GetToKnowUsFirst.org said Monday that it was informed Friday that the ad, featuring a gay family, was rejected by KNBC after the station showed the ad to the NFL Legal Department.

The group said that it was told the NFL considered the ad “advocacy,” a category which the NFL says it excludes.

It is the second time in weeks that the ad, featuring a same-sex African American couple, has been rejected by an LA station.  KABC refused to run the 30-second sport during its coverage of President Obama’s inauguration.

GetToKnowUsFirst.org Project Organizer John Ireland said he was shocked to see the other advocacy ads run during the NFL programming.

“We bought ads before, during and after the Super Bowl in ten markets across California. We planned this buy weeks in advance and heard late Friday that the NFL rejected our ads because they violate the NFL’s ‘no advocacy’ policy. I was truly stunned while watching the programming, to see that they had selectively blocked our ads, while allowing other advocacy ads to air,” said Ireland.

Among the advocacy ads which did air were PSAs for TobaccoFreeCA.org and DontBeAnAsterisk.org, an anti-steroids advocacy campaign.

“We are disappointed that this ad couldn’t reach an audience with images of our families during one of the most watched programming events of the year,” said Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Giuliano said that GLAAD has asked for a meeting with KNBC and GetToKnowUsFirst.org to discuss why the commercial was rejected and find ways to remedy the situation.”

The PSAs were produced for GetToKnowUsFirst.org by the non-profit organization POWER UP. Gina Levy, who directed the PSAs, said she was angry that the ad buy was blocked.

“Marriage Equality is a civil rights issue,” she said in a statement. “As a straight woman, I know this affects all of us, not just people who happen to be gay. It is important for us all to get to know these families. It’s a shame that’s not going to happen today.”

Republican Roger Wicker and Democratic former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove are longtime friends who shared an apartment while serving together in the state Legislature. They’re competing in a Nov. 4 special election to fill the final four years of Lott’s term in heavily Republican Mississippi.

Lott retired last December to become a lobbyist, and Republican Gov. Haley Barbour moved Wicker from the U.S. House to replace him temporarily.

Republicans want to keep the seat that’s been theirs since Lott first won it in 1988. Democrats hope significant turnout for presidential candidate Barack Obama will boost Musgrove.

The 30-second spot, which is not posted on Wicker’s campaign site but can be viewed on YouTube, portrays Musgrove as beholden to liberal interest groups and shows an actor playing a Democratic operative taking campaign cash. The ad was paid for by Wicker’s campaign and started running this week in local television markets.

Musgrove’s campaign called it a “desperate political trick” and said Musgrove has never taken money from the groups depicted, which include the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League and the Human Rights Campaign PAC, a gay rights group.

Those groups have, however, contributed to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is running ads on behalf of Musgrove and other candidates nationwide.

“We just thought it would be in good fun to show Mississippians who’s paying for these ads,” Wicker campaign spokesman Ryan Annison said Wednesday.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee also is pumping money into the race on Wicker’s behalf.

Musgrove’s campaign manager, Tim Phillips, said Musgrove has a long record of opposing abortion and same-sex marriage.

“Roger Wicker must think Mississippians are pretty dumb,” he said.

The Human Rights Campaign PAC is represented in the ad by one man dressed as a cowboy and another in black leather in the style of the 1970s disco group the Village People.

The ad also touches on a scandal left over from Musgrove’s time as governor. It ends with the Democratic operative taking money from a costumed cow, representing the Mississippi Beef Processors LLC plant that opened and closed during Musgrove’s tenure.

Two executives of the company that designed and built the beef plant pleaded guilty this year to giving Musgrove an illegal $25,000 “gratuity” during his 2003 gubernatorial re-election campaign. Musgrove, who has not been accused of wrongdoing in the case, has said repeatedly that he had no direct oversight over the beef plant project.

The campaigns made their decision known on the same day that a group backing community service on that day called on the candidates to refrain from partisan campaigning. The group, MyGoodDeed.org, wants Sept. 11 to become a national day of voluntary service and asked that Obama and McCain perform acts of community service instead.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said McCain did not plan to advertise at all on the anniversary. “Nine-eleven is not a day for politics,” Rogers said.

The Obama campaign said it plans to stop airing anti-McCain commercials on Sept. 11.

“We hope Sept. 11th is a day when Americans come together and reaffirm our resolve to address the common challenges we face together,” Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said.

Both campaigns have been running tough ads against each other, with negative commercials outnumbering their positive spots.

MyGoodDeed.org is also among a number of organizations and families of Sept. 11 victims who plan to hold a ServiceNation Summit on Sept. 11-12 in New York. Sponsors invited Obama and McCain to attend a presidential candidates forum on Sept. 11.

McCain has agreed to appear. Obama’s campaign said it is talking with event sponsors about the possibility of an appearance.

In a letter to both candidates Tuesday, MyGoodDeed.org founders David Paine and Jay Winuk noted that the country seemed to forget partisan differences in the days after the attacks and were unified by a sense of compassion. The group planned to announce their appeal to the candidates on Wednesday. The campaigns revealed their intentions when contacted by The Associated Press.

“We ask you to help us rekindle that sense of unity by suspending your campaign activity on 9/11, and engaging in your own personal expression of charitable service in honor of those who perished and those who rose in service to help rebuild our nation,” Paine and Winuk wrote to the candidates.

Paine, the president of the group, runs a marketing firm in California. Winuk’s brother, Glenn Winuk, was a lawyer and volunteer firefighter who died after rushing to the World Trade Center to assist victims.

In an interview, Paine said: “We didn’t feel that it was appropriate for those individuals who want to lead our country to engage in divisive political activity on 9/11. Nine-eleven needs to be a day that is forever preserved as a day of unity and day of remembrance and day of compassion when we put aside our differences and we think about how we can help others in need.”