This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.
Here's the backstory: Voters in WA passed in 1998 a Defense of Marriage act which defined marriage in Washington state to be the traditional marriage between one man and one woman. In May 2009 Governor Christine Gregoire signed into law a bill passed by the state legislature to grant all the rights heretofore accorded to married couples to domestic partnerships, which essentially gave all the legal rights of marriage without the name "marriage". The supporters of traditional marriage in WA accordingly collected signatures and filed a petition to refer this new law for referendum and approval by the voters, as they are allowed to do under the state constitution. Therefore this measure is now on the ballot for the November 3rd election.
Here is the real nitty gritty issue with this referendum--and I'm not talking about the referendum itself. Instead, I'm talking about the hullabaloo that has cropped about around the petition to refer this legislation to the ballot. In particular, there has been a nasty legal tussle about the identities of signers of the petition to put Prop. 71 on the ballot. Opponents of Prop. 71 have argued that the petition is a matter of public record and therefore all the identities of the signers should be released. There are two organizations that have been created which promise to publish the list of signers as soon as they are made public: knowthyneighbor.org, and whosigned.org . Proponents of Prop. 71 have argued that petition signing is a form of political speech, and therefore protected (and private/secret) under the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The big problem I have here is that there are people and judges/courts that actually agree that these names should be made public! Since when does signing a political petition to get an issue on a ballot NOT constitute political speech?? Ummmmmm, the last time I checked, I wasn't required to show anyone my ballot choices before I put it into the ballot box. And the same goes for signing my NAME on any petition to get something ONTO that ballot! You might as well require folks to sign their name and initial next to every ballot choice, because requiring public disclosure of petition signers' identities amounts to that.
The Washington Secretary of State had argued that the names needed to be released according to the Washington Public Records Act. Apparently the Secretary of State has not read this particular piece of legislation, because when I looked it up in WA's law books I found this interesting tidbit about invasion of privacy:
A person's "right to privacy," "right of privacy," "privacy," or "personal privacy," as these terms are used in this chapter, is invaded or violated only if disclosure of information about the person: (1) Would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and (2) is not of legitimate concern to the public.
Now I would certainly argue that, given that the organizations geared up to publish this data are called "Know Thy Neighbor" and "Who Signed", there is a great deal of offense being taken about who signed this petition. Secondly, I would also point out that signing a petition to refer a measure to the ballot does not necessarily indicate how a person would vote. It could well be that people signed the petition with the idea that they wanted to vote for the law and give their voter seal of approval to it.
Furthermore, I also found when I read the Public Records Act that petitions to refer legislation to ballot are not included in RCW 42.56.070, the subsection that details which types of records must be made public. And, even if these types of documents were included, there is again a specific clause protecting privacy which states, "To the extent required to prevent an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy interests protected by this chapter, an agency shall delete identifying details in a manner consistent with this chapter when it makes available or publishes any public record; however, in each case, the justification for the deletion shall be explained fully in writing."
This is a big deal, folks, and it's not going to go away. The U.S. Supreme Court has waded in to uphold a restraining order preventing the release of signers' identities, but the whole case is on appeal and will probably end up in the U.S. Supreme Court before all is said and done. It has made the Colbert Report, with Stephen Colbert satirizing the lawsuit and those who are arguing that the signatures should remain private. Proponents of Prop. 71 argue that traditional marriage supporters are being subjected to harassment and intimidation similar to what supporters of California's Prop. 8 experienced. That's ugliness at its worst, and it's not getting better.
What I'd like is for somebody to tell me how this is "tolerance"? It's tolerant to demand the names of people who sign a petition to refer a law to the ballot, because you need to "know your neighbor"? How so? What exactly about their signature on a ballot petition is in any way your business? What is essentially being argued for here is, "if you don't agree with me or I think you are giving the appearance to me, of not agreeing with me, I need to know about it". So really, "tolerance" means "agreement". Because if you don't agree with me, then I need to know about it. I don't think so.
I'm sorry, I hadn't realized that the right to maintain a difference of opinion means I give up my right to privacy at the ballot box and other legally mandated rights as a voter, which includes the petition process. I'm not buying it, and I'm betting the U.S. Supreme Court won't either (here's a hint...only one justice on the court disagreed with the restraining order being upheld). But it's very disturbing to me that such a large number of people seem to think they have a right to identify people who sign a ballot petition. This is a disturbing trend toward stripping rights away from folks just because they disagree with the perceived "mainstream" opinion. The fact that so many states have passed "defense of marriage" legislation at the ballot box ought to be a pretty good indicator that the "mainstream" opinion as given by the media is not really so "mainstream" after all.
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