CatholicVote.org is a conservative, non-profitpolitical advocacy group based in the United States. While the organization acknowledges the authority of the Magisterium, it is independent of the Catholic Church. It had a stated a goal of "electing new pro-life and pro-family candidates to Congress and, of course, electing a pro-life candidate to the Presidency in 2012."
Structure
CatholicVote.org is divided into three organizations: CatholicVote.org, a project of Fidelis, a Catholic organization. CatholicVote.org Political Action Committee is an affiliated non-partisan political action committee which assists selected candidates in their election campaigns. CatholicVote PAC is the group's connected political action committee; its goal is to "provide qualified candidates with direct financial support while working independently to mobilize voters to elect candidates whom we believe will be faithful stewards of Catholic social teaching and the common good." In 2010, it made campaign contributions to six Republicans and one Democrat. CatholicVote.org Education Fund is a 5013 tax-deductible program which comprises two units: the CatholicVote.org Education Fund and the CatholicVote.org Legal Action Fund.
History
Domain name
The CatholicVote.org domain name was first used by the Catholic Alliance in early 2000. The Catholic Alliance was a grassroots group of Americans who agreed with the platform of the fundamental evangelical Protestant Christian Coalition but wished to widen the Coalition's scope to include Catholics. The Catholic Alliance, formed in 1995, held the website until mid-2002. The next owner of the domain name was Larry Cirignano, founder of Catholic Vote, later called Catholic Citizenship. He used the domain for six years until mid-2008. The Fidelis Center began operating the domain in October 2008, initially redirecting it to CatholicVote.com. The first published articles linked on the site included ones by co-founders Brian Burch and Joshua Mercer. The Fidelis Center subsequently sold the domain to Fidelis, a related, but independent 5014 organization which operates the domain today.
Fidelis
CatholicVote.org is run under the umbrella of the Fidelis Center, a Catholic non-profit group. "Imagine Spot 1" was the first release of the nationalmedia campaign "Life: Imagine the Potential" in 2009. In ten days it recorded over 700,000 hits. The commercial centers around the story of President Barack Obama, showing an ultrasound image and saying that despite a hard childhood, the unborn child will grow up to be President of the United States. The advert was rejected by both NBC for airing during the Super Bowl and CNN for airing during coverage of President Obama's first State of the Union Address. The second commercial was also released in 2009, "Imagine Spot 2". This commercial featured Nelson Mandela. It was aired in selected markets during the American Idolseason 8 finale. In 2010 CatholicVote.org organized a petition urging the United States Postal Service to move forward with issuing a Mother Teresa commemorative stamp despite opposition by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and similar groups. The petition gained over 146,000 signatures.
Backlash
On June 25, 2015, one day before same-sex marriage became legal everywhere in the United States, CatholicVote.org uploaded a video onto YouTube called "Not Alone". The video, which shows Catholic people who oppose same-sex marriage, features those Catholic people defending themselves and all others who oppose same-sex marriage, saying that people should not hate or dislike those who oppose same-sex marriage. "Not Alone" quickly received a minimum of a million views on YouTube. "Not Alone" received lots of massive backlash due to the video's message. On YouTube, "Not Alone" both received many more dislikes than likes and received a lot of negative comments. Parodies of "Not Alone" appeared very quickly. Many websites condemned "Not Alone" and called the people who are in the video "bigots" or "anti-gay". CatholicVote.org president Brian Burch said "literally tens of thousands of people are emailing, saying: 'thank you for speaking up for me. I don't agree with the Supreme Court decision, but I don't hate anyone.'"
