Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage (NOM) Refuses to Turn Over Its Federal Financial Records as Required by Law.

Californians Against Hate began requesting your 990s (IRS non-profit tax filings) over three months ago, Maggie. You have not responded as required by law. We visited your national office in Princeton, N.J. twice to view the Form 990s, and sent our requests there by certified mail.

Someone at that address signed the US Postal Service receipt on April 25, 2009 (see copy below). You then had 30 days to comply with our request, but you still have not sent us your federal tax flings for 2007 and 2008.

We have also been to your “office” in Manassas, VA, and no forms there either, Maggie. It looks to be the home of your Treasurer, Neil Corkery. The Corkerys are apparently traveling around the world, and again, the forms are not available for public inspection as required by federal law.

What are you hiding, Maggie? Tell Us the Truth!

Is it all the involvement by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) in creating and funding the National Organization for Marriage, Inc.? That is exactly what the California Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating (Case # 08/735) right now.

Since you have not complied with public disclosure laws for your 501(c)4 non-profit corporation for NOM, we have taken the liberty of preparing an invoice showing just how much you owe the United States Treasury as of today for refusing to release these documents.

INVOICE
June 24, 2009
TO:
Maggie Gallagher
President
National Organization for Marriage
20 Nassau Street, Suite 242Princeton, NJ 08542

Re: Fine for Nondisclosure of Federal 990 Records

National Organization for Marriage a 501(c) 4 Corporation has failed to file with the Internal Revenue Service and make its federal forms available to the public after repeated requests.

Fine shall be $20.00 per day up to a maximum of $10,000.00 for the period:

March 25 to June 24, 2009

92 days @ $20.00 per day = $1,840.00

Due and Payable to: Internal Revenue Service

$1,840.00
This is not an actual Internal Revenue Service Invoice

As you are probably aware, the IRS fine for noncompliance is $20.00 per day for every day that you do not turn over your records up to a total of $10,000. For the 92 days so far, you owe the United States Treasury $1,840. While that won’t put much of a dent in the national debt, it is what you owe the government so far in fines. Frankly, Maggie, we are tired of waiting, and are exploring other actions to force the release of your filings.

Is NOM Even a Legal Entity?

In another very interesting development, we received a letter from the IRS last week in response to the request that we filed with them on May 6, 2009 for your Form 990s. The IRS said that, “we have no record of any organization by the name (National Organization for Marriage, Inc.) or address ( 20 Nassau Street, Ste. 242, Princeton, N.J 08542). Now, can you explain that?? They do have a record of your Educational Fund, the 501(c)3, but that apparently was just established last year. NOM, Inc. was established in May 2007 to get Prop 8 on the ballot, so there should be 2 annual filings available on NOM, Inc.

Here’s the copy of the IRS letter:

Maggie, why don’t you do the right thing and release your 2007 and 2008 form 990’s? Just what is in there about your funding and expenditures that you don’t want people to see?

A recent Washington Post story had this to say about the Mormon Church’s involvement in the same-sex marriage battles in six Northeastern States.

Mormon officials have tried to stay out of the controversy that followed the California vote, when the church’s prominent role in the marriage fight became clear. A spokeswoman in Salt Lake City declined to say whether the church is involved in debates going on in states such as New Jersey and New York, except to say that leaders remain intent on preserving the “divine institution” of marriage between man and woman. The faith holds that traditional marriage “transcends this world” and is necessary for “the fullness of joy in the next life.”

Well, Maggie it’s not so divine for you to stonewall your financial records.

That Admission by the Mormon Church
Raises Many More Questions

Who is paying for your multi million dollar TV campaign? Who is funding your $500,000 New York State PAC? Your California PAC? Who is paying for all the direct mail robo-calls and millions of direct connect calls in New York alone? Where did you get the $6 million that you admit to spending as reported this week in your hometown newspaper, The Journal News:
LoHud.com ?

How much are you and your executive director Brian Brown getting paid? Is the Mormon Church paying you directly or through another one of your other organizations like the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy

Is the Mormon Church producing all of your slick new commercials? Your controversial and often maligned A Gathering Storm commercial that was made using actors pretending to be real people was chock full of Mormon actors, mostly from Arizona. Most of the bad actors on your audition tapes appear to be Mormon as well. We have that documented.

Just how much money is the Mormon Church spending now to fight same-sex marriage in at least 7 states? Mormon families spent close to $30 million in California to pass Proposition 8 last year. The Mormon Church has likely spent tens of millions of dollars directly throughout the country on all their efforts to stop gay marriage since they hired the world’s largest PR firm, Hill and Knowlton, in 1988. It even appears that the Mormon Church, through its Public Affairs Committee, was monitoring same-sex marriage activities and involved in Canada as well.

We know that the Mormon Church has not been truthful about all of its involvement in opposing same-sex marriage for 20 years. We have seen ample evidence of this in the Church documents that we received.

When we filed our complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission last November, Mormon Church officials first said they spent “zero dollars on Prop 8.” Then 3 months after the election, they finally admitted to have made $190,000 in non-monetary contributions. Nearly all of that was supposedly spent the week before the election.

They later changed their story again, saying that the $117,000 reported in Salt Lake City staff time ($96,000) and facilities’ usage ($20,500) was not actually spent just on election day as they had reported to the California Secretary of State. According to Church spokesman Scott Trotter, the staff time included work between August and November. Well, then shouldn’t there have been other expenditures in August or even July and September? Come on Maggie, tell the truth!

The Mormon Church announced its active participation to pass Proposition 8 in the now famous letter read from Thomas S. Monson, President of the Church. This rare act took place on June 29, 2008, and was read to every Mormon in the Western United States. President Monson called on all Mormons to give of “your time and your means to pass Proposition 8.”Well, it worked. As we now know, the Mormon Church took over every aspect of the Yes on 8 campaign, and was largely responsible for its passage.

Please, Maggie, tell America the truth for once about where your millions of dollars are coming from. We are a country of laws, and we have the right to know.

Please Help Us Keep Up the Fight Against NOM.
Click on This Link Below to Contribute!

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=1084701

June 22, 2009

Keith Eddings keddings@lohud.com

A national organization headed by an Ossining woman that has pledged to spend more than $1 million to defeat a gay marriage bill in New York is defending itself in California against allegations that it was organized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to defeat similar bills nationwide.

The National Organization for Marriage said last week that it would spend $500,000 to help mount primary challenges against Republican state senators in New York who vote for a gay marriage bill proposed by Gov. David Paterson. It has passed the Assembly but stalled in the Senate, as Democrats and Republicans fight for control of that chamber.

The spending would come atop $600,000 the group says it has spent on media campaigns and telephone calls to sway senators in 25 Senate districts, including those represented by Sens. Vincent Leibell, R-Patterson, and Thomas Morahan, R-New City.

NOM says it has spent $6 million to block gay marriage in several states since it was organized in 2007, including $1.8 million to place an amendment on the ballot in California that repealed gay marriage there last year.

The campaign to repeal same-sex marriage in California was fueled in large part by the Mormon church. Critics in that state say the church began the effort by recruiting Maggie Gallagher of Ossining – who has forged a career writing about marriage for conservative think tanks – to establish NOM.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating complaints that NOM operates as a front for the Mormon church and that the church failed to report millions of dollars in nonmonetary contributions to the campaign.

The complaint was lodged by Los Angeles gay rights activist Fred Karger, who formed Californians Against Hate to protect gay marriage in the state.

“The church is the marionette, the puppeteer, of Maggie and Brian,” Karger said, referring to Gallagher, who is NOM’s president, and Brian Brown, its executive director. “The evidence is clear that the Mormon church is 100 percent behind the National Organization for Marriage and its funding.”

Gallagher said there is no connection between NOM and the church except that a Mormon serves on NOM’s board. She said she started NOM and recruited Brown to run it because conservative ministries, think tanks and charities that oppose gay marriage are not positioned to fight it on the ballot and in state capitols.

“I would not shy away from telling you if a group of Catholics and a group of Mormons founded NOM,” Gallagher said. “It’s not true. I founded NOM. I’d be happy to work with Mormons, but NOM was not started at the suggestion of Salt Lake. But I’d be OK with it if it was true.”

Once before, Gallagher faced allegations of a cover-up about who funds her work for conservative causes. In 2005, she acknowledged receiving at least $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services to write brochures and other material promoting the Bush administration’s marriage initiatives.

Gallagher also advocated for the Bush initiatives in a syndicated column she writes for Universal Press, but did not disclose the HHS payments. She said she earned the payments legitimately but conceded that she should have disclosed them in her column.

Karger has no smoking-gun evidence tying NOM to the Mormon church, but said the relationship would be exposed if the California Fair Political Practices Commission responds to his complaint by issuing subpoenas for church records. He said he believes the relationship exists because the Mormon campaign against gay marriage in California mimicked what he called its undercover campaign to overturn a court ruling allowing gay marriage in Hawaii in the 1990s.
On his Web site, californiansag.wpengine.com, Karger posts documents revealing how Mormons created a group called Hawaii’s Future Today in 1995 and covered up the group’s roots in a church many Americans are uneasy about. The documents detail how the church recruited non-Mormons as figureheads for the effort, while installing a Mormon on the board, and dodged financial disclosure requirements about its spending.

“We have organized things so the Church contribution was used in an area of coalition activity that does not have to be reported,” church Elder Loren Dunn said in a June 5, 1996, memo to a church committee overseeing the effort. He added that a campaign leader was avoiding reporters who were asking about church spending on the Hawaii marriage bill.

Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the church in Salt Lake City, responded to a question about the authenticity of the memos by e-mailing this statement: “Mr. Karger is entitled to his opinion but not to his own version of the facts.” She would not elaborate.

Farah said the church “did not establish the National Organization for Marriage.” She did not respond to a question about whether the Mormon church has been active in the campaigns to defeat gay marriage in New England and New York.

In April, as NOM was launching its $600,000 media and phone campaign in New York, Karger launched his own low-budget media campaign in the state and New England in ads on news organizations’ Web sites. The ads, called “The Mormons Are Coming!” and set to the tune of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” plays on New England’s historic unease with the Mormon church. Several news organizations, including the (Albany) Times Union, rejected it.

“To attack, harass and intimidate any one religious faith and say they don’t have a right to participate in the process I think is profoundly anti-American,” said Brown, NOM’s executive director. “A lot of what Fred is trying to do is to intimidate Mormons – especially – out of supporting marriage, and it’s wrong.”

“I’ve never questioned the right of the Mormon religion or any religion to be involved in the political process,” Karger said. “All I’ve said is, if they are going to participate, they need to abide by the election laws. I believe there’s a lot more there. I don’t believe Brian or Maggie are telling the truth.”

I spent three decades as a public affairs and political consultant. I spent a couple of hours at Los Angeles Gay Pride last Sunday.

Being heavily involved right now in our LGBT civil rights movement, it is important to observe what is going on out there. Several hundred thousand people attended the Sunday morning parade and the annual weekend festival. June is Gay Pride month, and there are literally dozens of cities in California that hold Pride weekends throughout June and all summer long.

Last year’s Pride was particularity interesting, because much to our surprise, gay marriage had been made legal just weeks earlier, and it was going to take affect days later. What an exciting and historic time that was. What a difference a year makes.

I remember last year that there was no one registering voters the entire weekend of L A Pride. Odd I thought, since one year ago we knew in advance that Proposition 8 was very likely going to be on the November 4th ballot.

Voter registration is an essential element in all major political campaigns. Practically every campaign and every political party has conducted voter registration drives almost going back as far as George Washington. It’s basic, nothing really new or innovative. The idea is, to register new voters who will vote with you in order to help your side get more votes than your opponents. Like I said, pretty basic.

This year I went into the Pride Festival to do a little test. I wanted to see what all was going on with voter registration.

I had assumed that our wonderful LGBT organizations (and they are incredible organizations) would have hundreds of people out registering LGBT voters and all our friends at LA Pride this year. I figured that they would be taking advantage of this mostly younger crowd, and get everyone at Gay Pride registered to vote. After all we very likely will be back on the ballot to repeal Prop 8 in less than 17 months.

As I went to my first LGBT political booth, I asked gently if there was a way to register to vote? A young bewildered volunteer said, “not really sure.” I visited the over 20 more LGBT political booths, out of over several hundred at the festival. Sadly, I could not find one voter registration card! Not even one!!!

During my wanderings, I finally met a very nice girl who had heard that the Stonewall Democrats booth had some voter registration forms. She marched me right over there, and I was thinking bingo, but alas, after some searching around they first said “we ran out,” then said, “sorry, we don’t have any.” Then the cute volunteer added, “good idea though.”

200,000 to 300,000 LGBT individuals and so many of our friends were in one place, who all agree that marriage equality should return to California. You do the math. Talk about a missed opportunity!!!

I’m pretty certain that at least half of the mostly younger crowd at Pride is not registered to vote yet. Once they do register, they will be voting for let’s say 70 more years on many more LGBT issues and for candidates who support us. That’s a lot of Novembers and Junes. In California, all new voters have the option of checking a box to have an absentee ballot mailed to their home forever. Vote at home = very high turnout.

It’s simple. Elections are won by who gets the most votes. We narrowly lost last year. Let’s put on the biggest, most successful most fun voter registration program in California history. Let’s give it a catchy name like “Milk the Vote” or “Register for Equality.” Then brand it, use our massive volunteer force that has been and continues to be organized, and let’s go get 600,000 new LGBT voters and our friends registered now. This new army should be everywhere the next 17 months where there is a gay event, rally, march, college campus and any place that there are more than 25 gay people assembled.

It’s a lot of work, but if all our organizations and volunteers get behind “Milk the Vote,” or whatever the name is, we can make up the 599,602 votes that we lost by and win next year’s election to repeal Prop 8. Let’s make sure that California once again leads the way on equality.

I appeal to all our very effective LGBT organizations to work together and make voter registration the number one activity between now and next October 18th (last day to register for the November 2, 2010 election).

Hell, people can even register on line: http://www.sos.ca.gov/nvrc/fedform/ and then just print out the form and mail it in.

We lost by only 4% of the vote last year — 599,602 votes out of the over 13.4 million cast on Prop 8. What a change from just 8 years earlier when we lost by 23%!

Please, make this the last Pride in California, or anywhere in the country for that matter, where we are not registering voters.

It is the smartest thing that we can be doing now and for our future.

Meet your anti-gay adversaries
On the anniversary of Stonewall, remember we must still fight

By DANIELLE TRUSZKOVSKYJUN. 18, 2009

Although we are in another wonderful month of gay pride celebrations, it is important to remember that our community is in the midst of an active battle for equal civil rights. The National Organization for Marriage (NOM)—the group behind the nation-wide anti-gay movement—has recently expanded its efforts and ad campaigns to ensure that millions of gay Americans are denied the same basic rights as every other US citizen. Since we are fighting for our rights and the rights of our families, it makes sense that we should know as much as possible about our primary adversary.

On their website, NOM states they have a 501(c)(4) nonprofit status, which means that the group is a “Social Welfare Organization” without restrictions on lobbying expenditures. When I searched for the organization using Guidestar (the leading nonprofit research database), however, no such 501(c)(4) shows up. Instead the National Organization for MarriageInc shows up with a 501(c)(12) status which is for “Local Benevolent Life Insurance Associations, Mutual Irrigation and Telephone Companies, and Like Co.” It seems this organization is intentionally misrepresenting itself.

It is also suspicious that this group, which has a seemingly limitless supply of cash, is operating out of tiny one-room office (located at 20 Nassau Street, suite 242, in Princeton, NJ). I visited this office numerous times, but never found a single person working there.

Also strange is that this office was previously inhabited by a right-wing organization called the Witherspoon Institute, which according to the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN) is an “Opus Dei-affiliated foundation.” Opus Dei is the secretive sect within the Catholic Church, with direct ties to the Vatican, that reportedly has billions of dollars in assets. They were made famous by the villain in “The Da Vinci Code,” who was a devout member of Opus Dei, albeit an uncharacteristically murderous one. It’s not surprising, however, that an Opus Dei “Numerary” is one of the founding members of NOM. ODAN states, “Numerary members pledge to remain celibate and generally live in Opus Dei houses. They commit their entire salaries to Opus Dei, submit incoming and outgoing mail to their directors, and practice various forms of corporal mortification, including use of the cilice, a spiked chain worn around the thigh, and use of the discipline, a knotted rope for whipping.”

NOM has more than one tie to a controversial religious sect. Another founding member of the group was Matthew Holland, who is a professor at Brigham Young University. His father is a member of the Quorum of 12 Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This “Quorum” represents the governing body of the LDS church. The Mormon and Opus Dei connection comes together beautifully in NOM’s “Gathering Storm” ad campaign, and it appears that at least 3 of the “actors” in the commercial are Mormons and at least 1 is a member of Opus Dei. Although NOM portrays itself as a group of average Americans, the reality is quite different. (Most Americans do not whip themselves with knotted ropes or stab their own legs with spiked chains.)  And since the Board of NOM has such close ties to religious organizations with billions of dollars in assets, it is only logical to question where NOM’s funding is coming from and if it being reported accurately.

On March 25, 2009 Californians Against Hate requested copies of NOM’s IRS 990 tax return forms. Federal law requires non-profits release this information within 30 days. It is nearly 90 days after the initial request and still NOM has failed to release their tax forms and are currently accruing IRS fines of $20 per day until their financials are released to the public. What are they trying to hide?Although NOM is continuing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on ad campaigns across the country, no one knows where this money is coming from. They are the only national organization working to deny gay Americans equal rights and their operating practices are suspect.

Considering the Board’s obvious ties to the Mormon Church and Opus Dei—is it possible that the only nationalized effort against gay civil rights is merely a front group for controversial religious organizations in an attempt to force their religious ideology on the American public?This June let’s remember that although we may have many differences within our own community, we are all fighting for a common goal: equal rights.

If members of the Mormon Church and Opus Dei can come together in a “marriage” of sorts in a collaborative effort to deny gay Americans equal rights, then certainly we as a community can work together to ensure that we win this fight for equality.

Opus Dei can come together in a “marriage” of sorts in a collaborative effort to deny gay Americans equal rights, then certainly we as a community can work together to ensure that we win this fight for equality.

Associated Press
Monday, June 15, 2009

editorial
Lawyers turn back on Manchester Hyatt

Published Thursday, 11-Jun-2009 in issue 1120

It’s been a rough few months for Doug Manchester, owner of the Manchester Hyatt. And with the recent news that the American Association of Justice (AAJ) – and its 2,000-plus attorney members – is taking its annual conference elsewhere, things aren’t looking much better.

In fact, the AAJ has announced it is moving its annual summer convention to San Francisco. The event was originally scheduled to be held at Manchester’s Hyatt here in San Diego, but after Manchester contributed $125,000 to the “Yes on Proposition 8” campaign and the ensuing boycott, the AAJ decided to take its lucrative business away.

“The American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, has relocated its annual convention to avoid meeting at the San Diego hotel that has become the target of a boycott because of its owner’s support of Proposition 8. In an undated letter addressed to members, President Les Weisbrod of Miller, Curtis & Weisbrod, in Dallas, announced that the organization’s convention has been rescheduled to take place from July 25 to 29 in San Francisco.”

Manchester Hyatt has already lost a purported $7 million in the last year as a coalition of labor and GLBT organizations have banded together for the boycott. Californians Against Hate partnered with Unite Here Local 30 (the hotel worker’s union) and several other GLBT organizations, including San Diego Pride July 18, 2008.

On a larger scale, most economic forecasters, including the prestigious Williams Institute, estimate that the passage of Proposition 8 will cost the state more than $800 million in the next three years, due to a loss of revenue for weddings and various auxiliary services.

Irony # 1: What’s ironic about this, of course, is that the state has a California Travel and Tourism Commission whose sole task is to bring people and their dollars to California. The governor appoints leaders in the travel and tourism industry to sit on this powerful commission for two-year terms.

And who should we find on this prestigious and vital commission?
Why, “Papa” Doug Manchester, of course. Manchester (papadoug@manchesterfinancialgroup.com) was appointed on Oct. 12, 2007, and his term is set to expire Dec. 31, 2009.

Irony #2: The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest GLBT rights advocate, lists Hyatt Hotels, with corporate headquarters in Chicago , as one of the “Best Places to Work for GLBT Equality.”

Both the California Travel and Tourism Commission and Hyatt Corporate have similar goals: to bring families and business travelers to hotels and increase cash infusions into local economies.
There are few groups of individuals who have more disposable income to spend at restaurants, theaters and on sight-seeing than attorneys. And while California itself didn’t lose the convention, as it merely migrated up-state to San Francisco, who is to say that it won’t next time? Phoenix , Las Vegas or Seattle are plausible alternatives.

We find it hard to imagine that other local commissioners are thrilled with Manchester’s actions. Andrea Fichthorn (andrew.fichthorn@seaworld.com), Executive Vice President and General Manager of Sea World San Diego can’t be pleased. Neither can David Cohn of the Cohn Restaurant Group (david@cohnrestaurants.com). Several of Cohn’s restaurants are within walking distance of the Manchester Hyatt.

As a community it is our obligation to stand by our brothers and sisters during this boycott, and we take our hats off to those who have publicly spoken out against holding the annual conference at the Manchester, including many prominent local attorneys and even District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.
It’s time now for the governor to take action. While Manchester’s term expires at the end of the calendar year, Gov. Schwarzenegger could send a strong message that discrimination is not good business practice and that it will not be tolerated.

Gov. Schwarzenegger should ask Manchester to tender his resignation as commissioner. The commissioner’s role is to bring money into the state and local economies; as a “commissioner” Manchester has done just the opposite.

We’re not suggesting that every person in California who runs a business has to support marriage equality, but we are certainly in the midst of the very real consequences of what happens when business owners make public displays of their personal beliefs.

And while Manchester has hired a crisis-management firm and dispatched his marketing team to global travel and tourism conventions, the issue is far from resolved.

Manchester should resign his post at the California Travel and Tourism Commission and begin dialogue with the leaders of the boycott. Nothing less is acceptable. Nothing less will bring this to an end. And, frankly, it just makes common sense.

As Pride season nears, we urge you to remember the boycott isn’t over and there are several other places to stay in San Diego during Pride. We urge you to continue to boycott the Manchester Hyatt, as well as Manchester’s other properties, including the Grand Del Mar Resort

News Coverage — #23

Washington Post

10 News – San Diego

ABC 4 Salt Lake City

KFMB 760 News Radio San Siego

The Advocate – NOM Hiding Mormon Money

The Advocate – Manchester Boycott

The Advocate – Prop 8 Upheld

Towleroad

Capitol Weekly

Sacramento News & Review

San Diego News Network

GLT San Diego – Editorial

GLT San Diego – Story

GLT San Diego – Editorial

San Diego News Network – Tom Blair

MyDessert.com

Towleroad

TPM

Desert Observer

LDS Files

Made Mark

California Ripple Effect

Rainbow Foot Soldiers

Gay Agenda

Planet Transgender

Joe My God

Planet Transgender

Let There Be Change

The Stripping Warrior

All Facts and Opinions

Salt Lake Crawler

Unite the Fight

Metropolitan News Service

NG Blog

Pam’s House Blend

Joe My God

Queerty

Rainbow Foot Soldiers

Box Turtle Bulletin

Queerty

Mike Tidmus

I’m Not Feeling It

Lavender Newswire

Tips Q

GLT – Nicole Murray- Ramirez

On Being Notorious

Planet Transgender

Larson Blog

Zo Kwe Zo

Against the Grain

Queerty

Death and Taxes

Gay Opinion Blog

California Ripple Effect

Lavender Newswire

Alternet

Christian Examiner

Latter Gay Saints

A Blue View

Rant & Reason

‘The Mormons Are Coming!’Supporters of Same-Sex Marriage Trumpet the Church’s Work Against It

LINK : Washington Post

By Karl Vick Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 29, 2009

LOS ANGELES — As more states take up the debate on same-sex marriage, some advocates of legalization are taking a very specific lesson from California, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominated both fundraising and door-knocking to pass a ballot initiative that barred such unions.

With the battle moving east, some advocates are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality.

“The Mormons are coming! The Mormons are coming!” warned ads placed on newspaper Web sites in three Eastern states last month. The ad was rejected by sites in three other states, including Maine, where the Kennebec Journal informed Californians Against Hate that the copy “borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion.”

“I’m not intending it to harm the religion. I think they do wonderful things. Nicest people,” said Fred Karger, a former Republican campaign consultant who established Californians Against Hate. “My single goal is to get them out of the same-sex marriage business and back to helping hurricane victims.”

The strategy carries risks for a movement grounded in the concept of tolerance. But the demographics tempt proponents of same-sex marriage: Mormons account for just 2 percent of the U.S. population, and they are scarce outside the West. Nearly eight in 10 Americans personally know or work with a gay person, according to a recent Newsweek survey. Only 48 percent, meanwhile, know a Mormon, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

Many Mormons also acknowledge a problematic public profile that could make it difficult for them to lead the fight against same-sex marriage. A 2008 poll by Gary C. Lawrence, author of “How Americans View Mormonism: Seven Steps to Improve Our Image,” found that for every American who expresses a strong liking for Mormons, four express a strong dislike. Among the traits widely ascribed to Mormons in the poll were “narrow-minded” and “controlling.”

“We’re upside down on our image,” said Lawrence, who organized Mormon volunteers in California, where on a typical Saturday 25,000 turned out to knock on doors. “People have misperceptions of us because of ignorance, because of the history of polygamy, and because we organize quickly, which scares some people.”

Mormon officials have tried to stay out of the controversy that followed the California vote, when the church’s prominent role in the marriage fight became clear. A spokeswoman in Salt Lake City declined to say whether the church is involved in debates going on in states such as New Jersey and New York, except to say that leaders remain intent on preserving the “divine institution” of marriage between man and woman. The faith holds that traditional marriage “transcends this world” and is necessary for “the fullness of joy in the next life.”

The church has a top-down hierarchy that answers to the First Presidency, who also holds the status of prophet. Last June, congregations were read his letter urging that “you do all you can” to pass the California initiative, known as Proposition 8. Lawrence, who like Karger worked as a Republican political consultant, professed no concern about the effort to shift the focus away from the definition of marriage.

“He is demonizing the opposition. It’s Political Consulting 101,” Lawrence said of Karger. “The average guy does not know the extent to which the Mormon Church was involved on Prop. 8.”
The proponents’ strategy is grounded in a stubborn reality: While the number of states legalizing same-sex marriage is slowly increasing — Maine recently became the fifth — in every case the agent of change was either a court or a legislature. Voters have rejected the idea wherever it has appeared on a ballot.

The election results track public opinion nationwide. Polls consistently show that while a majority of Americans support some legal recognition of gay unions, more want to keep marriage reserved for a man and a woman.

The disparity is narrow and shrinking, however, and in California, Mormons may well have made the difference on Proposition 8, which nullified a decision by the state Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage.

A torrent of last-minute contributions from church members across the country financed well-framed TV ads in the final weekend of the campaign. Opponents’ analysis of campaign-contribution reports indicated that Mormons contributed more than half of the campaign’s $40 million war chest.
“The church’s position on the issue of same-sex marriage is well known and well documented,” church spokeswoman Kim Farah said by e-mail. She declined to comment on estimates from individual Mormons but emphasized that the church itself made no cash contribution. It reported “in-kind” contributions of $190,000, mostly in the form of staff members’ time.

Rick Jacobs, director of the Courage Campaign, an advocacy group that produced a TV ad drawing attention to the Mormons’ role in the campaign, said, “We have zero interest in demonizing anybody who believes in any religion.”

In the spot, a pair of Mormon missionaries knock on the door of a lesbian couple, rifle their drawers and shred their marriage certificate in front of them.

Mormons “exist and flourish in this country because of the concept of equal protection,” Jacob said, noting the persecution that drove members of the church to Utah in the 19th century. “I find it just an irreconcilable hypocrisy that a group that rightly thrives within the essence of the American system would seek to repress and deny rights to another. And it’s even a little worse, because I certainly didn’t choose to be gay. People make choices to be Mormons, or any other religion.”
Mormon officials issued statements calling for “civility” in the wake of Proposition 8. “The Church has refused to be goaded into a Mormons versus gays battle and has simply stated its position in tones that are reasonable and respectful,” one statement said.

Suspicions that the church may be working behind the scenes in other states are encouraged by documents showing efforts by the church to cloak its participation in a late-1990s campaign that led to a ban on same-sex marriage in Hawaii.

“We have organized things so the Church contribution was used in an area of coalition activity that does not have to be reported,” a senior Mormon official wrote in one document Karger posted on his Web site, and the church has not disputed.

Mormon headquarters contributed $400,000 in an effort to persuade Hawaiians against same-sex marriage but urged the Roman Catholics to take the lead in a group dubbed Hawaii’s Future Today after polls showed that the other church had better public acceptance. A decade after the 1998 Hawaii vote against gay marriage, Lawrence wrote that the image problem remained: “The collection of negatives they are willing to apply to us suggests that they view us as a growing threat.”

That works for Karger, whose specialty at his consulting group was opposition research. “People will vote for someone because they like so and so, or because they don’t like the other guy,” said Karger, who entered gay activism to preserve the Boom Boom Room, a gay bar in Newport Beach, Calif.

And favorability ratings declined for Mormons over the last year, Lawrence said, from 42 percent to 37.

“Is it fruitful to use the Mormon bogey?” said Mark Silk, a professor of religion and public life at Trinity College in Connecticut. “My sense is that there aren’t great risks to it. Once a religious institution is going to inject itself into a public fight, which the LDS did in a straight-up way, then I think people are prepared to say, ‘Well, okay, you’re on that side and we’re against you.’ ”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: 619-592-2008

We are deeply disappointed with today’s majority decision issued by the California Supreme Court. As the county moves forward on gay and lesbian equality, our Supreme Court took a giant step backwards.

One year ago the California Supreme Court showed great courage and conviction in recognizing equal protection for all. Now we must regain marriage equality, and immediately go back on the ballot to repeal Proposition 8.

Next year we will win back our rights.

Until that time, Californians Against Hate will continue to closely watch all who oppose our civil rights. We will be a watchdog for our community.

We will carefully monitor and take action against those who bully us and spend vast sums of money against us. Individuals and organizations who give millions of dollars to deny our full civil rights will be held accountable.

Over the last 10 years, our opponents have beaten us at the ballot box in 30 out of 30 states. Now we are aggressively fighting back. Same-sex marriage is now legal in 5 states, and more will follow soon, including California.

During the next election cycle, Californians Against Hate will closely scrutinize our opponents, carefully review their campaign reports and make sure that all who oppose our civil rights are abiding by California Election Law. All major donors must disclose their full financial support, be it monetary or non-monetary. Owners and principals of businesses must fully comply with the law. No hiding behind spouses or listing false occupations and information when reporting contributions. We will be watching very carefully.

We have also begun looking into the principal organizations and their leaders who qualified and funded Proposition 8. These include the National Organization for Marriage, Focus on the Family and the American Family Association They continually spend millions of dollars to try and prevent us from full equality.

We live in a country that was founded with the express belief that “all men and women are created equal.” We will fight for that inalienable right so that future generations never, ever have to experience discrimination.

Help us wage this fight against those who want to deny us our equal rights. Please contribute today! Go to oue web site and click DONATE http://californiansagainsthate.com/