Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbySeptember 20th, 2010
The National Organization for Marriage refuses to follow state laws that require disclosure of who is paying for political advertising. And while some speculate that they are a front for the Mormon Church, I suspect that behind the paper face of Brian Brown lies a handful of very wealthy, very devout, very conservative Catholics who wish to influence legislators and voters without their identity being known.
But whoever provides the major funding, we now know that a chunk of it comes from the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal order.
On their website, the KOC talks about the good they do:
Our Catholic faith teaches us to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Members of the Knights of Columbus show love for their neighbors by conducting food drives and donating the food to local soup kitchens and food pantries, by volunteering at Special Olympics, and by supporting, both spiritually and materially, mothers who choose life for their babies. Knights recognize that our mission, and our faith in God, compels us to action. There is no better way to experience love and compassion than by helping those in need, a call we answer every day.
But what get’s less attention is where their money really goes. While they tell the reader that “During the past decade, the Knights of Columbus has donated more than $1.367 billion to charity,” the Knights define “charity” a bit differently than many of us.
Of the $34.6 million that the Supreme Council spent in 2009, only $3.0 went for doing good deeds. Eight million went to the church’s hierarchy, five million for the KOC museum, three million on “evangelization”, and over six million went for “family life” and “pro-life” programs ($4.7 million for anti-gay and $1.9 million for anti-abortion political advocacy). In 2009, one of the Knights’ largest individual donations, $1,430,000, went to the National Organization for Marriage.
In addition to the $34.6 million distributed by the Supreme Council, there were an additional $116 million in “contributions from state and local councils assemblies and Squires circles.” We do not know how much of the $116 million went to NOM.
NOM received total contributions of about $8,000,00 that year. It spent about $1.8 million on Maine’s referendum to block same-sex marriage.
(hat tip Washington Independent)
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Everett
September 20th, 2010
The Knights of Columbus are a very influential contingent of the Catholic Church. They’re very anti-gay, and anti-abortion. They’re at most Catholic colleges and universities and chances are, once a guy is a member, he’ll stay a member long after he graduates from college. They’re organized and they’re politically smart. GLBT folks need to be aware of this group. It’s true that they do engage in charity work, but they are also not afraid to get political to advance the conservative Catholic agenda. This organization has a lot of zealous, conservative Catholic white men.
Cooner
September 20th, 2010
They spent over two and a half times as much on anti-gay advocacy as they did on anti-abortion advocacy?
Criminy. o.O
Lynn David
September 20th, 2010
And I used to wonder why they never asked me to join.
Ben Mathis
September 21st, 2010
The National Organization for Marriage refuses to follow state laws that require disclosure of who is paying for political advertising.
How are they getting away with this part? Is there no enforcement metric?
Matt
September 21st, 2010
KoC really deserves to be picketed. There’s a lodge/coven/whatchamacallit near my partner’s house and it always disappoints me that I am never there to coincide with their frequent “hoagie sales” (we’re near Philly) that they advertise. I want to do something similar to the PFLAG “dollars” that they put in the Salvation Army buckets during the X-mas season. Some form of civil protest of the KoC’s HORRIBLE record on gay rights.
I believe that everyday people–including liberal Catholics–are completely unaware of the Knights’ horrendous attitudes. They peobably think it’s a “benevolent” organization–like B’nai B’rith–and not a blatantly political group. I really do not understand how they maintain their 501(c)3 status.
BlackDog
September 21st, 2010
Hmmmm, and here I just thought the Knights of Columbus was a bunch of old guys doing charitable stuff. The K of C guys in the Catholic church that I used to go to were pretty apolitical.
Of course, it makes sense. The one K of C member (Or possibly former member, I don’t know exactly) I know at the moment is a transplant from Louisiana, raised Catholic but currently (more or less) non-denominational Evangelical and that is how he acts/talks/thinks generally. He’s not especially anti-anything, but I can see how other members might be.
He generally automatically votes conservative.
Greg
September 21st, 2010
Knights of Columbus does do some really good work–every town I’ve lived in, they’ve done great stuff for underprivileged and disabled kids.
Also, a lot of the members don’t realize how anti-gay they are. At least, that’s the only conclusion I can come to after having talking to the members who would be out for one collection drive or another. When I tell them that I can’t support openly homophobic groups, they try to let me know that the individual member isn’t homophobic and supports full equality. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the money they collect from getting thrown into the general Hate the Gays pot.
I don’t think the members will leave over the anti-gay stance–it doesn’t affect them. However, they are thinking twice, and hopefully when they actually have meetings together, they can point out that they want to do good things for kids, not hurt their gay neighbors.
Rob
September 21st, 2010
Isn’t Knights of Columbus the Catholic equivalent to the Orange Order?
customartist
September 21st, 2010
Matt, They keep thier their 501(c)3 status because nobody engages in court challenges against them. Olsen and Boies should take on the issue of illegal political finance by NOM next.
BlackDog,
This group keeps their actions covert. They want to keep the perception of being apolitical. This allows them to keep on raking in dollars under the guise of popular charity. Their hatred of Gays is not a new thing. I’ve seen their names assigned to Gay Opressive movements for quite some time now.
We should start a Feed the Children charity, and then turn over the dollars to gay groups! Thgere’d be no difference.
Chris McCoy
September 21st, 2010
Rob wrote:
The Knights of Columbus was started as an alternative to Freemasonry (and other “Fraternal Societies”) – due to the Papal ban on Freemasonry. The ban forbids Catholics from joining any “secret” organizations. So Knights of Columbus’ membership list is publicly available.
The Orange Institution was founded specifically as an anti-Catholic institution, whereas the Knights of Columbus are not specifically anti-Protestant.
For this reason, wearing Green on St Patrick’s Day means you are pro-Catholic-Ireland (Pro-Unification, Anti-British). The Anti-Catholic, Pro-Protestant-Ireland, Pro-Great-Britain, wear Orange.
Paul
September 27th, 2010
As a life-long Catholic and a proud member of the Knights of Columbus, I’m shocked (and a bit amused) at the level of ignorance and misinformation posted here.
“Of the $34.6 million that the Supreme Council spent in 2009, only $3.0 went for doing good deeds.” … funny. I guess we define ‘good deeds’ differently. Of course, this doesn’t begin to address the MILLIONS of volunteer hours we put in each year to benefit everything from homeless shelters, battered womens shelters, food-shelf programs to feed the needy, collecting coats for the homeless in the winter time (it gets COLD where I live), and on and on and on it goes…
We were NOT started as an alternative to the Freemasons. We were founded by Fr. Michael J. McGivney, assistant pastor of St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, Connecticut in March of 1882. He observed great need by the many widows and orphans of his parish and founded the Knights as a volunteer order to help them.
@Customartist: Your comments are ridiculous to the point of being comical. No need for paranoia here. We are not some evil secret society. We’re not trying to be “covert”. We’re simply a volunteer organization with values in-line with the rest of the Catholic Church.
We DO NOT hate homosexuals. We simply value the traditional family. In this era of the quickie-divorce, dead-beat dad, and ‘I don’t need a man to have a baby’ attitude, the traditional family has become something of a rarity. None of the aforementioned attitudes have the welfare of the child at it’s core.
Could 2 men raise a baby well? In my opinion, absolutely. LOVE is the key ingredient, as with most everything. But they cannot ever be a Mom. Nor could 2 Moms replace a Dad. We believe every child deserves the benefit that comes from having both a Mom and a Dad.
What you mistake as hatred for gay people is nothing more than love and advocacy for the child who has no choice in the matter.
It’s the same for our views on abortion. What is being ‘terminated’/killed? A mango tree? A Water Buffalo? A ’67 Mustang? No. It’s a person. A human being. And we cannot help but see that as murder. Does this mean we hate the woman having the abortion? NO! We pray for her. But we pray and fight also for the life she is choosing to end.
I hope this gave some clarity to all of you. But unfortunately, I think it will just spark more pooh-flinging…
Peace!
TJMcFisty
September 27th, 2010
Children are not a legal requirement for marital rights and privileges, Paul.
Christopher
September 27th, 2010
Paul, what’s the special benefit of having parents of two different genders? I’m not trying to be facetious–I honestly would like you to clarify this point.
However bringing children into the argument misses the fact that, right now, a man and a woman who love each other can enjoy the benefits of marriage as long as they are married, even if they never choose to have children.
You complain about “ignorance and misinformation” and accuse an earlier poster of “paranoia”. How about mutual disarmament? You put down your pooh and I’ll put down mine.
Timothy Kincaid
September 27th, 2010
Paul,
Your history lesson is a bit skewed. The Knights were not founded as a social society to help “the poor” but rather as “mutual benefit society”, i.e a means of self insuring in a time when Catholics were subject to discrimination (ironic, isn’t it?).
And of course you do not “hate homosexuals”. You simply wish them to be second class citizens which are denied the rights that you take for granted. You wish them to be unable to serve their country, immigrate to be with the person they love, be protected from employment discrimination, be free of targeted hate crimes, pay the same rate of income taxes, or especially marry the person they love.
You don’t hate homosexuals, you just hold them in contempt. So much so that you are willing to spend more on fighting the ability of gay people to live with dignity than you spend on homeless shelters, battered womens shelters, food-shelf programs to feed the needy, and collecting coats for the homeless in the winter time, COMBINED.
You see this as “love”. If so, please stop loving me and just start ignoring me. Your “love” is not the love of Christ.
Jason D
September 27th, 2010
“We DO NOT hate homosexuals. We simply value the traditional family. In this era of the quickie-divorce, dead-beat dad, and ‘I don’t need a man to have a baby’ attitude, the traditional family has become something of a rarity. None of the aforementioned attitudes have the welfare of the child at it’s core.”
Paul, my partner and I neither have kids, nor want kids (easy to follow through on that when you don’t have a chance of getting pregnant).
Please explain exactly HOW preventing us from marrying gives any child a Mom or a Dad. More importantly, please explain how our marriage would keep a kid from having a Mom or Dad.
Richard Rush
September 27th, 2010
And furthermore, banning marriage for same-sex couples does not prevent a them from raising a child. But the marriage of that couple would benefit that child.
Vito
March 5th, 2011
Well said Paul
People are generally afraid and skeptical of groups that they don’t understand. Google is their for everyone. Be my guesses everyone.
Priya Lynn
March 5th, 2011
Paul said “We DO NOT hate homosexuals. We simply value the traditional family.”.
B.S. Paul. One can value the traditional family without attacking gays. You however choose to attack gays and that is hatred no matter how vehemently you deny it.
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