Wednesday, 90 days after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 48 in to law, was the last day to file 504,750 valid, signed petitions with the state. Stop SB 48 organizers announced their failure to gather enough signatures in an email to subscribers titled, “We Fought the Law and the Law Won,” in which they also state plans to keep fighting LGBT-oriented legislation:

While we did not overturn this very bad law, we built a small army of dedicated volunteers that collected an incredible amount of signatures. There will be a next battle. Despite the overuse of the term “tolerance”, there is little tolerance for those who do not endorse the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lifestyles. And there will be more laws passed that advocate for these and attempt to silence any opposition.

SB 48 opponents will have other opportunities to overturn the law, not through a repeal referendum, but through either a ballot initiative or a constitutional amendment — options which demand even more signatures and, consequently, more money than repealing the law by referendum. Karen England, president of the Capitol Resource Institute and leader of the Stop SB 48 campaign (the two entities share an address), could not be immediately reached for comment.

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which has worked with Stop SB 48 to overturn the education law, told The American Independent the effort to overturn SB 48 will continue. Dacus admitted a major obstacle to gathering signatures was lack of money and resources, but he said he was impressed with how far the group got.

“No matter how it turns out, one thing is clear,” Dacus said early Wednesday, when it was unknown whether Stop SB 48 qualified for the referendum. “A broad diversity of parents up and down the state of California actually posed a viable threat to repeal legislation without one dollar paid for signature-gatherers.”

He credited a Los Angeles Times editorial from April for a large part of the public opposition to SB 48. The editorial stated its opposition to the bill based on the belief that educators, not politicians, should write textbooks.

In June, the LA Times published another article on SB 48, claiming groups against the legislation for ideological reasons, such as Catholics for the Common Good, were misrepresenting the paper’s position:

Although the editorial board also opposes the bill, it’s not because these additions would shatter a child’s image of marriage. It’s because the board doesn’t want to see education politicized. In other words: Politicians shouldn’t be in the business of writing textbooks.

Dacus said he opposes SB 48 because it amounted to indoctrination of California’s children and because it is based on subjection, politics and speculation.

“This legislation requires subjective speculation of who in history [was] engaged in homosexual conduct. It will necessitate speculation of who in history was allegedly homosexual or transgender or not,” he said, claiming that a high school in Los Angeles has attempted to “pigeonhole” Abraham Lincoln as a gay man.

In part, the law states:

This bill would update references to certain categories of persons and additionally would require instruction in social sciences to include a study of the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and members of other cultural groups, to the development of California and the United States.

Dacus told TAI the new law forces schools to teach students “only positive things” about LGBT history, but, as written, the legislation prohibits “materials that reflect adversely upon persons because of their race, creed or sexual orientation.”

Asked about the provision of the law that requires inclusions of historical contributions from persons with disabilities, Dacus said: “No one based upon their disability, gender, race or orientation shall ever be excluded [from] history because of those factors.”

Rick Jacobs, founder of the Courage Campaign, a multi-issue advocacy group based in Los Angeles, told TAI he was not surprised that Stop SB 48 failed in its first repeal attempt, and he compared the groups in charge to “rightwing fringe groups equivalent to the Westboro Baptist Church.”

“The entirety of this campaign has been about lies and fear,” Jacobs said.

He said Courage Campaign enlisted 15,000 people to monitor Stop SB 48 signature solicitors throughout the state. The group has filed a complaint against Stop SB 48 with the state attorney general after one monitor discovered a campaigner trying to attract signatures by claiming the petition was to prevent child molestation.

Watch the video:

Advocacy group Equality California has also filed a complaint with the state’s ethics board in protest of Stop SB 48′s campaign practices.

“We’re going to remain vigilant,” Jacobs said. “If [SB 48 opponents] decide to try again, we will be there.”

“We do not Have Enough Signatures,” read the headline of newsletter emailed to SB 48 opponents by the Stop SB 48 campaign. Stop SB 48 is based in Sacramento, Calif., and is associated with the Capitol Resource Institute (CRI), a conservative state policy group that encourages churches to influence public policy.

In its 17th letter in a series of last-minute appeals, Stop SB 48 organizers admitted they are short the number of signatures needed — 504,760 — to qualify for a referendum before the law is implemented next January.

Ever since the education law passed this summer, Stop SB 48 has been emailing subscribers for help and money on an almost daily basis. On Tuesday, the group emailed supporters saying they anticipated having enough signatures by the Oct. 11 deadline, but two days later, organizers said that, due to improperly filled-out petitions, “If we had to turn in today, we failed.”

An example of the campaign’s desperation was evidenced by a text American Independent reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn received from the organization on Thursday. Zinshteyn had no prior knowledge of or communication with the group, but he does have a California cell phone number. The text he received read:

Subject: Stop
Homosexual & Transgender training in schools www.StopSB48.com to Download, Sign, Stamp & Send Petitions that will Voter Veto SB48

But even if Stop SB 48 is able to scrape together enough signatures in the next four days, more problems will likely arise, this time with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

On Monday, Equality California, the state’s largest LGBT-rights organization, filed a complaint (PDF) with the Fair Political Practices Commission, asking the agency to investigate whether three organizations connected with referendum campaign have violated the state’s campaign finance law.

The three organizations called out include Stop SB 48; the Capitol Resource Center, to whom the the Stop SB 48 website and campaign materials are registered and addressed; and the Pacific Justice Institute.

In the complaint, Equality California Executive Director Roland Palencia suggested that, because of its high amount of campaign activity so far, Stop SB 48 has likely raised and spent enough money that would require the organization to register with the state as a political committee.

“They are raising and spending funds specifically for the purpose of qualifying a referendum,” Palencia wrote. “As you know, organizations that raise or spend funds for political purposes are political committees and incur filing obligations. Such reporting is essential for the public to understand the sources of funding behind statewide ballot measures. In addition, their coordinated campaign with Stop SB 48 likely constitutes unreported in-kind contributions.  This violation obscures the source and nature of Stop SB 48’s support.”

Both the Capitol Resource Institute (CRI) and the Pacific Justice Institute have denied the allegations, framing them as a political maneuver to thwart a repeal of the new law.

“They are grasping at straws,” CRI CEO Karen England told TAI. ”I have no idea where they got most of what they are accusing us of. … They didn’t wait for our filings to get the facts straight.”

England said invidual donations to Stop SB 48 have not amounted to more than $5,000 and neither have expenditures; thus disclosure would be unnecessary at this point, and the group plans to file at the end of the month. She also disputed Equality California’s other allegation, that CRI has failed to report as a lobbyist employer. England said CRI has not had a lobbyist on staff since 1997.

The point of the complaint is essentially to find out what they don’t know, California Equality spokesperson Rebekah Orr told TAI.

“Their activities seemed to indicate violations,” Orr said. “The question is what do they have to hide? People who are considering signing this petition deserve to know who is sponsoring that effort.”

When asked how much money the campaign has raised so far and which organizations have donated, England told TAI to wait for the campaign disclosure reports at the end of this month.

Orr also noted that the the separation between CRI and Stop SB 48 is unclear. Nowhere on Stop SB 48’s website is there reference to CRI, and Orr said the same thing about SB 48 mailers; yet the site is registered to Capitol Resource Family Impact, which is CRI’s legal arm. Although England claims she is volunteering for Stop SB 48, she still receives a paycheck (PDF) from CRI, which shares a mailing address with the referendum campaign.

Orr also said that Stop SB 48 has been untruthful about the bill they are trying to repeal, claiming that it will force all California schools to to endorse transgenderism, bisexuality, and homosexuality, which she said is not the case.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Gallagher, “who often testified at hearings and engaged in public debates on behalf of NOM, became a frequent target of wrath from the gay-rights movement.” In a statement, NOM’s co-founder said she was stepping down to complete her Oxford University Press book “Debating Same-Sex Marriage” but that she would remain on NOM’s board and “continue to work on specific projects for NOM.”

A day after the announcement, NOM introduced a brand-new project, the Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance (MarriageADA), for which Gallagher is listed as being among primary staff, along with Damian Goddard.

MarriageADA is described as a ”supportive community for those who have been threatened for standing for marriage, to nip the climate of fear being created in the bud, to expose for fair-minded Americans on both sides of the  debate the threats being made, to conduct high-quality qualitative and quantitative research documenting the extent of the harm, to develop legislative and community proposal to protect Americans right to engage in the core civil rights: to organize, to vote, to speak, to donate, and to write for marriage.”

It is a (tax-deductible) nonprofit financed by the NOM’s 501(c)3 arm, the NOM Institute.

The first project Marriage ADA is engaged in is in North Carolina, one of the latest states to introduce a ballot proposal to amend its constitution to restrict marriage to straight couples. MarriageADA is is representing author Frank Turek, who has written three books about religion, public policy and same-sex marriage. The latter — “Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone” – is the subject of a consumer complaint MarriageADA has filed against Bank of America in North Carolina. In a video, Turek claims he lost his leadership-training contract with Cisco and Bank of America because of the book.

“We want to create an America in which people do not fear losing their jobs, or any other threats to their person or property, because they do not agree with gay marriage,” Gallagher said about the new project. “I believe both sides in this debate deserve basic respect for exercising their core civil rights as Americans to engage in an important public debate.”

MarriageADA is an extension of NOM’s never-ending battle to keep its donors secret.

From the MarriageADA website:

The Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance is dedicated to one, simple, and profound idea: No American should be afraid to exercise core civil rights: to speak, to donate, to organize, to sign petitions, or to vote for marriage as the union of husband and wife.

[...]

If you have been threatened, harassed, or made to feel afraid because you believe in the great, foundational truth of Genesis –we are born male and female and called to come together in love to give children mothers and fathers—Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance is here to help you: you are not alone.

In an email newsletter to supporters, sent Thursday night, NOM President Brian Brown explained the strategy behind the new project:

NOM’s Marriage Anti-Defamation League is fighting back! We’ve reached out, in the first instance, to citizens of North Carolina in the Charlotte area, where Bank of America is headquartered, and let me tell you, in the hundreds and the thousands they have responded: Are you outraged that Frank Turek was fired? Yes!

Will you call the company to complain? More than than 1,400 North Carolinians, out of the 9,000 we called, agreed to phone in their dismay. 37 percent of them are customers of Bank of America.

(I have to pause to give a shout out to the American Family Association, which has also taken up Frank Turek’s cause, God bless them!)

NOM’s Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance is not a one-shot. It’s the beginning of something truly big. We need to come together in love to support each other in the threats to our jobs, our families, and our rights that are now clearly laid down by gay-marriage advocates.

In the meantime, Eastman, law professor at Chapman University School of Law, founding director of the conservative Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and contributor for the Claremont Institute, is taking over Gallagher’s post.

In a commprehensive primer on Eastman, Media Matters points out that Gallagher’s anti-gay rhetoric — calling homosexuality “an unfortunate thing” which represents “at a minimum, a sexual dysfunction” and accusing gay men and lesbians of  “committing several different kinds of sins” — has been matched by Eastman’s, who has called homosexuality one of ““two new indicia of barbarism” in the 20th Century.

The American Independent’s sister site The Colorado Independent explains Eastman has defended the Boy Scouts’ discrimination against gay and lesbian troop leaders and has been a strong opponent to same-sex parents adopting children.

Last month, Eastman participated in a blog symposium sponsored by the Supreme Court of the United States blog (SCOTUSblog) on the subject of same-sex marriage. In his entry, Eastman defended the ”constitutionality of traditional marriage,” writing: “It is no denigration of one class or the other to acknowledge the biological truth that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to at least one of the purposes of marriage, namely, procreation.”

Initially, NOM had announced Gallagher would be participating in the symposium, but she never did. In an email, SCOTUSblog told TAI that Gallagher decided not to submit an entry due to “time limitations.”

Watch MarriageADA video on Frank Turek:

Stand for Marriage Maine PAC led the successful campaign to repeal gay marriage legalization in Maine in 2009 by popular vote in a People’s Veto.

Both sides of the Maine marriage campaign are beginning to prepare for a potential referendum in 2012; yet questions linger surrounding donor identities in the 2009 campaign, particularly for the side that supported “Question 1,” which repealed same-sex marriage.

Question 1 opponents, led by EqualityMaine, raised approximately $5.7 million from more than 10,000 donors, 12 times more individual donors than the winning side, which raised approximately $3.4 million from a handful of churches and conservative Christian organizations, according to a November 2009 report (PDF) released by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. The largest chunks of donations that went to the repeal effort came from NOM ($1.9 million), the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland ($500,000) and Focus on the Family Maine Marriage Committee ($114,000).

The American Independent recently reported that NOM is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics & Election Practices over whether or not NOM should have registered with the state and formed a ballot question committee — which means disclosing expenditures and contributions. That case is pending in the First Circuit Court. And last week, the United States Court of Appeals First Circuit ruled against NOM in an appeal that Maine’s election laws were unconstitutional. Thus, the investigation into NOM’s fundraising is presently stalled, and many of the names and organizations of those who donated money to defeating marriage equality in Maine are still unknown.

Openly gay political consultant and GOP presidential contender Fred Karger sparked the NOM investigation, having made it his ongoing project to follow NOM’s campaign money since the organization’s anti-same-sex-marriage campaign efforts in California in 2008. But it is straight, married activist Paul Kendrick who made it his mission to follow the actions of the Portland diocese. What immediately sparked his interest into the “Yes on 1″ campaign of 2009 was the fact that money was coming out of the Roman Catholic Portland Diocese, but there were very few individual contributions from church leaders.

“There are about 700 priests, nuns and deacons in the diocese, yet only four names appear on the reporting,” Kendrick recently told TAI from his home in Freeport, Maine. “What can we surmise? Can we surmise that what Bishop [Richard Joseph] Malone did, priests and deacons don’t support this? Did they all donate $49 dollars? … [Catholic leaders] were advertising themselves as followers of God but didn’t have the guts to stand publicly for their convictions,” Kendrick said.

The Stand for Marriage Maine PAC was run by Portland diocese public affairs director Marc Mutty, who took a leave of absence from the diocese to run the campaign. Mutty told TAI that, to his knowledge, the church followed all campaign-finance rules with regard to its contributions to the SMM PAC. He said that any contributions made without a name attached to them came from plate collections. Fallout criticisms about how and how much the diocese donated were based on general disapproval that the diocese participated in the political campaign, Mutty said.

“We don’t operate based on public opinion,” he said. “We operate based on what is the right thing to do. Public sentiment is not so much an issue.”

Quarterly campaign-finance disclosure reports from 2009 available on the Maine ethics commission’s website reveal several names of religious figures from across the country who donated more than $50 (the donating amount at which point an individual’s name must be disclosed, according to Maine’s election laws) to the SMM PAC; however, individual names from the Portland diocese are scarce. For the reporting period between July 6 and Sept. 30, 2009, only Father Paul Marquis of the Portland diocese is listed as having contributed $100. During that reporting period, the Portland diocese reportedly contributed about $345,000 to Stand for Marriage Maine in 16 payments, ranging from $200 to $149,300.

Aside from monetary and staff contributions, the Portland diocese has been painted as having had significant influence on the results of the 2009 campaign.

In a National Catholic Register article titled “Marriage Victory in Maine,” from November 2009, Joan Frawley Desmond laid out how the church wielded its influence.

The defeat of same-sex “marriage” at the polls in Maine Nov. 3 suggests that Portland Bishop Richard Malone’s “commonsense” message resonated with the state’s relatively secular voters.

[…]

Testifying before the state’s legislature in August, Bishop Malone described same-sex “marriage” as “a dangerous sociological experiment that I believe will have negative consequences for society as a whole. … Children will be taught in schools that same-sex ‘marriage’ and traditional marriage are simply different expressions of the same thing, and that the logical and consistent understanding that marriage and reproduction are intrinsically linked is no longer valid”

Mutty said he’s not sure what type of role the diocese will play in a future marriage equality campaign, if marriage equality advocates are able to collect the required 80,000 signatures to put the question on the ballot in 2012. Mutty’s currently drafting recommendations to the bishop as to how much money the diocese could potentially donate and if staff members should participate.

“This is a very difficult time financially for most people,” he said. “The diocese is certainly experiencing difficulties in this economy.”

Regardless of how the church might be involved next year, Mutty told TAI he will not be running the campaign as he did in 2009, saying the campaign was “extremely taxing on my health, psyche and family.”

Future fight over marriage in Maine

In August 2009, when Karger initially asked the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics & Election Practices to investigate the campaign-fundraising activities of the organizations that helped end same-sex marriage in Maine, he accused Stand for Marriage Maine of being a “front” for NOM, an accusation that was rejected by both organizations at the time.

Presently, however, it appears that NOM is maintaining control over the SMM PAC.

Asked who will be chairing Stand for Marriage Maine in a potential referendum campaign next year, former SMM PAC treasurer Joseph A. Keaney told TAI to ask Brian Brown, NOM’s president and SMM board member.

“[NOM] contributed the most to Stand for Marriage Maine, by far –- almost $2 million,” Keaney said.

Keaney has been listed as SMM’s treasurer on every campaign disclosure report filed between Sept. 2009, when Stand for Marriage Maine initially registered as a PAC, and the most recent report, filed July 2011. Yet the Portland, Maine-based certified public accountant said he is not sure he will continue as the PAC treasurer if a referendum moves forward. First off, he said he has not been asked yet. If he is asked to participate in the campaign, he said, it will depend on what arrangements are made, noting that he was paid for his work on the first campaign.

Brown did not immediately return TAI’s request for comment.

The EqualityMaine PAC is representing the preliminary efforts of a potential campaign to restore marriage equality in Maine next year by putting a voter referendum on the ballot. Thus far, EqualityMaine has only filed $25 in campaign contributions for 2011. Stand for Marriage Maine on the other hand has filed a $32,411 contribution from NOM and a $25 contribution from an unknown source so far this year.

EqualityMaine spokesperson Timothy Rose remains confident that his organization will be able to gather the requisite 80,000 signatures to put the question –- currently phrased as, “Do you support marriage licenses for same sex couples while protecting religious freedom?” — on the ballot. Currently, the question language is in for review with the secretary of state, but Rose said the group hopes to begin the process of collecting signatures this week.

Rose said that what marriage equality advocates in Maine learned from their failure in 2009 was that it is impossible to change hearts and minds during a campaign. Instead, EqualityMaine has been working to change hearts and minds before a potential 2012 campaign, by talking one-and-one to voters. Rose said that two independent polls conducted in 2009 and 2011 show that Maine citizens support legalized marriage for gay and lesbian couples by 53 percent.

“[We] made a commitment to the LGBT community that we wouldn’t bring the question up again until we were statistically certain [it can pass],” Rose said.

What’s critical, he said, is to make sure identified marriage equality supporters make it to the ballot box. Having the referendum during an election year will help in that effort, he said.

Fast-forward to today, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is still involved in an ongoing-but-stalled investigation and lawsuit with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics & Election Practices over whether or not the group broke state law when it contributed money to the 2009 “Yes on 1” campaign run largely by the Stand for Marriage Maine Political Action Committee (SMM).

With a new campaign for a possible 2012 referendum on the ban emerging –- coupled with a soon-to-be released behind-the-scenes documentary about the 2009 campaign –- The American Independent takes a look at the case’s two-year course and what the investigation has revealed about the leading organization against legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples since 2008.

The investigation

Despite claiming Maine’s marriage-equality reversal as a victory, for the past two years, NOM has fought the state’s attempt to investigate its fundraising records, claiming it did not directly fundraise for the Maine campaign. Attempts made by Maine’s ethics commission to test the veracity of NOM’s claims have been halted by litigation.

On Aug. 13, 2009, political consultant, activist and little-known 2012 GOP presidential contender Fred Karger sent a memo to Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics, requesting an investigation into NOM and the Stand for Marriage Maine PAC. In the original request for investigation, filed on behalf of his organization Californians Against Hate, Karger accused NOM and SMM of “money laundering,” claiming the organizations –- along with other big campaign donors such as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland and Focus on the Family — had acted as “fronts” for other individual donors who did not want their identities to be revealed in campaign-finance disclosure reports. Californians Against Hate formed in July 2008 to draw attention to the “mega-donors” in California’s Proposition 8 campaign.

From a memo Karger sent to Wayne, dated Aug. 13, 2009, speaking about Stand for Marriage PAC’s first campaign finance report:

Stand for Marriage PAC reported raising $343,689.50 during the period April 1 to July 5, 2009. We found it very suspicious that of that total, only $400 was given by individuals. The balance of $343,289.50 was contributed by various religious organizations and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. That means that individual contributions to repeal gay marriage in Maine are only .001% of the total raised. Are the proponents trying to hide the identities of those contributing to their campaign? Are they directing all contributions to existing organizations, who then gave the money to Stand for Marriage PAC? This appears to be the case. If this is true, would it not be considered money laundering?

Maine campaign finance law specifies that all political action committees are required to report the names and addresses of contributors who have given more than $50 to the PAC. The law also specifies that it is illegal for a PAC to “knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in the name of another person.”

In the end, the ethics commission chose not to investigate Stand for Marriage Maine. But where the commission saw potential illegal activity, based on the evidence Karger provided (in the form of fundraising emails and direct mailers sent to supporters throughout the Maine marriage campaign), was with the National Organization for Marriage.

On Oct. 1, 2009, the Maine ethics commission authorized its staff to conduct an investigation regarding whether NOM violated a campaign-finance law provision which states that organizations raising or spending more than $5,000 “for the purpose of initiating or promoting a ballot question” are required to register and to file campaign finance reports as a ballot question committee.

For the ethics commission, the concern was not so much on how much money NOM gave to Stand for Marriage PAC for the Yes on 1 campaign, which totaled approximately $1.9 million (though the commission did not know the full amount before the investigation began); the issue was on how much NOM spent on fundraising efforts specifically targeting Maine. NOM’s argument was that it raised money without specifying where the money was going.

The fundraising emails and direct mailers Karger provided the commission showed where NOM mentioned Maine (along with other states) when asking for donations. Karger also pointed out that NOM repeatedly promised donors anonymity in exchange for “generous donations,” with promises such as, “[U]nlike in California, every dollar you give to NOM’s Northeast Action Plan today is private, with no risk of harassment from gay marriage protesters.”

Additionally, NOM President Brian Brown sat on Stand for Marriage Maine’s five-member executive committee.

Both Stand for Marriage Maine PAC and NOM disputed Karger’s accusations through their shared lawyer Barry A. Bostrom of Terre Haute, Ind.-based litigation firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom.

In defense of NOM, Bostrom wrote:

NOM is a national organization that is active in several states across the country. It makes large contributions from its general treasury in several states. By “general treasury” we mean funds not solicited or designated for any specific state or ballot measure. … If the Commission were to launch a pre-election investigation, Karger will likely run ads and issue press releases trumpeting the “news” that the “Yes on Question 1″ campaign is under official investigation for ‘illegal’ activities. …  The Commission should not permit itself to be used in this matter, which could potentially impact the outcome of a free and fair election that is of crucial important to the people of Maine.

The day the ethics commission voted (3 to 2) to launch the investigation, NOM President Brian Brown told reporters:

“We look forward to the investigation because we’re gonna be able to prove that we’ve done nothing wrong. We’ve complied with all campaign finance law, and this is nothing more than an attempt to harass people who want to stand up for traditional marriage.”

Watch a WMTW.com video clip on the ruling:

The lawsuits

Brown claimed he “looked forward to the investigation,” but on Oct. 21, before the investigation could even begin, NOM sued the state, claiming the provision of the law it was accused of violating was unconstitutional. The plaintiffs were denied a request for a restraining order to prevent the commission from pursuing its investigation while the state tested the constitutionality of Maine’s campaign-finance law. The investigation went forward, and the commission subpoenaed NOM for documents and information.

Rather than submitting the requested information, NOM filed petitions to “vacate or modify” the subpoenas, objecting to them as “overbroad, irrelevant, and immaterial.”

The commission denied NOM’s request. In a memo, dated Feb. 19, 2010, Wayne wrote to his staff:

NOM contributed $1.93 million to SMM, which ran a successful political campaign expressly advocating in favor of the same-sex marriage people’s veto referendum. NOM provided roughly 62.6% of SMM’s funding.

In a memo dated March 16, 2010, Wayne wrote to his staff:

Mr. Brown also asserts that if he has to answer questions by the Commission staff or counsel regarding communications with SMM, that will “substantially alter how [he] would choose to communicate in the future.” This is plainly not enough to constitute irreparable harm. If it were, then every investigation that involves asking people questions about activities that may trigger certain regulatory obligations would constitute irreparable harm – a notion unsupported by the case law we have reviewed.

Wayne, who has been the executive director of the Maine ethics commission for the past eight years, recently told TAI that he could not remember another entity suing the state to prevent an investigation.

“Most of the time, if there’s a question on whether a political party or political interest group has complied [with the law], most respondents are cooperative and provide information to the state to determine whether there were violations or not,” Wayne said.

He called NOM’s actions “unusual.”

“I think anyone who really wants to understand why NOM is doing this,” Wayne said, “they believe [seeking the identities of their donors] interferes with the political process. That’s motivating the legislation.”

On March 3, 2010, NOM’s team filed another suit in state Superior Court challenging the commission’s Feb. 25, 2010, decision to deny their requests to vacate the subpoenas. This effectively halted the investigation.

What is NOM afraid of revealing?

In August 2010, the U.S. District Court upheld the constitutionality of Maine’s campaign finance law, but NOM refused to concede defeat and appealed the court’s decision. The federal case moves forward next month, when the U.S. District Court will be hearing oral arguments for NOM’s appeal case. The next court date is scheduled for Sept. 14 in Boston, Wayne said.

Last month, Karger wrote a post in the blog Liberaland, suggesting Brown and Gallagher could face prison time depending on the commission’s ruling.

“Some people will absolutely say anything to try to get publicity for themselves,” NOM”s counsel Jim Bopp, Jr., told TAI in an email, in response to Karger’s implication that NOM’s leaders could face jail time. “I guess it worked.”

He did not comment further on the matter.

In response to questions as to why NOM has been fighting this investigation for so long, NOM board chair Maggie Gallagher said she was not familiar enough with the investigation or lawsuit to comment, and President Brian Brown chose not to respond.

Among the materials requested by the Maine ethics commission in last year’s subpoena include: all revenue NOM received in 2009 and where that revenue came from; the identity of any donors to NOM who contributed $5,000 or more in 2009; and all communications between NOM and these donors. The commission also requested all information regarding expenditures made by NOM or by Stand for Marriage Maine PAC related to the people’s veto referendum on same-sex marriage; all communication between NOM and SMM; and minutes from SMM and NOM board meetings throughout 2009.

Most of the above-mentioned information would not be disclosed to the public, Wayne has stated during commission meetings, but NOM has demonstrated it does not even want to disclose documentation to a state agency whose job is to ensure ethics in elections and campaigns.

If Maine’s ethics commission — if it is ever able to continue its investigation — finds that NOM violated the law, at that point, the organization might have to disclose where it got its money to help Maine revoke marriage privileges from same-sex couples.

“The 2009 people’s veto referendum was a high-profile election that affected the civic rights of Maine citizens,” Wayne told TAI. “It’s important in general for Maine voters to know who is influencing elections, where the financing for campaigns is coming from [so that voters] can evaluate the messages in campaigns [that appear] in voters’ mailboxes and on their TV screens.”

In part, the goal of the investigation is to make NOM’s actions in Maine more transparent. Regardless of whether that’s happened, the Maine investigation has challenged NOM’s persistent donation-solicitation promise that contributors’ names will never be revealed.

NOM’s fundraising communications now come with a disclaimer. A recent email, dated Aug. 4, 2011:

Contributions or gifts to the National Organization for Marriage, a 501(c)(4) organization with QNC status, are not tax-deductible. The National Organization for Marriage does not accept contributions from business corporations, labor unions, foreign nationals, or federal contractors; however, it may accept contributions from federally registered political action committees. Donations may be used for political purposes such as supporting or opposing candidates. No funds will be earmarked or reserved for any political purpose.

Meanwhile, the future of legal marriage for gay and lesbian couples in Maine is uncertain.

NOM leaders have stated confidence they will be able to prevent a repeal of the repeal. Gallagher recently told the Associated Press: “We’d be optimistic about winning again if they want to put Maine through another campaign.” And as The American Independent recently reported, NOM is trying to raise between $15 million and $20 million by the end of fiscal year 2011, for all of its anti-marriage-equality efforts across the country.

CitizenLink reports:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — where the Prop 8 case is on appeal — asked the state’s high court to determine, whether under California law, marriage amendment proponents “have the authority to assert the State’s interest,” since California’s governor and attorney general refuse to do so.

On Aug. 4, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled (PDF) that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.

From U.S. District Chief Vaughn R. Walker’s August 2010 decision:

Proposition 8 cannot withstand any level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, as excluding same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate state interest. One example of a legitimate state interest in not issuing marriage licenses to a particular group might be a scarcity of marriage licenses or county officials to issue them. But marriage licenses in California are not a limited commodity, and the existence of 18,000 same-sex married couples in California shows that the state has the resources to allow both same-sex and opposite-sex couples to wed.

Prop 8 proponents appealed the court’s decision.

Those defending Proposition 8, the “defendant-intervenors” in the case, includeProtectMarriage.com; Yes on 8, a Project of California Renewal; and “official proponents” Dennis Hollingsworth, Gail J. Knight, Martin F. Gutierrez, Hakshing William Tam and Mark A. Jansson. They are being represented in part by the Alliance Defense Fund.

Plaintiffs in the case are two same-sex couples: Kristin M. Perry and Sandra B. Stier, who live in Berkeley, Calif., and raise four children together; and Paul T. Katami and Jeffrey J. Zarrillo, who live in Burbank. The “plaintiff-intervenors” are the city and county of San Francisco.

The chairman of ProtectMarriage.com’s executive committee, Ron Prentice (also CEO of the California Family Council, a Focus on the Family affiliate), was quoted in CitizenLink expressing hope that the case will reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The record of this case is packed with disregard for legal precedent, and the issues of states’ rights, the people’s will, and, of course, the definition of marriage, are extremely significant,” Prentice said. “The coalition of national organizations like Focus on the Family, and state organizations like all of the family policy councils, will not be deterred on the issue of marriage, because it involves God’s heart, society’s future and a child’s protection.”

One of the groups representing the couples in this case, the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), has started a movement asking California marriage-equality supporters to petition the court to release video footage of the public trial that led up to last August’s decision, which they claim the Prop 8 proponents are trying to prevent.

In the meantime, AFER has released videos of its own, on the lives of the couples in the lawsuit.

Watch Perry & Stier’s story:

Kris and Sandy from American Foundation for Equal Ri on Vimeo.

Watch Katami & Zarrillo’s story:

Paul and Jeff from American Foundation for Equal Ri on Vimeo.

NOM’s most recent defeat on this front was in Minnesota, a state where the organization recently helped pass a proposed constitutional amendment to appear on the ballot in 2012 that defines “marriage” as being only between one man and one woman. On June 30, the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ruled that NOM and faith-based policy group the Minnesota Family Council must disclose their corporate donations.

The ruling forced NOM leaders to roll back on a promise they have been making to donors since the group formed in 2007: Their identities would never be revealed. And while the arguments made before campaign-finance boards in various states have remained consistent — to protect donors from violence and harassment — the arguments made to supporters and donors have been much more complex and carefully crafted. Over the past four years, NOM has carved out a narrative that its movement is one of religious integrity, grassroots nobility and subject to intense persecution from violent radicals.

The American Independent has analyzed redacted fundraising emails (PDF, large) from the early years of NOM’s anti-marriage-equality campaign collected and archived by the University of California – Los Angeles Department of Statistics. NOM has used different rhetorical tactics to solicit donations while simultaneously making the case for opacity, among them: painting NOM supporters as persecuted victims and marriage-equality advocates as violent perpetrators, and telling donors their livelihoods would be at risk were their names to be revealed.

NOM President Brian Brown’s emails through 2008 and 2009, and even today, often end in similar ways, with a postscript below his signature. From Nov. 14, 2008:

P.S.: Can you help us continue to fight? Donations to the National Organization for Marriage are not tax-deductible–but they are also not public record. Given the attacks on donors, I’m pleased to tell you: You can help us continue the fight without fearing for your family in these troubled times.

And from Jan. 30, 2009:

Help us defend Prop 8 now and in the future: Can you give $100, $500, or even $5,000 to support marriage? Donations to National Organization for Marriage are NOT tax-deductible but they are also NOT public information. So you can fight back against the bullying in good conscience without any anxieties.

Reason to donate and donate privately: Religious persecution

Once speculation began to buzz around LGBT-rights groups that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was heavily involved in pushing Proposition 8 in California in 2008 by donating money, time and volunteers to the campaign, NOM rushed to vilify the backlash spilling out from the gay community. Repeated in email after email are supposed threats faced by “traditional marriage” supporters “to people’s property, to their persons, to their livelihoods, and to their place of worship.”

In early November 2008, envelopes containing white powder were mailed to two LDS temples, in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, and to the headquarters of Knights of Columbus (which donated $1.4 million to NOM in 2009, as The Washington Independent previously reported) in New Haven, Conn. On Nov. 15, 2008, the Associated Pressreported that the packages — anticipated to be anthrax or another bioterrorist substance — tested nontoxic by the FBI. The source of the white powder mailings was never determined, and several LGBT advocacy groups condemned the threats, but the LDS and NOM blamed gay-rights groups and used these incidences as evidence that marriage-equality supporters were harassing anti-same-sex-marriage activists.

In an email dated Nov. 20, 2008, three weeks after Californians voted to strip homosexuals of their newly-received marriage rights, NOM President Brown announced the launch of AbovetheHate.com, a website (which doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2008) run by NOM and erected in response to the purported anger members of the Mormon church were facing for investing millions of dollars into the amendment to ban gay marriage in California. The main feature on the site is a letter addressed to Thomas S. Monson, president of the LDS church, and co-signed by 5,583 Evangelical, Catholic and Mormon leaders. The letter essentially defended the Mormon church’s extensive monetary contributions that went to defeating same-sex marriage in California and Arizona.

“In the wake of our Prop 8 victory, gay marriage activists have singled out the LDS Church for protests, hate mail, petitions to remove tax-exempt status, a lawsuit alleging election reporting violations, and even an anthrax hoax,” Brown wrote in the Nov. 20 email. “Reading some gay marriage blogs over the past few days, I was shocked by the venomous anti-religious bigotry being leveled against the LDS Church.”

The “anti-religious bigotry” Brown refers to partly exemplified by a Daily Kos blog postlinked on the AbovetheHate homepage (no other blogs are cited). The post, written by Dante Atkins, is dated Oct. 20, 2008, before the California marriage amendment vote:

“[T]he No on Prop 8 folks told me recently that the “Protect Marriage” campaign has raised $30 million dollars–over half of it from the Mormon Church. Now, I have nothing personally against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They most certainly have the constitutional right to worship in their own way. They have the right to minister in whatever way they see fit and to marry whomever they see fit in their churches. … But when the church and its members invest millions of dollars in an attempt to write discrimination into my state’s constitution and divorce my friend Brian against his will, there will be hell to pay.“

In the post, Atkins included a spreadsheet of donors to anti-gay-marriage campaigns in Arizona and California, which revealed their names, cities, amount donated and affiliation to the Mormon church. Atkins then asked marriage-equality supporters to research top donors’ backgrounds to find evidence of support for “less than honorable causes,” in the name of creating negative publicity for the Mormon church. Atkins encouraged readers to use “any LEGAL tool at your disposal.”

Brown wrote in reply:

This sort of targeted harassment against a minority religious community – simply because they have chosen to exercise their constitutional rights to vote, organize, and donate in support of a cause they believe in – has no place in American politics.

On Dec. 12, 2008, Brown updated his email subscribers, writing, “We have 5000 courageous signers so far. (Can you sacrifice $5 a month to help us keep the message going? For the price of a Big Mac you can counter the campaign of hate directed at religious people across this country.)”

A television ad from October 2008 — again, before the Prop 8 vote — produced byCourage Campaign depicted Mormon missionaries invading a lesbian couple’s home and stealing their wedding rings, ripping their marriage licenses. The ad was repeatedly excoriated by Brown, who on Nov. 14, 2008, wrote:

“A TV ad campaign viciously attacking a religious minority has been followed by a week of public intimidations, threats, calls for retribution, and attacks on people’s livelihoods, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And this unprecedented flood of sheer hatred against Americans who think marriage is the union of husband and wife has been applauded and encouraged by mainstream, powerful politicians and organizations.”

Reason to donate and donate privately: If outed, donors could lose revenue/jobs

NOM launched another website on Dec. 10, 2008, the now-defunct BustTheBlacklist.com, a response to gay-marriage advocates launching boycotts against select California businesses that donated (or whose employees donated) to reverse marriage equality. Brown’s December 2008 emails focus on the small-amount donors attacked by anti-Prop 8 protesters, one being a Pollo Loco franchise employee from Lakewood, Calif., who, according to Brown, donated $100 to the Prop 8 campaign as an individual, not a representative of the restaurant chain.

Around this time, NOM and California-based coalition ProtectMarriage.com filed a jointlawsuit (PDF) against California Secretary of State Debra Bowen — in an effort to conceal the identities of their donors– and California campaign finance law, specifically the part that requires those who donate $100 or less to reveal their personal information. The lawsuit also challenged state campaign-finance policy that required reporting donations after a proposition had been voted on.

“Some people who supported Proposition 8 had their home and churches vandalized, were forced to resign their jobs, and were even threatened with violence and death,” Brown wrote in a December email defending the lawsuit.

NOM accused gay advocates of driving down A-1 Self  Storage’s Yelp ratings because the storage company donated to the Prop 8 campaign. In an email on Feb. 6, 2009, Brown asked supporters to go Yelp and write positive ratings for the business.

In an attempt to demonstrate that businesses were being harmed by the gay-marriage advocacy, in November 2008, the NOM team brought up the dating service eHarmony, which had been ruled by New Jersey’s attorney general to open up its online matchmaking services to same-sex couples. In fact, the ruling was the result of a 2005 lawsuit.

On Nov. 21, 2008, Brown wrote:

That New Jersey’s attorney general wanted to do so is just weird, given the large number of online dating (and, er, other) services available. Forcing eHarmony to provide a gay dating service makes sense only when you recognize what the architects of this movement really have in mind: using the law as a club to reshape the culture totally, so that people who believe in marriage – and the rest of traditional sexual morality – are forced out of the public eye altogether.

Reason to donate and donate privately: Protecting African Americans

Another oft-used NOM strategy has been to pit two minority groups — African Americans and the LGBT community — against each other, claiming gay-marriage advocates in California were specifically targeting African Americans by protesting Prop 8. NOM has also suggested that, generally, gay marriage threatens the black community.

In an email dated Nov. 21, 2008, Brown wrote:

Religious minorities (Mormons and African-Americans) are bearing the brunt of a new wall of licensed hatred, approved and encouraged by formerly responsible voices. No Americans, and especially not a religious minority, should face these kind of ugly threats because they have exercised their core civil rights to vote, to speak, or to donate in support of an idea like: marriage is the union of husband and wife.

In an email dated Nov. 14, 2008, Brown attempted to draw a correlation between former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to repeal Prop 8 and racism:

“What is Arnold Schwarzenegger, a white Republican, doing calling on courts to invalidate the votes of the 70 percent of African-Americans who voted to uphold marriage as one man and one woman?”

Another email, dated Aug. 26, 2009, discussed a Netroots Nation conference and picked out pieces of LGBT activists discussing their strategies to fight proposed state amendments banning same-sex marriage. Brown noted that a New Jersey woman making a documentary said she was having trouble finding members of the “minority” community who would speak in favor of same-sex marriage in the film.

“Maybe New Jersey minority community members understand that the ideal for children is a husband and wife working together in marriage, and that gay marriage will change what all our kids are taught by our own government,” Brown wrote in response. “Maybe they do not want to see the moral education of New Jersey’s black or Latino children co-opted to serve the interests of wealthy donors to the Democratic Party. Maybe they understand that there is something wrong when ‘civil rights’ is taken over to mean the right of two men to insist that we all view their relationship as a marriage, whether we like it or not.”

Karger was the first to announce his intent to run in April 2010 and the first to form an exploratory committee in July 2010. He has traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire multiple times and even launched a commercial for a brief time.

Karger’s resume includes working as a senior consultant for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford.

However, as Karger prepares to campaign in Iowa, he’ll have a tough road set by Christian conservative activists. Karger, the first openly gay presidential candidate, challenged with the Maine Ethics Commission that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) engaged in money laundering, resulting in an ongoing investigation.

NOM, along with the anti-gay American Family Association and the Family Research Council, supported the Bob Vander Plaats-led campaign to successfully oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices.

The FEC is currently considering a formal complaint by Karger that his exclusion from a recent forum with the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition was an “in-kind contribution.”

Karger was also an outspoken opponent against the Proposition 8 campaign in California to ban same-sex marriage by popular vote.

During the Faith & Freedom event, the 5 potential GOP presidential candidates all expressed their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Karger said he will be officially filing the papers at the FEC’s Washington, D.C., office Wednesday morning.

TAI spent two afternoons with Karger last week when he was in Washington, D.C., for the Victory Fund’s Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference. While Karger’s chances of gaining the 2012 nomination may be slim, he could play an outsized role during the nomination cycle. Much in the way that Ron Paul challenged doctrinaire Republican views during the 2008 Republican campaign, Karger could serve as the alternative voice during debates that forces other candidates to face issues they may rather avoid.

Karger is a long shot candidate by any definition of the term. He holds low name recognition, does not fundraise at the same level as other potential candidates and will face difficulty winning over any socially conservative voters. His qualifying experience comes not from elected office but from his career as a political consultant; he has worked on numerous campaigns, including Ronald Reagan’s presidential bids, and he was a senior executive at The Dolphin Group, a consulting firm most famous for creating the Willie Horton ads in the 1988 presidential campaign.

He may not stand much of a chance of winning, but Karger is the closest thing to an official candidate in the field at this point. He has a presidential exploratory committee, and made headlines recently when he began airing ads in Iowa — a full 14 months before caucus day. He is making his tenth visit to New Hampshire this week and has been to Iowa five times throughout the year, only trailing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich in Iowa appearances.

Karger’s current ambitions are focused solely on proving his initial viability as a candidate in order to qualify for the nomination debates next year. “I’ll do whatever it takes to put pressure on these debate organizers, and I’ll pick my battles,” Karger said.

“I had two goals for this year: one was to satisfy the leadership,” he said, discussing the leaders of the LGBT rights movement who he hopes will support his campaign. “I had to prove that I was serious because everybody said, ‘oh it’s a stunt’, which is a natural assumption with my personality and background, but it’s not. And number two, [to show] that I am credible. A lot harder to prove, but I think I’ve accomplished it with the kind of attention I’ve gotten and the devotion [to traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire].”

No matter what Karger says about — or how others perceive — his presidential run, he is aware of the reality that his candidacy would largely revolve around forcing other Republicans to address gay rights. “If I do nothing else, to kind of make this issue, to put a face on this issue as opposed to what happened in previous elections like 2004 where the gay community was getting used as a political tool to strengthen the president’s reelection,” he said. “If I can do that I’ll have done quite a bit.”

He hopes his candidacy can help other generations of LGBT individuals feel comfortable with their identity. Karger largely stayed in the closet throughout his consulting career. He lived a double life, spending his days organizing campaigns for conservative politicians, but in his personal life, supporting gay rights activism.

He recounted one incident early in his career that taught him the importance of keeping his identity hidden in his professional life. In 1978, he made a political contribution to the No on Prop 6 campaign, a measure which would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in California public schools.

“I took it upon myself, I’m 28 years old, I’m working for the Republican conservative running for attorney general by day, and by night, I’m helping the Republican’s opposition,” Karger said. “And I wrote a check for $100 … to this campaign. It was to get the sponsorship of the Los Angles County Young Republicans.”

He did not disclose that donation to his Republican employers at the time, but the contribution became public through campaign finance disclosures after the campaign. Two years later, that contribution came back to haunt Karger when he was working on the Senate primary for a conservative Republican candidate Ray Hanzlik.

“Ray got a letter from one of my detractors from the Young Republicans, saying ‘how can you have someone like this working for you who supports the homosexual agenda,’ and had a copy of the campaign [donation] page that had my name in there, and then a couple newspaper stories about the event and the Young Republicans,” Karger said. “He [Hanzlik] just throws this down on my desk and says ‘you should know who your enemy is, this doesn’t affect me one iota, but I want you to have it.’ And I still have it. It really sent a chilling effect on me and kept me — I never gave another contribution of $100 or more, since that’s the [reporting] threshold, for many years. It kept me more in the closet I think. It scared the hell out of me, because I could easily be fired. It’s difficult situation in Republican politics to this day.”

Karger did not come out to the general political world until after he retired from his position at The Dolphin Group in 2004, fully investing his time to gay rights activism. Through Californians Against Hate — the group he founded to work against Proposition 8 — Karger has been at the forefront of opposing the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and linking anti-gay funding to the Mormon Church. He has organized boycotts of businesses that contributed to anti-same-sex marriage campaigns and filed frequent complaints to force these campaigns to disclose their sources of funding.

As he has switched from an activist into a potential candidate, Karger has turned his attention to pushing for the repeal of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which bans openly gay citizens from serving in the U.S. armed forces.

“This is kind of a political football that people’s lives are being tossed around, 14,000 people have already been discharged under “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” it costs $355 million for the government, so it’s ridiculous. It’s discriminatory, the president should have done it with a stroke of the pen and not be enforcing it,” he said. “I fault Republicans in the Senate because I think there was a breakthrough with some of the moderates who were willing to do the right thing and they’re unfortunately tied to the leadership.”

The focus of his potential campaign may be primarily directed at LGBT civil liberties, but Karger would challenge the other presidential candidates on a host of other issues if he qualifies for the nomination debates.

He could create headaches for current frontrunner Mitt Romney. “I fully embrace his Romneycare for Massachusetts,” Karger said when asked if he agrees with the former Massachusetts governor on any issues. Karger opposed the federal health-care reform bill but said he supports state-based systems such as the measure Romney shepherded through as governor, which was substantively the same as the national bill.

His policy views are certainly unique among Republican ideology. Karger, a longtime member of Republican Majority for Choice, is staunchly pro-choice.

“There are no moderate voices out there; there are no other possible potential candidates who are even pro-choice. Even some of the libertarians are not,” Karger said. “I think that is extremely important, a major Republican issue. To me keeping government out of people’s private lives, that’s a basic tenet of the Republican Party.”

Karger breaks ranks from the party platform on a number of other issues as well. He gives lip service to the general conservative principles of smaller government and a strong national defense, but when he is forced to discuss specifics, there are few moments where he would agree with the rest of the field’s stated positions. He opposes Obama’s troop expansion in Afghanistan and advocates for removing soldiers from the ground while using advance military technology from a distance instead.

If he were in the White House today, Karger would extend the Bush tax cuts for one year, but he is unsure what he would prefer in the long term (these comments were made prior to the deal reached between the Obama administration and Senate Republicans Monday night). However, he does not share the zeal of his fellow Republicans for tax cuts for the rich. “I’m not for giving tax relief to the super rich,” he says. As to Republican claims that the $250,000 annual income marker is too low to describe a family as rich, Karger said, “it’s not exactly middle class.”

As for what Karger would do to help stimulate the economy and restart jobs he only offers vague comments about being an optimistic figure in the White House who would encourage consumers to get out and spend money again. He would like to cut down on government bureaucracy, but is unable to name anything specific. “The issue area is newer to me,” he said, but explains that he has been meeting with experts in various fields to bolster his credentials while he is still in the “exploratory” phase of the campaign.

Karger’s willingness to admit when he does not have enough information is notably refreshing in a landscape where politicians are prepared to spin any question lobbed their way. But this very attribute that is charming in a one-on-one situation would damage any possible sense of legitimacy if it continued through presidential debate appearances. He could run circles around people speaking on LGBT civil rights issues, but the seasoned campaign veterans he would face have honed messages on any major policy points.

Beyond expanding his ability to respond to the issues of the day, Karger faces a number of challenges in order to be seen as a viable presidential candidate. However, his consulting experience may give him an edge in conducting a headline-grabbing campaign necessary to boost name recognition as an underdog candidate.

“I need to be creative and I need to do things very differently,” he said. Different is definitely one way to describe his strategy to date. His campaign hands out swag — including frisbees — that is covered with “Fred Who?” a direct acknowledgment of the fact that he is currently unrecognizable to voters. He has already begun running ads in New Hampshire and Iowa, likely far before any other candidate will enter the airwaves

“Normally, you’ve got to be a little cautious in a campaign, but when you’re a longshot you generally throw caution out the window; what do you have to lose?

“I got a lot of my inspiration on a lot of what I’ve done, like announcing [his possible candidacy] in New Orleans, like this [ad] from David Plouffe, because in that book he said we have nothing to lose so we took chances,” Karger said. Plouffe served as Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, and his book “The Audacity to Win” has been described by many as an instructive manual on how to wage an insurgent campaign (even Newt Gingrich gave the book credit recently).

Fundraising will be the largest hurdle to overcome for a Karger campaign to gain any traction. “That’s languishing, and I’ve not really asked, I’ve not done what I’m about to do. I wanted to wait until the midterms were over and now the holidays,” he sayid. “After the first of the year is when I’m going to start doing that. It’s my least favorite part of it. Again, I have to prove that I’m serious, because why would people contribute to what looks like Fred going around and riding in parades and doing all this.”

He has set his sights significantly below the figures other candidates are likely to spend, but his preliminary budget still requires a high sum. “It’s a modest budget by presidential candidates, but it is a hell of a lot of money, $5 or $6 million. But I can do my two state strategy initially and I can make a big impact.”

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.”

[Congress1] 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.