EXCLUSIVE: A conservative think tank is spending more than $1 million to run ads during NFL and college football games over the Thanksgiving holiday with the hopes of keeping a new bill codifying same-sex marriage out of the end zone in the Senate next week, at least until lawmakers add new religious liberty protections to the bill.

The Heritage Foundation's campaign is being launched ahead of a final vote in the Senate on Monday to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify the right to same-sex marriage.

Heritage and other conservatives say the bill is deceptively named and would not deliver new rights to same-sex couples and that it leaves people of faith vulnerable to litigation and other forms retaliation. 

"America’s religious liberty is under attack with this impending vote in the Senate," said Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. "This legislation does not add one additional benefit to same-sex couples in the United States; it’s an attack that sets the stage to take rights away from people of faith. What it does accomplish is deputizing radical activists to target Americans who cannot in good faith endorse anything other than a man-woman marriage. The American people deserve all the facts."

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The group accuses Democrat lawmakers of "hurrying to cram through their far-left agenda" before the new Congress next year, when the GOP will be in the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Heritage says the 50 Senate Democrats and 12 Republicans who voted to advance the bill last week are "sneaking" through a bill that would "expose religious schools and nonprofits to lawsuits" and worries the law could give the IRS a basis for stripping the tax-exempt status of dissenting religious groups.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., has said it would allow activists to sue dissenting faith-based groups in an effort to "force them to abandon their deeply held beliefs about marriage or close their doors."

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, offered an amendment to the legislation to solidify religious liberty protections in the bill, but so far Democratic leadership has refused to allow a vote on the amendment.

"Republican senators claiming the bill protects religious liberty are misleading the public," said Roger Severino, Heritage’s vice president of domestic policy. "Their refusal to require Sen. Lee's amendment is proof of their insincerity."

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The 30-second ad will air in local broadcasts during the NFL Thanksgiving Day matchups between the New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings, Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions, and New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys. The ad will also be seen during coverage of four rival college football games, including Iowa Hawkeyes vs. Nebraska Cornhuskers on Friday and Indiana Hoosiers and Purdue Boilermakers on Saturday.

The campaign, which includes a $300,000 worth of digital ads by the group's political action arm, Heritage Action, totals $1.3 million, making it the largest advertising campaign by the group to date.

Last week, the Senate cleared the Respect for Marriage Act through a key procedural hurdle in a bipartisan vote of 62-37, and a handful of Republicans gave the measure enough votes to clear the filibuster.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the bill is a "simple, narrowly tailored but exceedingly important" measure, "as personal as it gets."

Co-author Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the "bill recognizes the unique and extraordinary importance of marriage on an individual and societal level," and she touted the bill’s religious liberty and conscious protections.

But Lee said he voted against the bill "because the religious liberty protections were severely anemic and largely illusory."

"Religious Americans will be subject to potentially ruinous litigation, while the tax-exempt status of certain charitable organizations, educational institutions and nonprofits will be threatened," Lee said, adding that his amendment would have "shored up those vulnerabilities."

"It is a shame it wasn't included," he said.

Legendary western outlaw Billy the Kid was allegedly born in New York City on this day in history, Nov. 23, 1859.

One of the Wild West’s most wanted men was most likely born in a poor Irish neighborhood on the east side of Manhattan, although much of the Kid’s early life is unknown or unverified, according to History.com.

Billy the Kid’s original name was thought to be Henry McCarthy — but he called himself William H. Bonney. The name Bonney was his mother Catherine’s maiden name, while William was the name of her longtime companion, William Antrin.

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Antrin stepped in as Billy’s father figure after his biological father disappeared.

It was believed that Billy first traveled west around 1865 when he and his brother — along with Antrin and the boys' mother — moved to Indiana and then to Wichita, Kansas, in 1870.

In 1873, legally married Catherine and William Antrin showed up on record in New Mexico, as History.com reports.

The following year, Catherine Antrin died of lung cancer in Silver City, according to reports.

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After his mother’s death, Billy abandoned his brother and stepfather and became a ranch hand, History.com has noted.

He reportedly killed his first victims, a group of Apache Indians, in the Guadalupe Mountains in 1876.

Not long after, Billy killed a blacksmith in Camp Grant, Arizona, according to legend.

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The outlaw then took a job as British rancher John Tunstall’s bodyguard in Lincoln, New Mexico.

Billy and several other gunmen were hired to protect Tunstall and his property from a rival cattle gang known as "The House."

In February 1878, Tunstall was gunned down by a posse organized by Sheriff William Brady, who supported The House.

In pursuit of revenge, Billy and other former Tunstall employees started the vigilante group known as "The Regulators," History.com also notes.

The new gang murdered Sheriff Brady and spent the following weeks in shootouts with forces of The House.

This became known as the Lincoln County War, which concluded after a fatal, five-day firefight in July 1878 and ended in a peace agreement as The Regulators left town.

The war branded Billy as one of the west’s "most skilled gunmen," according to history.com, but he remained wanted for the murder of Sheriff Brady.

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For this, he’d spend the rest of his young life running from the law.

Two years later, Lincoln Sheriff Pat Garrett — a former friend of his — arrested Billy the Kid.

The Kid was found guilty of the murder of Sheriff Brady in April 1881 and was sentenced to hanging. 

But two weeks before his scheduled execution, the outlaw outsmarted the law.

On April 28, he wrangled a gun from a jailer, shot him dead and escaped his confines in a maneuver that received national attention. 

A few months later, on July 14, 1881, Garrett found Billy the Kid at a ranch near Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where he was visiting a girlfriend.

Garrett surprised him in the dark of night and fired a bullet through the Kid’s chest.

Billy the Kid was dead at just 21 years old.

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In the four-year span from 1877 to 1881, the Kid was involved in at least nine murders, History.com reports.

This includes a legendary gunfight in a New Mexico saloon in January 1880, when Billy shot Joe Grant dead for terrorizing the bar in a drunken stupor.

Unlike other outlaws, Billy the Kid never robbed a train or a bank — but his first arrest occurred for stealing clothes from a Chinese laundry.

Many people have theorized that the legendary gunslinger never really died by Garrett’s bullet and instead went on to live under an alias.

Ever since Billy the Kid left his mark on the western frontier, the outlaw has been the subject of more than 50 films and several TV series.