Rights and Rights

A friend alerted me to this bit by Stephen Colbert on the "right" of petition signers to remain anonymous:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Don't Ask Don't Tell
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And then I ran across this article from NYT, via Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog Gay:

At a time when voters in many states are using petitions to qualify ballot measures on issues from gay rights to property rights, a legal dispute over the identity of 138,000 petition signers here is raising new questions about privacy, free speech and elections in the Internet age.

On Tuesday, voters in Washington State will decide whether to extend to registered domestic partners the same rights married couples have, short of marriage. But the campaign over the referendum, placed on the ballot by opponents of same-sex marriage, has been overshadowed by one issue: whether the individual names of the petitioners should be made public, and ultimately, circulated on the Web.

Sudbay comes close to the gist:

The irony of this article is that the New York Times misses the point that people in Washington State are voting on other people's privacy. Thanks to these petition signers, voters can actually take away rights from people if Referendum 71 is rejected, just as they can in Maine if Question 1 passes.

It's a little deeper than that. The anti-marriage group is claiming that they are afraid of reprisals against the petition signers, citing grossly exaggerated accounts of "persecution" in California after Prop 8 -- death threats (? -- I think I remember hearing about one that was verified, and it was some crank who makes death threats against everyone), loss of business, social ostracism. I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again: if your beliefs and attitudes are out of step with those of your community, you get punished. It's called "social disapproval." If you don't have courage of your convictions, you shouldn't be signing those peititions to begin with. The suit presupposes that people have a right to be insulated from the consequences of expressing their opinions. At least, the people on their side. It's another case of standing reality on its head.

The piece also quotes Tom Lang, who created knowthyneighbor.org in Massachusetts:

Concerns about intimidation and free speech have been raised in other states where knowthyneighbor.org has posted signatures. Tom Lang, the group’s co-director, said some gay rights organizations had distanced themselves from his work “because they understand the provocative nature of what we do.”

Created in 2005 amid the fight over same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the Web site was founded on a belief that “for social change to happen, there has to be a shaming part,” Mr. Lang said. Discussion, not intimidation, is the goal, he said.

“I’m trying to get you to understand that if you’re going to try to take away my rights I want you to know what you’re doing,” he said. “In Washington you’re being deprived of that.”

Exactly. If people are going to put our rights on the ballot, we should know who those people are.

Sure, you have the right to speak your mind. You also get to deal with the fallout. It's called "taking responsibility," something which has become foreign to the "conservative" mindset.

As footnote to this, remember also that NOM and its allies don't want to tell who gave them their money, no matter what the law says. From Robert Polzoni at The Gay Buzz, here's apost about NOM's efforts to overturn Maine's election reporting laws.

I don't know if any of you remember, but the last time Peter LaBarbera tried to get an anti-marriage advisory referendum on the Illinois ballot and it failed, he sued to overturn Illinois' election laws. Do I see a pattern here? As in, the law is for other people?

So much for "morality."