National Organization for Marriage ordered by another federal judge to stop hiding its donors

Read decision here

The reason many people think NOM has fought so hard to hide its donors is that it is a front for  political activities orchestrated by the LDS Church.
     This suspicion is widely held in Maine, where NOM was quickly able to pour $1,900,000 into an anti-gay marriage campaign despite little grassroots support of NOM, indicated by the extremely small turnouts during its bus tours.
     Prominent Mormons were instrumental in the formation of the National Organization for Marriage.
     At one point, NOM's president, Maggie Srivastav (who, in public, only uses her maiden name, Gallagher, never her married name) was asked to take a lie detector test regarding her donors.
     Here is an example of how reluctant the Mormon Church has been to disclose its financial support of measures to kill not only same sex marriage, but civil unions and domestic partnerships — an excerpt from a letter to California's Fair Political Practices Commission:

As part of its investigation, I hereby ask the Fair Political Practices Commission, to find that the Mormon Church helped establish and pay for the creation of NOM, and failed to report any of its non-monetary contributions.

...A close examination of actual staff time from these and other Church employees could reveal far more staff time put into their effort, and would need to be reported as non monetary contributions. Elder M. Russell Ballard as the Church’s Chairman of its Proposition 8 campaign, more than likely spent 100% of his time on this all important Church project.

In reviewing the 23 very slick commercials that the Mormon Church produced ranging from 43 seconds to over 8 minutes each, it is impossible that all commercials were made for only $29,000 as filed in their January 30, 2008 report. They used dozens of young people, filmed at numerous locations from Southern to Northern California. It appears that the Church even bought film permits in Huntington Beach (10/15/08 - $250.00) and San Francisco (10/03/08 $432.00). Since the Church’s campaign web site http://www.preservingmarriage.org/ was up before these shooting dates, it appears that these dates are incorrect. Look at all the slick commercials, and there is no way they were produced for $1260 each... These 23 commercials easily cost several hundred thousand dollars to produce.

"Vic," a particularly well-informed commenter over at Joe.My.God had this incisive analysis of what will happen next in NOM's suit against Maine:

It is fascinating to me that the conservative Christian groups  - which are always banging on about how judges shouldn't override the "will of the people" - have had nothing to say about NOM's suit.  The law that NOM is seeking to have overturned was passed by popular referendum in Maine by a margin greater than that enjoyed by Prop 8 or Question 1.  Maggie wants one unelected man in a black robe to thwart the will of the people but for some reason Tony Perkins won't decry this attempt to impose judicial tyranny.
     Clarification of a few other matters:  NOM will appeal to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, not SCOTUS.  In the meantime, NOM will continue to argue to the Maine elections commission that it shouldn't have to disclose donor names because, even though the Maine election law has been held to be constitutional, NOM falls outside of its scope.
     NOM's argument here is that in 2009 NOM raised money for its work nationally and not specifically for the Maine election.  Since the donations weren't specifically targeted for use in Maine, NOM contends, it should not have to register as a PAC and make disclosures.  I think the commission is very skeptical of this argument and will order NOM to disclose.  I think that by 2012, we will know a lot more about where NOM's money comes from.