A campaign to derail a proposed gay marriage law in Maryland is focusing on fear.

Mailers being distributed by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's most vociferous opponent of gay marriage, urge Maryland residents to oppose the institution's legalization, gay weekly The Washington Blade first reported.

In one mailer, a child's doll cries under the headline, “Maryland families are under attack. Unemployment, higher taxes and now same-sex 'marriage.'”

“Imposing same-sex marriage has consequences,” reads another headline. Those consequences, the mailer alleges, are children as young as kindergarten being taught about gay marriage; opponents risking “lawsuits and government-imposed consequences;” and “religious organizations will be subjected to lawsuits claiming discrimination because they refuse to participate in acceptance of gay marriage.”

The mailers also target Maryland State Senator James Brochin, a Democrat who shifted his position from supporting civil unions for gay and lesbian couples to supporting marriage. Brochin said he had a change of heart after hearing the testimony of opponents, which he called “troubling.” (One opponent warned that such marriages pave the way for android nuptials.)

“The demonization of gay families really bothers me,” Brochin said. “Are these families going to continue to be treated by the law as second class citizens?”

But the group fails to take aim at Senator Allan Kittleman, the only Republican senator who voted in favor of the gay marriage bill. Kittleman also had previously supported civil unions, not marriage, for gay couples.