The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is up to its old tricks, as usual.

The non-profit was founded by conservatives in 2007 to fight against marriage equality. Since then, NOM has raised millions and millions of dollars to fund campaigns across the U.S. designed to defeat same-sex marriage, including California’s Proposition 8.

This is the same group that is known for the now-infamous “Gathering Storm” television ad campaign, which used paid actors to portray “real people” who made outlandish claims that were pure fiction. The scare tactics were highly effective in persuading California voters who were on the fence about the marriage equality issue.

NOM has come under intense scrutiny over the lack of transparency regarding its finances and its extensive donor list.

Despite the outrageous and scandalous scare tactics, the misleading TV ads, the countless speeches and the massive spending to persuade Americans not to support marriage equality, public opinion has been trending upward in support of same-sex marriage. Two recent polls reflect those trends.

It is clear to us that NOM is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans.

NOM acts like it is running scared. This summer, NOM and its executive director, Brian Brown, started a bus tour of America to tout its message of hate under the pretense of saving opposite-sex marriage. Scant numbers of supporters have been showing up at each stop, each time being easily outnumbered by those who believe in equal rights for all.

On Tuesday, the Human Rights Campaign called out NOM and declared that the bus tour was a complete sham. We applaud Fred Sainz, HRC's vice president of communications, for exposing the truth.

"NOM's highly-touted bus tour is less about so-called 'traditional marriage' and more about creating an elaborate and cynical stunt,” Sainz said. “NOM rolled out a summer of nationwide events in order to draw lawful protesters, all so that NOM and its allies can pepper ongoing lawsuits challenging public disclosure laws with made-up stories of harassment. This unprecedented victimization crusade is the lowest denominator of political activism, and it won't fly."

Cynical is the word of the day. Go to the NOM website and read all the outrageous claims that NOM supporters are being bullied and harassed during the bus tour. One must applaud them for being the master manipulators of propaganda, especially for their lies about equal rights supporters threatening children and parents of children who attended the events.

Not only that, but NOM has produced a “shocking video” allegedly showing the vicious attacks by gays and lesbians. See it for yourself.

In the video, NOM accuses equal rights supporters of intolerance and trying to “silence” their voice and take away their “civil rights.” Huh? Isn’t NOM trying to prevent our civil rights from becoming equal to theirs?

NOM uses loaded language to embellish their phony claims. They claim marriage equality supporters came “armed with” balloons and rainbow-colored umbrellas. Oh, so scary. Maybe we should send these guys to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wait, NOM supports the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy preventing gays and lesbians from serving openly. Then they claim their detractors were “even more aggressive” in another counter-protest and shook bottles filled with rocks. We guess that was a creative attempt to drown out NOM’s lies and distortions. Then there was a “storming” of the podium by a gay rights supporter who, by the way, simply was shouting at Brown. Ugh, the protester also has civil rights and is allowed to express his opinion.

How Brown can keep, ahem, a straight face when he makes his outlandish accusations is beyond us. But what is most disturbing to us is that Brown's and NOM's message of hate is resonating with fringe elements of the conservative movement, evidenced this week by a poster that offered "The Solution to Gay Marriage" -- a pair of nooses.

Why isn't Brown and NOM deploring that message? This is a homophobic threat of violence, something that should concern gay rights supporters as well as Brown and NOM. But no, Brown and NOM are silent. Instead, they upload their phony video footage that is edited in such a way to make the opposition look bad.

Shame on Brown and shame on NOM.

Lastly, we are happy to point out a comment from an SDGLN reader who logged in as esperando and who offers this intriguing thought:

Go to http://www.twomillionformarriage.com/site/c.mkLRJ5MQKtH/b.5264393/k.D17C... to order a FREE NOM bumper sticker. The more you order and tear up, the less money they’ll have to funnel into scary adverts that equate gays with pedophiles or ballot initiatives to strip gay people of their civil rights, so get the word out to as many equal marriage supporters as possible. Even if they nip the problem in the bud and stop offering free bumper stickers right away, we will still have disrupted a major part of their advertising.