Blame Game: NO on 8 fighting its friends as well as its foes

[cboy4]

Prop. 8 backers splinter as court fight resumes

John Wildermuth, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, November 24, 2008

The group that persuaded California voters this month to pass Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, now is fighting its friends as well as its foes.

Other conservative groups that loudly backed Prop. 8 are being targeted as too extreme and off-putting by ProtectMarriage.com, which put the constitutional amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot and hopes to help persuade the state Supreme Court to uphold the measure.

"We represent the people who got things done, who got Prop. 8 passed," said Andrew Pugno, general counsel for the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign. "An important part of defending Prop. 8 is eliminating arguments not helpful to our concerns."

Pugno, for example, persuaded the Supreme Court last week to bar the Campaign for California Families from intervening in the court case over the validity of Prop. 8 and the same-sex marriage ban.

"That organization represents the extreme fringe and is not representative of the coalition that got it passed," Pugno said. "They didn't even support Prop. 8 until sometime in the summer."

People associated with the group didn't expect the Prop. 8 campaign's efforts to push them to the sidelines.

"I'm surprised, because we've litigated beside each other for 4 1/2 years" in the unsuccessful effort to keep the Supreme Court from overturning Prop. 22 same-sex marriage ban in 2000, said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, which represents the Campaign for California Families. "We have the same goal, which is to defend Prop. 8."

The group, now known as the Campaign for Children and Families, is run by Randy Thomasson, who for years has been one of California's most visible opponents of gay rights and what he bills as "the homosexual agenda."

The people behind Prop. 8 have been butting heads with Thomasson for years, arguing that his efforts to outlaw same-sex marriage and curb domestic partnership arrangements are a long step further than a majority of California voters is willing to go.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/23/BA21149LUL.DTL&tsp=1

[tsuki]

1. Have you seen this?

http://www.americablog.com/2008/11/princeton-proposition-8-to-protect.html



Bless the children; they will show you the way.

[cboy4]

2. Nope .. I hadn't seen it. Thanks :)

Very clever. :thumbsup:

[RedLetterRev]

3. It's all fun and games

until somone puts an eye out.

That was mom's way of saying the effect doesn't occur to some people until something similar actually happens to them. Other minorities are just now figuring out what the LGBTQ community have been trying to get across for years. The far-right always pick on us first as the weakest and most vulnerable; no one will speak up for us and no one will come to our defense before the fight. It's always after, when the damage has been done.

The cancer always spreads from there: hysteria over immigrants, attacks on affirmative action, rights first are taken by the ballot, thrown away by terrified sheeple, then snatched by executive order in the Oval. The trend always could have been stopped anywhere along the way. The people who should know better, but vote for this kind of crap anyway could invest a moment's thought toward the very real consequences beforehand, but it's always easier, lazier, simpler to blame on the maunderings of long-dead, sun-baked "prophets" than to invest any empathy into how actions impact living, thinking, feeling human beings.

Until it's too late.

I posted this in a similar thread earlier this morning:

They always pick on the LGBTQ community first, the most vulnerable and least defended. When they're successful, they start whuppin'-up fear about immigrants and get sheeple to throw more of their own rights away. Then they head right for the African-American community and start bitching about affirmative action, with precedents for stripping rights already in hand. The wackogelical christofascists can't win outright and they can't win honestly: they have to attack the Constitution by stealth and by degrees by getting people to throw their own rights away under the guise of taking rights away from someone else.

The amoral, soulless cabal of the wackogelical power- and fear-mongers in bed with the soulless and amoral fascist Ponzi-schemers have kept this shell-game going easily, right under most folks' noses. It's easier to hate and to feel superior wrapped in a flag made of Chinese material and of Chinese workmanship and carrying a styrofoam cross and a plastic jahazis. To wit:

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

Link to Salon article

I've been yelling, posting, emailing, talking, writing, whatever about this for years. Very little, if anything seems to have changed, except the wackogelicals have gotten stronger, bolder, and even more vile and hateful than ever.

Conspiracy? Not much. They're right out in the open with it these days. I'm surprised they don't wear their sheets every day. I wouldn't be shocked to find pre-fitted, wash-and-wear robes in Sprawl-Mart in sizes infant to 5X.

Whyinhell we haven't put our foot down on the same, repeated pattern, I don't know. It always starts by demonizing gays and always spreads from there.

[readmoreoften]

4. Shouldn't the OP read Yes on 8?

[keepCAblue]

5. The OP got it wrong...should change the subject line

[Zuiderelle]

6. Yeah, that confused me at first.