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Court Rules Proposition 8 Crusaders Must Reveal Donor Names

By blueness

Federal District Court Judge Morrison England refused Thursday to shield the names of financial donors to the campaign in favor of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that amended the state constitution to recognize marriage only between one man and one woman.

Proposition 8 proponents had requested the court either invalidate a 1974 California law mandating disclosure of donors contributing to a campaign $100 or more, or give pro-Prop. 8 donors some sort of special exemption, in order to protect them from teh gays.

Politely, Judge England told them to get stuffed.
The pro-Prop. 8 plaintiffs had rended their garments before Judge England, ululating that Internet disclosure of donors' names and other identifying information in state-mandated reports had led to consumer boycotts and even death threats. They demanded that England exempt pro-Prop. 8 folk from the state's post-election contribution report, due Monday. In requiring disclosure, "the government is getting in the middle [of the issue] and saying, "here are the people to go after,'" wailed Richard Coleson, mouthpiece for the pro-Prop. 8 crusaders.

England was unmoved.

"If there ever needs to be sunshine on a particular issue, it's a ballot measure," U.S. District Judge Morrison England said after a one-hour hearing in his Sacramento courtroom.

If the Prop. 8 campaign was exempted from disclosure because of reports of harassments of individual donors, said Deputy Attorney General Zackery Morazzini, the same case could be made for any controversial initiative. Courts would have to "keep the entire California electorate in the dark as to who was funding these ballot measures," he said.

England agreed.

He noted that some of the reprisals reported by the Prop. 8 committee involve legal activities such as boycotts and picketing. Other alleged actions, such as death threats, mailings of white powder and vandalism, may constitute "repugnant and despicable acts" but can be reported to law enforcement, the judge said.

Even if there have been illegal reprisals, that would be insufficient reason to grant a wholesale exemption for a multimillion-dollar initiative campaign, England said.

Any desire by donors to remain anonymous is outweighed by the state's authority to require "full and fair disclosure of everyone who's involved in these political campaigns," England said.

Pro-Prop.8 crusader Frank Schubert fulminated that England's ruling "puts 1600 people in harm's way"; mouthpiece Coleson vowed to appeal England's decision to a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit District Court of Appeals.

A piece in the San Jose Mercury News notes that California is not exactly a "sunshine" state when it comes to transparency in campaign contributions; there exist several ways for donors to cloak their identities. Too, while pro-Prop. 8 crusader Ron Prentice howls that "hundreds of people informed us of harassment, intimidation and threats that came to their places of employment as well as their homes," in truth, the Mercury News reports, "all that's been reliably documented are a few examples of gays and their supporters staying away from businesses whose owners were Proposition 8 donors. No physical harm whatsoever."

California Attorney General Jerry Brown, representing the state of California, had scoffed at the pleadings of the pro-Prop. 8 crusaders. "Backers of Proposition 8 should not be allowed to carve out a special privilege of anonymity for themselves," he sniffed.

Brown has latterly been transformed into Beelzebub in the eyes and minds of the pro-Prop. 8 crusaders, as, following the measure's passage, he determined that it unconstitutionally stripped gay citizens of "a fundamental liberty," and aligned his office with those seeking before the California Supreme Court to have the initiative invalidated. The California Attorney General is generally required to defend in the courts an initiative measure approved by the voters, but may demur when, as in this case, he determines that the measure in fact violates the state constitution.

Among the attorneys who will argue against Brown before the state's highest court in March, urging that Proposition 8 be upheld, is Kenneth Starr, the man who spent much of the 1990s sniffing Bill Clinton's underwear.

It is generally acknowledged that the deciding force in the passage of Proposition 8 was the involvement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, hereinafter referred to as Mormons. That good Mormons must crusade for Proposition 8 was decreed from the pulpit. Some 45% of the out-of-state money received by the pro-Prop. 8 campaign came from the Mormon homeland of Utah; the New York Times reported that Mormons were responsible for an 11th-hour infusion of money, without which the proposition's backers believe it would have failed.

That Mormons would emerge as the greatest crusaders against a ballot measure mandating that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" is frankly bizarre, as for the first 74 years of its brief 178-year history, the Mormon church allowed and actually encouraged polygamy, permitting a man to glut himself with as many wives as he could reasonably support. The church only began foot-draggingly "renouncing" polygamy in the late 1890s, after the Congress of the United States made it clear that Mormon-infested Utah would not be granted statehood unless a prohibition against polygamy was explicitly written into the Utah state constitution.

Also--and excuse me--but the Mormon church is a flippin' freakazoid cult, far more strange, outre, than anything that has peeled back my eyes at several SF Gay Freedom Day Parades.

Mormons are required to believe that, after rolling away the stone there in Judea, Jesus moseyed on over to the New World, where he rode around on buffalo, chewed beef jerky, and spread The Word to the natives. Grizzled carny-barker Joseph Smith received this revelation when presented with "golden plates" by someone called the Angel Moroni, plates he "translated" into The Book of Mormon, by gazing into glowing crystals. Challenged to produce these plates, Smith allegedly flourished them before 11 hand-picked "witnesses." Then, Smith said, Bony Moroni immediately demanded them back. And so the magic plates magically disappeared; stashed away today, so believe some Mormonoids, aping the Arthurian Avalon legend, in some stinking snake-infested hole in Utah, awaiting the day of resurrection, when they'll float high into the sky, there alongside Old Mad Joe.

Until 1978, when one of the church's ancient patriarchs, Spencer Kimball, was compelled to have a "revelation," in which The Lord decreed that blacks were actually people, fit even for the Mormon priesthood, church doctrine more or less held that black people were a sort of farm animal.

In Mormonism women are not considered to be gifted with souls, and may only attain one of the Mormon heavens through sanctified contact with a Mormon penis. Adult Mormons must wear, at all times, except during intercourse, "garments," a form of holy super-underwear that is supposed to remain on the body until it rots off, at which time it is replaced by new "garments."

I mean, whatever gets you through the night. But: really. I just don't much think weirdsmobile people like these should be telling me who, or--next step--whoms, I may, or may not, marry. Will gather honey my own and only way, thank you very much.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on January 30, 2009 (boomark / email).