Did the contributions have to be of a certain amount to fall under the proviso of the law that could then have them published? I mean, just going off the linked information in the OP, I don’t recall seeing anything under $4,950. Am I interpreting the whole thing correctly?
On what *principle *are they different? That’s the point I’m trying to make. If there is a spectrum with, on one end, “small website with few hits” to, on the other end, “national ad campaign” at what point does it stop being acceptable, and under what principle? My assumption is that even most people who support the website would agree that the billboards are out of bounds. If so, and if there is no difference in principle between the two, then it supports my contention that we shouldn’t do any of it.
GO also doesn’t see one, but he seems to say we can do all of it.
Yes, it is. But his neighbors and family are probably not actively seeking out whether or not someone in their town, any more than the gay neighbors of someone who quietly donated to Prop 8 are actively seeking out that info. If people want to look into that for their own purposes, there’s no stopping them.
What people object to – on moral grounds, not legal ones – is third parties going out and deliberately trying to get people to ostracize other members of the community. I don’t think that is long-term productive for any cause, or for the nation as a whole.
No – I specifically excluded any kind of dishonesty. Its “framing” to call supporters of prop 8 “bigots,” and it’s framing to say that allowing gay rights “legalizes perversion.” I may agree with the first and not the second, but that’s just my point of view, not some kind of empirical fact. Neither comes close to actionable slander.
You responded to me in post #84, and seemed to not be following my line of argument, so I explained what I was doing. I’m only trying to “pin down” people who want to say this incident is OK, but would be unwilling to extend the principle to others. If that shoe doesn’t fit you, it’s not yours.
Okay, I’ll accept that as a reasonable distinction. What if they just published all the names of every donor in a full page ad in several major newspapers? What if it was just the website, but they ran TV ads that told people to go online? How about a mass email campaign encouraging people to “see if your neighbors support sodomy?” The last is not far from what this campaign is already doing, just in reverse.
I’m not being flippant – I really do think this is an ugly road we’re talking about going down, and once we start I don’t see (under current law) any obvious off-ramps.
So, if you can’t defend something taken to extremes, you can’t defend doing it in moderation? Isn’t that a bit like saying, “If you’re not okay with drinking yourself into a coma, you shouldn’t be okay with having a glass of wine with dinner?”
I think some of us are saying just because it is legal doesn’t make it right - a notion you are likely intimately acquainted with by now.
I’m saying you should be able to explain where exactly the difference is, and why the line is drawn there.
There is a definable difference between having a drink and getting drunk. There is a definable difference between being drunk and drinking yourself into a coma.
What is the definable difference between what this list’s supporters are doing, and someone else creating and promoting a “Find the Fag Lovers” website?
Election issues that are public:
- Your donation above a certain threshold.
- Your party registration
- If you voted
I would not change that. If someone uses that information to commit a crime, they should be prosecuted. If someone uses that information to shame you - that sucks.
My concern is what to do when someone uses that information to boycott your place of work, and you get fired for that. At that point we are effectively firing someone for their political beliefs - and that does not sound like a good thing at all. However, I do not know how to balance that with the need to make money if the boycott is effective.
Okay, that’s a fair distinction.
As I said in my first post, there is no difference. Except, of course, in how the people who were on the receiving end of those tactics reacted.
And so you are okay with “shaming” as a general political tactic by all sides on any issue?
I appreciate the consistency, but I see nothing but rancor, hostility and pain coming from that. It sounds safe enough if you’re a gay person in West Hollywood getting a Mormon restaurant manager fired. I suspect it sounds a bit different to a closeted gay man living in a small town in the Mojave.
Actually, not that many in SF were voting at all. SF didn’t have a very good voter turn-out rate, about average for the state. San Diego had 5% more voters as a %, and voted “yes” on 8.
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/Returns/status.htm
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/Returns/props/map190000000008.htm
We only needed 600000 more votes to defeat Prop 8. SF could have easily provided 10% of that with a better turn-out.
I also want to point out that the Yes on 8 crowd started it:
"Archive blogs
Prop. 8 directors somehow saw this as justification for sending letters to about three dozen companies that donated to the opposite campaign. OK, we’re all for free speech, and complaining about someone else’s closely held beliefs is fair game. But in this case, the Yes on 8 people demanded equal contributions to their campaign, or they would “out” the donor:
“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 pro-8 campaign continues to confuse support for same-sex marriage with lack of support for traditional marriage."
I’d be fine with it.
If the people who donated money to Prop. 8 believe they did the morally correct thing in supporting the proposition, how can you shame them by telling others what they did?
Yes, that’s pretty much unavoidable when the majority of society decides that a minority doesn’t deserve equal rights under the law. You can’t really have a law like Proposition 8 without the rancor, hostility, and pain. That is, let’s face it, the point behind the proposition in the first place: to remind gays that we are not as good as straight people.
Kind of hard to stay friendly in the face of something like that. The hostility is baked into the debate. Quibbling about donor lists isn’t going to make it go away.
Then I’d recommend that gay Mojavian not donate money to gay causes. If he’s that afraid of his neighbors, he’d be better off saving up his money so he can afford to move some place where he can live openly and honestly. In the long run, that’d do more good for gay rights than any monetary contribution he could make.
Taking a financial hit is a good one.
Right.
If there were people wanting to reinstate Jim Crow laws, I’d sure want to know who was paying this so I could avoid doing business with them.
Until they donate money to make their religious beliefs into law. That’s very public
One way the bigots tip their hands is by giving money get Prop 8 passed.
No one ever said that.
I do. Going back 50 years or so, wouldn’t it have been productive to ostracize KKK members?
Depends on the specific time and place, but in some, absolutely.
Going back 50 years or so, wouldn’t it have been productive, from their POV, for the KKK to publicize which white people were “nigger-lovers,” and which blacks were getting “uppity?”
The concern is not that the tactic is ineffective; the concern is that it WILL be effective, causing the other side to use it in a bigger and better form.
Well, that’s that, then.
Can’t argue that it was okay for one side to do it, but not for the other to retaliate. This should pretty effectively silence complaints about the OP.
Good point. And in that thread:
I thought it was contemptible then, and I think the reverse tactic is also contemptible.
You thought the original was worthy of disdain, too.
It’s not a “reverse tactic”. Yes on 8 was trying to extort money from SSM supporters by threatening to publish their names. SSM supporters are not trying to extort money or blackmail anyone, they’re just looking to publicize the names of folks who supported Yes on 8.
As an analogy, I have a picture of a certain swimmer sucking on a glass device that, if made public, may or may not cost that swimmer millions of dollars in endorsements.
If I contact said swimmer and ask him to “donate” money to my cause, or I’ll release the picture, that’s called blackmail and it’s a crime. If I give the picture to a newspaper because I think his behavior is reprehensible, and everyone should know what kind of asshole he is, that’s not a crime.
If and when somebody actually attempts to engage in the reverse tactic, do let us know. Be sure to include the text of the associated letters (at least, the specific portion of the text that demands a payoff in return for inaction) to document the fact that it is, in fact, equivalent to the Yes On 8 extortion tactics.
Edit. Ninja’d, I see. Really, it’s a bit embarrassing for two people to immediately recognize a lawyer’s ignorance of a basic legal element of what does and does not constitute “extortion”.
Well - I don’t have to like the methods of the Yes on 8 people to find the methods of the No on 9 crowd similarly wrong. But even apart from all of that - it seems to me that what drives all of this is an unintended consequence of finance disclosure.
Gigi Brienza gave money to the Nader and Edwards campaigns - and then the nutcases at Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty publicized her name and address on their website. The unfortunate thing is that she didn’t work at Huntington and didn’t even know her company did business with them - she worked for Bristol Meyers Squibb.
That didn’t stop her from living in fear for years - SHAC firebombs the houses of people even tangentially connected to their target. And again, while this information could have been obtained anywhere, in this specific case it was obtained through donation records.