Dual Bus Tours for Marriage Equality: A Wrecked Opportunity?

The Village Voice took note of two different bus tours to promote marriage equality nationwide after New York became the latest state -- and currently the largest state -- to extend legal parity to gay and lesbian families.

One bus tour, the Aug. 2 Village Voice article noted, was to have been undertaken by National Organization of Marriage defector Louis Marinelli, together with Kitty Lambert, a New York woman whose marriage to her same-sex life partner was among the first to be granted in New York.

As reported at EDGE, Marinelli had worked with the anti-gay NOM as its travel coordinator for NOM's own road show, which promoted legal discrimination against same-sex couples and their families. But being on the road and having a chance to interact with real gay people brought Marinelli new understanding that the families whose rights he was helping abrogate were flesh and blood, rather than some ideological construct.

Marinelli founded the similarly named National Organization for Marriage Equality, and was set to bring his skills and experience to the new group's own national tour when the Human Rights Campaign unveiled its own traveling marriagepalooza.

"Coincidence?" asked the Village Voice article. "Marinelli says no. HRC says yes.

"Regardless, it may keep one of the most significant people to flip on this issue from being able to hit the road as a convert."

Even upon his high-profile conversion from anti-gay zealot to marriage equality supporter, the HRC seemed to take aim at Marinelli, issuing a statement saying that Marinelli "did harm to the LGBT community."

Added the release, "He was the strategist behind NOM's multi-state 2010 Summer Bus Tour and a key digital strategist for the organization, writing things like, 'Those who wish to promote homosexual behavior are encouraging people to shorten their life spans.' "

Other GLB equality advocates also seemed to embrace Marinelli less than wholeheartedly at first, possibly based on those claims.

GLBT news site Good As You examined Marinelli's history with NOM and commented on Marinelli's "Incendiary tweets" regarding GLBTs, such as the one regarding the life expectancy of gay men, a longstanding -- and long-discredited -- claim touted by anti-gay groups that originated with anti-gay activist Paul Cameron.

Cameron, who was expelled by the American Psychological Association in 1983, is the founder of the anti-gay Family Research Institute. His studies purporting to show that gays are inherently unhealthy have been widely lambasted by health professionals and condemned by professional organizations such as the American Sociological Association and the Canadian Psychological Association for his "consistent misrepresentation of sociological research," as the ASA phrased it in a 1986 APA resolution. In 1996, the CPA approved a similar resolution renouncing Cameron for "consistently [having] misinterpreted and misrepresented research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism," according to a Wikipedia article.

Marinelli's use of Cameron's claims is standard for anti-gay groups seeking to pathologize GLBTs, and is based on an assumption that gays will invariably contract HIV through sexual contact. In an interview conducted via email, Marinelli repudiated his earlier stance.

"I quoted from the research of Paul Cameron when I said that homosexuals have a shorter life-span," Marinelli wrote to Good As You correspondent Jeremy Hooper. "I must say that when I quoted this man I was not aware of his history and here and now do not wish to comment on the legitimacy or irrelevance of the man's work as I am neither a psychologist nor does psychology interest me.

"What I said, referring to the life-spans of homosexuals, I continue to believe in the following context: Any group of people that contract any viral disease more than the general public due to the nature of their lifestyle, logically, will have a life-expectancy lower than that of the general populace," added Marinelli.

"However, that kind of rhetoric, implying that gay men are unworthy of civil marriage due to any particular health issues surrounding their sexual activity was both inappropriate and offensive. It is for those reasons, that I retract this statement."

Marinelli explained how his work with the anti-gay group resulted in his becoming a supporter of gay family parity.

"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," Marinelli recounted. "It was my doing when, in March that year, I approached [NOM president] Brian Brown about sponsoring and participating in a series of traditional marriage rallies scattered around the Nation."

Continued Marinelli, "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."

Simple Question, Life Changing Answer

It was with that simple question -- what was he doing? -- that Marinelli's conversion to supporter of equal civil rights for same-sex families came about.

But Marinelli's new NOME and the HRC were destined to cross paths and, it would seem, work at cross-purposes.

Marinelli and leaders from California-based group Courage Campaign had spoken by phone and mulled a bus tour similar to the one Marinelli put together for NOM, but focused on promoting civil parity for same-sex families. Those talks trailed off, however, and Marinelli moved forward singularly to organize and launch the tour.

"However, it may all be for naught," the Village Voice article said. "Even though Marinelli had moved forward to start his tour in San Diego, and had even gotten Kitty Lambert to join him, HRC took the wind out of his sails by announcing their tour, launching the same week."

HRC spokesperson Michael Cole-Schwartz told the Village Voice that the HRC's tour had been in the works "for quite a while," and "had nothing to do with any external groups or individuals. It was driven by our national poll being completed and the imperative that we begin marketing the events around the tour in the individual cities.

"Our 'On the Road to Equality' tour is an HRC event and the only affiliations it has are with state and local organizations we're working with at individual stops," added Cole-Schwartz. "We haven't coordinated anything with Louis Marinelli or his group, nor is our tour connected with the Courage Campaign."

Marinelli conceded that HRC might be better equipped to take on a major touring campaign, the Village Voice reported.

"I understand the HRC has the manpower, resources, reputation and ability to do their tour and do it well," the newly minted marriage equality advocate said. "I won't even [contest] the fact that [their] tour will likely draw more media attention and more people will likely attend their events," added Marinelli. "Hey, you need money to get the job done and I fully understand that."

But Marinelli remains a "conservative Republican," the article noted, and, as other conservatives have noted, it takes a Republican to speak to other Republicans about issues like family parity.

"Being a conservative Republican, I am one of the last people in the country you'd probably expect to support marriage equality," Marinelli wrote in a July 28 post at his website titled "Corporate HRC bus tour running my tour off the road."

"Unfortunately, The Republican Party has been taken over by the religious right to the extent that all Republicans are assumed to be Bible thumping, anti-gay bigots," added Marinelli. "The very fact that I am from that demographic is living proof that things are getting brighter for the future of gay equality in this country because it shows that support is growing on both ends of the political spectrum."

The HRC, on the other hand, is viewed as a liberal group, and many social conservatives may well have hardened their attitudes beyond hearing what the organization has to say.

The GLBT equality group's website posed a July 25 release detailing the HRC's bus tour. "The 12 week tour will travel to 17 cities in 11 states and D.C., with particular emphasis on the Midwest and South where there are limited legal protections for LGBT people and living openly and honestly can be difficult," the release read. "Events will include everything from educational seminars on legal documents for families to community forums about family acceptance to participating in the University of Nebraska's 'Big Red Welcome.' "

"We are in the midst of a cultural tipping point on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues and our job is to push the scale as far and as fast as we can toward fairness," the group's head, Joe Solmonese, said. "The tour will serve as a powerful visibility tool and support the work of creating real and lasting change in these communities."

The release went on to say, "Among the 11 states the 'On the Road to Equality' tour will visit, none has a state-wide non-discrimination law including sexual orientation or gender identity.

"Additionally, none has any form of state relationship recognition and all have passed discriminatory constitutional amendments to ban marriage for same-sex couples. Many have laws prohibiting the positive discussion of gays and lesbians in schools and few have safe-schools laws that include LGBT students."

But the HRC's long-established stature as a leading GLBT rights lobbying group is destined to siphon dollars away from Marinelli's tour, the conservative marriage advocate wrote.

"Recently I heard that our primary funding sources, on which we were relying to pay for this tour in the first place, also became aware of the HRC tour and have been picked up by the HRC bus. I understand putting your money behind a well established big corporate organization like the HRC is a safer bet than putting it behind my name but that tour is running our tour off the road with its big bus."

Even so, Marinelli wrote, he was prepared to take to the road "concurrently with the HRC tour.

"Notice I said concurrently," Marinelli added. "We are not looking to be competitive with the HRC, we have the same goal in mind. Just, if you're going to be in the same road to equality we are, please just pass us on the left and don't run us off the road doing so."