A likely unpopular musing on some anti-prop 8 activity

[jlh]

I have to admit, the Prop 8 Map, which combines the list of donors to anti-Prop 8 organizations with googlemaps, worries me. I know it's all public information. But it's one thing to have a list of businesses to boycott, and quite another, I feel, to know what street someone who donated $50 lives on. (Yes, I've found folks on the map who donated that little.) I've donated money to political organizations here and there, and I stand by it, but I'm not sure I wouldn't feel just a little more reluctant to give $25 a year to Planned Parenthood, especially if I lived in a mainly pro-life area, if I thought that a bunch of folks could come protest at my door. I worry that this sort of thing works to limit political speech, to reduce the effect that Obama just had, to push small donors out of the system because there's just too much risk inherent in donating against your local grain. Which, of course, will just make the people with money even more powerful.

I know I'm a little bit biased about this. The first time I ran into something of this sort was when someone took the state-by-state registries of sex offenders and put them on what must have been a precursor of googlemaps a few years ago. Some of the parents on my flist praised this and saw it as a wonderful tool but I couldn't help but worry about the possibility of harassment. You might think that anyone who commits a crime that gets them on such a list is deserving of whatever they get, but in some states the bar is quite low. In any case, my father was on the list until his death; luckily, Maine doesn't make the full addresses public, or I would have worried for my mother's safety, living as they do on a quiet country road. (And certainly I was pleased to see the swiftness with which they took him off the list after he died.)

Maybe this isn't a great parallel. Maybe my mother deserved to be harassed by anyone with a grudge for staying with my father after his crimes; maybe he deserved to worry that someone might burn down the house. (It's happened, where the addresses were made public.) Maybe that was an incendiary tangent that I just went on. But I do worry that maps like this will have a chilling effect on political involvement. I know that in moving against Prop 8 there's a wish to shame the people who donated to its passage, but can this not be done in reverse? And is the $25 you gave to that political action committee worth protesters at your door?

Comments

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

i agree. a list of businesses is entirely different- i welcome that information; voting with one's dollars is as meet and just as vigilantism is wrong. perhaps there are offenders who "deserve" to be harassed on some level, theoretically, but i don't trust anybody to make that call.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I'm going to agree there. There's just too many ways that this could lead to trouble for innocent people. It's just too scary to know that people can be judged solely on this type of information along with their address.

[longtimegone]

Yeeeeeeeah, that's a bit creepy.

[hermorrine.livejournal.com]

I thought that the first time I saw that they listed individuals as well as businesses. I see no problem with listing businesses, as it gives consumers the opportunity to use their dollars as they'd like, but I don't see any good that can come of knowing that John and Mary Smith on Main Street in Ontario donated for Yes on 8.

[cricketnyc.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you'd heard about the recent situation in Sacramento. The artistic director of Music Circus, the biggest summer stock theater in the country, was listed as donating (he's mormon), and they listed his position with the theater. He was forced to resign. I still don't know how I feel about that, really. If he had not included the name of the theater when making the donation, had he made it anonymously, perhaps I would have less of an issue. After all, he is entitled to have opinions different from my own (and he is a member of a powerful church with opinions different from my own). But, knowing this is a matter of public record, I understand how so many people in the theater community (and ultimately, his theater's Board of Directors), wanted him out on his ass. This is a man who works with hundreds of homosexuals every year- actors, dancers, designers, composers, patrons... as Marc Shaiman said in his statement, he makes his living off of gays, but believes they should not be entitled to equal rights. They star in shows, they design the costumes, the buy the tickets, but they're not entitled to the same rights that he is? There were threatened boycotts, and in this era of uncertainty for so many theaters, I can understand why the Board forced him to resign.

[airemay.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. Holding business' accountable is one thing. I think adding individuals is taking it too far.

[moony]

A few months ago, a player of Warcraft threatened to come to Austin (where Blizzard's call center is located) and go "Virginia Tech" on us, because we didn't give him something he wanted. Something that didn't actually exist, that wasn't more than just pixels on a screen.

If we live in a world where someone thinks it's okay to threaten to take someone's life over a video game, I can completely understand being a little iffy about controversial donor names and addresses being made public. No matter what side you're on, there are those who think violence is the best response to something you don't agree with. As much as I loathe the people who donated toward Prop 8, I wish them no harm and I worry about retribution toward them and their familes.

Companies, however, I will happy boycott and protest them.

[folk.livejournal.com]

I think I understand your concerns on this. To me, much of it is the general concern I have about mashups: people's expectations of privacy. It was one thing when you could WHOIS a website and find out that the owner of SugarTowerAlley (say) lived at 123 Snuffleberry Hill, Buttfuck, EG, because the barriers to entry to actually *doing* anything about it were high and numerous. Now, the barriers are lower because I can Google Streetview number 123 and see the white Mazda parked outside, and that just skeeves me the hell out.

But part of me says to the people who are worried about being harassed because they donated to Prop 8: boo fucking hoo. LGBT people are harassed, attacked, assaulted, raped and killed every day. Maybe not contribute to a cause that legitimises the discrimination that leads to that before crying about hypothetical straw-boogey-men.

For apart from that despicable incident of graffiti on a SF Catholic church (one that, of course, had a fairly pro-gay congregation, although that does strike me as nearly as ridiculous as a pro-Jew Klan rally) I haven't read a lot of reports of violence from the "gay side".

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, I understand the boo fucking hoo; I think that's why I included the example of my father. I get that people might think he should be shot for being on that registry, but that isn't what the court said, and in any case I shouldn't have had to worry about my mother getting her house burned down.

But all that said, what I'm actually worried about is the pro-life types, who absolutely do have a history of violence. When I was living in Philadelphia in the early 90s Operation Rescue was targeting Pennsylvania, and the whole city was sort of a mess of protesters and escorts and craziness. Do I want to be harassed by some insane pro-lifer who realizes they live around the corner from a donor to a pro-choice ballot issue? Not so much, no. And if I feel uncomfortable, imagine how other people feel.

In general, I don't want the uptick in participation that we saw in the 2008 campaign to go away because people are starting to worry that if they work for a company that might have different political views than they do, they could be fired for contributing to the wrong effort. It's very easy to go back to the red scare days, incredibly easy to intimidate people out of participation, so that the wealthy man is the only one who can afford to give, not because he has more money, but because he needn't fear for his job.

I guess, let's take the actual cause out of the equation. Never mind that you're angry that these people contributed to a cause that hurts you. What if they had contributed to a cause you agreed with, but that many people don't, like abortion? What happens then? Should that guy at the playhouse have lost his job? Part of me understands why the board asked him to resign, and part of me is deeply worried about where that sort of thing can lead.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I can understand it, and yeah, I did hear about that case, but it makes me think: If I worked at a conservative company, say, and I contributed to a pro-choice cause, should they ask for my resignation? Is that even legal? Is there anything that would stop that company from firing me? And mightn't that lead me to stop contributing, or to only contribute anonymously? Is that a good thing?

This is always the problem with me and activism; I can't help turning things upside down.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

And certainly there are pro-life groups that have a history of violence against private citizens. They've mostly concentrated on intimidating physicians, but who's to say they might not take on donor lists? It's worrysome.

[folk.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on the sex offenders' registry, BTW: I know people on it for things like statutory rape when one partner was 18 and one 17 in the UK before the age of consent was equalised, that kind of thing. And, yes, very often innocent families and friends are tarred with the brush.

I do take your point about crazy pro-lifers and PP and all, but are PP contribution records public? In a way, we've been dealing with this in the UK, where the BNP had its membership lists leaked to wikileaks, and so people have been mashing up "where is the BNP?" with Google Maps and the addresses. And I feel kind of skeevy about that, because BNP members are banned from the police and various other jobs, but it's generally a private organisation, and I don't want some foolish old retired guy to get a beating, you know?

For some things, we have protected classes. I'm much more skeeved by the idea of a list on this based on any of those. (Race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) But I think that political donations are public for a reason, because your representatives and mine decided it was important that everybody know who contributed to registered political organisations. I think I'm okay with the tradeoff of people being concerned about contributing to controversial causes.

(I do think that it was ethically just that Scott Eckerd lost his job at the playhouse in Sacramento, because being anti-gay is not a legally protected class, and I am entirely ethically skeeved by him profiting off the backs of those whose he paid to diminish.)

[cricketnyc.livejournal.com]

I think that had he not included his employer information, it might not have been an issue. But by including that information, he dragged his employer into this mess, and I think they had a right to dismiss him for that reason. I think it also depends on your role within the company. He was the artistic director, and pretty much the guy in charge. If the VP of GMHC made a similar donation, I could see that ruffling feathers, but someone whose name is not immediately associated with the company (or who did not include their employer information) would not necessarily get the same backlash.

In other words, to use your example, if you worked for that company, I'm not sure they'd have grounds to fire you for a donation to an organization of your choice, but if you ran that company, I could see there being enough public backlash that you might be asked to step down.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

But the question is: is being pro-choice a protected class? And if not PP, then on any of the ballot initiatives regarding abortion that went up in various states this past election season?

I think it's the addresses that worry me more than anything. And I may be pre-wondering about a chilling effect, but a chilling effect would really, really suck.

The Sacramento thing is skeevy, but where does that sort of thing end? That's certainly what I worry about.

[folk.livejournal.com]

See, I get why you're concerned; I just think that the tradeoff of chilling effect vs. open political process is worth it.

I dislike slippery slope arguments, but in this case? If we want people to be able to not get fired for personal stuff, then we need to enact employment protection laws. Even then, I'm pretty sure he could still be fired for bringing the company into disrepute, and standard contracts would start to include 'no disrepute' clauses.

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

i do understand this. my son had a wonderful teacher in confirmation class, a lawyer, married, kids, about age 60. i noticed he wasn't on the roster anymore, but he doesn't live right here, and works in my hometown, so i figured it just got to be too much on his schedule. well, my mother knows him through church stuff down there, and when last she saw him (he was wearing an obama hat) he told her he was asked to step down because he said he thought gay marriage should be legal. not celebrated in the church, mind you, just legal in the us. so the kids in the parish are being deprived of a caring, learned, dynamic teacher, he's being deprived of working with them, this sucks all round, and we're not even talking about somebody's livelihood.

and yet i feel that there's a huge difference between the ground troops and the top brass in ANY situation. it would make more sense to me, however vehemently i disagree, if he were a cardinal and the vatican censured him. the closer you are to the top, the more you have control of goals and missions and finances and policy in any organization, the more i think there's some legitimacy in asking you to hew to its philosophy. are gay rights part of the philosophy of a musical theater group? it seems like they should be. of course i think egalitarianism should be part of the philosophy of the church, but that's another headache.