in the Omaha Word Herald on Sunday titled, Heritage Coalition Proclamation on Sexual Preference, in an effort to defeat a local ordinance extending anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity within the city of Omaha, Nebraska. The ad states, “We do not have the right to change God’s moral law to fit our sexual preferences” and claims that Jesus will forgive gay people and “begins to change us from the inside out to become more like him”:

Councilman Ben Gray reintroduced the bill this week, which failed in 2010 on a 3-3 council vote. Meanwhile, an effort to “nullify any LGBT ordinance in Omaha by banning municipal protected classes not enumerated by the state appears to have stalled in the Unicameral’s Judiciary Committee after a hearing last Wednesday.”

Meanwhile, the paper notes today that “Among the 50 largest cities in the nation, Omaha is one of 15 whose gay residents have no specific legal protection from discrimination.” “In the past two years, at least 35 cities and counties in the United States of all sizes have passed anti-discrimination ordinances based on both sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Speaking at a gay rights fundraiser in Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned the crowd that a Republican president could undo many of President Obama’s advances for LGBT equality. Stopping short of outright condemning the state’s proposed amendment banning all legal recognition of same-sex couples on behalf of the administration, she suggested that organizing for the May 8 vote on Amendment 1 could serve as a practice run for supporting the President’s reelection:

SEBELIUS: I know there’s an important election in early May in North Carolina. And I think it’s a great template for what needs to be done to organize people and turn out people for November. North Carolina is hugely important in this next [presidential] election.

The Obama administration has struggled to address state-level action on same-sex marriage, owing at least in part to the President’s still-”evolving” position on the issue. In his speech to the Human Rights Campaign last October, he said that “we’ve got to work hard to oppose“ enshrining discrimination into state laws and constitutions, but he didn’t mention Minnesota or North Carolina by name. In 2009, Organizing for America (Obama’s campaign arm) encouraged Maine residents to vote, but stayed mum regarding the ban on same-sex marriage that was on the ballot. At an LGBT fundraiser in New York last June, just days before a contentious Senate vote on marriage equality, Obama mentioned the legislation but took no position on it, calling the deliberation “exactly what democracies are supposed to do.” And in January, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he didn’t know if Obama opposed Republicans’ effort to repeal same-sex marriage in New Hampshire.

The Democratic National Committee has said it will “certainly consider” helping to fight anti-gay measures in states like North Carolina and Minnesota, but so far has taken no action on that front. The DNC will host its convention in Charlotte in September, but by then it will be far too late to prevent discrimination from being written into the state’s constitution.

New Hampshire Rep. David Bates (R) — the sponsor of legislation to repeal the state’s marriage equality law — says he’ll propose “a floor amendment to try to win over opponents — one that may remove its “religious liberty” clause if that’s what it takes to pass it,” the Union Leader reports. Currently, HB 437, defines marriage as “the legally recognized union of one man and one woman,” allows for “civil unions” that provide all the “rights, obligations and responsibilities” in the state’s marriage law, and preserves same-sex marriages that occurred since the law took effect on Jan. 1, 2010. The measure also includes a “religious liberty” clause that shields any “individual, corporation, entity, association, educational institution or society” for refusing to solemnize or treat as valid any civil union if that violates “their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs.”

Bates claims that opponents of the bill are falsely claiming that the language would override the state’s existing nondiscrimination protections, but says “I would rather see the bill pass with nothing in there regarding religious liberties rather than insist on keeping this in there and having the bill fail as a result of it.”

“Civil rights have to do with intrinsic qualities that a person just can’t change,” such as race or gender, he added. Homosexuality doesn’t meet that criterion, he said, adding that not long ago it was referred to as “sexual preference.” “There’s no other example of any basis that we afford a civil right based upon a behavior or a preferential choice,” he said.

Anti-gay groups like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) have pledged to spend $250,000 “running independent TV ads as well as donating directly to legislators’ campaigns this year” to advances Bates’ measure. Meanwhile, the state reports that 1,887 same-sex couples have married since the law took effect on Jan. 1, 2010.

Bates would not say when his bill would come up for consideration.