The National Organization for Marriage's Illusionary Base

Over the weekend I wrote about Louis J. Marinelli who has resigned from NOM and come out as an advocate for CIVIL marriage for same sex couples. NOM, of course, has tried desperately to minimize Marinelli's defection and depict him as a two bit part time volunteer (yet another example of NOM's inability to not resort to lying as a matter of standard procedure). Perhaps egged on by NOM's disclaimers, Marinelli has posted a new piece on his blog that looks at the artificial and illusion nature of NOM's claimed broad base support. One can only hope that Marinelli continues to speak out and expose Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown for the mean spirited, self-enriching political prostitutes that they are in fact. Here are some post highlights:
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Last week, I resigned from the National Organization and publicly declared my support for same-sex civil marriage. I also apologized and recanted the offensive and hurtful comments I’ve ever made against gay and lesbian citizens in this country. For many my actions have been a source of hope for the future of marriage equality. I wanted to take this opportunity to reinforce that hope.
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Tax records show that the vast majority of the National Organization for Marriage’s financial support comes from a handful of donors. This information is public and the Human Rights Campaign exposed it quite a while ago.
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In my work with the National Organization for Marriage, I, like you have seen on multiple occasions how fundraisers, which are matched dollar for dollar by an undisclosed source pulling the strings from behind the shadows, have met their goals. I shared the suspicion many did when gaps of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations were suddenly closed in the final hours running up to the deadline.
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The summer tour rallies were met with counter-protesters at every stop and with the exception of a couple of instances, NOM’s supporters were greatly outnumbered and their enthusiasm was bested by the gays and lesbians who came out to meet us in the streets to stand up against injustice and intolerance. Completely understandable. The lives of gay and lesbian Americans were on the line, they were being oppressed by a group seeking for force its religious doctrine on our society. If they weren’t fired up about that, what would that say about them?
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I want you to realize that NOM is a small group of devoutly religious Catholics supported by a couple of undisclosed sources. NOM is essentially made up of Brian Brown, its President, Maggie Gallagher, the CEO, a handful of other Board members (who are scattered across the country involved in other matters), a couple of advisors to Mr. Brown and a small and largely incompetent office staff.
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Their social media management isn’t operated by NOM – they’re not big enough for that nor do they understand social media! As Jeremy Hooper detailed, Opus Fidelis manages NOM’s social media and websites.
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That is all that is standing between you and the freedom to marry. There is no grassroots opposition. While they have proven to be quite successful over the past couple years, I think it’s time to put NOM’s size into perspective. Are you going to let a handful of fringe Catholics (with whom many Catholics disagree on marriage) stand between you and the freedom to marry?
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It's also time to expose NOM's donors who are pulling the strings while hidden behind a curtain. We and the world need to know who they are. The fact that NOM is going to great lengths to hide their identities suggests that the very nature of the civil marriage argument might shift if we but knew their identities.