Boycott those who supported Prop 8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)

Since Proposition 8 passed, several legal challenges to Proposition 8 have already been filed in California courts, and more than 40 state legislators filed a friend-of-the-court briefs  to support legal efforts to void Proposition 8. A series of protests have spread across California, and are sweeping the country, and now they've moved onto the Internet with blacklists that are outing those who gave money to get Proposition 8 passed.

 Reminiscent of Christian boycotts against companies who supported gay rights, and the ever popular War on _____ boycotts, now gay right activists are calling for the same action.  Several new websites have launched that list all the names and businesses of all the donors. Evidently those who made political donations to Prop8 did not realize that their contributions are a matter of public record... or that publishing those records is legal.

http://electiontrack.com/
http://antigayblacklist.com/

• Boycott those who supported Prop 8 - sm
  • The people spoke - against gay marriage
  • Awesome, thanks. Now I have a list of companies to patronize. - Lu
  • maybe they knew and did not care that it was public information - nm - Amanda

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Interesting column from the Times, written by a black. I bring this here just as a matter of interest. I found it to be quite interesting.

Op-Ed Columnist
Gay Marriage and a Moral Minority
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: November 29, 2008

We now know that blacks probably didn’t tip the balance for Proposition 8. Myth busted. However, the fact remains that a strikingly high percentage of blacks said they voted to ban same-sex marriage in California. Why?

There was one very telling (and virtually ignored) statistic in CNN’s exit poll data that may shed some light: There were far more black women than black men, and a higher percentage of them said that they voted for the measure than the men. How wide was the gap? According to the exit poll, 70 percent of all blacks said that they voted for the proposition. But 75 percent of black women did. There weren’t enough black men in the survey to provide a reliable percentage for them. However, one can mathematically deduce that of the raw number of survey respondents, nearly twice as many black women said that they voted for it than black men.

Why? Here are my theories:

(1) Blacks are much more likely than whites to attend church, according to a Gallup report, and black women are much more likely to attend church than black men. Anyone who has ever been to a black church can attest to the disparity in the pews. And black women’s church attendance may be increasing.

According to a report issued this spring by Child Trends, a nonprofit research center, weekly church attendance among black 12th graders rose 26 percent from 1993 to 2006, while weekly church attendance for white 12th graders remained virtually flat. In 2006, those black teenagers were nearly 50 percent more likely to attend church once a week than their white counterparts. And it is probably safe to assume that many of them were going to church with their mothers since Child Trends reported that around the time that they were born, nearly 70 percent of all black children were born to single mothers.

(2) This high rate of church attendance by blacks informs a very conservative moral view. While blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, an analysis of three years of national data from Gallup polls reveals that their views on moral issues are virtually indistinguishable from those of Republicans. Let’s just call them Afropublicrats.

(3) Marriage can be a sore subject for black women in general. According to 2007 Census Bureau data, black women are the least likely of all women to be married and the most likely to be divorced. Women who can’t find a man to marry might not be thrilled about the idea of men marrying each other.

Proponents of gay marriage would do well to focus on these women if they want to win black votes. A major reason is that black women vote at a higher rate than black men. In the CNN national exit poll, there were 40 percent more black women than black men, and in California there were 50 percent more. But gay marriage advocates need to hone their strategy to reach them.

First, comparing the struggles of legalizing interracial marriage with those to legalize gay marriage is a bad idea. Many black women do not seem to be big fans of interracial marriage either. They’re the least likely of all groups to intermarry, and many don’t look kindly on the black men who intermarry at nearly three times the rate that they do, according to a 2005 study of black intermarriage rates in the Wisconsin Law Review. Wrong reference. Don’t even go there.

Second, don’t debate the Bible. You can’t win. Religious faith is not defined by logic, it defies it. Instead, decouple the legal right from the religious rite, and emphasize the idea of acceptance without endorsement.

Then, make it part of a broader discussion about the perils of rigidly applying yesterday’s sexual morality to today’s sexual mores. Show black women that it backfires. The stigma doesn’t erase the behavior, it pushes it into the shadows where, devoid of information and acceptance, it become more risky.

For instance, most blacks find premarital sex unacceptable, according to the Gallup data. But, according to data from a study by the Guttmacher Institute, blacks are 26 percent more likely than any other race to have had premarital sex by age 18, and the pregnancy rate for black teens is twice that of white teens. They still have premarital sex, but they do so uninformed and unprotected.

That leads to a bigger problem. According to a 2004 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women have an abortion rate that is three times that of white women.

More specifically, blacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women’s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. (In contrast, only 13 percent of the white men in the study said they had sex with both men and women, while 14 percent of the white women said that they knew their partners were bisexual.)

So pitch it as a health issue. The more open blacks are to the idea of homosexuality, the more likely black men would be to discuss their sexual orientations and sexual histories. The more open they are, the less likely black women would be to put themselves at risk unwittingly. And, the more open blacks are to homosexuality over all, the more open they are likely to be to gay marriage. This way, everyone wins.

The Protect Marriage Coalition, which led the fight to pass an anti-gay marriage initiative in California, is now suing to shield its financial records from public scrutiny.

The lawsuit claims that donors to Protect Marriage and a second group involved in the suit have received threatening phone calls and emails. It asks for existing donation lists to be removed from the California secretary of state's website and also seeks to have both plaintiffs and all similar groups be exempted in the future from ever having to file donation disclosure reports on this or any similar campaigns.

Although public access advocates believe this sweeping demand for donor anonymity has little chance of success, it does point up the secretive and even conspiratorial nature of much right-wing political activity in California.

Howard Ahmanson and Wayne C. Johnson

The man who more than any other has been associated with this kind of semi-covert activity over the past 25 years is reclusive billionaire Howard Ahmanson.

Ahmanson is a Christian Reconstructionist, a devout follower of the late R.J. Rushdoony, who advocated the replacement of the U.S. Constitution with the most extreme precepts of the Old Testament, including the execution -- preferably by stoning -- of homosexuals, adulterers, witches, blasphemers, and disobedient children.

Ahmanson himself has stated, "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives."

As absurd as this Reconstructionist agenda may seem, the success of Proposition 8 demonstrates the ability of what is sometimes called the "Christian Taliban" to pursue its covert objectives behind the screen of seemingly mainstream initiatives and candidates.

Ahmanson's role in promoting Proposition 8 has drawn a lot of attention, but he appears to serve primarily as the money man, leaving his associates to carry out the practical details. One name in particular stands out as Ahmanson's chief lieutenant: political consultant Wayne C. Johnson, whose Johnson Clark Associates (formerly Johnson & Associates) coordinated the Proposition 8 campaign.

Johnson has spent many years working for Ahmanson-funded causes -- such as the battle against a 2004 initiative to promote stem cell research -- and organizations, like the anti-spending California Taxpayer Protection Committee.

Johnson Clark has also operated PACs for many candidates supported by Ahmanson. It ran Rep. John Doolittle's leadership PAC, which became notorious for sending a 15% commission to Doolittle's wife out of every donation received. It currently runs the PAC for Rep. Tom McClintock, a strong Proposition 8 supporter who was narrowly elected last fall to succeed the scandal-plagued Doolittle.
Proposition 8

The series of events leading to the approval of Proposition 8 began in 2000 with the passage of Proposition 22, which defined marriage in California as being solely between one man and one woman -- but did so only as a matter of law and not as a constitutional amendment.

Proposition 22 was quickly challenged in court, leading to the creation by its supporters of the the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund. In 2003, Johnson Clark Associates registered the domain ProtectMarriage.com on behalf of that fund.

ProtectMarriage.com began campaigning in early 2005 for an initiative that would add its restrictive definition of marriage to the California constitution, but it failed to gather sufficient signatures and was terminated in September 2006.

In 2008, however, a reborn ProtectMarriage.com, flush with nearly a million dollars in funding from Howard Ahmanson and tens of millions from other doners, succeeding in getting Proposition 8 placed on the ballot and approved by 52% of the voters.

Proposition 8 is now California law -- at least for the moment, pending challenges to its constitutionality -- and ProtectMarriage.com has turned its attention to demanding that all 18,000 existing same-sex marriages be declared invalid.
The Ahmanson-Johnson Strategy

The partnership between Ahmanson and Johnson, however, did not begin in 2003 or even in 2000. It goes back to at least 1983, if not earlier, and has been a continuing factor in California politics for the last 25 years.

In a 1994 article on Christian Reconstructionism, Public Eye described Johnson's central role in an Ahmanson-financed attempt by the Christian Right to take control of the California state legislation. The strategy involved first pushing through a term limits initiative, which was accomplished in 1990, and then promoting its own candidates for the seats this opened up:

"The practical impact of term limits is to remove the advantage of incumbency ... which the extreme Christian Right is prepared to exploit. ... At a Reconstructionist conference in 1983, Johnson outlined an early version of the strategy we see operating in California today. ... The key for the Christian Right was to be able to: 1) remove or minimize the advantage of incumbency, and 2) create a disciplined voting bloc from which to run candidates in Republican primaries, where voter turn out was low and scarce resources could be put to maximum effect. ...

"Since the mid-1970s, the extreme Christian Right, under the tutelage of then-State Senator H. L Richardson, targeted open seats and would finance only challengers, not incumbents. By 1983, they were able to increase the number of what Johnson called 'reasonably decent guys' in the legislature from four to 27. At the Third Annual Northwest Conference for Reconstruction in 1983, Johnson stated that he believed they may achieve 'political hegemony. . .in this generation.'"

The mention of H. L. "Bill" Richardson as the originator of the Johnson-Ahmanson strategy is both eye-catching and significant. Richardson, a former John Birch Society member, was considered to be one of the most extreme right-wing politicians of his time. In 1975, he co-founded Gun Owners of America (GOA), an organization which is widely regarded as being well to the right of the National Rife Association.

Wayne Johnson began his political career in 1976 by working for Richardson -- and Johnson Clark Associates still operates a PAC for GOA's state affiliate, the Gun Owners of California Campaign Committee.

In 1992, Johnson and Ahmanson managed to help send a batch of conservative Republicans to Congress. Foremost among these was Richard Pombo, one of whose first acts after taking office was to introduce a resolution of commendation for the Reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation.

In 2004, Johnson told an interviewer that Pombo's election was a high point of his political career. "There have been a lot of great moments, but Richard Pombo's 1992 upset victory in his first congressional primary has got to be near the top. The television stations didn't even have his name listed on their pre-programmed screens election night. Today, he's chairman of the House Resources Committee."

Two years after Johnson's enthusiastic declaration, Pombo was defeated by a Democratic challenger, following wide-ranging allegation of corruption, including being named as the Congressman who had received more donations from Jack Abramoff than any other.
The Anti-Homosexual Agenda

Although the Christian Right never achieved its original goal of taking over California state government -- which may be why Ahmanson and Johnson have turned their attention to passing socially conservative initiatives instead -- it has been far more successful in establishing dominance over that state's Republican Party.

In 1998, Mother Jones reported:

"First they packed the then-moderate California Republican Assembly (CRA), a mainstream caucus with a heavy hand in the state party's nominating process, with their Bible-minded colleagues. By 1990 they controlled the CRA, and since then the CRA's clout has helped the religious conservatives nominate and elect local candidates and—crucially—catapult true believers into state party leadership slots. ...

"From radical fringe to kingmakers in a decade — how did they do it? 'Basically, there's two places you have influence: one is in the nominating process in the primaries, where you can elect people in ideological agreement with your views, and the other is in the party structure,' says former CRA vice president John Stoos, a former gun lobbyist, member of the fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionist movement, and senior consultant to the State Assembly."

Stoos appears to come out of precisely the same background as Johnson and Ahmanson. He served as the executive director of Gun Owners of California and was also the chief of staff and a legislative advisor to Tom McClintock from 1998 until 2003, when he got into trouble for his over-the-top Reconstructionist sentiments.

In the Mother Jones interview, Stoos referred to Christian politicians as God's "vice-regents ... those who believe in the Lordship of Christ and the dominion mandate" and pointed to the repeal in the 1970's of laws against homosexual acts as an example of the need for rule by "biblical justice."

"The proof is in the pudding," Stoos told Mother Jones. "Since we lifted those laws, we've had the biggest epidemic in history."

To many who voted for it, Proposition 8 may have been no more than a nostalgic attempt to keep a changing world more like the way it used to be. But for Reconstructionists like Ahmanson, Johnson, and Stoos, it clearly represents something else -- a dramatic first step towards "the total integration of biblical law into our lives."

the right to free speech.  Thanks to the moderator for straddling the fence and electing not to ban me.  That said, I will not hide (change my name) and I will not go away.  I will not allow those who are afraid of opposite opinion to stop me from posting mine.  That is not the America I want to live in, and I think it is time that more of us stood up againt bullying tactics.  I am standing.

In deference to those of you who would seek to silence me....I am an Independent and I will post independently.  I will not reply directly to any of you, you can keep your threads all to yourselves.  If I have a rebuttal I will post it separately.  You are free to do as you have been doing without me entering your threads.  That is me, reaching across the aisle.

I will also retract a statement I made yesterday.  I was wrong to lump all Democrats into the same barrel.  As Oldtimer so astutely pointed out, I fell into the same trap I accused others of, and in retrospect and after McCain's speech it became more clear to me.  All Democrats/liberals/progressives are not of the same cloth as what I have experienced on this board.  I apologize for that. 

What I do not apologize for is being a conservative and having conservative values.  Too many of us have been too quiet for too long.  We sat down.  We need to stand up with John and Sarah.  There is nothing wrong with nor to be ashamed about in the way we feel and we are as much entitled to that as liberals are to liberalism.  And part of that is tolerance.  So, as a compromise....

Democrats/liberals, start your threads, and I will not encroach upon them.  I would ask for the same respect from you as I post independently.  There will be no need for you to open any of them or to spend half a page piling on.  I will respect your threads.  Kindly respect others.

As McCain said last night, we are all God's children (even if you don't claim Him, He claims you), we are all Americans.  So let's allow both sides to present views, support their candidates, exercise our right to free speech, have diverging opinions.  I would like to see the America back where I grew up, when the old fellas sat and played checkers in front of the library in town and bantered back and forth about politics, but it was good natured and they were still best of friends.  I miss that.  We need to stop belitting others for where they live or for their religion or the lack thereof.  We need to stop attacking each other, period.  A house divided against itself cannot stand.  We do need to try to be one America again.   No politician can rejoin us.  That is a task we must do ourselves. 

Great article in the Rocky Mountain News.