The National Organization for Marriage is boasting today about a new poll that it claims supports its case against marriage equality in Rhode Island, but the organization could not be more wrong. NOM’s big claim from the results is that a majority of voters —74 percent, then 78 percent after a push question — want to vote on the question of same-sex marriage. Not only did it take an incredible amount of distortion to arrive at that number, it’s what NOM doesn’t mention about the poll that is most incriminating.

Even with all the tactics employed to get responses that support NOM’s cause, the poll still found that nearly a third of voters (31 percent) believe that Rhode Island lawmakers should consider making same-sex marriage legal “while there is an economic crisis in our state,” as opposed to the proposed alternative of “the economic crisis [should] be dealt with first.” Obviously, the question presents a false dichotomy because approving same-sex marriage does nothing to interfere with fixing the economy. Indeed, marriage equality would support Rhode Island’s economy with an estimated $1.2 million in spending over the first three years the law is in effect. NOM’s best attempts at distortion simply cannot convince Rhode Island voters.

Here are some of the other tactics the poll employed to get skewed results for NOM:

1. The poll didn’t ask whether voters support same-sex marriage. In a poll that is almost entirely questions about same-sex marriage, it never actually asked respondents specifically how they feel about the issue itself. At best, it found that 48 percent are “liberal when thinking about social issues.” The best way to avoid getting an undesired answer is not to ask the question.

2.The poll sample was incredibly low. This poll sampled only 401 voters in Rhode Island. Obviously Rhode Island is a small state and a lower sample can be used, but recent polls in Rhode Island have surveyed 614 and 501, still significantly bigger samples. Both of those polls found majorities support marriage equality.

3. The poll grossly over-sampled older voters. About 42 percent of Rhode Island’s population is over the age of 45, but 71 percent of poll respondents were over the age of 50. National and statewide polls have consistently shown that younger people are more likely to support marriage equality, so the over-sampling seems quite intentional.

4. The polling company is extremely conservative and has a poor track record. As other LGBT blogs have pointed out, NOM’s go-to push-poller QEV Analytics has a number of conservative ties, including the Catholic Church and the Republican Party. NOM had QEV do a similar poll in the lead-up to New York’s marriage equality vote and, using similar distortions, it found 57 percent opposed to the proposed same-sex marriage bill when every other poll showed similar size majorities supporting equality. QEV President Steve Wagner said in 1996, “Polling done for the purposes of publicizing results is meaningless, and I think the media are guilty of spending too much time on polls… People don’t vote based on polls.” Apparently NOM didn’t get that memo.

NOM is quite desperate to make a case against equality in Rhode Island, but apparently the only way to do that is to ignore reality.

A new Public Policy Polling poll has found that 57 percent of Rhode Island voters approve marriage equality while only 36 percent do not. The poll also found that 31 percent prefer civil unions over marriage, but civil unions have not been successful in Rhode Island since they passed in 2011. Only 13 percent oppose any legal recognition of same-sex couples. The most recent poll, from October, similarly found a majority support for equality, with a 56-36 split. Despite the broad support, it’s unclear how soon or swiftly Senate Democrats will act now that the marriage equality bill has passed the House.

Openly gay Rep. Frank Ferri (D), one of the bill's sponsors.

As expected, the Rhode Island House of Representatives voted today to approve marriage equality legislation with a vote of 51-19. The bill now advances to the Senate, where the Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed (D) previously blocked a vote. This year, though, Paiva Weed has promised to allow a vote after approval in the House, but it’s unclear when that will occur. Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I) has promised to sign the bill and block any attempts to refer the question to a referendum.

An October poll showed that 56 percent of Rhode Island voters support marriage equality. Same-sex marriages from other states are already recognized by state agencies. After over a year of offering civil unions, less than 100 couples bothered to obtain one. All other states in New England — Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut — already recognize and offer same-sex marriages.

The Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee just unanimously advanced the same-sex marriage bill, HB5015, with an 11-0 vote. According to Rhode Islanders United for Marriage, this is the first time a General Assembly committee has advanced marriage equality to the floor. The full House is expected to take up the bill on Thursday.

Click to see it full-size.

The National Organization for Marriage published a full-page newspaper ad this week attacking same-sex marriage in Rhode Island. Like decades of anti-gay propaganda before it, the ad relies on two familiar tropes. First, marriage equality will somehow curb “religious freedom” because people will not have free reign to discriminate against same-sex couples. Secondly, children will learn that gay people exist.

Neither of these arguments is particular convincing, but NOM believes they are calling out “The Big Lie” of marriage equality, because “people of faith will pay the price.” The new coalition to support marriage equality in Rhode Island has published a thorough fact-check of the ad. Here’s a sample:

• Claim: Small businesses that oppose marriage equality will face lawsuits.

• Fact: A Seattle Times investigation “failed to turn up any evidence that same-sex marriage had produced a rash of suits involving businesspeople.”  The Times “also checked with human rights commissions in four of the six states where marriage is legal; the commissions said there was not an increase in discrimination findings or suits involving same sex marriage.”

Indeed, NOM’s scare tactics increasingly fall on deaf ears. Though as Jeremy Hooper suggests, the ad does provide some nice publicity for the children’s book King & King.

Marriage equality legislation is moving quickly in Rhode Island. After hearing hours of testimony for and against the bill Tuesday night, the state’s House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote for next Tuesday. Not only would the new law allow same-sex couples to marry, it would also recognize the less than 100 couples who got civil unions over the past two years as married. Hopefully the bill’s fast track will prevent the delays and watering-down of the legislation that led to the unsuccessful civil unions two years ago.

Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute testified against marriage equality Tuesday night before the Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee and delivered a doomsday list of outlandish consequences to the bill’s passages. The Ruth Institute has dubbed her testimony the “New Gettysburg Address of the Marriage Movement,” which she described as her “duty to God.” Looking much farther down the imaginary slippery slope, Morse envisioned a world without sex differences in which equality opponents like her represent a ragtag group of “refugees”:

I predict that none of it will make you happy.  Not redefining marriage. Not the attempts to smother sex differences and biological connections. Not the further suppression of churches, religious organizations, and faith-filled private citizens. If normalizing homosexual activity were going to make you happy, it would have done so long ago.  You would not be so desperate today for affirmation from strangers.

And if any of you come to realize that the Sexual Revolution has been one empty promise after another, we will embrace you.  We will welcome you to our ragtag  ranks of refugees, defectors and displaced persons from the great social civil war of our time.

Perhaps I will be mistaken, and you will never have a moment’s doubt for the rest of your lives.  In that case, we must continue to oppose you, to try to contain the damage we believe you are doing.

Morse’s rhetoric has achieved a new level of extreme. It’s telling that her testimony does not once mention the existence of gays and lesbians or their families, but instead reduces those relationships to “homosexual activity.” Her arguments are now so far detached from reality that they do not warrant a research-based debunk. Instead, simply exposing her brash paranoid ego is enough to defame one of the  largest anti-equality organizations in the country.

The Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing yesterday about the proposed bill to legalize same-sex marriage, with hundreds of supporters and opponents assembled to deliver speeches.

Outside the hearing, anti-gay opponents drowned out the testimonies. The scene included chanting and praying, as well as protester signs claiming that same-sex marriage threatened the so-called “natural order.” But plenty of supporters of marriage equality were on-hand to testify as well. Sixth grader Matthew Lannon, a supporter of the bill, made an appeal to lawmakers:

LANNON: Let me tell you about my parents. I have two moms and two dads, and an older sister. If you came to our house, you would feel the love that we all have for one another. We laugh a lot, we talk about our feelings, we argue, we are real. [...] Having gay marriage won’t change our family, it will change the way that the state, and other people see our family; as normal just like everyone else.

Watch a video that includes scenes of the protesters as well as excerpts of Lannon’s testimony:

Clergy opposing the bill have framed their attacks on marriage equality as an issue of “religious liberty,” but discrimination is not a question of religious freedom. “I come from the religious position where I believe that same sex marriage is in fact, part of God’s plan,” same-sex marriage supporter Rev. Gene Dyszlewski said at the hearing. Over 100 religious leaders from 13 denominations have come together to support equality in Rhode Island.

The House committee may vote on the bill as early as next week, and from there it would move onto the the House floor. This time around, it will be brought to the Senate floor, two years after the Senate President did not allow the legislation to come to a vote.

Screenshot of the deleted post.

The National Organization for Marriage has always attempted to maintain distance between its efforts and the more candid anti-gay rhetoric of groups more publicly identified by their Christianity. Plenty of exceptions have always been found, but NOM no longer seems to be trying to uphold such distinctions. In its efforts to fight marriage equality in Rhode Island, NOM has allied with MassResistance, an extremist group designated a “hate group” for its anti-gay rhetoric.

On its Rhode Island for Marriage page, NOM published two videos as a “preview” of what the “radical homosexualist movement” is all about, each full of hate groups’ rhetoric condemning homosexuality as a disorder and sin worthy of death and calling the LGBT movement a push toward the “collapsing morality” of “atheistic Communism.” That was until Jeremy Hooper called them out today, and without explanation, NOM removed the post from its page. Screenshots preserve the record, and more importantly, the videos can still be viewed on YouTube:

Perhaps NOM did not watch the videos before posting them, or perhaps the organization didn’t count on being associated with the offensive content they contain. Either way, NOM’s new alliances are troubling, and it will be interesting to see how they maintain their new relationships while trying to hide from the resulting bad PR.

This afternoon, the Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing on a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. Coalitions have already formed on both sides of the issue with Rhode Islanders United for Marriage supporting equality and the National Organization for Marriage’s Rhode Island for Marriage opposing it. It seems conservatives will not be holding back in their assault on the rights of same-sex couples, as demonstrated by the testimony Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Kellie Fiedorek will offer at today’s meeting:

FIEDOREK: Religious freedom belongs to everyone, not just a handful of people. The government cannot limit constitutionally protected religious liberties in a way that’s foreign to our Constitution. This bill fails to ensure that those liberties of every Rhode Island citizen will be respected. The First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom for all Americans is not limited to the four walls of a church.

The OneNewsNow article highlighting Fiedorek’s remarks clarify her intention that justices, judges, court commissioners, business owners, and counselors should all have protections to not recognize same-sex marriages.

Unfortunately, this is a realistic problem for the Rhode Island legislation. When lawmakers attempted to pass marriage equality in 2011, they ended up settling on a civil unions bill with some of the most extreme “religious exemptions” of any similar bill in the country. According to that law, administrators at religion-run schools, hospitals, and businesses can simply refuse to treat civil unions as valid if doing so violates their religious beliefs, essentially making legal recognition of civil unions pointless. Combined with the access and recognition of same-sex marriages from neighboring states, it’s unsurprising that civil unions have been “a complete failure” in the state, with less than 100 couples bothering to get one after the law had been in effect over a year.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I), who is eager for the new legislation to pass, issued an executive order last May requiring all state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The kind of exemptions ADF is demanding could essentially roll back protections married same-sex couples already enjoy. Fortunately, there is little reason for lawmakers to cave to such inordinate invitations to discriminate, as 56 percent of voters support marriage equality.