We just referenced Doe v Reed last month in our memo on the campaign finance shenanigans of the National Organization for Marriage. NOM, you’ll recall, justifies hiding its donors (and thus files endless lawsuits to keep those donors secret) due to, they claim, harassment and intimidation (and worse) from LGBT advocates. Such harassment and vandalism has gotten so bad, apparently, that tenet #4 on NOM’s presidential marriage pledge has called for “investigations” of LGBT Americans who, supposedly, are responsible for such vandalism.
Well, today, a federal judge, a George W. Bush appointee, has ruled against NOM’s phony argument. According to the Seattle Times, the judge said “Protect Marriage [an off-shoot of NOM] failed to show any ‘serious and widespread threats, harassment, or reprisals against the signers of R-71, or even that such activity would be reasonably likely to occur upon the publication of their names and contact information.’”
More from the paper:
A federal judge on Monday issued a ruling that publicly releases the names of 137,500 people who two years ago signed Referendum 71 petitions to bring the state’s domestic-partnership law to a vote.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle of Tacoma ends a legal fight between the Secretary of State’s Office and the religious conservative group Protect Marriage Washington.
The group had argued in court that petitions bearing the names of the signers should be sealed to protect them from harassment, while the state maintained that the petitions need to remain public.
The article said that the group will appeal the ruling, which continues to bring up the simple question - just what is NOM trying to hide?
Related post:
NOM trying to sidestep Minnesota disclosure laws
5 comments:
YES! These people need to come clean about who is funding them. Once the truth is revealed, NOM will collapse like a house of bigoted, money-grubbing cards.
I LIVE for that day.
NOM is fuzzy on that whole public record thing.
But sooner or later, they're going to me made to answer for what they've done. And we're going to find out who their donors are, and who signed their petitions.
It's already clear from the SB48 battle that it's likely NOM employed subversive tactics to get people to sign their petition with a bait and switch routine.
Well done to the judge. It's time to make these people accountable for their claims and expose fraud in the process. I'd like to see them all called, not to be harassed but to verify their signatures and the situation under which they were gathered.
The actual ruling is pretty sweet. The judge outed all of the formerly secretive "John Does" and they all turn out to be rather public faces, including Pastor Ken Hutcherson.
What they are trying to hide is that there was massive fraud committed in the collection of signatures for this referendum. It should not have been qualified in the first place, for there were many irregularities in the signatures. What they are afraid is going to happen is that a lot of people whose names are on those petitions are going to come forward to say, I never signed such a document, and their whole house of cards is going to fall down. I hope that when that happens some of the "signature gatherers" will be prosecuted, and that NOM will have to pay restitution. The referendum took millions of dollars to fight, and it should never have been held in the first place.
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