When filmmakers Joe Fox and James Nubile convinced officials and activists on both sides of the 2009 initiative to repeal Maine’s marriage equality law to give them “fly on the wall” access during the campaign, they had no idea that the chair of the effort to repeal the equality law would become their star. Religious right leaders frequently portray LGBT people as tortured souls, but the only tortured soul in Question One: the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage in America is Marc Mutty, who was the titular head of the Yes on One campaign, working on loan from the diocese of Portland under the orders of the bishop.

Back in April, when a trailer was released with footage of Mutty essentially admitting that he had betrayed his principles in the campaign (which had been “a fucking son of a bitch”), Mutty and the National Organization for Marriage went into damage control mode, suggesting that he had been misrepresented and taken out of context. But the full documentary, which was screened by Fox at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention this past weekend, makes it clear that Mutty was deeply uncomfortable with the campaign strategy that was forced on him by Frank Schubert.

Schubert is the political strategist who came up with the idea of manufacturing concerns about hypothetical consequences of marriage equality in order to win California’s Prop 8 in 2008. The following year he was paid by NOM to bring the same tactics and fear-mongering ads about schools to Maine. In the documentary, Mutty admits to the campaign’s “hyperbole” and talks about asking for forgiveness for ways in which he betrayed himself by going along with Schubert’s strategy.

Full Story from Religion Dispatches

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