It’s not punishment, and no one is forced to do anything. In the free market, it’s his job to attract customers, who may reject his business for any reason or no reason at all.
Funny, how conservatives are all in a lather about how the concept of “shame” has been lost, and needs to be restored… until they find themselves on the receiving end?
As noted above, disinfecting political corruption via sunshine has obvious benefits to the body politic.
A law that restricts only the wealth-bloated running-dog capitalist pigs? Most excellent political progress, Comrade Magellan!
Of course not. Packaging and disseminating public records is neither a crime nor an incitement to crime.
It provides people who are so inclined with the ability to exercise their free-market rights.
Only if “another man” is unclear on the concepts of purely legitimate private action (boycott) and government-driven strongarming (blacklist).
Irrelevant comparison. Ownership of firearms does not raise issues of political corruption, as anonymous political donations do.
Unless the government is behind the pressure in the former case, I see no real resemblance.
Either boycotting in response to donations is within people’s rights (in which case there is no need to shield donations) or it is not (in which case the “Prop. 8 Executive Committee” is guilty of the federal crime of extortion via mail). I await magellan01’s opinion on which it is…
Only if you define disagreement on an issue as “political corruption”.
Regards,
Shodan
The issue is giving people money so that you get your way politically. Please try to keep up with the class.
If I were personally in charge, I’d say $500, because that just feels like the threshold between big and small contribution. But as long as we agree that there’s some point where contributions do not require publication of an employer’s name, I’m in agreement.
It feels to me like $500 worth of influence that someone without $500 to spare simply doesn’t have.
It seems to me that if you’re passionate enough about an issue to lay out the cash, maybe you should man the fuck up and own it.
But hey, why should I be suprised that people who make a coward’s argument (“I don’t have anything against gay people! I just think that society will go to hell if we treat them like regular people!”) want to do it in a cowardly way.
The punishment I was talking about comes after they donate.
if this is your rationale, then you’d be find with the vote not being secret, right?
Well, I’m not sure that’s necessarily the case. IANAL but I think that if someone disseminated the information with the intent that people be harmed or harassed, and it wound up happening, that it would be a crime.
That she gives money to her friends makes her a good Christian, if you will, but in no way changes the fact she donated money to take civil rights away. You’re right, it’s not always about hate, but a person’s actions can still be grossly wrong-headed.
And there’s the rub. They could be wrong-headed to you. And that’s really just another way of saying you disagree with her. I think at the heart of this is either an unwillingness or an inability for some ProP 8 opponents to entertain the notion that they may be wrong, that there is a legitimate argument to be had regarding the term “marriage”. Or, at least, that Prop 8 supporters are evil or morally bankrupt.
But to turn your question back around on you: What societal good is served by making donations secret? Or “helping along” the process? Why wouldn’t someone have the courage to stand by their convictions? After all, if they feel strongly about it, there’s no compelling reason to hide. There’s been no militant homosexual violence, which was your initial concern. Nor has there been any sort of mob rule, another concern. As a matter of fact, things are pretty much limited to boycotts, as has been foretold.
So that people may choose to do business with, interact with, have sex with or the opposite of any of those things with the people who either opposed or supported Prop 8. And to try and criminalize what’s been done after the fact is cowardly, to say the least. Further, if by “pay” you mean boycott, well, there’s reason enough right there. And to turn that around, if there are those who feel that Pro 8 was right, just and good, they now have new outlets for their consumer dollars. Now, if by “pay” you’re once again referring to the backlash of militant homosexuals, I’ve not seen anything indicating that any such thing has happened.
Yeah, and we should also accept that no matter which side of the issue we stand on, there are also those who will choose to not do business with us. That’s just a cost of living in this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.
And:
Well, my word and the California (at least) legal code says that for whatever similarities they may have, they’re not similar enough. While they may have some similarity insofar as they influence a given situation, those are not enough to have the same weight applied to each of them. And honestly, if I were the only one who had called you on this, I would rethink what I was saying and where I was coming from. But you have attempted on more than one occasion to equate political contributions to a ballot cast, whether in a general election or in a unionizing situation that it seems it bore repeating. Which it was. In the interests of fairness, you did finally say that they are not the same, so there’s some ignorance succesfully fought. Good on most everyone.
There is no punishment. A business does not have a right to anyone’s patronage. Ergo, failure to provide said patronage is not a punishment.
Casting a vote that counts exactly like every other vote does not raise issues of political corruption. Buying influence does. QED.
It’s pretty obvious that YANAL. To commit a crime (specifically, the crime of incitement), there must be an imminent threat of unlawful action*, which is clearly not the case here.
*e.g. Publishing an idiot screed declaring that the Joooos caused the current financial meltdown is protected speech; stirring up a mob to the point where they lynch a local Jewish banker is not.
I’m inclined to agree with DianaG in that if you wanna pony up the scratch, then it’s time to be a grown up. That said, though, I think that if there is a requirement to list your employer, then perhaps a line should be drawn where if you contribute below it, then you needn’t do so. On the other side of that would be a business owner who knew and exploited the law and had his employees make $499 donations. This is a tough call, but I might wish to see the level lowered to somewhere in the neighborhood of $100.
And equally that Prop 8 supporters are unwilling to admit that they could be wrong about the term “marriage”. Or that Prop 8 opponents are evil or morally bankrupt.
Well, there already is at the federal level–$200. But, really, this is all missing the point somewhat. If I have your exact name and ZIP code, which are also published as part of the FEC regulations, it’s easy enough for me to find out where you work (usually). I do that every day here at work through Accurint services, with a success rate of about 80-90%. Now I’m bound by my professional organization’s code not to go broadcasting that info to everyone out there, but it seems to me that anyone sufficiently nosy can do the same.
Would you go further, and argue that name and town shouldn’t be published at all? Personally, I’m not comfortable with totally anonymous donors. I’m OK with publishing everybody above $200 and leaving everyone below anonymous, though.
NO, I’m fine with what I’ve proposed. Obviously if I have your name and address, I can follow you to work and see where you work, if it’s that important to me, but the general run of public cannot.
No, it’s still pretty clearly about discrimination. Bigotry is not an either/or proposition. There’s a lot of middle ground between being Martin Luther King, Jr, and being Bull Connor. Someone can be friendly to gays in a lot of ways, but still harbor prejudice against them - as, evidently, is the case with Ms. Christofferson. The irony is that, had she and her establishment been less friendly to gays in the past, there probably wouldn’t have been as much of a backlash against them. It sounds like the L.A. gay community is viewing this not just as opposition, but a betrayal - someone they had counted on as an ally stabbing them in the back. It’s not very fair to her in a lot of ways, but then, supporting prop. 8 wasn’t very fair to a lot of people she apparently considered to be her friends. Hopefully, she’ll see that the reaction she’s getting is a direct result of the injury and insult she’s offered to the gay community, and adjust her priorities accordingly.
Nah, all you need is a Lexis-Nexis account and time, really. Available at a library near you.