Having spent the last five years putting all of my political will, interest and energy into fighting against the spread of same-sex marriage as if it were a contagious disease, I must admit that it is hard for me to put the following text into words let alone utter them with my own voice.
Whether it is an issue of disbelief, shame or embarrassment, the one thing that is for sure is that I have come to this point after several months of an internal conflict with myself. That conflict gradually tore away at me until recently when I was able to for the first time simply admit to myself that I do in fact support civil marriage equality.
While I have come to terms with this reality internally, speaking about it, even with the closest members of my family, has proven to be something difficult for me to do.
In short, if there is an issue of disbelief surrounding my newfound support for civil marriage equality, it is disbelief from those who surround me. If there is an issue of shame, it is a result of acknowledging the number of people I have targeted, hurt and oppressed. And if there is an issue of embarrassment, its roots lie in the face-to-face encounters I have had and expect to have with those with whom I once toiled over this very contentious issue.
I understand that those whom I approach now are well within their right to disbelieve and question me and my motives. I accept that is the result of what I have done over the past few years and would therefore like to take this time to, as openly as I can, discuss the events that brought about my change of heart.
As you may already know, I was the one behind the 2010 Summer for Marriage Tour which the National Organization for Marriage sponsored and operated throughout July and August last year. It was my doing when, in March that year, I approached Brian Brown, then Executive Director of the National Organization for Marriage about sponsoring and participating in a series of traditional marriage rallies scattered around the Nation.
In fact, the tour route itself, while chosen largely by NOM itself, incorporated as many of the sites I had originally chosen and helped independently organize. Other locations were added due to strategic, political or simply logistical purposes.
Ironically, one of the last tour stops added to the itinerary was Atlanta and I bring this site up because it was in Atlanta that I can remember that I questioned what I was doing for the first time. The NOM showing in the heart of the Bible-belt was dismal and the hundreds of counter-protesters who showed up were nothing short of inspiring.
Even though I had been confronted by the counter-protesters throughout the marriage tour, the lesbian and gay people whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people for me almost instantly. For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing.
If my transition from opponent to supporter of same-sex civil marriage was a timeline, Atlanta would be indicated by the first point on the line. The next point on that timeline would be two months later.
After the marriage tour wrapped up and everyone went their separate ways, I transformed my marriage tour “Inside Look” blog to a more general blog about protecting marriage and opposing the homosexual agenda.
Over the course of September and October I occupied my time writing up articles along these very lines. Some of the articles were fair, even if you disagree with them, but many of them I would now categorize as propaganda filled with strong and unnecessary rhetoric. This is especially true of the YouTube videos I made.
One article I wrote, towards the end of October, 2010 caught the attention of a blogger by the name of RJ, who writes on the blog AmIWorking. He responded to my article about the homosexual agenda with an article addressed personally to me regarding marriage equality. In short, his article had the miraculous effect of instantly putting things into perspective for me.
At that point, between what I had witnessed on the marriage tour and RJ’s post about marriage equality, I really came to understand that gays and lesbians were just real people who wanted to live real lives and be treated equally as opposed to, for example, wanting to destroy American culture. No, they didn’t want to destroy American culture, they wanted to openly particulate in it. I was well on my way to becoming a supporter of civil marriage equality. You can read my statement retracting the statements I made about gays and lesbians here [ http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2011/04/g-a-y-exclusive-exposure-to-nom-could-lead-to-unintended-side-effects-national-organization-for-marriage-tour-organizerfac.html ].
As a result of that I closed down my blog within a couple of days. That gave birth to my current endeavor, The Conservative Dispatch, which is how I occupy my time. The site is about promoting general conservative principles and is not focused solely on social issues.
In December I came out in support of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I also removed the admins I had delegated my moderating duties to for my Facebook page.
Having done that, I had to pick up where they left off. I was largely taken aback by the fact that the page I created had become such a hateful place. My comments and rhetoric paled in comparison to what that place had turned into. I began to understand why the gay community was out there claiming opposition to same-sex civil marriage was all about hate.
I soon realized that there I was surrounded by hateful people; propping up a cause I created five years ago, a cause which I had begun to question. This would be timeline point number three. I wanted to extend an olive branch in some way and started to reinstate those who had been banned by previous administrators of my page. I welcomed them to participate on the page and did what I could do erase the worst comments and even ban those who posted them.
Also, I started regularly conversing with same-sex marriage supporters in another Facebook group [ http://www.facebook.com/FreedomFighters4Equality ]. This further solidified my new perception of gays and lesbians as real people, not some faceless political opponent. That could be considered the next point on the timeline.
Lastly, I came to understand the difference between civil marriage and holy marriage as in the sacrament of the Catholic Church. Let me rephrase. I understood that but either willingly chose not to accept it or just didn’t see it. Regardless, I see it now and the significance of that is as follows:
Once you understand the great difference between civil marriage and holy marriage, there is not one valid reason to forbid the former from same-sex couples, and all that is left to protect is the latter.
Indeed Christians and Catholics alike are well within their right to demand that holy matrimony, a sacrament and service performed by the Church and recognized by the Church, remains between a man and a woman as their faith would dictate. However, that has nothing to do with civil marriage, performed and recognized by the State in accordance with state law.
My name is Louis J. Marinelli, a conservative-Republican and I now support full civil marriage equality. The constitution calls for nothing less.
Last week, I resigned from the National Organization and publicly declared my support for same-sex civil marriage [ http://louisjmarinelli.com/politics/i-now-support-full-marriage-equality (above)]. 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.
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.
I can’t explain these fundraising miracles, only NOM’s inner circle could.
My area of involvement was online outreach and growing the grassroots network. This is an area the National Organization for Marriage is particularly weak in. I’m not telling you anything new, that’s a fact that could be observed by the size, fervor and stretch of the summer bus tour and a fact which is underscored by the aforementioned public tax records. Don’t misunderstand me, I think some of the stops on the summer bus tour were very effective and helpful for NOM. On the other hand, many of them were not. It’s just a fact of reality.
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?
That same enthusiasm gap, support gap, involvement gap, call it what you want, exists for NOM in the online world as much as it does in the real world. This is where I came into the picture over the past six months or so. It was clear that NOM needed a plan to activate what supporters they had, to mobilize them to respond to events to create a grassroots-like illusion of support.
Of course, illusion is my word but is an accurate usage of the word considering the objective. NOM in no way ever ordered me to create an illusion.
I am sharing this with you because 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.
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?
Republicans are unhappy with their field of presidential candidates and yearn for someone who will come along to save them. But here’s what the GOP doesn’t want to confront: its problem lies not in its candidates but in itself.
The candidates appear much smaller than they are because the party’s primary voters and core interest groups insist upon cutting them down to size. To win a Republican nomination, a candidate has to move right, recant absolutely any past position that violates the current conservative catechism and never dare to speak the truth that solving our deficit problem will require new revenue — a.k.a. taxes.
Thus we have Mitt Romney defending the individual mandate to buy insurance that was part of the health plan he championed in Massachusetts but then denouncing President Obama for imposing a similar mandate at the national level. This shuffle wasn’t good enough for the guardians of conservative orthodoxy. It ruled that Romney will merit salvation only by fully repudiating his greatest achievement as governor.
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has been absolutely abject in declaring his sinfulness for once believing in a cap-and-trade solution to global warming. “I’ve said I was wrong [ http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/pawlenty-hopes-im-sorry-is-enough/ ],” he insisted. “It was a mistake, and I’m sorry.” Pass him the sackcloth and ashes, please.
And then there is Mitch Daniels. The Indiana governor has the advantage of not having joined the race yet, which is why so many in the GOP are turning their lonely hearts to him.
Even if you accept some pandering to the primary electorate, the Republicans’ problem is deeper and creates huge difficulties for the country as a whole. The reason Washington is paralyzed over the deficit is because most Republicans are petrified to admit that we will never get our budget close to balance without some tax increases. Both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush raised taxes when deficits got too high. If Reagan were trying to do that now, his party would condemn him as a big-taxing liberal.
In a rational deficit debate, Republicans would call for more spending cuts than Democrats want and a consumption tax to avoid hikes in levies in income and capital gains. Democrats would insist on fewer cuts and tax increases on income, capital gains, dividends and financial transactions. We’d fight it out, and maybe even find ground for compromise. But as only a few brave Republicans publicly acknowledge, taking all revenue off the table is not a serious position.
This goes to the biggest problem of all. Today’s Republicans have totally broken with the party’s long commitment to innovative national action: the land-grant colleges, national parks, food and drug regulation, interstate highways and government student loans. The creation of the income tax itself was supported by a good conservative Republican president, William Howard Taft.
Today’s GOP is committed to one proposition above all others: Reducing the size of the federal government. In this, Republicans resemble no group so much as conservative Democrats from the 1850s — minus, it must be said quickly and with gratitude, the shameful position such Democrats took on slavery. Even nullification and secession talk is now in vogue among some Republicans.
Imagine what would happen today to a Republican who said this [ http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1861lincoln-special.html ]: “Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of ‘State rights’. .?.?. Much is said about the ‘sovereignty’ of the States; but the word, even, is not in the national Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln spoke those words on July 4, 1861, and believed so much in the national government that he waged a bloody war to save it. Do you think any Republican will be quoting Lincoln on states’ rights during the 2012 debates?
What this nation most needs right now is a Republican Party that believes again in its own best traditions. It would be lovely if at least one of the party’s presidential candidates stood up for them.
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