The liberal fascists are at it, again:
In an echo of tactics employed against true marriage supporters in California and elsewhere, a Washington state homosexualist website is threatening to publish the names and addresses of individuals signing a referendum to overturn a new homosexual civil unions law.
The tactic centers around efforts by Protect Marriage Washington to gather signatures for Referendum 71, which would bring into voter’s hands a newly-passed law that grants all the rights of marriage to same-sex couples, minus the name. The group has until July 25 to collect 120,000 signatures supporting the ballot initiative.
WhoSigned.org, which has teamed with KnowThyNeighbor.org, vows to create a searchable database of the names of all Referendum 71 signers, along with the amount they gave and their place of employment. It is unclear whether their home addresses will also be published. The latter website has supported similar projects in Oregon, Florida and Arkansas.
Murphy says the purpose of exposing the names is to foster “conversation” between the opposing groups.
“We believe the process for initiative and referendum petitions that maintain discrimination by opposing equal rights and protections for Washington State residents must meet a high standard of transparency to ensure a fair and open discussion in the public forum,” wrote Brian Murphy, the creator of WhoSigned.org.
Murphy explained to the Seattle Post Intelligencer: “We hope when they find names of people who are familiar to them, that when at the grocery store or the soccer field or just mowing their lawn, that’s a chance to have a conversation.
“If you want to sign (Referendum 71), you have the right to sign that, but be aware there are probably people who live near you, people you know, who would want to come and talk to you about what that means to them.”
Which is, of course, a lie – what Murphy wants is to intimidate people into not signing, so that there won’t be a democratic vote on the issue, because Murphy knows his side will probably lose. Who would go to such a website to see if their neighbors signed? Only fanatics who want to do something nasty – and as everyone can easily see that is who would avail themselves of the website, the easy way out is just to not sign…especially if you’ve got kids you don’t want exposed to hatred, or property you don’t want exposed to vandalism.
This is a very insidious act and it will be very difficult to combat – the people who do this sort of disgusting deed need not expose themselves. Murphy can be sued if anything bad happens, but he’d be the last person to suffer such a fate…all other future attempts will be done anonymously, if any action is taken against the people who set this up. We can, perhaps, change laws to forbid the release of signature names for a number of year after being gathered – but activists within government would probably leak them, anyway.
It is in our anonymity that our democratic system works – we don’t have secret ballots just for the heck of it, ya know? They’re secret precisely to prevent such intimidation. We need to work out a way to make signing a petition as secret as voting – perhaps we can have petitions placed in voting booths and registered voters can sign or not sign anonymously? It needs thought, because we can’t allow liberal fascists to get away with this sort of thing.
Blogs For Victory 