We’re Changing Our Name
Rights Equal Rights
It’s been just two years since a small group of friends and I started Californians Against Hate to draw attention to the mega-donors to California’s Proposition 8 campaign. It’s been a busy 23 months.
We began on July 18, 2008 by helping to assemble a coalition of LGBT organizations and labor in San Diego to boycott Doug Manchester’s three hotels. Doug Manchester had contributed $125,000 in very early money to quality and pass Proposition 8, which took marriage rights away from millions of Californians. Why should we support his three hotels, only to have that money used against us? [ ... ]
Our new name reflects our new direction and makes us more national in scope.
Rest assured, that I have never been more determined and motivated to help lead the LGBTQ community in our fight for full equal rights in this country.
Younger people who begin to realize that they might be lesbian, gay, bi-sexual transgender or queer will soon be afforded all the same rights as their brothers, sisters friends and neighbors.
That is what our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
We will settle for nothing less.

Fred Karger: “Rest assured, that I have never been more determined and motivated to help lead the LGBTQ community in our fight for full equal rights in this country.”

Check it out!

That commission, on a tip from Fred Karger — the founder of Californians Against Hate, went after the National Organization for Marriage and nailed the group for clenching their tiny fists and stamping their little feet when they were told they had to comply with Maine’s election donor disclosure laws.

Anti-gay marriage group seeks end to fundraising probe
Kennebec-Journal online
AUGUSTA — The National Organization for Marriage will ask the state ethics commission Thursday to dismiss an investigation into the fundraising techniques it used prior to last year’s gay-marriage vote.
The group believes the commission does not have the authority to conduct the investigation, said Barry Bostrom, an attorney with the Indiana law firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom.
In October, the commission directed its staff to investigate whether the National Organization for Marriage should have registered with the state as a ballot question committee. State law says groups that raise or spend more than $5,000 trying to influence the outcome of any Maine election must register with the state and disclose their donors.
The National Organization for Marriage donated more than $1.9 million to Stand for Marriage Maine, a political action committee that helped repeal a Maine law that allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry.

NOM’s attorney is indulging in a little shell shuffling when he disingenuously claims “NOM did not raise more than $5,000 specifically for the Maine campaign but instead took money from its general operating budget to help the Maine repeal effort.”

And, of course, the organization fears its sunshine-shy, equality-hating donors will be horribly oppressed by the big bad gays like this …

I, for one, am beginning to suspect that NOM has lit too many backfires in too many states, and the flames are beginning to lick at their anti-gay assets.

Manchester giving up control of Hyatt
www.signonsandiego.com
Developer Douglas F. Manchester is giving up control of his Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego downtown to Hyatt Hotels in a proposal scheduled to be heard before the San Diego Unified Port District today.
There is some speculation that Manchester is making the move in order to eventually pull cash out of his investment in the Grand Hyatt during an economically challenging time for hotel properties. However, Manchester said in a series of e-mails that is not likely to happen, at least in the near term. His goal, he wrote, is to be involved in a real estate partnership that would allow him to diversify his holdings.

As an added complication — bonus if you prefer, the traditionally married Manchester is in the throes of a reportedly nasty separation from his wife of 40-plus years.

Iowa GOP committeeman to gay candidate: I’ll sink you | Des Moines Register Staff Blogs
blogs.desmoinesregister.com
Iowa’s Republican National Committeeman sent an e-mail this week to a gay member of his party who is considering a run for president and told him he would work overtime to ensure that his campaign aspirations are aborted.
“You and the radical homosexual community want to harass supporters of REAL marriage,” Steve Scheffler wrote in an e-mail to Fred Karger, a longtime civil rights advocate in California who is gay and has announced he is running for president. “. . . I will work overtime to help ensure that your political aspirations are aborted right here in Iowa.”

Fred Karger expressed shock: “The fact that he made such hateful comments, I think is very offensive. I certainly think he owes me an apology.”

The right-wing windbag acknowledged writing the nasty email, but offered no apology.

Wuss.

Don’t Get Caught in a Bad Hotel (video: prideatworksf at YouTube)

Glee in!

Californians Against Hate founder, Fred Karger, to Mitt Romney: Apologize!
(all photos: Mike Tidmus. Fair use encouraged)

As former Massachusetts governor and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney signed copies of his new book, No Apology – The Case for American Greatness, a dozen demonstrators from Californians Against Hate assembled on the sidewalk outside the posh suburban mall in La Jolla, California.

Inside the Mormon bookstore, Romney savaged the newly passed healthcare reform bill as “unconstitutional” and called for its repeal. Outside demonstrators led by Fred Karger called on Romney to stop “the Mormon Church’s nasty campaign against gay marriage!”

Rex Wockner also covered the demonstration. Read his report here.

A dozen Californians Against Hate demonstrators participated

Just one, please

The demonstrators, led by a bagpiper, marched to the Mormon bookstore where Romney was signing his new book

Say “cheese.” Is it me or does this kinda, sorta look
like a nascent presidential campaign?

While not hostile, it was clear these folks were not expecting a line of demonstrators led by a kilt-sportin’ bagpiper

The demonstrators pose for a group shot in front of the San Diego Mormon Temple

The hotel has been under boycott, now in its second year, launched by an alliance of labor and LGBT groups, including Californians Against Hate, Equality California, Courage Campaign, Unite Here and others. Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, has estimated that the Manchester-owned property is losing a million dollars per month in bookings — a charge Manchester’s representatives limply deny.

Manchester contributed $125,000.00 in seed money to bankroll signature gathering for Prop 8, the ballot proposition that would — with massive infusions of Mormon cash and backing from a number of fanatical anti-gay religious organizations and cults — eliminate the existing right of California gay and lesbian couples to marry.

Here’s the press release from the APA:

Office of Public Affairs
American Psychological Association
(202) 336-5700

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 23, 2010

APA Council Votes to Move Its August Meeting Out of the Manchester Hyatt Hotel

(Washington, DC) — The Council of Representatives, the major legislative body of the American Psychological Association, will not meet at the Manchester Hyatt Hotel during the Association’s August 2010 Convention. In response to a donation to the Proposition 8 campaign by the owner of the Manchester Hyatt, Doug Manchester, a number of APA Divisions and members voiced concerns about APA’s use of the hotel during its annual meeting.

“Today’s decision allows Council to make an important statement that it stands in solidarity with the LGBT community and its allies in protest of Mr. Manchester’s political views. Members of our Council will now not be faced with having to choose between their responsibilities as members of Council and their wish to express their opposition to Mr. Manchester’s action by not entering his hotel,” said APA President Dr. Carol Goodheart.

APA is not calling for a general boycott of the Hyatt hotel but will make every effort to provide choices to members or groups who do not want to use the Hyatt hotel. Other lodging and meeting space will be available.

“It is important that we be respectful of the decisions of individuals; those who choose to stay at the Hyatt and those who do not,” said Goodheart.

In addition, APA plans to use the meeting to highlight the Association’s policy statement in support of same-sex marriage and the science that supports that position.

Mormon church documents headed to Prop 8 trial?
(video: Chino Blanco at YouTube)

Over in Mormonland, they must think of the founder of Californians Against Hate as some kind of Great Gay Satan. Lock up the wives and children. Here comes Fred Karger!!

Karger was nominated recently at a popular Mormon blog in a poll for the “Non-Mormon with the biggest impact on Mormonism in 2009.” How was Karger described:

Fred Karger: suing us all the time.

(emphasis: mine)

The Mormon pollsters jacked the poll and handed the win to Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert.

From Chino Blanco‘s YouTube page:

According to Utah’s ABC4: “… some of the LDS Church’s activities could be brought up at the California federal trial on the future of gay marriage.”

“According to our sources, the San Francisco City Attorney has shown interest in and is expected to soon receive hundreds of documents about the LDS Church’s opposition to gay marriage.

“ABC 4 News is also being told that copies of these documents were sent by special courier to the City Attorney’s office and they were sent in just the last few days.

“Again, according to our sources, the San Francisco City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, requested, perhaps, as many as 1,500 copied documents about the LDS Church’s opposition to gay marriage.

“The documents reportedly deal with the LDS Church’s earlier efforts to defeat gay marriage movements in other states, efforts going back a number of years.

“Herrera, coincidentally, has been admitted as co-counsel in the California federal case to over-turn the ban on gay marriage.”

(emphasis: mine)

I smell smoking gun. Sweet.

8: The Mormon Proposition, a film by Reed Cown
(video: Minority Films at YouTube)

As we Californians are aware, those Mormons sure do love to meddle in elections. The Salt Lake Tribune this morning reports that, despite the fact that Reed Cowan, the director of 8: The Mormon Proposition, scored the most votes in a recent online poll for “Mormon of the Year,” the Mormon pollsters, instead, decided to hand the award to the more palatable Senator Harry Reid.

From Peggy Fletcher Stack, writing at The Salt Lake Tribune:

The staff of a popular Mormon blog announced Monday it has chosen embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the 2009 Mormon of the Year, even as several top Republicans called for his resignation.

During the past year, Reid was the “most visible and influential Mormon politician in the world,” Kent Larsen III, organizer of the annual conference at timesandseasons.org, said in a phone interview. “What most made Harry Reid Mormon of the Year was his overall presence in the news and issues that affect peoples lives.”

It appears the Mormons find an accused racist more palatable than, say, a gay-friendly, Emmy Award winning, documentary filmmaker and journalist like Reed Cowan.

As in previous years, the blog’s 12 staff members made the selection, though they did invite readers to offer their own opinions. This year’s contest attracted nearly 2,000 votes, Larsen said, with the top slot going to Reed Cowen, a filmmaker who documented the LDS Church’s involvement in California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. Fox talk show host Glenn Beck and former Utah governor and now U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. also fared well with readers.

(emphasis: mine)

The phrase “offer their own opinions” is Mormon-speak for what the rest of us call voting. Regular readers are sure to remember back in 2008, when the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints showed up in the Golden State with a money-wagon, fresh from a trip to Fort Knox, and offered their opinion on the existing right of gay and lesbian Californians to marry.

+++++++

Over on another Mormon blog — bycommonconsent.com, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert scored the honor of being the “non-Mormon with the biggest impact on Mormonism.” The founder of Californians Against Hate, Fred Karger, who had been neck and neck with — in fact the last time I checked slightly ahead — Colbert, was removed as a candidate from the amateurishly-coded online poll.

Must not upset the LDS Elders or the rest of those meddling Mormons.

Two months later, at a Washington press conference to present the group’s “Manhattan Declaration,” George stepped aside to let Cardinal Rigali sum up just what made the statement, and much of George’s work, distinctive. These principles did not belong to the Christian faith alone, the cardinal declared; they rested on a foundation of universal reason. “They are principles that can be known and honored by men and women of good will even apart from divine revelation,” Rigali said. “They are principles of right reason and natural law.”

Even marriage between a man and a woman, Rigali continued, was grounded not just in religion and tradition but in logic. “The true great goods of marriage — the unitive and the procreative goods — are inextricably bound together such that the complementarity of husband and wife is of the very essence of marital communion,” the cardinal continued, ascending into philosophical abstractions surely lost on most in the room. “Sexual relations outside the marital bond are contrary not only to the will of God but to the good of man. Indeed, they are contrary to the will of God precisely because they are against the good of man.”

George looked on with arms crossed and lips sealed. But he was obviously pleased. To anyone who knew George’s work, the cardinal’s words sounded very much as if George had written them, and when I asked him about it later, he acknowledged providing assistance. Rigali’s remarks were a summation of the distinctive moral philosophy that is the foundation of George’s power.

(emphasis: mine)

The New York Times piece continues:

“If there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy,” the conservative Catholic journal Crisis concluded a few years ago, “its leaders probably meet in George’s kitchen.”

The Times acknowledged that George, for twenty years, “has operated largely out of public view at the intersection of academia, religion and politics. In the past 12 months, however, he has stepped into a more prominent role.”

We’ve seen faint traces of that prominent role in action as the mysteriously-funded and obstinately-secretive National Organization for Marriage, fronted by Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown, have rushed into state after state, frequently defying local election laws, to stem the gathering storm of marriage equality.

+++++++

The American Principles Project

Deep in the NYT piece is this paragraph:

George instead is plunging deeper into partisan politics. Alarmed at signs that the Republican Party was moving away from cultural issues, he recently founded a new group called the American Principles Project, which aims to build a grass-roots movement around his ideas. “His new venture will make him a major political player,” the conservative writer Fred Barnes predicted in The Weekly Standard. Among the group’s first endeavors has been to call for the ouster of Kevin Jennings, an Obama education official who previously founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Jennings, George says, wants to “use our elementary schools in defiance of the wishes of parents, to use our elementary schools to teach pro-sexual-liberationist, pro-homosexualist propaganda.”

(emphasis: mine)

The name, American Principles Project, sounded vaguely familiar.

Back on 22 October 2009, in a post called NOM sues Maine over donor reporting, I wrote:

According to the Bangor Daily News, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and a second group, the Washington, DC-based American Principles in Action (AIPA), are suing the State of Maine over its campaign contribution disclosure laws

Further investigation revealed:

The organization’s website provides little background or history, but their first blog entry is dated last May. In the complaint, the group is described as: “Plaintiff APIA is a nonprofit 26 U.S.C. §501(c)(4) organization dedicated to promoting equality of opportunity and ordered liberty.”

In the complaint, APIA states, under penalty of perjury, that it “does not have as its major purpose the promotion or defeat of any Maine referendum or ballot question,” but in the next paragraph announces its intention to to create a series of videos “relating to same-sex marriage in Maine” and place them on its website.

In that post, I included the script of the malicious, anti-gay ads that APIA wanted to run in Maine.

The first ad was called Bigot:

Girl: Mommy, are you a bigot?

Mother: What?

Girl: At school, we learned that people who are against gay marriage are bigots.

Mother: No, dear. I believe that homosexuals should be treated fairly–but I also believe that marriage should be just for one man and one woman. That doesn’t make me a bigot.

Girl: What about Reverend Jones and Father Diego? Are they bigots?

Mother: Did you learn that at school too?

Girl nods

VO: Think that gay marriage won’t affect your family? Think again.

Vote Yes Graphic

The second ad was called The New Curriculum:

School Administrator (talking to an off-camera mic/reporter–as he talks, we see images of teachers in classrooms reading from blurred-out books, GLSEN-style posters, etc.): No, we’re very proud of the new curriculum. It’s all about teaching kids to embrace different lifestyles and explore their own sexuality.

Switching from images of sex ed classrooms to little boy on a bench in a darkened school hallway. We can see an adult male (not his face, we’re looking from the perspective of the child and the view never includes his head) come out of an office, take the boy’s hand, lead him into the office, and close the door. Freeze on the closed door, which has a sign that says, “Counseling Session: Do Not Disturb”

Reporter (VO) : Yes, but is it appropriate for kindergartners to be receiving counseling about whether they might be gay?

School Admin (VO): Sure, we’ve had a few complaints, but there’s not much parents can do. It’s the law, after all.

VO: Think gay marriage won’t affect your family? Think again.

Vote Yes Graphic

An article at Robert George’s American Principles Project reveals that American Principles in Action is, in fact, the “sister organization” of American Principles Project.

+++++++

NOM and the Catholics

Much has been written about NOM’s connections with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, including about the presence of Mormon author Orson Scott Card on NOM’s Board of Directors. Card called for civil insurrection if Prop 8 was defeated in California.

The Mormon’s apparent absence in Maine left many NOM critics perplexed — despite some late infusions of cash — and at the same time stunned by the aggressive anti-gay tactics of the Catholic Church first in Maine and later in Washington DC.

Given Robert P George’s collusion with the Catholic bishops, revealed in the New York Times article, a number of other connections begin to make more sense.

San Diego attorney Charles LiMandri contributed $10,000.00 to the National Organization For Marriage California – Yes On 8 on 28 January 2008 — and another $27,000.00 to ProtectMarriage.com. Limandri is affiliated with the Catholic, anti-gay Thomas More Center, served as NOM’s general counsel during the Prop 8 campaign, and sued to fight California’s campaign disclosure laws.

NOM would later employ the same tactic in Maine, with George’s American Principles in Action joining NOM — the organization he chairs, suing to thwart Maine’s campaign disclosure laws.

LiMandri also filed suit on behalf of four San Diego firefighters (1, 2, 3) over a brief ride in San Diego’s 2007 gay pride parade. The National Organization for Marriage sponsored the firefighters defense website.

When NOM cast off the former Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who was featured in a NOM television commercial, Charles LiMandri served as Prejean’s attorney when she sued pageant officials.

Writing at The Huffington Post, Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate noted the shift from Mormon to Catholic backing in the fight against marriage equality:

The Catholic Church has become much more visible as the Mormons have backed off. Maine Bishop Richard J. Malone and his sidekick, Marc Mutty, ran and heavily funded the recent campaign in Maine to take away same-sex marriage in that state. The Roman Catholic Dioceses of Portland (ME) even set up a Political Action Committee (PAC), and gave and raised $553,000 to pass Question #1. That’s a lot of money, especially when they recently closed 5 churches in Maine.

Now, last week in Washington D.C., the Catholic Church there threatened to stop feeding the homeless if the City Council passes a same-sex marriage bill. Yes, the Catholic Church will stop feeding the hungry!

Fourteen Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops signed NOM Chairman Robert George’s Manhattan Declaration. George has apparently succeeded in uniting the Catholics and the forces of the radical religious right.

The conservative Catholic journal Crisis may have been prophetically correct when it suggested, according to The New York Times, that the leaders of this vast conspiracy might have met in George’s kitchen.