Posts Tagged As: Louis Marinelli

Maggie Gallagher: “I Need a Picture… He’s Black, He’s On Our Side”

Jim Burroway

March 27th, 2012

Louis Marinelli, the National Organization for Marriage’s former tour organizer, is updating this post with more emails illustrating NOM’s implementation of their previously secret strategy documents pitting African-Americans against fellow LGBT citizens. Those emails seem to show Maggie Gallagher’s growing obsession with pictures of black people. One email, titled, “I need a close-up photo of Bishop Battle for the newsletter tomorrow) explains the need in very simple terms: “He’s black, he’s on our side, he’s COGIC (Church of God in Christ)” Another email following a rally in Washington, D.C. has Gallagher giving this direction:

I’m told the rally was two-thirds blacks. All the photos we have up are taken behind white people. Any phot (sic) that shows the crowd as it was. Please send it to me and Eve tushnet (sic) for use in this week’s newsletter. I would also like a photo of Faunteroy for the Newsletter.

And think it should go up on the blog. Maggie

Here are two photos from the D.C. rally. It looks like Maggie heard wrong. Marinelli says more revelations are coming.

NOM’s Brian Brown: “I Need Crazy Pictures of Our Opponents.”

Jim Burroway

March 27th, 2012

Louis Marinelli, the National Organization for Marriage’s former tour organizer and NOM Facebook page founder and blogger, revealed that line in an email from NOM President Brian Brown. Marinelli says more emails are on the way. That will be interesting

NOM Astroturfs Online Support

Jim Burroway

August 5th, 2011

Louis Marinelli, who used to be the Social Media Manager for the National Organization for Marriage and the group’s Facebook page owner, reveals NOM’s “astroturf” campaign to make NOM’s so-called grassroots support appear larger than it really is:

Waiting for a bus.

Social media manager for the National Organization for Marriage, Louis J. Marinelli, the then 24-year-old behind the “Protect Marriage: One Man, One Woman” page, was asked to put together a “SWAT team” of people to comment in favor of NOM’s content and opinions. “There was a system where we would track what they did and they would accumulate points…. We were working on a program where they would redeem those points for prizes,” said Marinelli.

The group also planned to create media teams in key 2012 election states who would be asked to take online actions as well as attend events or write letters to editors, according to Marinelli. When he resigned on April 7, he said about 15 people were on the online astroturf team.

A measure of NOM’s actual support can be seen in the massive turnout for last year’s bus tour, where pro-LGBT advocates often outnumbered NOM supporters by a wide margin.

From NOM to NOME

Jim Burroway

July 22nd, 2011

Louis Marinelli, the former coordinator for National Organization for Marriage’s “Summer for Marriage Tour” who has since left NOM and announced his support for marriage equality, has launched a new group. He’s calling it the National Organization for Marriage Equality, and his web site indicates that NOME “is registering as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.”Marinelli will be hitting the road once again, just like old times.

This summer we plan to travel the country from California to Maine to talk about my change of heart on the issue of marriage equality and talk with conservatives and republicans about why they should support the freedom to marry.

This tour, which is modeled in part after the Summer for Marriage Tour I helped organize last summer for the National Organization for Marriage to oppose same-sex marriage, aims to revisit many of the places NOM visited last year to spread its discriminatory and bigoted message against gay and lesbian citizens.

I am personally responsible for that tour. It was my idea and I proposed it to Brian Brown, NOM’s President, who agreed to endorse and sponsor the project. As a result, I feel compelled to revisit the cities of last year’s marriage tour to meet the thousands of people who came out to meet discrimination and bigotry head on in the streets of their hometowns.

LGBT people turned out in droves when NOM’s tour was winding its way in 2010, often outnumbering NOM supporters at many stops. I think it would be good to turn out again. Marinelli writes that this time, “I look forward to seeing many of the same faces and families I saw last year so that this year I can stand with them, not against them.”

Former NOM Organizer Now Supports Marriage Equality!

Jim Burroway

April 8th, 2011

This is huge! Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper has the scoop. Louis Marinelli, National Organization for Marriage’s former tour organizer, and NOM Facebook page founder and blogger, now supports civil marriage equality for LGBT people. Marinelli told Hooper in an email exchange that it was last summer’s marriage tour last summer which opened his eyes.

In the interview exchange, Marinelli repudiated much of what he had previously written, blogged and tweeted on behalf of NOM. He called his earlier statements using Paul Cameron’s discredited research “inappropriate and offensive,” retracted his endorsement of Peter LaBarbera (“he is just a hateful man and I would be embarrassed and ashamed to be associated with him”), and he regrets personal attacks against gay people (“This includes calling them an abomination”).

Marinelli’s position didn’t shift from completely anti-gay to 100% pro-gay:

“I personally do not agree with homosexuality and without any shame will continue to uphold my belief that homosexuality itself presents a public health concern due to the sexual diseases that are associated with it and that spread rapidly as a result of it. …

…Having said that, the health issues facing promiscuous homosexual men is irrelevant to the issue of same-sex marriage. I was guilty of and apologize for this insensitive and inappropriate rhetoric.

He’s not pro-gay, but his shift is, I think, enough:

…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 most interesting thing about it, is that Marinelli’s change of heart came about during NOM’s disastrous 2010 Summer for Marriage Tour. When the tour stopped in Atlanta, where the overwhelming turnout of counter-protesters, when compared to the dismal showing of supporters, “was nothing short of inspiring.” He wrote, “the lesbian and gay people whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people for me almost instantly. For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing.”

He continued blogging on behalf of NOM through the fall, but things started to change for him. He began an exchange with a blogger by the name of RJ, who responded to one of Marinelli’s blog posts.

At that point, between what I had witnessed on the marriage tour and RJ’s post about marriage equality, I really came to understand that gays and lesbians were just real people who wanted to live real lives and be treated equally as opposed to, for example, wanting to destroy American culture. No, they didn’t want to destroy American culture, they wanted to openly particulate in it. I was well on my way to becoming a supporter of civil marriage equality.

By December, Marinelli became a supporter of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and relinquished his moderating duties for NOM’s Facebook page.

Hooper’s email interview with Marinelli is fascinating, and is indicative of the slow but sure growing support for marriage equality that we have been seeing over the past decade.

What’s more, Marinelli now has issued a statement on his own blog: “I now support full marriage equality,” where he speaks of his former cohorts at NOM:

Having done that [delegating his Facebook duties], I had to pick up where they left off. I was largely taken aback by the fact that the page I created had become such a hateful place. My comments and rhetoric paled in comparison to what that place had turned into. I began to understand why the gay community was out there claiming opposition to same-sex civil marriage was all about hate.

I soon realized that there I was surrounded by hateful people; propping up a cause I created five years ago, a cause which I had begun to question.

…My name is Louis J. Marinelli, a conservative-Republican and I now support full civil marriage equality. The constitution calls for nothing less.

i encourage you to go over there and show him some love.

NOM’s Marinelli loses it over attendee counts

Timothy Kincaid

August 3rd, 2010

Louis Marinelli, the bus driver for the National Organization for Marriage’s Tour of Mostly-Empty City Plazas (and Church Parking Lots) is breaking under the stress, falling apart, going bonko. And though it’s shameful to admit, I find it fascinating to watch.

Well, that and the fact that the rest of their tour is so mind-numbingly boring that he’s the only thing interesting to watch, kind of like a demented clown at a particularly bad circus.

So, anyway, I’ve been giving Marinelli a little grief over at his website about the count he reports for attendees. For some reason he thinks it’s not quite as embarrassing if he doubles or triples the tiny turnout – like 40 is bad but “over 100” is something to be proud of.

And it’s so obvious. Not only does the Trial Tracker crew do hand counts and take pictures, but even NOM will post pictures that make it clear that at stop after stop they are only talking to a handful of people in a big open space. Clearly they were hoping that fired up marriage supporters would be greeting them at each city showing that American wants to defend marriage from the homos. It’s sad.

Yet Louis tries – desperately – to put a spin on it. Stop after stop he’s put on a brave face and tried to make it look like NOM’s little tour is a glorious success. But this time he’s finally lost it.

At Des Moine there were a whopping 86 people who showed up. All in all, that’s not bad for this tour which has seen “crowds” as small as 19. But it wasn’t good enough for Louis Marinelli. Oh no, he announced:

As you can see, our 150+ supporters gathered in the shade to escape the hot glaring sunshine.

Our stalkers over at the NOM Tour Tracker love to downplay the turnout we have at our rallies. The last thing they want is for the public to see a strong turnout of Americans who support marriage between a man and a woman only.

That is why they have been constantly claiming that our turnouts have been very low. Now this picture shows about fifty people but it is taken from within the crowd. A conservative estimate would be 150 yet the stalkers from Califrornia claim we had less than 90. They do this so that they can (and they have) claim that the counter-protesters who show up to interfere with the rally “outnumber” our supporters.

Oh, but there was just on teensy little problem. You see, NOM itself had posted a front facing elevated angle picture of their crowd in a way that caught all of them. No stragglers, no “just outside the frame”, no “lots more to the left”, no “but half the crowd is behind the ones you see”; nope, every single soul listening to their speakers drone on in Des Moines was caught in glorious color. And NOM, bless their hearts, posted this picture with digital clarity that lets you blow it up big. Real big. Big enough to count every last one of the 86 people at the rally.

Now a better person than me would have been gracious. A more polite, loving observer might have suggested that perhaps it was early, maybe some were laying down behind the others, maybe there were folks way the heck back on the other side of the plaza listening. But sadly, I’m just not that noble.

So I kinda teased Louis just a bit. I maybe, just for a moment (or two) suggested that everyone reading his blogsite count for themselves and hinted a itty bitty bit that Louis was maybe stretching things just ever so slightly. Okay, maybe it wasn’t teasing a little bit; maybe it was full on taunting.

My bad.

But who knew that it would cause Louis to come completely unhinged? Who knew that this would be the result:

Our rally today in Sioux City attracted about 80 people. Our opponents claim that only 56 showed up but that of course, is because they need to make it sound like there were more people at their same-sex ‘marriage’ rally they held than who showed up to support authentic marriage between a man and a woman.

They can take a picture from forty feet away and count the heads they see. Sure from that point of view and in a two-dimensional photo, there very well may be only 56 heads visible. But said photo lacks important aspects such as depth which is why their head count of 56 is about 25 heads short.

There’s no way one photo from one vantage point is going to show each person standing in a group! It’s a very simple concept yet our opponents have made this mistake time and time again – but the point is that it actually isn’t a mistake.

They are doing this on purpose because if NOM appears to have high turnouts or at the very least turnouts that are greater than their counter protests, then they lose.

This is why time and time again we see their estimates of our turnouts to be lower than media reports and more importantly, lower than their counter-protest turnout. The first thing they posted today was about turnout focusing on 56 NOM supporters and a convienently slightly higher 64 same-sex marriage supporters.

Oh, Louis honey, we don’t care if there were 56 or 80 or 110. It’s all still so very very laughably pathetic. After months of planning and effort and with hundreds of churches in town to draw from, you’re getting next to no one. And your wild exaggerations are only making you sound sad and desperate.

But those five furious paragraphs weren’t enough. No, Louis had to prove his point (not really something I really recommend for someone with Louis’ grasp on reality). He posted a picture of part of today’s rally (about 28 people total) and a picture of two women picking up materials at NOM’s table and issued a challenge.

Challenge: Find these two women signing up to join the NOM team in the picture of the rally above.

Because if we couldn’t find these two in his cropped picture well, that proved something. Or other. But it gets worse.

You already know where this is going, don’t you?

Yeah.

Me: The blond woman in green is next to the guy in the baseball cap to the right.

Yeah, somehow I think this trip just hasn’t been as fun as Louis thought it would be. And I do feel kinda dirty for being so unkind.

NOM’s driver Louis is back with another blog

Timothy Kincaid

July 29th, 2010

Louis Marinelli is back with a new blogsite, and it’s as bizarre as the first. This time he’s making a big deal over someone who wrote “bullsh!t” on the ground with chalk (foul language!) and absolutely obsessed about how the Trial Trackers didn’t want him taking pictures of their press passes.

You know, from reading his stuff earlier, I pictured Marinelli as being a crotchety senior – the kind that rants about “kids these days.” But he’s actually a young guy.

Weird!

It’s like he’s in some strange time bubble where people don’t use “foul language” or show the middle finger. I’ll admit to thinking “kids these days” some times, but even I know that we don’t live in Leave it to Beaver world.

NOM’s Louis Marinelli’s blogsite goes ‘invite only’

Timothy Kincaid

July 27th, 2010

It now appears that the National Organization for Marriage has silenced their loose cannon, Louis Marinelli. While he is likely still driving the bus for their Tour of Mostly-Empty City Plazas, his blogsite can now be seen only by invitation. As Marinelli’s existences seems to revolve around expressing his contempt for gay men and women, that must frustrate him immensely.

NOM’s Louis Marinelli denies speaking for NOM

Timothy Kincaid

July 26th, 2010

The National Organization for Marriage’s Louis Marinelli is currently driving the bus for NOM’s Tour of Mostly-Empty City Plazas. Marinelli was a natural selection after his organization One Man, One Woman was brought under the NOM umbrella and his Facebook page became the one that NOM touts as their own. Or, as Marinelli said on March 17th, “We are now working directly for the National Organization for Marriage.”

But Marinelli’s own personal blogsite is not NOM’s blogsite – they have their own – and we have been careful to distinguish between NOM’s blogsite, NOM’s Facebook page (which is owned by Marinelli), and Marinelli’s own personal blogsite which shares the same name as NOM’s Facebook page. Nevertheless, Marinelli has now issued this “clarification” on his blogsite.

A statement of clarity
I would like to take this opportunity to state that the opinions and statements made in this blog reflect only the opinions of myself, personally, not the National Organization for Marriage.

I am not an employee of the National Organization for Marriage. I am a third party who is directly involved as a partner with the Summer for Marriage.

Therefore, positions I take and statements I make do not reflect the positions or opinions of any other person, entity or the National Organization for Marriage as a whole.

This statement of clarity has been added due to the heavy attention our opponents give to this blog and the great lack of understanding of who or what I represent. Let this stand as a clarification to all.

This is an effort on the part of the National Organization for Marriage to speak out of both sides of their mouth. They wish to have NOM – which makes statements that are palatable to the secular public – but also be able to have Louis/One Man, One Woman – who can say the fiery things that horrify the public but which are required to motivate the rabble.

I’m not buying it.

Of course Louis may not be an “employee” of NOM – in the sense that he receives a paycheck with their name in the corner. But let us not pretend that Louis is an independent third party, either.

And, of course he doesn’t “speak for” NOM any more than those persons who NOM invites to stand in front of their microphone and address their (tiny) crowds speak for NOM. But let’s not pretend that Louis’ opinions and statements are entirely independent of those of NOM. It’s his website that bears their LOGO. It’s his butt sitting in the bus’ drivers seat.

Perhaps the best way to view Louis is to consider the relationship between a political candidate and his campaign strategist. A strategist is not the candidate and he may not “speak for” the candidate officially, but his public positions are associated with the candidate and – if not retracted or renounced – can safely be assumed to be the same as those of the candidate.

So too are Louis Marinelli’s opinions and statements a reflection on the opinions and statements of the National Organization for Marriage. The “distinctions” between the two are meaningless. And unless and until NOM officially denounces his statements and re-separates their commingled organizations, it is disingenuous to argue otherwise.

Smile and wave, NOM’s watching

Timothy Kincaid

July 21st, 2010

The National Organization for Marriage’s Summer for Marriage Tour does not exactly yield itself to stimulating discussion. We’ve heard Brian Brown ranting and the, ummm, peculiar theories of Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Foundation (why do I keep wanting to call her Dr. Ruth?) and there’s just not that much new to say about it all.

But can you imagine having to be actually driving the bus and having to hear daily reruns of those speeches. Or blogging about it? Oh my sweet bippy, I’m dozing off at the thought. There are only so many times you can say “I’m so exited about the crowd of 40 senior citizens who dozed in the sun while Dr. Ruth Jennifer expounded on how same-sex marriage is an attack on farm animals and corporate structure” before your eyes glaze and you start banging your head against the wall. Or speaking in tongues.

So, like the rest of us, NOM’s bus driver extraordinairre, Louis Marinelli, has taken to talking about the protesters instead. And taking pictures. Of their dogs.

But in Trenton the protesters stayed away and instead held their much more interesting and vastly better attended press event, so Louis doesn’t even have them to talk about. And it must be far too discouraging to talk about the mini-rally. I mean, really.

But luckily for Louis, he found us.

Oh yes, Marinelli not only found the commentary to be worthy of focus but many of your comments as well. Smile and wave, kiddies, NOM’s watching. (But don’t let it go to your head; he also told us the contents of his lunch).

Marinelli was oh so happy to see anyone critical of storming the stage. He “applauded our integrity”… though he seems not to have read the commentary very fully or completely (or realize that Jim and I are two different people).

But Marinelli then took an approach that was very revealing: he obsessed about our disagreements over tactics. And in his writing I again recognized two things that separate our community from those who are intent on denying us our equality: we are capable of having multiple perspectives, differing views, and even disagreements while remaining one community; and we are not afraid of dissent.

I think that idea fascinates those who oppose us. It’s foreign to those who are accustomed to believing that there is one true holy and universal way to think, revealed by God and upheld by Pontiffs and Prophets. And while I’m sure they fear disagreement (and regularly remove comments and individuals from their sites that don’t toe the line) I think they also envy our freedom. The freedom to challenge and be challenged, the freedom of not having to be ‘right’ lest you spend eternity in torture, and the freedom to question presumptions and grow.

So smile kids and don’t be afraid to question us or each other. NOM is watching and this is something that they need to see.

Jim Burroway’s comment: Incredible, isn’t it? NOM is about to pee their collective pants in glee to discover that the LGBT community is a very diverse group of people, ranging from Christians to atheists, Republicans to Democrats, from right-wing fascist to merely conservative to moderate to merely liberal to left-wing Marxist. You know, like the rest of America.

But Marinelli is so incapable of understanding that concept that he seems to think Timothy and I are the same people. That confusion is instructive, because like many who fight so hard against LGBT equality, Marinelli is incapable of distinguishing among different people. Where we see people, he sees an agenda, and to him, Timothy and I are all the same. And so what Marinelli is squealing like a schoolgirl over here is his cognitive dissonance that he has encountered now that his stereotype of the monolithic “homosexual agenda,” that bogeyman who lurks in the shadows and always behaves in a predictable way (bogeyman only exists in the imagination of the dreamer, hence the predictability) evaporates when confronted with the reality that, gosh, different people have different opinions! Imagine that! And furthermore, they’re going to express them! Well golly willikers! Maybe we disagree with the whole equality thing altogether!

Don’t count on that.

P.S. I love how all of you ordinary readers are now “homosexual activists.” Welcome aboard.

Another bad day for the National Organization for Marriage’s Giant Flop tour

Timothy Kincaid

July 17th, 2010

Today NOM’s Big Bus of Animus came to Albany, NY. And the rhetoric and spin from the National Organization for Marriage is reaching comical proportions.

NOM: “Local supporters were happy with the turnout, explaining that downtown Albany is a “ghost town” on weekends.”

More NOM: “We started off in Augusta with close to 200 people on Wednesday, had roughly 150-200 in Manchester on Thursday, and around 100 in Albany today.”

Courage Campaign: “It’s fair to say that Albany turned into yet another NOM FAIL, due to the beauty of creative counter-protest and the paltry NOM attendance (Danny hand-counted 57 attendees).”

Yes, it looks like NOM continues to have problems with simple mathematics. Or perhaps they suffer from Honesty Deficiency Syndrome.

In Albany, local supporters of equality came up with a very creative way of countering NOM’s message. Inspired by their warnings of gathering storms, the community showed up with colorful umbrellas and surrounded the rally.

And NOM & crew are not happy. NOM’s Louis Marinelli is getting increasingly bitter as each day goes by.

Today he continued his pattern of putting the names and pictures of gay people on his blogsite, this time a young activist named Danny. While this is a common tactic for the some of the crazier of the anti-gay loons, I’m not sure what Marinelli is hoping to accomplish. I guess he thinks that this is still 1972 and that gay people are living in the shadows hoping no one finds out that we are gay.

He also waved his martyr flag with a little story about how some woman wasn’t able to dictate to the “rude interlopers” where they should stand or which way they should face.

Poor NOM, things aren’t going so well for them in the North East. Tiny crowds, “rude interlopers”, and unflattering photos of NOM’s Brian Brown scowling, glaring, and snarling. We’ll see how things for for them tomorrow in Rhode Island.

UPDATE:

Marinelly has lost it. He’s really completely lost it.

He has now dedicated an entire blog post to the fact that some counter-protester brought his dogs. Seriously.

NOM’s Marinelli can’t count

Timothy Kincaid

July 16th, 2010

National Organization for Marriage’s Louis Marinelli is blogging about the “enthusiastic rally for marriage in Manchester”. He says

Then we got to work and everything went pretty smoothly which gave us time to play some music prior to the rally, which started on time at noon with an introduction by Brian Brown who gave a very charismatic speech about how we will not tolerate being labled as bigots for standing up for what we believe in.

He received great applause from a crowd of marriage supporters that had quicky grown to over 150.

And here’s his wide-screen shot of the crowd:

How many heads are in this picture? I count 74. And I compared it to the others from the same event and while some folks seem to have been milling about, this was pretty much it.

Don’t you wish the ones who claim moral superiority would at least try to speak truthfully?

NOM’s Marinelli “miscounts” the counter-protesters

Timothy Kincaid

July 15th, 2010

Louis Marinelli, the organizer of NOM’s Big Bus of Animus nineteen city tour (and driver of the RV), blogged about the two girls who served as silent observers of the rally in August, ME. From the rather unsettlingly named One Man, One Woman: Inside Look:

Meanwhile, after an all-out call for homosexuals and gay rights activists from around the state, Equality Maine and other national gay rights groups which have been scrambling to organize counter rallies in opposition to the Marriage Tour were only able to turn out one lesbian couple who attended the rally silently and without any disruption.

They were “only able to turn out one lesbian couple”? Really? I guess that’s what you have to say when you don’t want to admit that your rally was dwarfed in size by the counter-protest.

And it’s not like Marinelli didn’t know about the counter protest; he dismisses it a “press conference” before going on to deride the girls for not wanting to be identified (he names one anyway) in NOM’s tour blog (He needs to get his NOM talking points straight). This “Summer Marriage Tour” is so pathetic that Marinelli is willing to say anything so as not too appear a complete failure.

NOM goes completely wackadoodle

Timothy Kincaid

July 13th, 2010

In the grand spectrum of anti-gay activism that ranges from relatively respectful disagreement through nasty and spiteful on its way to ragingly hateful and on to bizarre and downright insane, Maggie Gallagher and her National Organization for Marriage have managed to retain the appearance of being rational and principled. While their intentions were hostile and based in animus and the presumption of superiority, their rhetoric was more mainstream and avoided trips into the realm of paranoia, villainizing, or blatant hatred.

Until recently.

But increasing Maggie has been losing it, demonstrating an increasingly bitter and hostile persona and saying things that she never would have just a year or so ago.

And things have changed for NOM, as well. No longer behaving like a marriage advocate, NOM now seems to have morphed in to a radical anti-gay activist group with views and opinions similar to those of Peter LaBarbera or Brian Camenker. The new NOM doesn’t love heterosexual marriage anywhere near as much as they dislike gay people in general.

A few weeks ago we let you know about NOM’s merging with an anti-gay extremist group, One Man, One Woman, headed by Louis J. Marinelli. Although at first it seemed that NOM was trying to downplay their affiliation, this tactic has been abandoned and Marinelli’s facebook site is now at least semi-officially the voice of the National Organization for Marriage.

And a nasty voice it is, indeed.

Language about “the best interests of children” has been replaced with ranting about “the homosexual agenda” and posts about how violent gay people are. And Jeremy at Good_As_You has extensively documented Marinelli’s extremism from trying to equate gay people to pedophiles and prostitutes to repeating the old Paul Cameron lies.

Yes, NOM has decided it’s time to attach its bus to the wackadoodle train… and I marvel at that decision. Frankly, I thought Maggie was smarter than that.

NOM’s double standard on public exposure

Timothy Kincaid

July 13th, 2010

NOM's Bus of Animus

Maggie and crew over at the National Organization for Marriage were furious when the courts ruled that Washington State was not incorrect in wanting to release the names of the signatories on public referenda. She was aghast that the courts did not shroud the identity of those who wanted to testify in favor of Proposition 8. And she was apoplectic when the Maine courts told her that she could not keep secret the identity of those who funded the campaign to block marriage equality in that state.

They Could Be in DANGER! They might lose business or have people say mean things to them if the public came to know that these individuals sponsored anti-gay discrimination!

But it seems that NOM’s concern for privacy and secrecy extends only to those who agree with them. When it comes to those who oppose NOM’s agenda, all concerns for privacy, security, or “participating in the democratic process” no longer matter.

This week, activist Louis Marinelli and NOM President Brian Brown are traveling about in a big Protect Marriage bus and a little Protect Marriage van, seeking to encourage and rally those who are dedicated to keeping you, your family, and your rights inferior to their own. And here is what NOM had to say on Thursday:

Yesterday, a handful of teenagers packed into a small white car beside the NOM van at a red light took notice of the van’s exterior design which reads “Protecting Marriage Between One Man and One Woman”.

“Hey, you guys are against gay marriage!” one girl yelled out, calling the NOM van to the attention of her friends, who proceeded to yell out vulgarities and show their middle fingers to us. Then they got camera shy when Louis started taking photos of them from inside the van. The girl in the front passenger side tried to cover her face.

Real courageous group.

This was accompanied by a photograph of the car and its passengers. I’ll not include it here.

    

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Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

Daniel FettyThe FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.