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Tracking people who sign petitions for the gay-marriage ballot question
By adamg on Thu, 09/08/2005 - 5:42pm
A couple of gay activists have set up a Web site on which they promise to list the names and addresses of everybody who signs petitions for a ballot question that would outlaw future gay marriages in Massachusetts. You can even sign up to be notified if somebody in your town signs one of the petitions (hmm, where's the integration with a mapping program?).
Right or wrong?
Domenico is outraged:
... Imagine if pro-marriage Christian advocates had something similar. Suppose they listed the names and addresses of every gay couple who had received a marriage license from Massachusetts since the court order went into effect in May 2004. The howls of outrage and protest would be heard from every rooftop in Cambridge and Wellesley and Newton and dozens of other liberal bastions. We'd hear ominous warnings of fundamentalists intimidating and even attacking peaceful gays and their adopted children. We'd be told that it smacks of fascism and stories would be re-told of homicidal anti-abortionists shooting up clinics. ...
Ed. note: If you do a whois search on the site, you see that it's been registered with DomainsByProxy.com, a site which hides the addresses of people who use its services. How come they don't want people to know their address? Surely they'd want to "open up communication" as they told the Herald was the reason to set up the site. Not that they're too hard to find - a quick trip to Switchboard turns up their contact info.
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Comments
please
If you're willing to sign a petition enshrining discrimination into the state Constitution that is a public document, you should be ready to accept the consequences.
Why is it okay for the right wing wackos to use everything at their disposal to discredit, intimidate and otherwise force their views on everyone else, but when other groups do it, suddenly it's such a horrible thing?
If you don't want people to know you hate gay people, don't sign the damn petition.
And ...
So two wrongs make a right is what you're saying?
If you're going to post the names and addresses of people doing nothing more than exercising their constitutional right to sign a petition, then at least have the decency to post your own name and address on the site, so that they can engage in the dialog you claim is your only reason for posting those names. Just because I support the right to gay marriage doesn't mean I think proponents should adopt the tactics of the Article 8 crowd.
I think
that what people are forgetting is that this is public information. If you sign the petition then your name and address are in the public realm. The same goes for your hypothetical publication of gay marriage certificates - if you want to get married, then guess what, you've put that information into the public realm and if someone wanted to post it, then that's what they have a right to do.
It's just that someone thought of doing it where no one has done it before.
There isn't really a history
There isn't really a history of gay-on-straight violence that makes this comparable to abortion clinics or if gay petitioners were targeted. Gay people as well as doctors who peform abortions have already been targeted and killed by religious nuts and bigots. Comparing the two just isn't valid.
That said, this is a scary precendent to start. I can see this being abused very, very quickly to intimidate people in future petition drives on contentious issues.
Yep...
Signing a petition and getting a marriage license both are matters of public record.
There are a LOT of sites (anybirthday.com, zabasearch.com, cityofboston.gov) that publish public records. The first two sites are anonymously owned corporate sites. At least the guys who made the petition site are upfront with who they are -- they're speaking to the press and so forth. I think THAT'S pretty gutsy of them, given the prevalence of anti-gay violence.
I think all petitions should be put up on a website. So should how people vote. If you wish to vote for an unpopular view, you damn well better have a good reason that you're willing to defend.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
There's a phone number and mailing address on the site
KnowThyNeighbor.org
P.O. Box 395
Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA 01944
(978) 335-0477
A mailing address, a phone number, and a website are more than you need to communicate with the founders of the site.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
For Domenico
Domenico doesn't have a way to contact him, unless you register on his site and provide him with your personal information. I'm not about to register with a website that promotes hatred toward me though, so I thought I'd reply here.
So, Domenico...
Hi, I'm eeka. Nice to meet you. I own a home in Boston. I vote, I pay taxes, and I work in public service. I'm a quite upstanding MA resident, if I do say so myself. You've just called my family an abomination though, without even having met me.
OK, so, how on earth can you, as a newlywed, possibly support the idea of the government telling some families that they shouldn't be allowed to be married? How would it make you feel if the government just suddenly decided that you weren't allowed to be married to the person you love for some random reason?
By the way, those commandments to which you allude are also used in my house of worship, where ALL families are valued.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
For Eeka
Eeka,
My email address is right at the top of my home page (and nearly every page) where it says "email me". It's not that difficult to find if you'd spend half a second looking for it.
You have to register only to post comments and that's a measure to protect me from the comment spammers who once put more than 700 comment-spams on my site in one night.
If you want to find out why I think that the state does not have the capacity to create the legal fiction of gay marriage feel free to search my site for "gay marriage" via the convenient search box that's also on nearly every page. I won't get into a flame war on this thread since it's only tangential to the main point of the blog entry. Feel free to register and post on my site though. But be polite.
Domenico...
I wasn't intending to get into a flame war either. Yes, I saw the e-mail address, but that doesn't allow me to post on the site where I could add to the one-sided discussion that's going on there. I don't wish to register on your bigoted website.
I'm just really curious how it remotely affects you whether my partner and I have the legal right to hospital visitation, joint property, death benefits, and so forth.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
For Eeka
Like I said, the registration is to keep out the spammers. Your lack of desire to register isn't my problem.
Creating the legal fiction of gay marriage has nothing to do with those rights. If you sign a piece of paper written up by a lawyer you can assign those rights to anyone you please, so enough with the red herrings.
You can no more create a legal right to marry someone of the same sex than I can demand the right to bear children by having a court declare it so. Marriage is what it is and it's neither in the state's purview nor capabilities to redefine it.
This isn't necessarily a religious issue. It can be argued purely from the principles of (classically) liberal government. But enough of that. I know when I'm in hostile territory.
You don't like my site and I know that nearly 100% of those who are here agree with you. I know where the real bigotry and hatred is.
Bigotry? Hatred?
I don't hate anyone, nor think that any group of people is undeserving of rights.
Of the 1049 federal rights that a marriage grants, about 200 of them can be granted to people who are not legally married through having court papers drawn up. Others, such as the right to a spouse's death benefits, are only given to people who are married. Davina Kotulski's book gives a lot of examples of rights that can only be secured through legal marriage.
You still haven't explained how it remotely affects you whether I am legally married or not.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com