Gay rights activists outing their opponents’ political orientation
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Rights for same-sex couples are on the ballot today in Maine and Washington state. Voters in Maine are deciding whether to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage law, while voters in Washington are deciding whether to extend domestic partners the same rights as married couples.
[Update on Nov. 4: Voting results are in. Maine rejected same-sex marriage. But it looks like Washington's referendum will be voted up, if narrowly.]
Beyond manning phone banks, passing out flyers, and knocking on doors, gay rights activists have come up with a new tactic to try to achieve their political objectives. KnowThyNeighbor and WhoSigned.org are working to put the names and addresses of anti-gay rights petition signers on their websites.
There have been petitions in several states in opposition to marital rights and domestic partner rights for gay couples. When signing, people likely didn’t think about the possibility of their political opinions being revealed online. But in many states, petition signatures are considered public records. They’re typically archived, but now these groups want to make the information easily accessible online.
KnowThyNeighbor.org has already digitized the information of petition signers in Florida, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Oregon. Washington State was next on the list, but the Supreme Court has weighed in to block the release of the names for now.
The Supreme Court decided that the Washington petition signers’ names should be kept secret, though it may revisit this issue later:
The United States Supreme Court weighed in last week, deciding to let stand a lower court ruling that ordered Washington’s secretary of state not to disclose the names of the signers. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the issue, and it is unclear whether it will.
The case, legal experts say, could chart new territory well beyond Washington State. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had ordered the release of the signatures, said the case presented “novel questions of whether referendum petition signatures are protected speech under the First Amendment.”
Some advocates for releasing the names who support the expansion of the state’s domestic partnership rights say they want to post the names of petition signers as a check against fraud but also to encourage potentially “uncomfortable” conversations with the people who signed the petitions.
It would also seem to have an impact on these individuals’ Google search results. But when I tried a few names from the over 15,000 on KnowThyNeighbor’s Florida list, their gays-don’t-deserve-the-same-rights-as-straights listing didn’t appear in top results. It was in the fifth page for one individual, though that might change as these sites attract more traffic.
The movement raises important questions: Should we have to stand by our political opinions publicly? What we do in the voting box is considered private; should our signing of petitions be granted the same privacy?
“If you believe and understand and want to hurt families in Washington state and take their rights away, then don’t hide, by all means go ahead and sign,” said Tom Lang, director of KnowThyNeighbor.org, who launched the first campaign to out petition signers in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage. “No minority group should have their civil rights subjected to the ballot box.”
But Maggie Gallagher, an advocate who writes extensively against gay marriage, said the strategies could have a chilling effect on the democratic process and surely will spread as long as organizers are effective in intimidating voters.
“They are using the public-disclosure laws to punish people for participating in the democratic process — a core right,” said Gallagher, the New York-based president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy.
As regular readers know, I’m usually of the anti-privacy persuasion. But I’m torn on this. I’m not sure what the online disclosure of these names accomplishes beyond political intimidation. The claim that it’s a “check against fraud” seems like a throwaway argument. You can review the lists for fraud without putting them online… though that does allow for a kind of fraud open-sourcing.
On the other hand, there’s something to be said for having to be transparent about your opposition to civil rights for a minority group. If that’s really how you feel, why not be forthright about it? Though I’d prefer that addresses not be included in the listings; it invokes the anti-abortion activist tactic of posting personal information of abortion-performing doctors for the purposes of targeting them.
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You write: “…there’s something to be said for having to be transparent about your opposition to civil rights for a minority group. If that’s really how you feel, why not be forthright about it?”
First, do you really think we should base petition privacy laws based on one issue (civil rights for gays and lesbians) when there are petitions on numerous issues? That makes no sense. As you alluded to earlier, whether the issue is taxes or gay rights, the only purpose of disclosure is political intimidation by opponents (on both sides). This happened on Prop 8 in California.
Second, the answer to your last question is that, like voting, people don’t necessarily want others (colleagues, friends, neighbors) to know their political beliefs — much less have a Google record of their political activity.
Is that really so hard to understand?
I do understand it. That’s why I’m torn.
But we have already decided that petitions are public records, no matter the issue. I’m adverse to standing in opposition to making public records available online.
In response to another comment. See in context »