Archive for the ‘legal’ tag
Prop. 8 Campaign Has No Special Right to Anonymity
So there’s some good news. Although it’s predictable, it’s nonetheless good. Proposition 8 supporters who donated money were denied special rights to anonymity.
It’s interesting to note that the Proposition 8 people are going to the U.S. District court to “overturn the will of the people.” You see, the 1974 Political Reform Act was a California ballot initiative. And the Prop 8 people are saying that the ballot initiative is unconstitutional.
Now, I believe that Prop 8 is unconstitutional as a constitutional amendment. I’m hoping the California Supreme Court judges will agree. But it’s so ironic that the people arguing that the voters are the ultimate judges and should dictate the rights of the minority are here arguing that no, the voters voted in 1974 for an unconstitutional law.
Proposition 8 proponents’ complaint that a California campaign-finance disclosure law has led to harassment of same-sex marriage opponents failed to sway a federal judge, who refused Thursday to throw out the law or shield donors’ names.
…
“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.
…
He argued that the $100 disclosure requirement – adopted by California voters in 1974 – should be struck down, modified to raise the dollar limits, or at least not applied to Prop. 8’s contributors. As a first step, Coleson said, the campaign should be exempted from the state’s post-election contribution report, due Monday.
Get that? Everyone else who donates money since 1974 in California should have their donation records publicly available, but not the Proposition 8 people. No! They have a special right to privacy.
And who are they comparing themselves to to argue for this right?
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld campaign disclosure laws in 1976 but ruled in 1982 that the Socialist Workers Party in Ohio could shield its donors’ names because of a history of attacks and reprisals.
Protect Marriage argued that it was entitled to the same exemption because of retaliation against some of its contributors, but lawyers for the state said the two cases weren’t comparable. They noted that the Prop. 8 campaign raised nearly $30 million from 36,000 donors.
So let’s get this straight (pardon the pun). The California Supreme Court ruled that gay, lesbian and bisexual people have historically been subject to persecution and are thus a suspect class deserving strict scrutiny for laws limiting their rights (meaning, the bar is very high for the government to justify unequal treatment). Now, the Proposition 8 people are comparing themselves to socialists, who received an exemption from a similar law in Ohio. Why? Because socialists have been historically persecuted in the US, so they need extra protection in the form of anonymity to participate in democracy.
I’m not so sure I agree with that (mulling it over), but that’s the rationale they gave for the exemption.
What about the Proposition 8 donors? They’re not minority group that’s been historically persecuted. They’re part of the majority that’s donating to persecute a minority group!
[Deputy Attorney General Zackery Morazzini] 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.
So let’s look at this again. The Proposition 8 people allege that they’ve been threatened with illegal behavior. But there are no lawsuits. Compare this with the recent hate crimes in California against gay and lesbian citizens. People are actually being found and tried, such as the gang rape suspects who targeted, kidnapped, raped and robbed and assaulted a woman who had a rainbow flag on her car in a gay neighborhood in San Francisco.
There’s no comparison.
But they still feel persecuted somehow. Or are arguing for special rights to anonymity.
Referring to the donors whose names will appear in Monday’s public report, campaign spokesman Frank Schubert said England’s ruling “puts 1,600 people in harm’s way.”
Yes, so 1,600 people donated to strip fundamental rights from a historically persecuted minority group. And the Prop 8 lawyers are right now arguing that 18,000 married people and their children should lose their marital and family rights and obligations — which would be a sure thing. But the 1,600 people should become anonymous so that they might not get fake white powder or have people who don’t want to buy their goods or services.
Astounding.
[Quoting from Prop. 8 campaign can't hide donors' names]
Colombia Establishes Marriage Equality For Gay Couples (Sort of)
The South American nation of Columbia has gay marriage now. Sort of. Read the rest of this entry »
Kenneth Starr’s New Prop 8 Filings
Proposition 8
Today, as expected, Ken Starr (yeah, that one) filed a new brief in response to California Attorney General’s recent brief against proposition 8.
He relied in major part on one thing I find a bit ironic: trust in the people. Meaning, just because the majority of Californian voters want to treat the gays as less than equal in marriage doesn’t mean that they will want to take away other rights of the gays and lesbians and other minority groups.
Um, hello?
Church Can’t Take the Money and Run Over Gay Priests
Today the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the homophobic Newport Beach congregation of the Episcopal Church may leave the national organization, but can’t the money and run.
Proposition 8 Attorneys Working through the Holidays
This just in. The California Supreme Court has issued an order. Details after the jump.
Brief Appearance: Trust, But Verify
I’m sort of stealing this concept from KipEsquire (as I do many links lately). He calls the feature “comment left elsewhere. I thought it would be nice to have my own archive here if the comment is one relating to something I usually blog about, this time made on Trust, But Verify which is almost everything I remember about Ronald Reagan’s presidency as a child. The full text of my comment below the jump.
Money to Burn for Yes On Proposition 8
Andrew Sullivan has been writing many posts about the Human Rights Campaign and their inneffectiveness in preventing the passage of Proposition 8 and altso their general lack of impact around marriage equality and civil rights — their raison’ d’etre.
Something that sort of blows my mind is that the No On 8 ads were so useless…. and the Yes On 8 people actually have money left to burn after winning:
After the election, the Committee has remaining surplus funds of over $1.6 million. Under California law, the Committee is authorized to expend these funds for legal defense “where the litigation arises directly out of… The enactment by the initiative process, of any… constitutional amendment.”
[From the Preliminary Opposition available on the California Supreme Court's web page in messy PDF]
Crap! So they raised the money, spent it well, and had more money left over. What’s more, because they have money left over and the litigation is about the amendment, they can use the cash.
The Mormons Underwrote a Lot of Non-Money Contributions and Didn’t Report Them
Pointing Fingers, Drawing Connections
It turns out that the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Days Saints (the Mormons) didn’t just walk the line separating church and state by advocating that all of their members volunteer time and donate cash to Proposition 8 and the slime campaign against marriage equality.
I wrote earlier about the movement to report the Mormons to the IRS. But there’s a new political action group, Californians Against Hate and they’ve started some legal action against the Mormons for the huge amount of non-monetary contributions given to underwrite Proposition 8 that they apparently have not reported:
Under California Election Law organizations such as the Mormon Church are not required to report activities if they strictly constitute “member communication.” We will explain why we feel that the activities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went far beyond “member communication,” and were instead specifically targeted at California’s 17 million voters. By not reporting any of these non monetary contributions, the Mormon Church violated the Political Reform Act.
The only mention of compliance was a news story stating that the Mormon Church reported a single non monetary contribution of $2078.00 for Church Elder L. Whitney Clayton’s travel expenses for one trip to California. Was there only one trip? Were no other Church officials traveling to California for such an important campaign?
This sort of activity in political movements is common. For instance, if a large corporation lets a political action group use its phone lines or meeting rooms, etc., reporting the non-monetary donations keeps things honest.
Similarly, in my working with non-profit organizations, fund-raisers that give away prizes or swag bags worth more than the cost of entry are heavily scrutinez by the IRS as well and annual reports must include in-kind donations amongst other items.
The Californians Against Hate don’t have a lot of special access, it looks like, but they’ve strung together from public knowledge and record many non-monetary contributions.
Let’s see what happens.
Although KipEsquire has written about the chances and likelihood of getting the Mormons on the IRS:
…the Internal Revenue Code only places limit on endorsing particular candidates and not issue advocacy. (The counterargument that LDS engaging in impermissible “lobbying” is also too much of a stretch.)
Court challenges are one thing. Public shaming is one thing. Invoking the tax code is another thing altogether — and doomed to fail. Those disgusted by the soulless cretins who run the Mormon cult should stick to what actually has a chance of working.
[emphasis mine]
I’m not so sure. Granted, I don’t have his expertise in law or accounting, and I do realize there’s a bias from courts against frivolous lawsuits… I think making the Mormon Church scramble and account for itself and its leaders in the media, in the courts, and on the streets (non-violently, of course) can be what educators and trainers sometimes call multi-channel learning.
The movement for civil rights and marriage equality as a cultural movement with national focus and attention is really just starting. Leaders will emerge, and so will a strategy and consistent messaging. Clearly, what’s gone before has failed. I’m excited by what is just now emerging.
[Image by Bob Boster via Flickr under a creative commons license.]
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA): Legal Resources and Information
In my travels and surfing I found this site.
A site without insight.
Warning: it seems pretty biased from first glance as I type this in the San Jose airport. (For instance, on the front page it has a statistic of Muslims who voted for Obama — as if that were relevant to this issue except if one is homophobic and xenophobic and a religious bigot as well).
Nevertheless, the maps are kind of cool.
I object to the name of the site — it should be titled the Marriage Inequality site if it’s talking about DOMA.
See also my recent post:
Proponents of Prop 8 Recycle Failed Arguments In Motion
In their identical motions to intervene in the three petitions filed, thankfully, didn’t repeat all the nauseating reasons to deny marriage equality.
They did, however, seek to interpose themselves using the same arguments they already made to the California Supreme Court — which were rejected.
As I wrote earlier, the court denied their participation as parties to the action:
… that notwithstanding an advocacy group’s strong political or ideological support of a statute or ordinance – and its disagreement with those who question or challenge the validity of the legislation – such a disagreement does not in itself afford the group the right to intervene formally in an action challenging the validity of the measure.
In re Marriage Cases, (S147999) Opinion (PDF) – May 15, 2008, page 20.
The proponents (known as Campaign for California Families but is anything but) site a case People ex rel. Rominger v. County of Trinity (1983) 147 Cal.App.3d 655, 662.
That case involved the Sierra Club, who wanted to participatete because they wanted to represent members who would be harmed by the use of herbicides at issue in the case.
The California Supreme Court specifically addressed this very case. Quotation after the jump.
