Defector: There Is No Grassroots Opposition to Marriage Equality

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is sort of the nut de la nut of anti-gay hysteria. Their mission is to define marriage as something only heterosexual people can have, and they will go to any lengths to make sure gay people can't marry. Their history reads like a kind of a series of failures, they went on the road and drew low-double-digit crowds (of supporters, opponents turned out in droves) in most places. It is a group that seems to have no support, but they keep coming up with funding, and they keep getting their mugs on TV and in the papers.

In our little suburban Maryland county, the anti-gay, anti-transgender Citizens for Responsible Government sent out emails earlier this year linking to the maryland4marriage.com domain. CRG president Ruth Jacobs called it "our new Maryland for Marriage website." This domain was shown to be registered to The National Organization for Marriage.

Thick as thieves, they are.

One of NOM's top people defected last week, and has given some useful insights into the organization. Louis Marinelli was NOM's tour organizer, Facebook page founder and blogger, and now says he supports marriage equality.

Good As You has a summary of Marinelli's career and role in NOM, and an email interview with him. Marinelli has not become "pro-gay" by any means, but he admits he was wrong about a lot of things, he sees bigots such as Paul Cameron and Peter LaBarbera in a clearer light, and he is coming around to a view that even if you don't "agree with" homosexuality, it is not right to deny people the ability to marry someone they love:

On multiple occasions I have said something to the effect of “homosexuality is wrong”. And in my opinion it is. My transition from an opponent of same-sex marriage to a supporter does not mean I suddenly think homosexuality is a good thing.

I personally disagree with it. The same way I disagree with many other things other people do with their lives. That doesn’t give me or anyone else the right to prevent homosexuals from being homosexuals or to take away their constitutionally protected civil rights as American citizens.

The guy's eyes are opening. You don't have to like everything other people do, but sometimes it's just none of your business..

Marinelli wrote on his blog over the weekend about NOM and what a sham it is. Let me quote a few bits from there.

Last week, I resigned from the National Organization and publicly declared my support for same-sex civil marriage. I also apologized and recanted the offensive and hurtful comments I’ve ever made against gay and lesbian citizens in this country. For many my actions have been a source of hope for the future of marriage equality. I wanted to take this opportunity to reinforce that hope.

Tax records show that the vast majority of the National Organization for Marriage’s financial support comes from a handful of donors. This information is public and the Human Rights Campaign exposed it quite a while ago.

In my work with the National Organization for Marriage, I, like you have seen on multiple occasions how fundraisers, which are matched dollar for dollar by an undisclosed source pulling the strings from behind the shadows, have met their goals. I shared the suspicion many did when gaps of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations were suddenly closed in the final hours running up to the deadline.

I can’t explain these fundraising miracles, only NOM’s inner circle could. The illusion that makes up NOM’s base of support

The picture he paints is of a very small core group backed by shadowy fat-cat donors.

The summer tour rallies were met with counter-protesters at every stop and with the exception of a couple of instances, NOM’s supporters were greatly outnumbered and their enthusiasm was bested by the gays and lesbians who came out to meet us in the streets to stand up against injustice and intolerance. Completely understandable. The lives of gay and lesbian Americans were on the line, they were being oppressed by a group seeking for force its religious doctrine on our society. If they weren’t fired up about that, what would that say about them?

That same enthusiasm gap, support gap, involvement gap, call it what you want, exists for NOM in the online world as much as it does in the real world. This is where I came into the picture over the past six months or so. It was clear that NOM needed a plan to activate what supporters they had, to mobilize them to respond to events to create a grassroots-like illusion of support.

We have seen this in our county. Our school district was beseiged by a tiny cell of extremists who were able to get in front of TV cameras and talk to reporters to create the illusion that they represented the views of a large number of people. But they never did. This is Montgomery County, Maryland, possibly the bluest county in the United States, of course we've got our weirdos but most of the people who live here are tolerant, objective, and respectful.

In the same way, NOM showed up everywhere, the same two or three people speaking up on television, writing letters to the editor, tweeting and blogging and social networking to create the illusion that there were a lot of them.

I am sharing this with you because I want you to realize that NOM is a small group of devoutly religious Catholics supported by a couple of undisclosed sources. NOM is essentially made up of Brian Brown, it’s President, Maggie Gallagher, the CEO, a handful of other Board members (who are scattered across the country involved in other matters), a couple of advisors to Mr. Brown and a small and largely incompetent office staff.

Their social media management isn’t operated by NOM – they’re not big enough for that nor do they understand social media! As Jeremy Hooper detailed, Opus Fidelis manages NOM’s social media and websites.

That is all that is standing between you and the freedom to marry. There is no grassroots opposition. While they have proven to be quite successful over the past couple years, I think it’s time to put NOM’s size into perspective. Are you going to let a handful of fringe Catholics (with whom many Catholics disagree on marriage) stand between you and the freedom to marry?

It's fascinating to get reports from the soft underbelly of an organization like NOM, and I hope Marinelli will continue to explain some of the otherwise inexplicable things that that group has done.

He doesn't seem to have any idea where the money comes from, but there's a lot of it. Wouldn't you like to know?

And I think it is worth pointing out the value of Marinelli's new perspective. He does not approve of homosexuality, he still seems to believe a lot of the stereotypes. But he has turned a crucial corner, he now realizes it's not his place to tell other people how to live. Sometimes that's the best you can hope for. An ordinary person can't be expected to learn about the special issues involving each subpopulation in their society, it's just too much. But at some point you have to trust that other people can be responsible and good, even if you don't understand them, even if they are doing something that you yourself can't imagine doing.