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Loading ...Gay marriage opponents issue threats to Calif. businesses
10.24.2008 10:27am EDT
(San Francisco, California) Leaders of the campaign to outlaw same-sex marriage in California made an offer to businesses that have given money to the state’s largest gay-rights group: Give us money or we’ll publicly identify you as opponents of traditional unions.
Supporters of same-sex marriage called the tactic “an attempt to extort people” and “a bit Mafioso.”ProtectMarriage.com, the umbrella group behind a ballot initiative that would overturn this year’s California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, targeted about 35 companies in the appeal, spokeswoman Sonya Eddings Brown said.
She called the letter “a frustrated response” to the intimidation felt by Proposition 8 supporters, who have had their lawn signs stolen and property vandalized in the closing days of the increasingly heated campaign.
Certified letters from the group this week asked companies to withdraw their support of Equality California, a nonprofit organization that is helping lead the campaign against Proposition 8.
“Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error,” reads the letter. “Were you to elect not to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. … The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published.”
The letter was signed by four members of the group’s executive committee: campaign chairman Ron Prentice; Edward Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference; Mark Jansson, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for ProtectMarriage.com.
A donation form was attached. The letter did not say where the names would be published.
San Diego businessman Jim Abbott, who owns a real estate company and is a member of Equality California’s board of directors, received one of the letters late Wednesday afternoon. His adult son called Abbott to read it to him.
“He characterized it as a bit Mafioso,” Abbott said. “It was a little distressing, but it’s consistent with how the ‘yes’ side of this campaign has been run, which is a bit over the top.”
Abbott, who married his same-sex partner at the end of August, estimated that over the last decade he has given $50,000 to Equality California, including a recent $10,000 gift to underwrite a San Diego event that raised money to defeat Proposition 8.
When asked whether ProtectMarriage.com planned to name businesses that have supported the No on 8 campaign, Prentice initially said he was unaware of any such effort.
“I’m not familiar of any organized attack against organizations that have given to No on 8,” he said Thursday.
But when asked about the letter to Equality California donors, Prentice confirmed they were authentic and said the ProtectMarriage.com campaign was asking businesses backing the other side “to reconsider taking a position on a moral issue in California.”
Prentice said it was his understanding that the letter was intended for large corporations such as cable operators Time Warner and Comcast instead of small business owners like Abbott. Time Warner and Comcast are listed on Equality California’s Web site as corporate sponsors that gave $50,000 each to the group.
Companies that have contributed directly to one of the campaign committees collecting cash to fight Proposition 8, including one set up by Equality California, also were recipients of the letter, Prentice said. That list includes companies such as Pacific Gas & Electric, Levi Strauss and AT&T.
“I think the IDing of, or outing of, any company is very secondary to the question of why especially a public corporation would choose to take a side knowing it would splinter its own clientele,” he said.
Equality California executive director Geoffrey Kors said Thursday he has heard from two other business owners besides Abbott.
“It’s truly an outrageous attempt to extort people,” Kors said.
While an anti-Proposition 8 group called Californians Against Hate has posted lists of gay marriage ban donors on the Internet and even launched boycotts of selected businesses, Kors said that work has been independent of the official No on 8 campaign.
“They are going after our long-term funding and trying to intimidate Equality California donors from giving any more to the No on 8 campaign and from giving to Equality California ever again, which would impact our work for seniors, youth and other people in need,” Kors said.
The conservative groups have learned well from the master manipulators, the LGBT community.
really outrageous of these antigay extortionists, I plan to keep on giving.
R J Liar,
Please explain the mis-/dis-information in your outrageously slanderous post.
The article clearly shows the anti-gay group is using manipulation (not to mention outright falsehoods and smears and blackmailing threats) when they say, “Give us money or we’ll publicly identify you as opponents of traditional unions”, which was “consistent with how the ‘yes’ side of this campaign has been run, which is a bit over the top” AND was “truly an outrageous attempt to extort people”.
How has the LGBT community done this ‘manipulating’ you claim?
To support EQUALITY hardly means we “oppose” heterosexuals getting married. The way you ‘think’, one would get the impression our aim was to prevent bettersexuals from getting married, which is clearly not the case. There’s nothing you need to “defend” marriage FROM (well, maybe from Britney ‘55 hours’ Spears, or from Rick Rockwell/Darva Conger making marriage into a TV game show prize, or from Mickey ‘8 “marriages” and counting’ Rooney – heterosexuals all!).
Wow, they are getting desperate, so they are using scare tactics to try and bully their way to victory.
Is it kind of pointless to make such a threat, when large donation amounts are already made public? Seriously, the names of some of the large donors are mentioned right here in this story!
Man, some people are so dumb…
Since the campaign chairman for Yes On 8 (Ron Prentice) has admitted to sending these letters out, maybe they should be sued. Simply put, they are using harassment and threats to extort money from an oppressed community that has put up with being crapped on far too long.
I would say that that this group has learned well from their Bible. The Ten Commandments makes no mention of extorting money from others. So, in their eyes it is perfectly moral even though its a felony under California’s Penal Code.
Extortion and blackmail has become the latest ‘open’ agenda of the religious right, and once again, the legal system turns a blind eye ? The same blind eye that fails to enforce the words held within our Constitution, allowing instead, the words of a Bible, and someone’s ‘interpretation’ of the words held in that Bible to override the word’s in our Constitution ? The California Supreme Court, finally, stood up and upheld the ‘all inclusive’ rights of our Constitution. In doing so, they rightly thwarted yet another attempt by the religious right to use the popular vote of the so-called ‘majority’ to re-write our Constitution, of whose full pursuit and intent is to substitute/replace Constitutionally protected Democratic rights with a Theocratic Ammendment removing rights based soley on said religious interpretation. History is filled with what has happened in the name of ‘religion’ to any and/or all minorities that failed and/or refused to ‘conform’ to said religious doctrine. This is no more well evidenced than in the ongoing battle between religions, all of which continue to fail/refuse to conform to their own doctine/interpretations as it applies to themselves or each other, forget that they all lay claim to the same ‘God/Jesus’. Despite all sharing the same tax-exempt status, some interpret ‘Gods will’ as telling them that it is best to forget taking care of the ‘least amongst us’ with said tax savings, instead, use it to remove people’s Constitutional right’s… The Mormon Church, with maybe 2% of the U.S. population, has ‘donated’ almost half the total support for Prop 8, yet this 2% Mormon majority still retains their tax-emempt status, and apparently has no problem with a public disclosure of those ’savings’ being used to ammend our Constitution and Bill of Rights. When, exactly, is this going to be stopped ? Are we going to allow another Holocaust before we stand up and scream NO ? Every time we go to the polls and vote, we just need to vote NO to ANY attempt to ammend our Constitutionally protected rights via a Constitutional ammendment !!!???
This strikes me as incredibly funny but,
“Give us money or we’ll publicly identify you as opponents of traditional unions”
Where does anyone say that if you support same-sex marriage, you want to destroy opposite-sex marriage? Men and Women will go on marrying, divorcing, and cheating on each other, completely unchanged, if gay marriage remains legal.
I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that these people honestly think that we’re some sort of threat to their “way of life”.
Is the “gay lifestyle” (in reality no different than the “straight lifestyle”) that tempting and appealing to these bigots that if it’s OK’ed by the government, they think all of their children will suddenly “convert”?
I should laugh myself silly.
I hope they follow through with the threat and publish all companies who refuse to respond to the extortion. With luck they are places I can spend some money.
Don’t expect RJLiar to reply: Another post-and-run nutsack.
First: RICO laws apply to this religious group. Anyone of these companies can go to the authorities and Mr. Prentice can be thrown in jail! The FBI should be on this. It’s their jurisdiction too.
second: If anyone from No On 8 is scanning this thread PLEASE create a COMMERICAL using this story as your theme. Californians will go ballistic over an exhtortion attempt like this!
Third: Get Out and VOTE on Nov. 4th no matter what state you live in!
This strikes me as criminal activity… I think I’m gonna go out and hug a Canadian flag today.
I’m with Mike from Canada…I think I’ll hug a Canadian flag as well. My hubby and I, and our two daughters, and his parents traveled to Toronto last year to get married. We were tired of waiting for a place here that would give us “marriage” – CA hadn’t legalized yet and MA only allowed in-staters. While our marriage may not be recognized federally, we know that when they repeal DOMA – (and under Obama we are hopeful that they will repeal it) – then it will not matter as our marriage will count at the federal level (it already counts to us). Needless to say, I am in awe of how progressive and wonderful Canada is and their example of Human Rights to other “progressive nations” – the US is not included in that. I just wish it was warmer there so I could immigrate to a supportive country that would value our contributions and citizenship not to mention my pink dollars…but alas, I’ll have to wait for Mexico (which will also happen sooner than the US). Side note: poor RJ Ligier – you are on a gay website; either you are a deeply self loathing ‘moe or you still try to convince yourself that you are straight but then peruse the gay sites..I think you protest too much…the most homophobic tend to be the ones with something to hide…what’cha hiding RJ? Can’t stand that you like Man on Man sex so you think you’ll sling a little mud our way? Poor boy – you don’t know what you are missing out – here is my advice…learn to love and accept yourself…I promise you won’t be so full of hate!
I don’t live in CA but I visit often…what a dichotomy of a place. some great areas to visit and then you have of course Orange County. With all the supposed wealth there why is it such a depressing parking lot filled up with unattractive track housing? good for the hate mongers to live there. Let them suffer.
But, I’m posting to urge all Californians to do something about this. This Prentice guy must be on some boards with some of you or send his kids to the same school as you or work at the same company. I think you need to get personal. I can’t call him up and say what I’d like to but you people can embarrass him and his cohorts in the public square.
Come on Californians, up the ante, where is your anger???? I’m not advocating violence…just embarrass him. Don’t we have allies that can run into these people at a party and publicly make them look like the fools they are?
I know about the religious bigots, they are nut jobs in the first place so no surprise they let the child abusers manipulate them (where would the gay priests go hide if we had gay marriage? They would have a harder time staying closeted…and THAT is why this is an issue today)
But what about the reasonable, educated, enlightened people I see in CA every time I visit? If you started a LOUD discussion with these people in public, you would totally make them look like fools in the eyes of their neighbors. Do it LOUDLY, make everyone around hear you. People aren’t as stupid as we give them credit for. If you corner them and make them answer why my marriage has hurt theirs, why this equality movement is anti-marriage (that is the most orwellian argument I’ve ever heard) and WHY HAVE THEY DEDICATED THEIR LIVES TO THIS. Really, people put are gay-obsessed.
I don’t see the ads, being on the right coast, and I don’t see the conversations amongst neighbors either, but I sense this isn’t happening.
Here in mass we sought out people who signed the petition putting this on our ballet and tried to embarass them. I met personally with my legislator and changed his mind, I told him he cannot legislate from his catholic point of view. I made him uncomfortable. I accused him of being under the Pope’s thumb. These are fun conversations, people can’t escape the facts and you can very easily make them out to be fools.
COME ON CALIFORNIANS get out there and get loud! Turn up the heat on these people!
The brain-dead septic-tank-dwelling bottom-feeding sludge-sucking Konservative Kristianist Krazies in favor of Prop. 8 are a bunch of bullies … I can’t imagine them being “intimidated” by anything or anybody. True to form, when they can’t win honestly, they revert to lying, cheating, stealing, and outright blackmail … SOOOOOO kristian (NOT!) … watch their ‘rhoids EXPLODE when the CA Supreme Court declares Prop 8 unconstitutional … there’s been a lot of chatter about that … the premise is that (1) you can’t write conflicting laws into the Constitution, and the court has already declared Prop. 22 to be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause; and (2) since it is a CHANGE and not a REVISION, a 2/3 majority is required to pass it. Supposedly both have to be adjudicated; in the meantime it will be put on hold by a judicial stay in the unlikely event that it DOES pass.
What a waste of time, effort and money that could have been put to GOOD use.
Cheers,
Bud Clark
San Diego CA USA
Time for gays to talk with their pocketbooks. Look at the pro donors of prop 8 and use your buying power accordingly. Also, how about some picketing of the LDS churches this Sunday morning. Time for them to understand that hate has a price.