I can’t find the order online yet, but the AP so reports:
Kennedy’s ruling today temporarily blocks a federal appeals court ruling last week that ordered the release of the names. Kennedy said his order would remain in effect while he considers a request by a pro-marriage group that asked him to reverse the appeals court ruling.The case involves Referendum 71, a ballot initiative that asks Washington voters to approve or reject the state’s so-called “everything but marriage” law, which grants registered domestic partners the same legal rights as married heterosexuals.
As I mentioned early this morning, I think that the Ninth Circuit’s decision overturning the district court’s preliminary injunction — and thus allowing the state to release the names of the signatories — is correct, and I think the Supreme Court won’t even agree to reconsider the decision on the merits. But it makes sense that Justice Kennedy would temporarily stay the opinion below, at least pending the state’s filing its arguments and possibly pending the Court’s considering the petition for certiorari (which in turn won’t come until after the Ninth Circuit announces its reasoning): Once the names are released, the attempt to enjoin the release will become moot, so it makes sense to take some time now to consider the matter on the merits.
Thanks to Richard Winger’s Ballot Access News blog for the pointer.
Randy says:
Gosh darn it. I had my bombs ready to toss. Now I have to go back and diffuse ‘em all.
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October 19, 2009, 6:56 pmKazinski says:
I’d like to see the release delayed until after the November election. The primary purpose of requesting the release of the names is to harass and intimidate petition signers. I think after the election the legislature can decide dispassionately whether they want to open up the petitioning process for that sort of harassment.
Last year in Seattle at Halloween right before the election a local alternative newspaper posted addresses of people that had Republican yard signs as an invitation for some petty vandalism or harassment. And of course harassment of Prop. 8 donors in California is well documented.
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October 19, 2009, 7:24 pmricky says:
I would hope that a wise Catholic man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone else who hasn’t lived that life.
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October 19, 2009, 7:43 pmOwen H. says:
Of course, the whole situation pretty much much kills claims that it was just the word “marriage” that people were bothered by. Nope, turns out it was treating gays like regular people.
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October 19, 2009, 8:49 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I’m cool with people not signing petitions if they aren’t willing to do it without anonymity.
But I wish there were seriously negative consequences for harassment.
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October 19, 2009, 9:03 pmRandy says:
” The primary purpose of requesting the release of the names is to harass and intimidate petition signers.”
It must really suck to be a red-meat eating straight guy nowadays. Used to be you could harass gays and their establishments with impunity, but now the gays are striking back! Still, as we recently saw in Atlanta and Fort Worth, raiding gay bars and beating up patrons for no reason is still the fun du jour for police departments.
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October 19, 2009, 10:11 pmMac says:
Randy,
What you do to others can be done to you. Just because your ox is not being gored at the moment does not mean it can’t be at some future date.
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October 19, 2009, 10:45 pmanonymous says:
Voter intimidation is a felony; and in the state of Washington, a private citizen has the common law and statutory authority to make a citizen’s arrest in such cases. In fact, a private citizen can arrest someone who has committed a misdemeanor in their presence.
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October 19, 2009, 11:48 pmJohn Moore says:
Yeah, Randy... perhaps a right-wing whacko website should publish the names, photos and addresses of gay activists along with just barely legal suggestions of what to do about it.
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October 19, 2009, 11:54 pmRandy says:
Yeah, Randy… perhaps a right-wing whacko website should publish the names, photos and addresses of gay activists along with just barely legal suggestions of what to do about it.
“What you do to others can be done to you. Just because your ox is not being gored at the moment does not mean it can’t be at some future date.”
Well, I did actually mention that our ox is gored when gay bars are raided and patrons harassed, as happened just the past few months. And we don’t need to ask right-wing whackos to publish names, photos and addresses of gay people so that they could get harassed, fired from their jobs, and so on. We only need to go to newspapers in the past that did that all the time specifically to harass gays.
Now, of course, two wrongs don’t make a right. And I certainly don’t condone any harassement of any kind. But straights have a much longer and terrible history of harassing gays than gays ever had of harassing straights. So perhaps the solution is to leave gays alone, allow us our rights (which don’t affect you in the slightest), and we’ll all be able to co-exist nicely. But if you continue to deny us our rights, then you have to expect that some gay people might get a bit angry over it.
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October 20, 2009, 12:12 amJohn Moore says:
The past is the past.
Your last statement provides a very good reason not to publish the information, given the history of the gay “rights” movement. Have we forgotten, perhaps, how the gay rights movement obstructed the protection of the blood supply in the ‘80s? How they tried to prevent the closing of bath-houses when AIDS was killing them and the details weren’t well understood? How they spread the hoax to scare everyone into thinking that heterosexual sex was just as dangerous as anal sex and we were all at the same risk of getting AIDS — which was a complete lie? How they harassed the backers of Prop 8 much more recently?
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October 20, 2009, 12:18 amRandy says:
I really like how you put “rights” in quotes, thereby indicating that we aren’t really deserving of them, or not to be treated seriously. And especially that the past is the past, except when you can use it against gays.
BTW, the World Health Organization estimates that about more than 80% of all AIDS cases are heterosexual. So I guess heterosexual sex is at least as dangerous, wouldn’t you agree?
And let’s not get into all the lies that straight people have told about gays, shall we? We don’t want to bring up the past.
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October 20, 2009, 1:12 amtired of blogs says:
It is spectacularly hypocritical to argue that “the past is the past” and then to invoke “history” in the very next sentence to support your claims.
And, as Randy notes, I don’t think that anti-gay-rights activists are likely to come out ahead in any fair-minded accounting of the relative grievances between gays and straights.
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October 20, 2009, 2:22 amJohn Moore says:
I put rights in quotes because I don’t think that marriage of homosexuals is a right. Simple.
Only if you don’t understand statistic or are willing to lie with them. Those statistics absolutely do not apply in the US (with the exception of population subgroups from pattern-II countries, in spite of the attempts by gay activists to use them to try to achieve some sort of bizarre equality of risk with heterosexuals. Specifically:
Since the AIDS scare tactics were targeted at heterosexuals in the US, they were lies. BTW, the “is increasing” has been on that statement for a couple of decades, but it hasn’t increase much. Anal sex is far more effective at transmitting AIDS than normal heterosexual sex — in Pattern I populations.
There is also very good reason to believe that the AIDS case numbers in Africa are significantly inflated, although the disease in certain African countries is certainly widespread.
This information has been known for 20 years.
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October 20, 2009, 2:26 amvanhattan says:
John Moore: What does AIDS have to do with making public the names and addresses of the signers of a proposed state ballot referendum?
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October 20, 2009, 2:56 amVisitor Again says:
The reason gays and their supporters want these names is so that they can be publicized, boycotted and picketed. These people need to learn that while they may have the power to deny gays the happiness that comes with marriage–and even with merely the freedom to marry the partner of one’s choice–its exercise carries consequences that may decrease their own happiness level. Such boycotts and pickets are entirely lawful and hardly constitute harassment; indeed, they are affirmatively protected by the first amendment’s speech, association and assembly guarantees.
Those opposing release of their names are putting forth highly exaggerated if not spurious claims of threats to physical safety, but what they’re really afraid of is the harm that will result to their pocketbooks. They not only want to deny basic rights to a minority, they want to be able to do it in secret so that the minority cannot identify them and take entirely lawful retaliatory action against them. They want a cost-free license to bully. They will learn soon enough that the days of one-way bullying are over.
By the way, the people making thinly-veiled threats on this blog entry are those who are hostile to gay rights and particularly same-sex marriage.
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October 20, 2009, 4:53 ambadlaw says:
See, this is why they don’t need to release the names. Because there are too many people like you and Randy who think it’s fine to penalize people for not agreeing with you. You think the great moral evil here is to not support gay couples, and anything that results from that is completely vindicated.
He put “rights” in quotes because he’s incredulous that what the LGBT community tends to deem rights is actually a right. See, the thing about “rights” is, you can’t just decide you have a right to something based on insular groups of people, and then criticize others for not recognizing it. And don’t try to analogize the civil rights movement, either, because that’s not what I’m talking about.
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October 20, 2009, 7:14 amTuesday round-up | SCOTUSblog says:
[...] Volokh comments on Justice Kennedy’s decision to stay the release of the names of signatories to Washington’s [...]
egd says:
ITA.
That’s why I want the local director of elections to publish the names of everyone who voted for a Democrat in the last election. These people need to learn that while they may have the power to take away my money at gunpoint, to deny me the right to use that money to further my own happiness comes with its own consequences that may decrease their own happiness level. My right to picket, boycott, or protest loudly outside their storefront, home, or childrens’ school is First Amendment protected speech and no one should deny that right based on their own hate-filled political ideology.
Why the hatemongers of this city insist on secret ballots, I have no idea.
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October 20, 2009, 9:16 amcjwynes says:
It’s shocking that in just the last 15–20 years we’ve seen such a swing on public attitudes towards homosexuality that in some regions of the country you’ll be ostracized and harassed for OPPOSING the granting of legal privileges to homosexual partnerships, or even for merely opposing the NAME they want to call their partnership (as these post-modern culture warriors have heard their professors preach that the word “marriage” is more important even than the legal status.)
In 1989 I think this would have been inconceivable, much more so than any other shift in social acceptance that has taken place. It really speaks well to the effectiveness of the gay lobby’s work to control the image of their community over the years and get the San Fransisco oddballs off the public’s mind.
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October 20, 2009, 10:22 amRandy says:
cjwynes: “In 1989 I think this would have been inconceivable, much more so than any other shift in social acceptance that has taken place. It really speaks well to the effectiveness of the gay lobby’s work to control the image of their community over the years and get the San Fransisco oddballs off the public’s mind.”
Or, it may be that as more gay people come out, and at earlier ages, people realize that all those lies perpetrated by hostile straight people against gays were in fact lies, and they learned that gays are just like anyone else. It’s inconcievable that a gay person could be treated as a human being who has rights the same as a straight person who has rights. They have also seen gay people actually get married in places like Massachusetts, Vermont, Canada, and several countries in Europe, and nothing has changed.
To place the credit on a small number of people in the gay lobby really isn’t fair — it’s because gay people, especially students, have been brave enough to endure the real harassment that comes from being gay in America.
egd: “That’s why I want the local director of elections to publish the names of everyone who voted for a Democrat in the last election.”
IF that’s what you really want to do, all you need to do if drive around the neighborhood and look at who has the signs on their lawn supporting which candidate.
As for AIDS, it is increasing at rates in urban areas in the cities so that striaght black females have the highest increase, and in Africa and Asia, it is spreading throughout the population. Unless you are going to say that these places have massive numbers of gay men, you will have to agree that AIDS has been a significant problem there, and it’s much more of a problem among striaghts than gays. Even Pat Robertson agrees, which is why the religious right is suddenly concerned about AIDS there.
But not to worry, John, we get it. We all fully understand your hostility to gays, so you needn’t elaborate by coming up with weird arguments about AIDS when the issue is this court ruling.
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October 20, 2009, 11:23 ammidasear says:
This is an pitifully short-sighted view, the sort typical of a self-defeating fanatic.
The consequences of using petition signatures to select people for “picketing” is not going to be restricted to this particular issue, or even to the pro-Gay side of this particular issue. Ordinary people will be unwilling to sign ANY controversial petition, since it will open them up to a campaign of punitive harassment by the proposal’s opponents. This will almost certainly include proposals of which you would approve.
As things now stand, a _lot_ of states have incorporated marriage=one-man-one-women into their state constitutions. I assume you’d like to see this change, Well, good luck getting those provisions repealed when the non-activists you’ll inevitably need support from realize that signing a petition means risking “picketing” and “boycotts” by the very well-organized local religious fanatics.
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October 20, 2009, 12:02 pmegd says:
Fair enough, so you oppose releasing the names of the petition signers, because all you need to do is drive around the neighborhood and look for people with “I support the public’s right to vote on same-sex marriage” signs, right?
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion. But the facts are clear that AIDS is spread disproportionately by homosexual acts.
As you can see in the table “HIV/AIDS Cases by Transmission Category,” men comprise only about a third of HIV infection spread through heterosexual contact. That means that it is mostly men spreading the disease to women. While we can guess that maybe there is one “Typhoid Mark/Mary” out there spreading disease to all of these men, it is more likely that they are acquiring the disease from gay sex and then passing it on to spouses, girlfriends, or one-night-stands.
I think it’s disappointing that gay men have not taken a big stand against AIDS by discouraging promiscuity and unprotected sex. Many gay groups are focused on opposing anti-gay Christian messages, increasing awareness of homosexuality in schools, and lobbying for same-sex marriage and hate-crimes protection. Not necessarily bad goals, but there’s not a lot of emphasis on safe sex.
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October 20, 2009, 12:43 pmSmallholder says:
I’d like the names published.
If you sign a petition, it is a public act.
I don’t want anyone firebombed. I also think firebombings are unlikely.
I will, as will others, check the list before I do business with someone. I think it is entirely appropriate to let bigots know that their bigotry will hurt their pocketbook.
And I’d also like those names to be available to future historians. When we ask the elderly what they thought about Brown v. Board, almost all claim that they supported letting black kids go to school. We know that a majority of them are lying. Source survivability has improved. Someday John Moore will be having uncomfortable discussions with his appalled grandchildren.
The bigots are going to lose. Gay marriage and equality will be achieved in the next decade or so. This time it won’t be just the Sheriff Clarks and Orvil Faubises and George Wallaces being held accountable — the rank and file bigots will face the judgment of history as well.
I was thinking about this when they had the march on Washington. I wanted to go up with a sign that said “my family welcomes your family to equality.” Unfortunately, I had orders for hay deliveries. I worry that, in forty years, my grandchildren will ask what I did during the big civil rights issue of my lifetime and I will only be able to lamely say that I was too busy to march, but by God did I write some biting blog comments!
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October 20, 2009, 1:31 pmmidasear says:
Just keep in mind that historically the segregationists actually made _far_ more successful use of the economic boycott as a tool than the civil rights movement.
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October 20, 2009, 2:03 pmJRL says:
I sign all petitions presented to put something or someone on the ballot, regardless of my views on the individual or the issue.
How about publishing the names of those that didn’t sign the petition!
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October 20, 2009, 3:05 pmptt says:
The past is the past
Indeed. We are where we are in the fight for gay rights because individuals spoke out publicly. They circulated petitions, they signed them, they testified at city council meetings and school boards, they stood up. Many lost their jobs, their families, sometimes their lives. And now the opposition wants to take away rights — NOT marriage rights, there is no same-sex marriage in Washington state — and the individuals who want to do this seek unprecedented anonymity.
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October 20, 2009, 3:17 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Supreme Court Blocks Washington State Officials From Disclosing Names of Anti-Same-Sex-Marriage Petition Signers, says:
[...] post about Justice Kennedy’s similar action yesterday is here. For now, I continue to think that the Ninth Circuit’s decision overturning the district [...]
Christian K says:
Yes, if you want to get very graphic and specific, it is true that anal penetrative sex is the easiest sexual method of HIV transmission. Also in the USA and Europe the most frequent transmission method is Male and Homosexual, but the largest increase is Female and African American. However world wide the numbers clearly show that the most frequent transmission method is heterosexual, mostly in Africa and south east Asia. The safest sexual contact is Female and Homosexual. So obviously the best public policy would be to encourage Female Homosexual relationships, wouldn’t you agree?
So you would obviously support Same-Sex Marriage! Marriage is typically used for the co-mingling of assets but I guess you could use it support monogamy.
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October 20, 2009, 4:14 pmShelbyC says:
Or to support less sex. I’m always amazed that the fundie types don’t support SSM, since it would obviously lead to less gay sex.
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October 20, 2009, 7:10 pmRandy says:
egd: “I think it’s disappointing that gay men have not taken a big stand against AIDS by discouraging promiscuity and unprotected sex.”
Such a statement shows a shocking ignorance of exactly what happened from the mid-80s to the mid-90s in the gay community. To say such a thing shows you have a total lack of knowledge of what exactly happened and how it affected the community. Believe it or not, most bathhouses closed *voluntarily* so as to not spread the disease. Many gay people even stopped having sex altogehter *voluntarily* because they were so afraid of getting it. You couldn’t go anywhere in a bar, bookstore, gay pride parade without being innundated with messages of safe sex and discouraging promiscuity. Condoms were regularly passed out for free at virtually every gay event, however non-sexual the context. (I remember going to a filmfest and the goodie bag included condoms.) But the best message was the one that didn’t have to be told: When you see a friend die of this terrible disease, you want to do everything in your power to make sure no one else does.
And in fact, by the mid-90s, new AIDS cases in the gay community dropped dramatically.
Before you start talking about what has or hasn’t happened in the gay community, I suggest to you actually talk to someone who has a bit of knowledge rather than rely upon Pat Robertson’s skewed view. I might remind you that the Reagan Administration did absolutely nothing about AIDS, thereby allowing it to become the epidemic that it has become. Had they moved half as quickly to isolate it and find the cause of transmission as they did with Legionnaire’s disease or other budding epidemics, it would have been severely contained. But who cares if a few fags are dying, right? At least, that was Ronnie’s position.
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October 20, 2009, 8:51 pmMac says:
This coursens our culture and can most certainly have severe and unpredictabe repercussions. But, if this is the way you want to go, then to hell with secret elections. Actual
ly, this is exactly what the unions want to do with card check.
(I have a new laptop and have never owned one before. I can’t figure out how to do a lot of things, like delete the spaces above. Soon, I hope to have this figured out. In the meantime, aauuughhhh!)
Let us forget about secret elections, then. There is so much election fraud that I would actually welcome publication, see Troy, NY. I would love to boycott Democrats. (Well, not really, because I have this crazy idea that everyone is entitled to his opinion no matter how crazy I think it is.) But, if Randy wants it and it becomes law and the unions want it and it becomes law then let us go all the way. A lot of elections will be a lot more honest that way. Let’s have at it. What is good for one part of the election process should be good for all of it.
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October 20, 2009, 11:01 pmMac says:
coarsens Can’t figure out spell check, either. AAUUGGHH!!!!
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October 20, 2009, 11:07 pmRandy says:
Sorry, Mac, but no one has called for the elimination of secret elections. I think you got the wrong thread.
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October 20, 2009, 11:10 pmMac says:
Randy, you operate in a world in which that which you advocate being done to others won’t be done to you. The Imam who is speaking with Jessie Jackson this weekend says that 6 million US muslims can take over the US. How would you feel if you get this passed and Muslims, no friend of gays, decide to publish all names of people who support petitions for gay marriage? Homosexuality is against the Koran. They are known to be rather forceful, shall we say? Still want this?
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October 20, 2009, 11:15 pmMac says:
Randy, it is all part of the election process. Either all of it should be secret or none of it.
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October 20, 2009, 11:17 pmMac says:
Randy, if you want it to be legal in this incidence, with the subsequent intimidation and harassment, then it is legal in all instances. Are you certain you want this?
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October 20, 2009, 11:20 pmMac says:
Sorry, I meant instance. This laptop is addling my brains. Now, be a big person and let that statement go, Randy.
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October 20, 2009, 11:23 pmJohn Moore says:
Wow! I am so very impressed with them. How noble. Of course, if I thought sex was going to kill me in agonizing ways, I might stop having it too!
Revisionist crap. You love to trash “bigots” — but “Ronnie” had gay friends. They guy had been head of the Screen Actors Guild, after all. He was indeed focused on other priorities than a strange disease that was quietly showing up in San Francisco, and that’s not unreasonable, given the other minor problems he was dealing with (terrible recession, Soviet expansionism, etc).
AIDS became the epidemic it did exactly because too many gays engaged in outrageous amounts of promiscuous sex with large numbers of partners — and in spite of the many known STD’s that they were constantly getting.
If you knew anything about infectious diseases, you would know that Legionaires’s disease was relatively easy to isolate and then treat, compared to a novel virus of an unusual and poorly understood kind (retrovirus in humans). Add to that the difficulties of doing epidemiology in the anonymous sex atmosphere of the early ‘80s and it was a very tough problem. The rapid spread of AIDS, and its explosion into an unstoppable epidemic, was the fault of many members of the gay community — primarily in SF and Long Island. Even today, 30 years after the start, there is still no way of preventing HIV infection other than taking reasonable sexual precautions that should have been obvious to the gays in the early ‘80s.
Blaming it on Reagan is crap. Blaming it on the individual gays would be easy, except that it is understandable that, in the age of antibiotics uber alles, they might individually believe that anything they caught could be cured. Nevertheless, someone in the community should have recognized the danger of their behavior. The gay community should have taken action before AIDs stuck — gays were catching all sorts of nasty STDs in highly disproportionate numbers before they knew about AIDS, and they knew it.
Danny, what you are demonstrating is the gay activist community’s fondness for historical revisionism and shifting the blame away from itself.
Okay, that’s the past. It was tragic. There we villains but there were mostly victims.
I have no problem with individual gays, but the gay “rights movement has gone from activists who were crusading against anti-sodomy crackdowns to activists who label those who disagree with their disputable idea of rights as “bigots” and “hate filled,” and use that as justification for campaigns of harassment and intimidation.
It’s clear to me that we now need to keep petition signatures almost as private as we keep individual votes — for the same reason: to prevent retaliation from those who are not willing to engage in civilized political action.
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October 21, 2009, 1:11 amJohn Moore says:
Smallholder scribbled:
Yeah, we’re just like those KKK guys, aren’t we.
When are you folks going to understand that the civil rights movement was about equal rights, while the gay rights movement is (now) about inventing rights and then demanding them, and about changing the clear meaning of the word marriage?
Many people with causes like to equate themselves to the heroes of the civil rights movement, and their opponents to the racists.
That is not only bad logic, it is an offensive and despicable tactic, and an affront to the very real civil rights movement for racial equality, to which you claim equivalency.
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October 21, 2009, 1:20 amSmallholder says:
John Moore wrote:
Indeed you are. And your grandchildren will see that more clearly than you.
Gays aren’t asking for special rights; they want what we straight people take for granted.
Of course, guys like you also opposed interracial marriage — claiming it was an “invented” right — black people can marry people within their own race just like white people can marry people within their own race.
Dude, every post you have is indicative of dislike of gays and their nefarious agenda. You judge them as a group. Since you are already illustrating the definition of bigotry, you should just embrace the word.
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October 21, 2009, 9:45 amJohn Moore says:
There you go again, arrogating the mantle of the civil rights movement. It’s still repugnant.
Dude, if you read closely, I use the word “gay activists” when talking about what I dislike, and that’s only because they have adopted tactics that are offensive. When writing about the history, I mention the careless behavior of gays in SF & LI, but that’s history. One of those people who was active in that scene was a friend of mine. “Gays” encompasses a much wider categorization than “gay activists”.
I judge individuals on their actions, and since the individual sexual actions of a single gay human being do not harm or attack me or my principles, I have no reason to judge or dislike that person on the basis of sexual orientation. Furthermore, even if that person holds and advocates views I oppose — such as gay marriage, that gives me no reason to dislike them. When they call me a bigot — that’s a different matter — but the resulting dislike at that characterization isn’t a result of their sexual orientation but rather their indiscriminate willingness to insult.
...
BTW, most of your posts reek of either a damaged sense of entitlement (marriage “rights”), and complaining about how “straights” (sound like bigoted stereotyping?) did gays wrong. In other words, petulant whining!
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October 21, 2009, 12:17 pmRandy says:
Moore: ” but “Ronnie” had gay friends. They guy had been head of the Screen Actors Guild, after all. He was indeed focused on other priorities than a strange disease that was quietly showing up in San Francisco, and that’s not unreasonable, given the other minor problems he was dealing with (terrible recession, Soviet expansionism, etc).”
And yet, after all your ranting, you are not only not able to identify a single instance of the Reagan Administration doing anything at all to investigate or examine the disease at it spread, you agree that he had other priorities, as though the gov’t isn’t big enough to handle more than a couple of issues at any one time.
And of course it’s true that AIDS acts very differently, which is exactly what we learned AFTER the gov’t started on researching it. Had they started earlier, they would have been able to know more about it before it infected wide numbers. All this is carefully documented in the book “And the Band Played On,” a book which even people like you haven’t been able to debunk because it is so well sourced.
And more and more people are realizing that gays are asking for the exact same rights that you have, nothing more. We aren’t asking that we be first in the line for popcorn at the movies, we are not asking for more than our share of social security benefits, and we are not asking that people be required to give presents of real value at our weddings. We are asking for the exact same things that you have, which are: you have marriage rights, we want marriage rights. You can serve openly as a straight person in the military, we want to serve openly as gay people in the military. You can’t be fired from a job or evicted from your apartment because of your sexual orientation, and the same for us. That’s it. That’s the sum total of the civil rights that we gays are asking for.
So far, we have marriage rights in several states, and you have yet to identify any problems with that. So far, we have labor and housing protections in many states, and almost all urban areas, and you have yet to identify any problems with that. The militaries of most of our allies are fully integrated, and you have yet to identify any problems with that. So yes, as the years go by, and more and more states allow us our rights, more people will see that all the fears that they had have come to nothing, and most everyone will support it. And when they look back and read the silly arguments that you made against our rights, that will laugh at you. Just like we laugh at all the silly arguments that were made in the past.
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October 21, 2009, 12:20 pmPublic Freedom says:
John Moore, well put couldn’t have said it better. Also, does anybody remember all of the threats made against the Mormon temples in California during prop 8? Let the Washingtonians keep their names anonymous. On the West Coast it’s dangerous to believe in traditional marriage now.
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October 21, 2009, 12:33 pmSmallholder says:
John Moore,
As a straight, I don’t feel under attack. I’m not whining — I’m simply supporting the idea that everyone should have the same rights.
Same not special.
And yes, I am arrogating the civil rights mantle for this civil rights moment.
Julian Bond, whose civil rights credibility is unassailable said:
“‘Civil rights’ are positive legal prerogatives – the right to equal treatment before the law. These are rights shared by all – there is no one in the United States who does not – or should not — share in these rights.”
Bond goes on:
“Gay and lesbian rights are not ‘special rights’ in any way. It isn’t ‘special’ to be free from discrimination – it is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship. The right not to be discriminated against is a common-place claim we all expect to enjoy under our laws and our founding document, the Constitution. That many had to struggle to gain these rights makes them precious – it does not make them special and it does not reserve them only for me or restrict them from others.”
Amen.
Your attempt to redefine “equal” is much more offensive than any attempt to redefine “marriage.” I suspect you know that too — your unwillingness to come out and say that government should discriminate against gay people for reasons x,y, and z like Bob McDonnell did in his graduate thesis is interesting. Instead you have to cast equal rights as “special.” Perhaps, deep down, you realize that your support of legal Apartheid is wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But don’t worry — the tide has turned and America is going to do the right thing.
Or do you think that all the young people who support marriage equality are suddenly going to become bigots? Your side is dying of old age and our side is reaching voting age.
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October 21, 2009, 1:06 pmegd says:
Actually this is exactly the type of special treatment that is being sought by the gay community.
Who cares if Washington historically hasn’t published ballot signers, the gay community demands it and therefore it should be done.
AIDS does not cause nearly the amount of harm as, say, prostate cancer (nearly half as many deaths actually). But it consumes more than ten times the amount of health dollars. From a cost/benefit analysis, this doesn’t make sense. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
What about prostate cancer sufferers, should they not demand the same “rights” as homosexual men? AIDS is most prevalent among the gay population, while prostate cancer affects all men. Do you insist on denying funding to men who suffer from prostate cancer to increase your political clout? If so, why?
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October 21, 2009, 3:20 pmRandy says:
So, are you actually saying that because AIDS only strikes some people, the gov’t was correct in not acting quickly? IF so, that’s a striking new policy. And for some reason, you think that AIDS only strikes gay men — but of course it doesn’t. It strikes everyone, and yes, even straight people. It isn’t about rights at all, but about treating a disease that can affect anyone before it becomes a problem. Obviously, if prostrate cancer were were communicable disease, you would want that identified as early as possible.
One of the reason AIDS gets so much money, however, is not only because it’s so intractable, but because it is so far outside the norm that studying it is very complex. Although there has not been much in the way of breakthroughs, despite the billions spent and over 20 years of research, many researchers have found that it HAS led to breakthroughs in other areas. Cancer, for instance. There is now the possibility of a vaccine for cancer, and that’s a direct result of the research on AIDS. Researchers in all sorts of disciplines support research into AIDS precisely because of the vast amount of new knowledge gained in many desparate areas. If you go here. Or you can go to the NIH website here.
Here’s just one positive aspect from the NIH website: “AIDS research has helped to broaden the understanding of the types of viruses potentially involved in the development of cancers. The discovery of the likely cause of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the herpes virus known as HHV8, provides a model for using novel techniques of molecular biology to search for infectious cancer-causing agents in any type of cancer. Studies involving HIV-infected persons are now serving as the model to identify potential infectious etiologies for several common malignancies.”
Does that benefit prostrate cancer patients? I certainly hope so.
And that’s not to mention that it was because of gay men and women who pestered the NIH and the FDA to speed up their processes of approving potentially life-saving drugs that allows people of all diseases access to medicines much faster than before.
So go ahead, claim that AIDS is strictly a gay man’s disease. Then you would at least have to agree that you owe gay men a huge hearty thanks for the benefits that have flowed to you and the medical community because of AIDS.
But something tells me you and John Moore aren’t going to be quite so generous....
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October 21, 2009, 4:46 pmRandy says:
And to answer your question, no, I don’t support denying money for prostrate cancer. I’m a man, and I might get it. Regardless, I don’t support denying money for any forms of medical research. Neither should you. But of course, there is scarce resources, and we have to make choices. The NIH receives quite a bit of funding for AIDS research and they keep asking for it because they know the benefits go way beyond just AIDS. Furthermore, they know that AIDS is killing off many straight people in Africa and Asia, and is a worldwide problem.
If you can show any link at all between denying funding for prostrate cancer, or any other disease for that matter, and increasing political clout for gays, I will be happy to discuss it. But as of now, that’s a completely baseless statement.
What is much more interesting to me is that you would make up baloney like that. Apparently, you really think that gays have political clout as a result of AIDS funding. It’s that sort of nonsense that you can only come up with if you are totally clueless. Or watch Fox News.
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October 21, 2009, 4:51 pmegd says:
I think I made it fairly clear that AIDS is not a “gay man’s disease.” Instead, I pointed out that it disproportionately affects gay men.
A top-end estimate puts the number of homosexuals at 10%. But gays comprise over 50% of new HIV/AIDS cases every year. HIV/AIDS also disproportionately affects the black/African-American population, yet another group that should focus on safe sex and monogamy. See, the facts are not just homophobic, they’re also racist.
Obviously the facts have no bearing on the your case. It’s clear that you’re the type of sensationalist who insists on playing the victim card despite evidence to the contrary. To continue to ignore reality for the sake of preserving your political views shows you really are intellectually incompetent.
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October 21, 2009, 5:48 pmJohn Moore says:
Randy writes:
You are conflating two issues. First, on acting quickly, I’m saying that because AIDS had an unusual epidemiological pattern, which occurred in the middle of a lot of other STD outbreaks in the same population, recognizing that AIDS was a significant issue was not as easy as, say, Legionaire’s disease, with which you compared it. Consider the things that allowed AIDS to “hide”:
* happening in a group that was also contracting many other diseases, making AIDS hard to recognize as a symptom group with a new, retroviral etiology
* a strikingly long period between initial infection (and minor symptoms) and the development of the AIDS syndrome, making it hard to associate cause and effect
* the resistance of the victim group to contact tracing
* the anonymity of many sexual partners, also making the epidemic hard to track
Second, on over-funding of AIDS research. I did not make that claim. The spending on AIDS research was way out of proportion to the number of sufferers, compared to other diseases urgently needing cures, and the politicization of that was very wrong. However, the side effects of that spending, as Randy points out, are quite positive because of what we have learned about the immune system, and because HIV infection has become a manageable disease rather than a certain death sentence. I personally don’t know the balance — whether the net of forcing the government to spend huge amounts on AIDS was positive or not. I don’t like the way the decision was made, but that doesn’t make the decision wrong.
Then Randy writes:
No, Randy, it does not strike everyone. It rarely strikes the celibate. It is far less likely to affect non-IV drug abusing heterosexuals in pattern one populations, and that has been true throughout the epidemic, in spite of the fear mongering. I don’t know if the reasons for its heterosexual spread in pattern II populations is well understood yet, but the last I heard the high incidence of other STDs in those populations (also common among gays during the outbreak of AIDS) may be a major factor — the STDs making viral entry easier, as it already is in anal intercourse.
You can spout all you want about how it is “increasing most quickly” among heterosexual groups, but when you look at actual numbers, and then factor our IV drug use and pattern II populations, HIV incidence among heterosexuals is still very low.
Those are facts. There’s one thing about science, as opposed to politics: mother nature ultimately defines reality, and you can squirm and fuss all you want, but eventually mankind comes to recognize and accept that reality.
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October 21, 2009, 6:36 pmJohn Moore says:
Smallholder says:
Muy apologies. It was only after my post that I realized I was responding to you rather than Randy.
That said, the rest of your attempted equation of marriage rights continues to fall flat. If the propaganda campaigns get the majority to accept gay marriage, they will. That doesn’t change the argument, only who wins the political fight.
As for Julian Bond, it would be silly to accept him as some sort of authority on what is or is not a right. Julian Bond is a radical and while he participated in the civil rights movement, it doesn’t make him an authority.
No dice.
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October 21, 2009, 6:40 pmricky says:
The government recognizes and subsidizes heterosexual marriage because it has long-term benefits for society. I’ve never met a heterosexual married couple who thought that the government recognizing and subsidizing their marriage was some kind of constitutionally-protected “right”. This is not about “equal protection”, it’s about a special interest group lobbying for a subsidy. I’m fine with that, but it’s the self-righteous whining about “civil rights” that annoys me. Imagine if the sugar industry demanded the same subsidies as the corn industry and compared themselves to Martin Luther King for doing so.
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October 21, 2009, 6:49 pmRandy says:
egd: “Obviously the facts have no bearing on the your case”
Really? Then I’ll ask you again: Please show me how funding for AIDS research leads to denial of funding for prostrate cancer, and also contributes to increasing our political clout. I haven’t claimed victim status at all — in fact, you are the one trying to make us the AIDS victims. Rather, you are claiming yourself a victim of gays asking for too many rights.
John: “First, on acting quickly, I’m saying that because AIDS had an unusual epidemiological pattern, which occurred in the middle of a lot of other STD outbreaks in the same population, recognizing that AIDS was a significant issue was not as easy as, say, Legionaire’s disease, with which you compared it. Consider the things that allowed AIDS to “hide:
Absolutely correct. On this I certainly agree. But we didn’t know *any* of that until research was done. For many years, people didn’t know whether AIDS was passed through kissing, or insect bites, coughing, or what. Had research begun earlier, these questions would have been answered earlier.
“The spending on AIDS research was way out of proportion to the number of sufferers, compared to other diseases urgently needing cures, and the politicization of that was very wrong.”
But the problem is that throughout most of the 80s, there was almost NO money going into research for AIDS. Why not? Because people in the Reagan Administration made it a political issue rather than a medical one. So groups such as Act Up demonstrated, agitated and argued for money — any amount of money — to do research. If you were in the same position, you would have done exactly the same thing. The only way to get attention on this disease was to literally ‘act up’. Had the gov’t treated this disease as any other, none of these would have been necessary.
So yes, I agree the politicization of this was very wrong, but the wrongness started with the people in power, not gays.
” There’s one thing about science, as opposed to politics: mother nature ultimately defines reality, and you can squirm and fuss all you want, but eventually mankind comes to recognize and accept that reality.”
I never denied that gays were most affected by AIDS in the US. So I don’t know why you are making this argument. What I have said is that outside the US, it strikes heteros much more than gays, but that’s a fact that somehow makes you squirm, and you refuse to acknowledge it. For instance, 67% of the people in sub-sahara AFrica are currently living with HIV. Unless you really think that most of these people are gay, you will have to admit it is hitting the striaght population much more. The stats are here.
Finally, we have this gem. In response to someone else who complained that gays did nothing to stop AIDS, I replied that there was in fact quite a bit done. And many gays even stopped having sex. Here is your sarcastic reply:
“Wow! I am so very impressed with them. How noble. Of course, if I thought sex was going to kill me in agonizing ways, I might stop having it too!”
Your mocking statement is offensive to the thousands of gay and, yes, even straight, people, who have died under this terrible disease. Evidently, you are one of the type who seems to think that gays ‘deserve’ this disease because of their filthy lifestyle, which is why you seem to deny that AIDS ever hits straight people. (Or good honest straight people, the sluts get what they deserve too, right?). The gay community responded to the crisis, and as a result, new AIDS cases dropped dramatically.
But that isn’t enough for you. You have to mock the very people you yourself claim are the most affected by this. I’m left shaking my him in wonder over how shameless you really are.
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October 21, 2009, 11:27 pmJohn Moore says:
Randy, you are such a whiner.
I was not mocking the people who died of this disease, or gays. I was mocking your pathetic argument.
The gay community’s initial response to the crisis was to deny it, to obstruct public health officials, and to blackmail the blood donor clinics.
Once denial was no longer possible, they mounted a successful (for a time) propaganda campaign to convince people that everyone was equally at risk. That was dishonest.
They also pressured the government into spending a lot more for AIDS than for other important research. As I said, the result of that is debatable — it may have ultimately been for the good.
And yes, they finally woke up and recommended precautions to their community that the public health community had been advocated since before the AIDS epidemic was even recognized.
As for Reagan administration politicizing AIDS (as opposed to the gay organizations who politicized it as I described above): evidence?
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October 24, 2009, 2:40 pm