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Loading ...Gay foes want Prop 8 donors kept secret
01.09.2009 9:13am EST
(Sacramento, California) Supporters of the ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California have filed a lawsuit seeking to block their campaign finance records from public view, saying the reports have led to the harassment of donors.
“No one should have to worry about getting a death threat because of the way he or she votes,” said James Bopp Jr., an attorney representing two groups that supported Proposition 8, Protect Marriage.com and the National Organization for Marriage California. “This lawsuit will protect the right of all people to help support causes they agree with, without having to worry about harassment or threats.”The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Sacramento, asks the court to order the secretary of state’s office to remove all donations for the proposition from its Web site.
It also asks the court to relieve the two groups and “all similarly situated persons” from having to meet the state’s campaign disclosure requirements. That would include having to file a final report on Proposition 8 contributions at the end of January, as well as reports for any future campaigns the groups undertake.
Proposition 8, approved by 52.3 percent of California voters on Nov. 4, reversed a state Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage. The measure’s opponents have asked the Supreme Court to overturn it.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday cites a series of incidents in which those who gave money to support Proposition 8 received threatening phone calls, e-mails and postcards. One woman claims she was told: “If I had a gun, I would have gunned you down along with each and every other supporter.”
Another donor reported a broken window, one said a flier calling him a bigot was distributed around his hometown and others received envelopes containing suspicious white power, according to the lawsuit.
Businesses employing people who contributed to the Proposition 8 campaign have been threatened with boycotts, the suit said.
Supporters of the gay marriage ban fear the donor backlash will hurt their efforts to raise money in the future, perhaps to fight an initiative seeking to overturn the ban.
“Several donors have indicated that they will not contribute to committee plaintiffs or similar organizations in the future because of the threats and harassment directed at them as a result of their contributions … and the public disclosure of that fact,” the lawsuit said.
The suit said courts have held that laws requiring disclosure of campaign contributions can be overturned or restricted if a group can make “an uncontroverted showing” that identifying its members can result in economic reprisals or threats of physical coercion.
California’s Political Reform Act, which voters approved in 1974, established disclosure requirements for candidates and campaign committees.
The secretary of state’s office and another defendant, the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, declined to comment Thursday on the lawsuit.
But Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, the gay rights group that led the campaign against Proposition 8, called it hypocritical for supporters of the measure to try to overturn voter-approved campaign finance laws.
He said Proposition 8 supporters used campaign finance records during the campaign to threaten gay rights supporters.
“They’ve used these records to attack corporations, to attack individuals,” Kors said.
Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, which supports public access to government records and meetings, said the lawsuit is likely to be unsuccessful. But he also said the plaintiffs’ arguments are not trivial.
“The problem with their argument, of course, is that campaign finance laws, both at the state and federal level, have been litigated endlessly now since Watergate and the argument has, in one form or another, been rejected,” Scheer said.
He said courts have consistently failed to agree that contributors have a right to donate directly and anonymously to a candidate or campaign. He said some states have less restrictive reporting requirements, but they always include disclosure of donors.
the “[punks'] can dish it out. But like all children, pun intented, cannot take it!!!!!!!!!
You guys need to blend blogs: This from Ruby-Sachs:
I am amazed by a story run by the AP today in which supporters of Proposition 8 are asking for court relief from campaign finance laws. One complaint is that business who employ people who donated to Prop 8 are facing boycotts.
Now I don’t believe that businesses should be held accountable for the political views of mere employees, but I also believe that boycotts are perfectly legal, important tools for the promotion of social causes. In fact, the anti-gay lobby has been, perhaps, the most successful boycotter of all.
They consistently encourage businesses (like McDonalds) to pull funding for equality organizations, encourage television networks to pull shows with gay content and encourage individual organizations to tone down their pro-rights language.
How can they be complaining about boycotts?
This case will not be about the right to a secret ballot. It is about the right to funnel large amounts of money to certain political causes. This, thank goodness, has never been a privilege in the United States.
On disclosure: I can’t believe that the proud winners of Prop 8 don’t want the world to know exactly where they stand and who their allies are! If they’re convinced that they are indeed protecting something precious from our GAY ability to destroy it, my goodness, you’d think they’d want their names on the front page of of every paper. Do they not view themselves as heroes? After all, they “saved” marriage in California! As someone who is directly affected by their wisdom, I want to know exactly who funded their efforts to save me from my unfathomable desire to settle down and get fair tax treatment. As a taxpayer that contributes to a political system that guarantees me this right, I want to know where the money comes from, as I feel it has adversely affected my pursuit of happiness. This is what we call transparency. It is part of our democracy. It helps avoid corruption, and is part of the fundamental checks and balances that guarantee the rule of law.
As for fear of retaliation: until they get beat to a pulp for being straight; until they lose a job for not being camp enough; until they have been denied the right to be with their loved one in a hospital because they don’t love each other in a religiously appropriate manner; until they have had the house they helped maintain and pay for stolen by holy, greedy, and marriage-protecting members of their partner’s family… Until they experience some good old fashioned American discrimination, I have no sympathy for their fears. They have no idea of the type of fear they instilled in me as a young man, and how much pain it caused. And now they claim THEY’RE victims? Heck, I just wanna know who paid so much money to save the sterling reputation of Californian marriage.
And on an even more alarming matter: Ron in Dallas: are you saying we’re a different race? Or are we a different ethnicity? A different culture, perhaps? You sound like a segregationist. I am as proud of being gay as I am of being left handed. I have no pride in things I did not accomplish. Being gay is just a sexual orientation, it is a scientific curiosity, it is what makes us an invisible minority (Canadian terminology – we might consider it in the US). But that’s it. To be proud of one’s gayness is silly. It’s like being proud of one’s hair color. Before I hear “self-hating homosexual”, I will admit that I am proud of my personal accomplishments. But the fact that I’m gay is not an accomplishment. It just is. And that’s just fine. You lament the loss of gay pride. You say I should be proud of the sex acts I engage in. Why? Nothing could be more superficial. Please don’t tell me that I’m so different that I have to act a certain way. I’ve lived and worked on 4 continents, sometimes in countries where being gay is illegal. I certainly don’t need a fellow American telling me how to act or what to be proud of. That is not the American way. I suggest you check out how gay people live in other parts of the world. You can do so online. But you might not like it: you’ll discover that we’re actually not all that special. Can you deal with not being special? I doubt you’d like it: you’ll no longer be in the limelight, darling. Unfortunately, equality neutralizes specialness. Equality means we can be proud of things we actually accomplish, not the rather dull fact that we’re an invisible sexual minority. If gay pride fell apart, Ron, it’s because it was based on feeble foundations. If folks like you could stop spending so much time being proud of what you do in bed, how you dress, or how “gay” you act, our “community” just might find REAL things that we can be proud of. Consider some facts: Like the fact that 10% more Californians voted FOR our rights than the last time around. Like the fact that we lost by less than 3%. Like the fact that the USA is doing more to fight AIDS in poor countries than any other nation. Gays can take REAL GAY PRIDE in these achievements – our activists made these things happen. People screaming that we’re so different that we might as well secede from the human race – and that sex acts are something that bestow pride upon a community – they do nothing for us. Go visit the world (online), Ron. It sounds to me like you want everything except equality in the eyes of the government or society. And your reasons seem quite selfish: you want special treatment, not equal treatment. You insist we’re naughty if we think marriage and kids are OK for some gay folks – just because its heteronormative. And you want me to be proud that I’m a scientific curiosity. Tell ya what, Ron. Go help a little old lady today, or go talk to a lonely friend. Then take pride in the fact that you did something useful with your day. Call it gay pride. But DO SOMETHING, and don’t tell me that screwing 19 guys between now and Monday is an accomplishment you take pride in – unless you are getting paid. Then, you can have professional pride. Not gay pride. We are more than what we do in bed and we are more than how differently we act from non-gay people (here’s a shocker: most people don’t know I’m gay unless I tell em!). How dare you attack the Mattachine society? Did you do more to advance justice during those days, Ron? Or are you just attacking a generation you know little about? Take your anger and put it on the back burner, because it’s apparently blinding you. Then get out your history books and learn a little about humanity. You’ll find plenty of things gay people can take pride in – and you’ll find that maybe you’re not really qualified to vilify most gay people just because they don’t live in your sheltered world where it’s safe to rant about how one must act and think in order to join your club.
“Hi, we’re the Prop 8 people, we want to deny gay people their rights, but we want our names to be kept secret. Thanks!” What a stupid argument.
We have not lost our way Rob in Dallas.
Some of us have always had the goal of getting married (to a same sex partner)and settling down. That does not make us any less fabulous.
Yes, I’ve had my wild days. I’ve had my party days. I remember a time when you entered into gay bars through discrete entries in the sides of buildings. I’ve slept with more guys than I can possibly even count.
But it speaks to how far we’ve come that couples are openly setting down. Openly adopting or having surrogate children.
I think that those that have been able to achieve this are even more “Fabulous” than we had ever been able to have imagined even back in the 80’s.
Sometimes I just cannot believe how far off the path the gay community has wandered. When I read articles and opinion columns in the gay press I sometimes forget it is the gay press. What have we become? I’ll tell you. Faux heterosexuals. Makes me sick. They talk about gay rights and equate that with marriage, a broken heterosexual institution. SICK! They talk about having kids and settling down in a nice house with a white picket fence. SICK! Let’s do the whole get married, buy house, have 2 ½ kids, dog…etc. Sound nice?
Don’t get me wrong. If that is truly your idea of happiness, more power to you. Just make sure it’s YOUR idea. Every since the Stonewall Riots there have been people like the Mattachine Society telling us to be like the heteros. We are just like them and we need to show it. We now follow gay rights organizations that espouse this same philosophy. BULLSHIT!! Let me be clear. WE ARE NOT LIKE THEM!
WE ARE FABULOUS! We are queer. We are men that suck cock and women that eat pussy and we should be damn proud of that. Did you get that word? PROUD? What happened to gay pride? Where did we loose our way? I’ll tell you. We sold our collective gay souls for acceptance. Acceptance by secular society, acceptance by the government, acceptance by organized religion. We have become a bunch of assimilationist fags that can barely be distinguished from any heterosexual on the street.
We need to remember those who have come before us and DIED for being fabulous and gay. We need to take back our gayness and tell those who would have us mimic heterosexuals WE WILL NOT! We will not be quieted, we will not be patient, and we will not assimilate. TRUE PRIDE IN 2009!!
Where did all that pride in their righteousness go? Free speech is legal; it’s naive to think it has no consequences.
COWARDS !
I JUST HAVE TO SAY ” I LOVE THAT I WAS ‘BORN’ A HOMOSEXUAL” AND NOT A DUMB [BUTT] BREEDER, WHO HAS NOTHING TO DO BUT GO AFTER PEOPLE THEN RUN AND HIDE. WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE, WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING. WATCH OUT YOU [JERKS], YOUR ON “THE LIST”. A MEMBER OF THE Q.A.L.F.
A MESSAGE FOR ” focus on the family, protect marriage.com, the o.m.a.c., and james bopps jr.” YOU ALL CAN KISS MY INFECTED [BUTT]!!!! I/WE ARE SICK OF YOU TWO FACE BREEDERS! KARMA IS A [PAIN], AND YOUR TIME WILL COME. WE WILL FIGHT TO THE END OF TIME AGAINST YOU SICK [JERKS]. THIS IS YOUR WARNING FROM THE “QUEER NATION 2.0″ & THE Q.A.L.F.
THE GROUPS “FOCUS ON THE FAMILY,PROTECT MARRIAGE.COM, THE M.O.N.C., & JAMES BOPPS JR.” CAN ALL KISS MY INFECTED [BUTT]!!!!! KARMA IS A [PAIN], AND YOUR TIME WILL COME. YOU FUKS. WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP, WE WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH!
I’M SO SICK OF YOU TWO FACE BREEDERS! THE Q.A.L.F. A WARNING FROM THE “QUEER NATION 2.0″
Interesting that one article details the attempt to keep “yes on Prop 8″ donors secret because of the threat of a boycott while another article details the attempt of the busybody American Family Association to boycott Pepsi for supporting “the gay agenda”, whatever that is……….equality for all Americans is apparently the way the AFA defines the “gay agenda”. These folks just can’t keep their “standards” straight! With so much time on their hands, I suggest they use some of their apparently plentiful funds to help replenish the empty shelves in food pantries across the country instead of filing lawsuits and sending mailings calling for boycotts.
Of course they don’t realize they are being harassed for supporting the banning of civil rights and protections of US Citizens – it’s all the fault of the oppressed. Typical discriminatory hypocrisy.
If you’re going to give power to a political movement that denies the rights of certain categories of individuals, you’d better be damned f*ckin’ ready for the backlash. This is their structural violence met with our real violence.
It sucks that they *are* facing small-scale terrorism from our community, but I *do* think they deserve to know exactly who they’re messing with.
Also, did anyone catch the typo, “Envelopes containing SUSPICIOUS WHITE POWER” in para 7? No comment.
I am sure California would want the gay marriage business back. It is likely already losing beaucoup buckets of gay wedding tourist dollars to the gay states Connecticut and Massachusetts.
My own state of Maryland may become a gay marriage state one day after New Jersey and the other New England states.