NOM defector Louis Marinelli writes, in a new blog post, that it was a mistake for the Southern Poverty Law Center not to include the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in its list of designated "hate groups".
NOM's summary of the rally in Providence says that the protesters were “crazy”. In all actuality, some of the pictures depicting their actions do make them appear that way and I was directly responsible for taking their pictures, as some of you know.
What you don't know is that in an e-mail I received from Brian Brown, he essentially instructed me to specifically take ‘crazy' photos of gays and lesbians. His short and to the point e-mail dated July 19, 2010 wrote:
I need crazy pictures of our opponents.
What is particularly necessary to point out is that his call for ‘crazy photos' of NOM's opponents was in response to an e-mail I sent to him six minutes earlier that simply wrote: “Here is a picture of our supporters before the protesters arrived.”
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From that point forward my job was, among other things, to take those ‘crazy' photos that would be used as propaganda against the LGBT community. At least until the propaganda backfired, anyway. Many people who would have otherwise came out to support us, let us know that they were scared of what the counter-protesters might do and decided to stay home the day we were coming to town.
NOM is about deceiving the public about who gays and lesbians are because the longer the public fears them, the longer they will oppose their equality. I fell into that trap and then I came to see gays and lesbians for the people they really are – which by the way, is the exact reason I changed my mind to support marriage equality.
