Cynthia Jeub: How I Came to Support Same-Sex Marriage, Part 2: Losing Faith in Politics

NJO: Source: Cynthia Jeub's blog.

It was March 2012 when everything I had been taught to believe about gay people began to break down. People were choosing sides in the upcoming election, and as I became more politically influential than ever before, I was becoming equally disenfranchised with politics.

The more I worked on both sides of political lines, however, I realized all people are just people, and the system is more broken than I ever knew. Simple conversations with a fellow investigative journalist, a Ron Paul supporter, and a childhood friend made me start questioning the political reasoning behind opposition to same-sex marriage rights.

A fellow videographer (NJO: Almost certainly either John Howting or Spencer Meads) drove me to the university (NJO: The University of North Carolina) we were investigating for corruption. (NJO: Some context: This was during the lead-up to the vote on North Carolina's legislatively-referred constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, known as Amendment 1, which would pass as expected, and would in October 2014 be declared unconstitutional. The "investigation" for "corruption" that James O'Keefe had sent Howting, Meads and Jeub on involved Howting and Jeub secretly filming university administrators while pretending to be students who wanted to commit voting fraud as a means to defeat the amendment and trying to get said administrators to voice some kind of endorsement or sympathetic statement on tape. Classic James.) We discussed the stronger arguments for equal marriage rights: gay couples weren’t hurting anyone with their personal lifestyle choices, so it didn’t make sense to outlaw it on grounds of harming people. Our investigation was focused around voting legality and ethics, not equal marriage, but I had to think about my priorities: I knew I believed in fighting injustice, and it didn’t seem fair that these people couldn’t live how they wished.

My friend Dave picked me up from the airport when I landed back in Colorado. A dedicated Ron Paul supporter, Dave talked to me about the primaries and didn’t ask me any questions about my secretive trip. I was leaning toward anarchy as a political philosophy (I don’t support violent revolution, but I think the ideal form of government is no government, and the means to get there is empowering individuals to govern themselves), but I didn’t support Ron Paul. Dave, too, brought up equal marriage rights. He said the government shouldn’t be making marriage official and taxing based on it anyway, so it didn’t matter if people were living outside of the so-called “definition” of marriage.

...

NJO: Whole post at Cynthia Jeub's blog.

You can see the long cut of the "investigation" here and the short and flashy cut here.

The long cut is over 3 hours long, with 13 distinct segments over (I think) 12 cuts. I say "long cut" instead of "full video" or "uncut version" because as we'll see in the following breakdown of both cuts, there were at least two surreptitious recordings made by the Project Veritas videographers as components of this "investigation" which, while included in partial form in the short and flashy cut, were for some reason excluded from the long cut.

Breakdown (work in progress):

Approximately the first 2 and a half hours consists of a series of hidden camera operations against
(a) University of North Carolina administrators (00:00 - 49:32, 49:32 - 1:21:33, 1:59:10 - 2:15:58, 2:15:58 - 2:32:30),
(b) North Carolina poll workers (1:36:13 - 1:59:10), and
(c) A phone bank operated by the anti-Amendment One campaign group Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families (1:21:33 - 1:36:13). These operations are all carried out by John Howting, accompanied in the second segment of part (a) (49:32 - 1:21:33; a meeting with two university administrators) by Cynthia Jeub, and in part (c) (1:21:33 - 1:36:13; the phone bank) by Spencer Meads.

The next 35 minutes consists of:
(d) John Howting's phone call to citizen Zbigniew Gorzkowski (2:32:30 - 2:35:18),
(e) Two hidden camera operations carried out by a young woman (maybe Cynthia Jeub again but I'm not sure) against University of North Carolina administrators (2:35:18 - 2:50:27),
(f) Spencer Meads' non-hidden camera confrontation with citizen William Romero outside what is apparently Romero's home, in which a kid is caused to cry (2:50:27 - 2:52:46),
(g) A non-hidden camera interview with Gary Sims, then Deputy Director of Wake County Board of Elections, conducted by a young guy who doesn't sound like either Howting or Meads (2:52:46 - 3:04:32), and lastly
(h) A non-hidden camera interview with a Durham County election judge, conducted by two guys who sound like Meads and Howting but I'm not completely sure. (3:04:32 - 3:08:10)

The short cut is 10 minutes long and features:

(i) A cut-down version of Meads' confrontation with Mr Romero, this time with subtitles, the faces pixelated, and narration from James O'Keefe. (00:00-00:49)
(ii) A cut-down and subtitled version of the second of the hidden-camera-at-a-polling-place stings carried out by Howting as seen in the long cut (the one starting at about 1:53:00, where he uses the name William DeJesus Romero and puts on an accent), preceded by some brief footage of Howting walking around outside not seen in the long cut, accompanied by some narration from James indicating that the dungaree get-up he's wearing is meant to denote "a strange man". (00:49-02:00)
(iii) A segment focussing on Mr Gorzkowski, starting with narration from James, a snippet of the interview with Gary Sims from the long cut, then some footage not in the long cut of Meads walking outside wearing similar get-up as Howting's with James again indicating that this denotes a "strange man". This is then followed by footage of a hidden-camera-at-a-polling-place sting carried out by Meads that's not seen in the long cut, in which he uses the name Zbigniew Gorzkowski. (02:00 - 03:16) After that is a cut-down version of Howting's phone conversation with Mr Gorzkowski with an introductory narration by James. (03:16 - 04:41)
(iv) "Ballots offered in the name of the Dead". A cut-down and subtitled version of the first of Howting's polling place stings seen in the long cut (the one starting at 1:36:13, where he uses the name Michael G. Bolton), preceded by an introductory narration from James. (04:41 - 05:20)
(v) A brief segue into the second half of the video which focuses on the other people recorded in the long cut, i.e. the university staff, the election officials, the phone bank activists. Brief snippet (not in long cut) of John Howting outside what is presumably a University of North Carolina building, dressed as he is the second segment of the long cut (UNC ballcap, blue shirt, blonde hair) as James narrates, "We found much more than we expected". Brief snippet of the first segment of the long cut (Howting's hidden camera recording of university administrator/professor Terri Phoenix), and the election judge. (05:20 - 05:46)
(vi) Sims (05:46 - 05:56)
(vii) the county election judge (05:56 - 07:33)
(viii) Howting and Jeub (07:25 - 09:51)
(ix) An audio recording not heard in the long cut, accompanied by a still frame not seen in the long cut, of the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families phone bank activists (09:51 - 10:18)