NOM vs. T-Mobile

We’ve been down this road before.  Starbucks endorses marriage equality and Referendum 74, and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) announces a boycott.  Rough result: 45,000 for them, 650,000+ for those supporting Starbucks and its position.

Fast forward to T-Mobile which announced its support of R74 and donated $25,000 to Washington United for Marriage.  Quicker than you could hit your redial button, NOM announced a boycott of T-Mobile.

But here’s where it gets interesting.  I thought I’d poke around and, for starters, it wasn’t all that easy to even find the NOM petition.  I actually had to research the blog where I first learned about the boycott, which led me to the petition details. A few minutes later, and I was at ACTRight, a right-wing online fundraising platform run by NOM President Brian Brown.

I then entered an obviously fake name, fake contact info and reported my phone bill was roughly $960 annually.  Once I entered that information, NOM allowed me to take the next step and go to the petition site which among others, had an “Impeach and Remove Chief Justice John Roberts” (under 100 signers).

Knowing NOM keeps a running count of signers, I went back to the T-Mobile petition and saw this:

Just 11 signers. I was #12.  Even the financial tally was crazy: $960, obviously the figure I had given just moments before. Wow. What an impact.

[UPDATE] In the 4 days since this post was written, the number of petition signers has skyrocketed from 12 to 24. The economic impact hasn’t gone beyond my fictitious $960 figure.

Screenshot taken at 10:54 am PT today: