Anti-LGBT Donor Has Ties to White Supremacist and Secession Groups
A man named Michael Peroutka who has been associated with white supremacist and secessionist groups, gave $10,000 to try to fight marriage equality in Maryland, a cause his side lost.
But now the Human Rights Campaign is calling for others involved in that state's fight against marriage equality to give back his donation--and disavow his support for their cause. Among those receiving this pressure? The Catholic Church.
HRC also calls on the Maryland Catholic Conference, which played a leading role in founding the Maryland Marriage Alliance, to publicly denounce Peroutka’s donation. Peroutka is an active member of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate, secessionist organization labeled an “explicitly racist” hate groupby the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Filings made available by the Maryland Board of Elections indicate that Michael Peroutka donated $10,000 to MMA on October 31, 2012.
The Maryland Marriage Alliance was founded and funded by the Maryland Catholic Conference and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). The Roman Catholic Church, along with the Knights of Columbus, contributed almost $425,000 this year to defeat ballot Question 6, with NOM donating $1.2 million.
League of the South President Michael Hill has written that white people possess a “God-ordained superiority” and that African Americans “have never created anything approximating a civilization.” Its Florida chapter chairman, Michael Tubbs, is,according to the SPLC, a convicted “Aryan” terrorist who amassed a stockpile of weapons and explosives along with a list of targets including businesses owned by Jews and blacks.
Peroutka appeared along with Hill and Tubbs in front of Confederate flags at the League of the South conference, said that he was grateful for the organization’s endorsement of his fringe 2004 presidential campaign and remarked that “If this be hate, let's make the most of it.” In 2004, he wrote on his blog that “I am proud to be a member of the League of the South. I look forward to receiving the support … from guys with Confederate flags in their trucks.”
