Fred Karger vs. Brian Brown and the National Organization for Marriage
(video: FredKarger at YouTube)

Rights Equal Rights founder, Fred Karger, pays NOM a visit

Yesterday, Rights Equal Rights founder Fred Karger paid a follow-up visit to the Washington, DC office of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). While the anti-gay organization’s 2009 tax filings had still not appeared on the group’s website, a worker surrendered a hard copy of NOM’s long-awaited 2009 tax filings. Karger noted that, since NOM’s founding three years ago, their income and spending has at least tripled every year.

Find copies of NOM’s documents at the link.

How do you say, “Front Group?” I went again to the NOM National Office at 2029 K Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006 to see their 2009 Tax Returns. Notice the UPS delivery slip on the doorknob. Neighbors said they never see anyone there, yet they are leading the fight against gay marriage in 14 states.

I recently visited their new National Office in Washington, DC twice during regular office hours to view the returns. No one was there. They must make them available to anyone during regular business hours. We also have checked online repeatedly for their 2009 returns, and again, nothing. What is NOM trying to hide? Why do they not file their tax returns every year?

Déjà Vu


I went through the identical exercise in 2009 when I attempted to view NOM’s 2007 and 2008 990’s, but they never filed those either. We visited their then National Office in Princeton, NJ many times and no one was ever there either.

One set of 990’s was 5 months late. The other set was 17 months late, when finally, the night before NOM President Brian Brown was to testify in front of the Maine Ethics Commission last year, all of their delinquent tax returns magically appeared on the NOM web site.

It was too late to stave off a State of Maine investigation of NOM, because in spite of threatening to sue the State of Maine (which NOM eventually did), the Maine Ethics Commission voted to investigate the National Organization for Marriage for election “Money Laundering.”

NOM is not above the law. They need to file their Income Tax Returns like everyone else and every other organization. We are entitled to see just how much money they raised and spent in 2009. Whom are they trying to protect?

NOM President Brian Brown getting questioned by reporters right after Maine Ethics Commission voted to investigate his organization for alleged money laundering.

NOM has sued 14 states to invalidate those state’s campaign finance laws. 12 of those lawsuits were in 2010 alone. NOM hopes to invalidate those state’s election laws, so when they spend their millions in those 14 states, it would not have to be reported.

NOM goes into these states and attacks anyone and everyone viciously that dares to support marriage equality in this country, and they do it without obeying election laws. They even subpoenaed me last year as soon as I filed the complaint against them in Maine. They are relentless.

Congressional Investigation of NOM — Now a “Hate Group”

We have tried repeatedly to get the Congress to investigate the National Organization for Marriage. There are numerous active complaints filed against NOM with the IRS. We need to get to the bottom of this highly questionable organization, now officially designated a “Hate Group,” by the prestigious Southern Poverty Law Center. CLICK HERE

Where’s Doug Manchester? He’s Not on Bust the Blacklist!

NOM now has a new web site up to defend its multi-millionaire and billionaire contributors. Their most famous donor of all is missing, hotel owner Doug Manchester. Manchester’s own people have admitted that they are losing $1 million per month from the boycott that Californians Against Hate (now Rights Equal Rights) launched on July 17, 2008, because of Doug Manchester’s $125,000 early donation to qualify and pass California’s Proposition 8. Here’s NOM’s new site, Bust the Blacklist: CLICK HERE

Manchester’s close friend, fellow San Diegan Terry Caster, who gave $693,000 to qualify and pass Proposition 8, is on NOM’s list. Guess the last thing Doug Manchester wants is any more publicity. He got a lousy return on his $125,000 contribution to take away marriage equality in California – at least $30 million in lost business to the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel alone!

Click to enlarge.

From The Iowa Independent:

National anti-gay groups unite to target Iowa judges

By Andy Kopsa | 10.21.10 | 7:30 am

The campaign to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices over a 2009 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage has attracted the attention of some of the most influential conservative organizations in America, each working together and sharing materials, funding and staff with Iowa groups and churches.

That coordination will be on full display next week, when anti-gay marriage groups and politicians will hold 20 events in four days around the state hoping to rally public opinion against Iowa judges.

The face of the campaign, Bob Vander Plaats’ group Iowa for Freedom, is a project of Mississippi-based American Family Association. But they are not alone. The Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, Georgia-based Faith & Freedom Coalition and New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage all bring direct funding or in-kind legal and promotional support to local organizations looking to oust the justices.

“They have chosen to come into Iowa because we have marriage rights for people who are gay and lesbian and they want to test in Iowa whether or not they can do something about that,” Interfaith Alliance of Iowa Executive Director Connie Ryan Terrell said. “So they are going after our judges and justices.”

Terrell believes people throughout the country should take special note of what happens in Iowa’s retention vote, as it could become a template for similar initiatives nationwide.

“People need to be aware that it seems this year all of the very right wing organizations have Iowa in their sights,” Ryan Terrell said in a phone interview. “That’s a scary proposition for our state and should be a red flag to Iowans. The fact that we have drawn so much attention from outside organizations, so much money is being spent by extreme religious right organizations — they are dumping money into our state.”

Read more at The Iowa Independent.

Just this past month 5 more gay or gay-perceived teens
committed suicide in this country.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), run by Maggie Gallagher and her sidekick Brian Brown, has spent tens of millions of dollars in the past three years to bully and bash lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people and anyone who dares to support their full equality. Everything NOM does only furthers hate and homophobia.

Yesterday Maggie finally weighed in on the suicide of Tyler Clementi, one of the most recent of the five young men who took their own lives in the last month. She had the gall to say, “Nothing in the press accounts suggest the kids who did this were motivated by homophobia.”

Big hearted Maggie and the wealthy mystery backers of NOM say they care deeply about children. Then stop the vicious attacks. Stop the bullying. Let all people live their lives honestly and openly.

NOM’s Real LGBT Agenda

On April 10, 2010, at a NOM program in New Orleans run by Brian Brown, the only other speaker was Thomas Messner, a NOM consultant and Visiting Richard and Helen DeVos Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Messner (above) was the first to speak the truth about NOM’s real agenda when he said:

“Gay marriage legitimizes homosexuality.”

That is exactly what NOM wants to prevent, period. Its purpose is to make LGBTQ people feel inferior and inflame homophobia under the guise of stopping gay marriage. We must not let them succeed; too many lives are at stake.

The 5 Most Recent Victims

Billy Lucas, 15 years old, died September 9, 2010.

Billy had been harassed at his Indiana school for many years. The day before his suicide, there was an alleged incident where he was bullied again at lunch, and was told him to go hang himself. He hanged himself in his barn next to his beloved horses the very next day.

Seth Walsh, 13 years old, died September 19, 2010.

After repeated bullying from other students in his Tehachapi, California hometown, Seth hanged himself from a tree in his backyard. After nine days in a coma, he died on Sept 19th. Police said after questioning the students who may have been involved, many broke down in tears, never expecting such an outcome.

Tyler Clementi, 18 years old, died September 22, 2010.

Tyler was a gifted musician and freshman at Rutgers University. He killed himself after his roommate secretly recorded him with another male student, and then the video was broadcast online. His last words, posted on his Facebook account 10 minutes before his death, were chilling, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”

Asher Brown, 13 years old, died September 23, 2010.

Asher shot himself to death after excessive anti-gay bullying apparently isolated him from classmates in his Houston school. Frustrated by the continued harassment and lack of support at school, he took his life the following day.

Raymond Chase, 19 years old, died September 29, 2010.

Raymond was an openly gay sophomore at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. He hanged himself in his dorm room after repeated bullying.

Help Stop NOM

Go to the wonderful new web site set up by the HRC and Courage Campaign, http://nomexposed.org and take action today. NOM must be stopped before one more child is hurt.

Thank you!

Fred Karger
Founder
www.RightsEqualRights.com

Help us fight back.

Please send a contribution to Rights Equal Rights today!

NOM Files Yet Another Lawsuit Challenging Disclosure Laws

By Michael Cole

As part of its radical nationwide efforts to dismantle state laws that provide transparency about who is funding political campaigns, the National Organization for Marriage this week filed suit in Rhode Island seeking to have their disclosure laws ruled unconstitutional. The suit comes the same week as NOM lost in federal court in Minnesota on a similar case.

The case – National Organization for Marriage v. John Daluz – was filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island on September 21. Daluz is the named defendant in his official capacity as Vice Chairman of the state board of elections.

This new lawsuit brought by NOM’s lawyers is similar to other public disclosure challenges they have made across the country including in Minnesota and New York. In Maine NOM remains under investigation by the Maine Ethics Commission for failing to register with the state as a ballot question committee and disclose the donors to its campaign to overturn Maine’s marriage equality law in 2009. In Washington State, NOM’s lawyers fought the state’s public records law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – and lost. A federal court in California has similarly rejected NOM’s efforts to hide its donors in the wake of Proposition 8.

Human Rights Campaign Vice President of Communications and Marketing Fred Sainz remarked in a release: “One thing’s for sure – NOM feels like they have something to hide. In yet another state, NOM is trying to eviscerate the fair and open process that governs election spending in this country. What lengths won’t they go to in order to shield themselves from public scrutiny?”

In Wake of Ballot Initiatives, Questions About the National Organization for Marriage’s Funding

Catholic Groups Funneled Millions to Fund Anti-Gay Marriage Initiatives in California, Maine

By JESSE ZWICK 9/20/10 8:32 AM

People protest extending marriage rights to gay couples in Washington, D.C. (Flickr/Fibonnaci Blue)

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal society founded in New Haven in 1881, does a lot of good work. In a report detailing its charitable giving during 2009, the organization noted that while the “Knights and their families are hardly immune to the economic downturn,” they had once again furthered their proud 128-year tradition of service — a tradition including “helping the widows and orphans of the late 19th century” and “providing coats to poor, cold children.”

Add to that list a donation of a whopping $1.4 million in 2009 to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a nonprofit group dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage through the ballot initiative system in California, Maine and other states. While NOM hasn’t yet made public its 2009 fundraising numbers, the amount of charitable contributions it received in 2008 totaled approximately $2.9 million.

The NOM donation eclipses what the Knights’ Supreme Council spent on some of its own charitable programs — such as its new effort supporting food banks or its total spending on education initiatives — in the same year, much to the outrage of some observers, including Catholic groups.

“It was a fairly simple, straightforward decision,” says Patrick Korten, vice president for communications for the Knights. “We are pro-family, and believe strongly in the defense of marriage. NOM is the single most important group engaged in defending marriage.”

Less straightforward is the fact that NOM has adopted a policy of refusing to disclose its donors to state election boards, and has sued in the courts rather than complying with existing law — thereby prompting much speculation as to the organization’s sources of funding. (NOM did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) The Knights of Columbus, however, freely disclosed its donation in its August 3 report. The amount was enough to have funded most of NOM’s successful $1.9 million effort to repeal Maine’s same sex marriage law in 2009.

Gay-rights activists have long speculated that the Mormon Church was the primary benefactor behind NOM. But the Knights of Columbus disclosure shows the Catholic group played a pivotal role in funding NOM’s efforts to deny marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.

Since its founding in 2007 and after its banner moment in 2008 — the passage of Proposition 8 in California, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman — NOM has fought vigorously against requests from various states to disclose its donor rolls. After some donors to NOM’s Prop 8 campaign received nasty emails from political opponents, the group sued the state of California, comparing itself to the NAACP in the 1950s South. It argued that the state’s disclosure laws had prompted harassment of Prop 8 donors and thereby curbed their constitutional right to free speech.

The case in California is still awaiting a trial date next year, but in the intervening months gay rights activists have openly speculated that NOM was used in the state as a front group for the Mormon Church. The allegation, put forth most prominently by activist Fred Karger, has been vehemently denied by NOM.

Karger, however, did manage to prove through public records that Mormon families contributed a large amount of the $40 million raised for the California ProtectMarriage.com campaign, and that the LDS Church, despite making extensive non-monetary contributions to the cause, had failed to report anywhere near the full amount of its efforts to the state of California. At Karger’s insistence, the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) investigated the case and found the Mormon Church guilty of 13 counts of late reporting, fining them more than $5,000.

Negative press prompted NOM to dive further underground. In fundraising endeavors following Prop 8, the group’s president Brian Brown encouraged supporters of efforts to ban gay marriage to donate to NOM as a means of keeping their names undisclosed. The group would act as a middle man of sorts, raising funds from individuals and turning them over to state-based campaigns in lump sums, all the while pledging to keep its donor names a secret.

“And unlike in California, every dollar you give to NOM’s Northeast Action Plan today is private, with no risk of harassment from gay marriage protesters,” Brown wrote in one fundraising appeal. “Donations to NOM are not tax-deductible and they are NOT public information, either,” another one read.

As promised, NOM ran political campaigns in Maine and Iowa in 2009 without disclosing its donors, promptly suing the state of Maine after it opened an ethics investigation against the group and challenging the state’s campaign finance laws as unconstitutional. (That case, too, is awaiting a final verdict.)

NOM continues to spend millions on its legal challenges in Maine, its deep pockets apparently dictating a strategy to challenge and delay disclosing its donors’ names in the courts as long as possible. But the Knights of Columbus’s role in funding NOM — as well as more overt forms of support for Maine’s Amendment 1 initiative from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine – are prompting Catholics opposed to the Church’s involvement in marriage equality issues to organize and speak out.

“You’ve got this really interesting funnel of tax-free money coming from the Dioceses and the Council of Bishops and the Knights of Columbus directly to these campaigns,” notes Phil Attey, executive director of the newly launched organization, Catholics for Equality. “Why are groups like NOM hiding where they’re getting their money? If it turns out to be a front group for the conservative side of the church, Catholics have the right to know because the majority of American Catholics, and we can show you heaps of polls, don’t support that [kind of spending].”

Knights’ spokesman Patrick Korten sees NOM’s noncompliance with disclosure laws in a different light. “The fact of the matter is that those who favor same sex marriage are working hard to intimidate individuals and groups that support our cause, but [the Knights] are big enough that intimidation doesn’t work on us.”

In addition to the opacity of NOM’s funding, some Catholic activists have also taken offense to the fact that, in an economic downturn, the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council’s funding for anti-gay marriage causes has outstripped the amount of funds it supplied for several deserving charitable programs it highlights in its 2010 report.

“As the recession has continued to make it difficult for people who have become unemployed or underemployed, or otherwise get by on lower incomes, the Knights of Columbus has stepped in to help,” notes the Knights’ 2010 report. It highlights a $1 million fund set up by the Supreme Council to supplement the efforts of local councils to support food banks through its new “Food For Families” program, and it touts its Coats for Kids program, which distributed coats to needy children.

But the Supreme Council’s spending on the two programs together still represents less than the $1.4 million it donated to NOM’s anti-gay marriage efforts in 2009. And the Council also donated an additional half million to NOM and $1.15 million to the California ProtectMarriage.com campaign the year prior. The Supreme Council’s total spending on community projects in 2009 (which include soup kitchens, homeless shelters, well drilling projects, and other forms of relief worldwide) totals approximately $3.5 million — an amount that exceeds its giving to anti-gay marriage proposition campaigns, but not by much. The Council’s spending on educational programs in 2009 totaled barely more than $1 million.

Korten nonetheless contends that the Supreme Council’s donations do not paint a full picture of the Knights of Columbus’ annual giving, calling its donations to organizations like NOM “a very small percentage” of the group’s charitable donations. “The vast majority of our charitable work is raised by local councils and that’s always been the case,” he adds.

But other Catholic activists predict that such spending on conservative causes will provoke a backlash among the faithful. “Do you think someone in New Mexico thought their donation was going to this effort in Maine, as opposed to aiding the sick and feeding the hungry?” asks George Burns, an attorney in Maine who fought NOM’s campaign to pass Amendment 1.

“If Catholics find out that while their parishes are closing, and charity work is being underfunded, that our church hierarchy is playing political games with their money, we believe that they’ll be as concerned as we are,” argues Attey.

The Knights, meanwhile, have come a long way from a lone fraternal council in New Haven to governing over 13,000 councils and 1.8 million members worldwide. “Their heritage was as an insurance company because Catholics were discriminated against and couldn’t get insurance,” observes Rev. Dr. Joseph Palacios, founding board member of Catholics for Equality. These days, however, they’re better known for fighting against the marriage rights of gays and lesbian citizens. Add to that list a donation of a whopping $1.4 million in 2009 to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a nonprofit group dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage through the ballot initiative system in California, Maine and other states. While NOM hasn’t yet made public its 2009 fundraising numbers, the amount of charitable contributions it received in 2008 totaled approximately $2.9 million.

The NOM donation eclipses what the Knights’ Supreme Council spent on some of its own charitable programs — such as its new effort supporting food banks or its total spending on education initiatives — in the same year, much to the outrage of some observers, including Catholic groups.

“It was a fairly simple, straightforward decision,” says Patrick Korten, vice president for communications for the Knights. “We are pro-family, and believe strongly in the defense of marriage. NOM is the single most important group engaged in defending marriage.”

Less straightforward is the fact that NOM has adopted a policy of refusing to disclose its donors to state election boards, and has sued in the courts rather than complying with existing law — thereby prompting much speculation as to the organization’s sources of funding. (NOM did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) The Knights of Columbus, however, freely disclosed its donation in its August 3 report. The amount was enough to have funded most of NOM’s successful $1.9 million effort to repeal Maine’s same sex marriage law in 2009.

Gay-rights activists have long speculated that the Mormon Church was the primary benefactor behind NOM. But the Knights of Columbus disclosure shows the Catholic group played a pivotal role in funding NOM’s efforts to deny marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.

Since its founding in 2007 and after its banner moment in 2008 — the passage of Proposition 8 in California, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman — NOM has fought vigorously against requests from various states to disclose its donor rolls. After some donors to NOM’s Prop 8 campaign received nasty emails from political opponents, the group sued the state of California, comparing itself to the NAACP in the 1950s South. It argued that the state’s disclosure laws had prompted harassment of Prop 8 donors and thereby curbed their constitutional right to free speech.

The case in California is still awaiting a trial date next year, but in the intervening months gay rights activists have openly speculated that NOM was used in the state as a front group for the Mormon Church. The allegation, put forth most prominently by activist Fred Karger, has been vehemently denied by NOM.

Karger, however, did manage to prove through public records that Mormon families contributed a large amount of the $40 million raised for the California ProtectMarriage.com campaign, and that the LDS Church, despite making extensive non-monetary contributions to the cause, had failed to report anywhere near the full amount of its efforts to the state of California. At Karger’s insistence, the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) investigated the case and found the Mormon Church guilty of 13 counts of late reporting, fining them more than $5,000.

Negative press prompted NOM to dive further underground. In fundraising endeavors following Prop 8, the group’s president Brian Brown encouraged supporters of efforts to ban gay marriage to donate to NOM as a means of keeping their names undisclosed. The group would act as a middle man of sorts, raising funds from individuals and turning them over to state-based campaigns in lump sums, all the while pledging to keep its donor names a secret.

“And unlike in California, every dollar you give to NOM’s Northeast Action Plan today is private, with no risk of harassment from gay marriage protesters,” Brown wrote in one fundraising appeal. “Donations to NOM are not tax-deductible and they are NOT public information, either,” another one read.

As promised, NOM ran political campaigns in Maine and Iowa in 2009 without disclosing its donors, promptly suing the state of Maine after it opened an ethics investigation against the group and challenging the state’s campaign finance laws as unconstitutional. (That case, too, is awaiting a final verdict.)

NOM continues to spend millions on its legal challenges in Maine, its deep pockets apparently dictating a strategy to challenge and delay disclosing its donors’ names in the courts as long as possible. But the Knights of Columbus’s role in funding NOM — as well as more overt forms of support for Maine’s Amendment 1 initiative from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine – are prompting Catholics opposed to the Church’s involvement in marriage equality issues to organize and speak out.

“You’ve got this really interesting funnel of tax-free money coming from the Dioceses and the Council of Bishops and the Knights of Columbus directly to these campaigns,” notes Phil Attey, executive director of the newly launched organization, Catholics for Equality. “Why are groups like NOM hiding where they’re getting their money? If it turns out to be a front group for the conservative side of the church, Catholics have the right to know because the majority of American Catholics, and we can show you heaps of polls, don’t support that [kind of spending].”

Knights’ spokesman Patrick Korten sees NOM’s noncompliance with disclosure laws in a different light. “The fact of the matter is that those who favor same sex marriage are working hard to intimidate individuals and groups that support our cause, but [the Knights] are big enough that intimidation doesn’t work on us.”

In addition to the opacity of NOM’s funding, some Catholic activists have also taken offense to the fact that, in an economic downturn, the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council’s funding for anti-gay marriage causes has outstripped the amount of funds it supplied for several deserving charitable programs it highlights in its 2010 report.

“As the recession has continued to make it difficult for people who have become unemployed or underemployed, or otherwise get by on lower incomes, the Knights of Columbus has stepped in to help,” notes the Knights’ 2010 report. It highlights a $1 million fund set up by the Supreme Council to supplement the efforts of local councils to support food banks through its new “Food For Families” program, and it touts its Coats for Kids program, which distributed coats to needy children.

But the Supreme Council’s spending on the two programs together still represents less than the $1.4 million it donated to NOM’s anti-gay marriage efforts in 2009. And the Council also donated an additional half million to NOM and $1.15 million to the California ProtectMarriage.com campaign the year prior. The Supreme Council’s total spending on community projects in 2009 (which include soup kitchens, homeless shelters, well drilling projects, and other forms of relief worldwide) totals approximately $3.5 million — an amount that exceeds its giving to anti-gay marriage proposition campaigns, but not by much. The Council’s spending on educational programs in 2009 totaled barely more than $1 million.

Korten nonetheless contends that the Supreme Council’s donations do not paint a full picture of the Knights of Columbus’ annual giving, calling its donations to organizations like NOM “a very small percentage” of the group’s charitable donations. “The vast majority of our charitable work is raised by local councils and that’s always been the case,” he adds.

But other Catholic activists predict that such spending on conservative causes will provoke a backlash among the faithful. “Do you think someone in New Mexico thought their donation was going to this effort in Maine, as opposed to aiding the sick and feeding the hungry?” asks George Burns, an attorney in Maine who fought NOM’s campaign to pass Amendment 1.

“If Catholics find out that while their parishes are closing, and charity work is being underfunded, that our church hierarchy is playing political games with their money, we believe that they’ll be as concerned as we are,” argues Attey.

The Knights, meanwhile, have come a long way from a lone fraternal council in New Haven to governing over 13,000 councils and 1.8 million members worldwide. “Their heritage was as an insurance company because Catholics were discriminated against and couldn’t get insurance,” observes Rev. Dr. Joseph Palacios, founding board member of Catholics for Equality. These days, however, they’re better known for fighting against the marriage rights of gays and lesbian citizens. Add to that list a donation of a whopping $1.4 million in 2009 to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a nonprofit group dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage through the ballot initiative system in California, Maine and other states. While NOM hasn’t yet made public its 2009 fundraising numbers, the amount of charitable contributions it received in 2008 totaled approximately $2.9 million.

The NOM donation eclipses what the Knights’ Supreme Council spent on some of its own charitable programs — such as its new effort supporting food banks or its total spending on education initiatives — in the same year, much to the outrage of some observers, including Catholic groups.

“It was a fairly simple, straightforward decision,” says Patrick Korten, vice president for communications for the Knights. “We are pro-family, and believe strongly in the defense of marriage. NOM is the single most important group engaged in defending marriage.”

Less straightforward is the fact that NOM has adopted a policy of refusing to disclose its donors to state election boards, and has sued in the courts rather than complying with existing law — thereby prompting much speculation as to the organization’s sources of funding. (NOM did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) The Knights of Columbus, however, freely disclosed its donation in its August 3 report. The amount was enough to have funded most of NOM’s successful $1.9 million effort to repeal Maine’s same sex marriage law in 2009.

Gay-rights activists have long speculated that the Mormon Church was the primary benefactor behind NOM. But the Knights of Columbus disclosure shows the Catholic group played a pivotal role in funding NOM’s efforts to deny marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.

Since its founding in 2007 and after its banner moment in 2008 — the passage of Proposition 8 in California, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman — NOM has fought vigorously against requests from various states to disclose its donor rolls. After some donors to NOM’s Prop 8 campaign received nasty emails from political opponents, the group sued the state of California, comparing itself to the NAACP in the 1950s South. It argued that the state’s disclosure laws had prompted harassment of Prop 8 donors and thereby curbed their constitutional right to free speech.

The case in California is still awaiting a trial date next year, but in the intervening months gay rights activists have openly speculated that NOM was used in the state as a front group for the Mormon Church. The allegation, put forth most prominently by activist Fred Karger, has been vehemently denied by NOM.

Karger, however, did manage to prove through public records that Mormon families contributed a large amount of the $40 million raised for the California ProtectMarriage.com campaign, and that the LDS Church, despite making extensive non-monetary contributions to the cause, had failed to report anywhere near the full amount of its efforts to the state of California. At Karger’s insistence, the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) investigated the case and found the Mormon Church guilty of 13 counts of late reporting, fining them more than $5,000.

Negative press prompted NOM to dive further underground. In fundraising endeavors following Prop 8, the group’s president Brian Brown encouraged supporters of efforts to ban gay marriage to donate to NOM as a means of keeping their names undisclosed. The group would act as a middle man of sorts, raising funds from individuals and turning them over to state-based campaigns in lump sums, all the while pledging to keep its donor names a secret.

“And unlike in California, every dollar you give to NOM’s Northeast Action Plan today is private, with no risk of harassment from gay marriage protesters,” Brown wrote in one fundraising appeal. “Donations to NOM are not tax-deductible and they are NOT public information, either,” another one read.

As promised, NOM ran political campaigns in Maine and Iowa in 2009 without disclosing its donors, promptly suing the state of Maine after it opened an ethics investigation against the group and challenging the state’s campaign finance laws as unconstitutional. (That case, too, is awaiting a final verdict.)

NOM continues to spend millions on its legal challenges in Maine, its deep pockets apparently dictating a strategy to challenge and delay disclosing its donors’ names in the courts as long as possible. But the Knights of Columbus’s role in funding NOM — as well as more overt forms of support for Maine’s Amendment 1 initiative from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine – are prompting Catholics opposed to the Church’s involvement in marriage equality issues to organize and speak out.

“You’ve got this really interesting funnel of tax-free money coming from the Dioceses and the Council of Bishops and the Knights of Columbus directly to these campaigns,” notes Phil Attey, executive director of the newly launched organization, Catholics for Equality. “Why are groups like NOM hiding where they’re getting their money? If it turns out to be a front group for the conservative side of the church, Catholics have the right to know because the majority of American Catholics, and we can show you heaps of polls, don’t support that [kind of spending].”

Knights’ spokesman Patrick Korten sees NOM’s noncompliance with disclosure laws in a different light. “The fact of the matter is that those who favor same sex marriage are working hard to intimidate individuals and groups that support our cause, but [the Knights] are big enough that intimidation doesn’t work on us.”

In addition to the opacity of NOM’s funding, some Catholic activists have also taken offense to the fact that, in an economic downturn, the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council’s funding for anti-gay marriage causes has outstripped the amount of funds it supplied for several deserving charitable programs it highlights in its 2010 report.

“As the recession has continued to make it difficult for people who have become unemployed or underemployed, or otherwise get by on lower incomes, the Knights of Columbus has stepped in to help,” notes the Knights’ 2010 report. It highlights a $1 million fund set up by the Supreme Council to supplement the efforts of local councils to support food banks through its new “Food For Families” program, and it touts its Coats for Kids program, which distributed coats to needy children.

But the Supreme Council’s spending on the two programs together still represents less than the $1.4 million it donated to NOM’s anti-gay marriage efforts in 2009. And the Council also donated an additional half million to NOM and $1.15 million to the California ProtectMarriage.com campaign the year prior. The Supreme Council’s total spending on community projects in 2009 (which include soup kitchens, homeless shelters, well drilling projects, and other forms of relief worldwide) totals approximately $3.5 million — an amount that exceeds its giving to anti-gay marriage proposition campaigns, but not by much. The Council’s spending on educational programs in 2009 totaled barely more than $1 million.

Korten nonetheless contends that the Supreme Council’s donations do not paint a full picture of the Knights of Columbus’ annual giving, calling its donations to organizations like NOM “a very small percentage” of the group’s charitable donations. “The vast majority of our charitable work is raised by local councils and that’s always been the case,” he adds.

But other Catholic activists predict that such spending on conservative causes will provoke a backlash among the faithful. “Do you think someone in New Mexico thought their donation was going to this effort in Maine, as opposed to aiding the sick and feeding the hungry?” asks George Burns, an attorney in Maine who fought NOM’s campaign to pass Amendment 1.

“If Catholics find out that while their parishes are closing, and charity work is being underfunded, that our church hierarchy is playing political games with their money, we believe that they’ll be as concerned as we are,” argues Attey.

The Knights, meanwhile, have come a long way from a lone fraternal council in New Haven to governing over 13,000 councils and 1.8 million members worldwide. “Their heritage was as an insurance company because Catholics were discriminated against and couldn’t get insurance,” observes Rev. Dr. Joseph Palacios, founding board member of Catholics for Equality. These days, however, they’re better known for fighting against the marriage rights of gays and lesbian citizens.

Federal judge approves most of Maine’s campaign law

Group opposed to same-sex marriage optimistic about appeal

A U.S. District Court judge on Thursday delivered a ruling that protected the core of Maine’s campaign finance laws against a challenge from a national marriage advocacy group regarding their constitutionality.

U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby, however, did find parts of state’s campaign finance laws as “unconstitutionally vague.”

Thursday’s decision is viewed as critical, as it sets the possible statutory parameters by which the National Organization Marriage will become involved in politicking for, or against, candidates for statewide office this fall.

Judge Hornby struck down rules requiring 24-hour disclosure of independent expenditures over $250 — not just before an election, but whenever they occur — saying the rule “has not been justified … is impermissibly burdensome and cannot be enforced.”

He also declared “Maine’s use of the words ‘influence’ and ‘influence in any way’ … are unconstitutionally vague.”

“Otherwise,” Hornby wrote, “Maine’s laws governing PACs, independent campaign expenditures, and attribution and disclaimer requirements are constitutional, and survive NOM’s challenges that they are unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.”

The National Organization for Marriage had contested the constitutionality of Maine’s campaign finance laws, prior to perhaps engaging in activity to influence outcomes of upcoming legislative elections.

The group, which supported the repeal of same-sex marriage legislation in Maine in 2009, has said it would work against the re-election efforts of Maine lawmakers who voted to support same-sex marriage in the Legislature.

Attorney General Janet Mills applauded the ruling on Thursday, saying it upholds the state’s campaign reporting and disclosure law.

Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, called the ruling mostly positive.

“Mostly, the decision appears to be very good news from the standpoint of the public understanding of who is raising and spending money to influence elections,” Wayne said. “There are a couple of aspects of the disclosure law that the judge found to be vague and have been severed from our statutes. Mostly it’s a clean bill of health for the disclosure laws.”

Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, said Thursday his group is disappointed in the ruling, but feels its arguments will hold sway with an appeals court.

NOM will pursue an expedited appeal to the U.S. First Circuit Court in Boston, he said, because of the short time before the upcoming election season.

Though Thursday’s decision will delay NOM’s plans for political activity in Maine, Brown said, the group is reviewing the decision to gauge a potential timeline for action.

NOM plans activity in Maine both on behalf of candidates that support “redefining marriage,” said Brown, and on candidates that support traditional marriage. He declined to say whether NOM would be active in the state’s governor’s race, as well as the legislative races.

Brown also expressed frustration at the legal hurdles spurred by what he called “frivolous” lawsuits filed by their political opponents, one of which, Californians Against Hate [now Rights Equal Rights], asked the Maine ethics commission to investigate NOM.

That group, one of the primary advocates for preserving California’s gay marriage law that was repealed by voters there in 2009, questioned whether NOM raised more than $5,000 to directly repeal Maine’s same-sex marriage law.

If it had, it would have been required to file campaign finance reports with the state and disclose who donated the money.

The state is seeking a list of donors so it can determine whether the group asked for money specifically to help repeal gay marriage in Maine. The group filed suit in state and federal court to try to stop the investigation, saying it fears disclosure would lead to harassment of donors.

In response, the group has said that although it donated nearly $2 million to Stand for Marriage Maine, the political action committee that worked to repeal Maine’s same-sex marriage law in 2009, it did not ask donors to give specifically to help in Maine.

That case remains pending.

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Staff Writer Betty Adams and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

NOM challenges orders to report donor names

Frank Schubert, campaign director for Stand for Marriage Maine, claims victory for Yes on 1 on Nov. 3, 2009, in Portland, Me.
(Source:Robert F. Bukaty (AP))

The National Organization for Marriage is going to court in two states to prevent revealing its list of donors to campaigns against marriage for gays and lesbians.

It was among the litigants that filed Protect Marriage v. Bowen, a lawsuit against the California secretary of state challenging the Golden State’s election laws requiring the reporting of names of contributors of at least $100, last December. And NOM joined with two other conservative groups this month to challenge Maine’s ten-year-old Clean Elections law in federal court. The plaintiffs contend the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on First Amendment free speech rights.

NOM has been fighting elections commissions in both states, which have ordered it to reveal donor names and addresses.

The organization contributed millions to campaigns that successfully overturned, through ballot referendums, legalized marriage for gays and lesbians in both states. Voters passed Proposition 8 in California in 2008 and Question 1 in Maine in 2009.

A U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco ruled on Aug. 4 Prop. 8 is unconstitutional, but the case is expected to go the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Maine suit, filed by NOM, the Maine Heritage Policy Center and the James Madison Center for Free Speech of Terre Haute, Ind., focuses on matching funds provided to publicly financed candidates. The suit seeks to halt such payments.

James Bopp, Jr., the attorney NOM hired in its fight with the Maine Ethics Commission over revealing donor names, is representing all three organizations in the case.

In late June, the ethics commission once again rejected NOM’s attempt to block an order requiring it to reveal donors. And a U.S. District Court judge earlier this year overruled NOM’s request that it not have to comply with the commission’s order. The lawsuit appears to be the latest tactic to avoid compliance.

Maine Citizens for Clean Elections called the lawsuit “an attack on the will of the people” and claimed it’s the “latest attempt in a national strategy to buy influence and bypass the will of the people in Maine and around the country.”

The organization termed the suit to be frivolous. “Mainers have spoken, and Maine people overwhelmingly support Clean Elections,” said co-chair Alison Smith in a statement.

The law “keeps big-money special interests at bay and keeps Maine citizens at the table when decisions are made about what is best for our state,” she added. “Clean Elections requires campaigns to be open, fair and honest. This lawsuit is meant to undermine the will of Maine people.”

Maine was the first state in the nation to pass a Clean Elections law, which a federal court found to be constitutional in a challenge 10 years ago.

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate (now called Rights Equal Rights), began the controversy over campaign funding by marriage opponents when he filed complaints with the California and Maine ethics commissions.

As part of the California lawsuit, plaintiffs have subpoenaed all of Karger’s records that led to his complaint with the state ethics commission. He is fighting the subpoena.

Karger is exploring running for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. He would be the first openly gay presidential candidate in history if he decides to seek the nomination.

“The super-mysterious National Organization for Marriage is relentless in its desire to intimidate and harm people through its mean, untruthful and potentially illegal activities,” Karger told EDGE in e-mail when asked to comment on the lawsuits. “The ones hurt the most by NOM are the very ones they claim they want to protect, our LGBTQ youth. A Congressional Investigation is needed of the National Organization for Marriage.”

Peter Cassels is a recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s Excellence in Journalism award. His e-mail address is pcassels [at sign] edgepublications [dot] com.

To link to the announcement about Fred Karger’s appearance on the Fallon Forum, click here.

Fred Karger will be on Ed Fallon’s radio program tonight. Karger is originally from Chicago, who worked for over 20 years with leading national Republicans, including Reagan, Bush, and Dole. In recent years he’s been an outspoken activist for LGBT equality, leading efforts to expose questionable campaign finance activities on the part of anti-gay organizations. Make plans to tune in tonight from 7:00- 8:00 p.m. on 98.3 WOW-FM or online. Please consider including your voice in the conversation by calling 515.312.0983 or 866.908.8255 (TALK). If you miss the show, podcasts are available.

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