NOM’s Executive Director Brian Brown.

Today Mayor Vince Gray joined Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in criticizing the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-marriage equality group that was recently found to have tried to drive a wedge between gays and African Americans.

In a statement reported by On Top magazine, Gray called the organization’s covert strategy, which was first reported on by The Daily Beast earlier this week, “hateful.”

“Across our nation, gay and lesbian couples seek equal marriage rights because they believe in the same values we all do – commitment, stability, responsibility and family,” Gray said. “That’s why it’s especially confounding that an organization that claims to support family values would seek to pit groups against each other in a hateful and cynical effort to deny equal rights to some families.”

According to documents uncovered by the Human Rights Campaign, in 2010 the National Organization for Marriage planned to “drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies…We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage, to develop a media campaign around their objections to marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.” (The organization released a statement this week defending itself.)

During the 2009 fight for same-sex marriage in D.C., NOM partnered with local groups and prominent African American religious figures to fight marriage equality. NOM’s more recent political strategy notwithstanding, race played a role in how the debate over marriage equality was framed and played out. When the D.C. Council voted on same-sex marriage, the only two dissenting votes came from councilmembers Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8); then Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. gave an impassioned speech explaining the difficult balance he had to strike between what his constituents wanted and what he thought was right.

Maryland has faced a similar fight, with African American religious leaders partnering with Republicans against same-sex marriage. Opponents are currently in the midst of gathering the 56,000 signatures needed to get marriage equality on the November ballot.