Prop 8 plaintiffs subjected to ugly, vindictive verbal attacks

Religious right groups such as the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage are always so quick to seize upon incidents in order to claim that lgbt equality is causing people to lose their rights or get threatened.

But as we have seen in the cases of Peter Vadala, Crystal Dixon, Patricia Mauceri, Jennifer Keeton,  Julea Ward, and the newest case, Marcia Walden -these folks either got fired or got into trouble because they didn't adhere to rules regarding professional conduct and then chose to make the controversy into a religion vs. homosexuality issue.

On the other hand, here is a real issue involving a lesbian couple who got a bunch of venomous verbal attacks simply because they were plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 trial. From The Advocate:

Two plaintiffs in the high-profile Proposition 8 case were subjected to multiple vitriolic and antigay voice mails during the 2010 trial from a San Francisco man who was later convicted of making threatening telephone calls to then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

According to a 2010 Berkeley, Calif., police department report, Sandra Stier, who with her partner, Kristin Perry, filed suit against Prop. 8 in 2009 along with a Burbank gay male couple, received about 13 harassing messages at their Berkeley home during a two-day period in January at the end of the trial’s testimony phase.

Using an unlisted cell phone with a Newport News, Va., area number, the caller made repeated biblical references to homosexuality as well as antigay slurs. Many of the calls were made in the middle of the night or early-morning hours. Listen to the voice mails below.

A former law enforcement agent who provided audio recordings of the voice mails to The Advocate said the phone number used by the caller matched one revealed in a federal grand jury subpoena involving the investigation of Gregory Lee Giusti, 49. Giusti made at least 48 calls in February and March of 2010 to Pelosi, including calls to her Washington, D.C., residence, one of her Northern California residences, her San Francisco district office, and her husband’s San Francisco office. Giusti used a Magic Jack device in an attempt to conceal the origin of the calls, according to a 2010 affidavit by FBI supervisory special agent Bryan S. Smith.

Editor's note - fair warning - these messages are UGLY:



Now I'm certainly not blaming NOM for FRC for this man's words entirely, but to on the other hand, one would have to be blind to ignore even the smallest link between the rhetoric these organizations spew and the bile flowing from this man's mouth.