Campaign Finance Disclosure
The latest battle in the campaign for LGBT equality: fresh from their victory at the ballot box, supporters of Proposition 8 have filed suit to keep their contributions to the campaign secret. They assert that opponents of Prop 8 have threatened financial contributors to the campaign after their names were revealed, and that protecting those contributors who haven't yet been revealed outweighs the state's interest in having transparency in elections.
I'm sure that one of the big examples of the threats and harassment that supporters of Proposition 8 is the case of Marjorie Christoffersen. She donated $100 to the Proposition 8 campaign, and after this was revealed, the business she managed was targeted for a boycott. I'll admit that this seems like an extreme reaction to Marjorie's relatively small contribution, but she also sat on the board of directors of the restaurant, which was owned by her mother. To top it off, it's a restaurant that had a disproportionate number of gay customers, many of whom had no idea that the woman serving them drinks and food was also supporting the elimination of their rights.
The ironic thing here is that the Yes on 8 supporters were singing a very different tune before the election, when people directly involved with the campaign sent letters to local business that had donated to the campaign against proposition 8, threatening to publicize that they are "in opposition to traditional marriage." The only possible goal they could have had in mind was pushing people to boycott those businesses who gave financial resources to oppose them. And where did they get the list of businesses to send letters? From the disclosures of one of the PACs opposing Proposition 8.
The fact that supporters of Prop 8 have flip flopped on this particular issue, combined with the fact that they have a history of lying in their campaign advertisements makes me want to take any of their proposed examples of harassment with a bit of a grain of salt. Especially when, in the aftermath of their victory at the ballot box, they do things like prevent vocal opponents of Proposition 8 from getting a job after they resigned over their opposition: a Catholic Priest who was forced to resign over his opposition to Prop 8 was recently prevented from getting a new job by some Catholic officials.
All three of these examples of reprisals against political contributors might be considered extreme, but I don't think the state has a legitimate and compelling interest in preventing them until they rise to the level of actually being illegal. And as far as I understand it, there's nothing illegal with boycotting a business because its employees or owners are homophobes. There's nothing illegal with boycotting a business because its employees or owners aren't homophobes. And engaging in political speech has a long history of causing problems with finding gainful employment (although in the last case I wonder if it might actually be based on some illegal discrimination: if I recall correctly, he revealed not only that he was against Prop 8 but also that he was gay. And it actually is illegal in at least some parts of California to refuse employment based on sexual orientation.)
I might prefer my political contributions to be private, but in a modern world where political conversation happens via commercials arguing in sound bites on the airwaves, adding transparency so that people actually engage in real conversations about politics will improve our political environment. More has happened in terms of getting people involved in the political process because of arguments about who supported or opposed proposition 8, whether or not it's appropriate for big churches or businesses to get involved on one side or another, and the protests that have happened since the election.
The election of Barack Obama to the presidency represents a huge changing of the guard in US politics. But I think the big thing that happened in California was a bit deeper than that: there's a growing movement of people who are starting to understand that they need to be engaged in the political process in order for it to work for them.