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The ugly side of Maine's gay marriage debate
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Supporters celebrated after voters overturned gay marriage in Maine (Bangor Daily News)
PORTLAND, Maine — Voters on Tuesday repealed the state's same sex marriage law after an emotionally charged campaign that drew large numbers to the polls and focused national attention on Maine.
With 87 percent of precincts reporting, the campaign to overturn Maine's same-sex marriage law won with 53 percent of the vote vs. 47 percent opposed to Question 1, according to unofficial results compiled by the Bangor Daily News.
...The defenders of Maine's gay marriage law — which passed the Legislature in the spring but was never allowed to take effect — acknowledged being behind, but held out hope for a bump as the final votes and absentee ballots were counted.
In a defiant speech to several hundred lingering supporters, No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly pledged that his side "will not quit until we know where every single one of these votes lives."
"We're not short-timers; we are here for the long haul," Connolly told the crowd, some of whom wiped away tears as he spoke. "Whether it's just all night and into the morning, or next week or next month or next year, we will be here. We'll be fighting, we'll be working. We will regroup." -- Bangor Daily News
It difficult enough to discuss an issue as emotional as gay marriage and get anywhere before tempers start flaring, but I'd like to touch on a subject which I think is of considerable urgency and one that we oughtta talk about from a bit of a philosophical point of view.
It the comment in the article excerpted above by gay marriage supporter Jesse Connolly. As you see above, Connolly was the campaign manager for No on 1, the referendum to repeal gay marriage in the state of Maine.
Noble perseverance in the fight for an honorable cause is fine; it's the stuff of campaign speeches made in defeat. But when someone pledges not to quit "until we know where every single one of these votes lives," it becomes dishonorable and a bit ominous.
We are not strangers in California to the emotional battle over gay marriage. Prop 8 was our more nationally publicized and probably more scrutinized version of events in 2007 and 2008 that took place in the state of Maine in 2009, and with the hotly contested battle, there was also ugly behavior.
As a result of the defeat of same-sex marriage in California (the passage of Prop 8), there were protests in several cities statewide and then a much more destructive phenomenon began. The roles of people involved in Proposition 8 were examined and using the resources of the internet, some of the opponents of Proposition 8 discovered the names of donors, their businesses, their occupation, and personal information like addresses and phones numbers, their children's names, how much they donated to the campaign and they published this information, causing one of them, a businessman, to write a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle… in fact, it was from his letter --because the Chronicle will not publish a letter without a real name and a real address… that Prop 8 opponents were able to find him… and to urge people to retaliate against his business because he donated money to the Yes on 8 campaign.
In Sacramento (where I live and work), the director for the city's oldest professional performing arts organization and California's largest nonprofit musical theater company resigned when it was learned he donated $1,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. His name is Scott Eckern. From the Sacramento Bee:
"Hairspray" composer Marc Shaiman called Eckern Thursday to discuss his donation. "Hairspray" closed this summer's Music Circus season.In a post on one Web site, Shaiman relayed what he told Eckern: "The idea that your donation came from a salary that for a short amount of time was drawn from profits from a show I wrote upsets me terribly and I would never allow anything I write to play there and will encourage my colleagues to consider doing the same."Shaiman has contacted colleagues in the theater, including Jeff Whitty, whose show "Avenue Q" comes to Broadway Sacramento next spring. Whitty's Web site, www.whitless.com, details a telephone conversation he had with Eckern on Friday."There's a great degree of hue and cry over getting Mr. Eckern fired," Whitty wrote. "I've searched my soul about this. I'm instinctively not comfortable with the idea of his dismissal, though my activist side still whispers, 'Punish!'"I fear for what Mr. Eckern's dismissal would say about theater: that there's only room for the pro-gay crowd. In a way, if we only allow people we agree with, if we only allow people who share a broad sympathy for the human condition, then we become one of those dreaded fantasy 'elites.'"Others were much more vitriolic in their condemnation of Eckern on online message boards.The theater site Broadwayworld.com has picked up the story, and the political antigayblacklist.com has published Eckern's name and professional affiliation along with those of others who made contributions.
A reader commenting in a previous article referred to these people with the unfortunate ad hominem "homoterrorists." I think we can do without that ad hominem and just address the behavior, because it should be pointed out here that this behavior is not the sole providence of decidedly small but vocal players in the gay community.
The Yes on 8 campaign --the opponents of gay marriage-- similarly uncovered donors for the No on 8 campaign and wrote them threatening letters suggesting they would be outted as closeted gays if they did not donate a similar amount of money to the Yes on 8 campaign. I've seen the letters. That's extortion; that's blackmail.
Here is an e-mail from a listener last year during the height of the Prop 8 campaign (I've edited it for brevity):
The amount of sheer hatred that I have seen come out of the Ukrainian Christian community against gay people is truly frightening. On Monday, my van, with my handicapped daughter inside, was surrounded by yelling and screaming Ukrainians waving signs yes on prop 8. They walked into heavy traffic with young children in tow, bellowing at us captive drivers to vote yes on 8. When I rolled my window down and mentioned how hypocritical I thought it was for Christians to be persecuting gay people, and that I didn't think Jesus would persecute, judge and hate gay people, they became violent. I mentioned that the Ukrainians were welcomed here, at great expense to the taxpayers, because they were supposedly persecuted for being Christians in the Ukraine. One mom, repeatedly hit my van with her sign, yelling that I was a devil-sinner. I'm honestly beginning to fear Christians. When will they decide that I am on their list of people to persecute? Will they perhaps decide that people with disabilities are "devil-sinners?" How about unemployed people? Fat people? Any non-Christians? Democrats? Those who choose not to have children? This may sound extreme, but after being surrounded by the Christians in my van, I truly feared for my safety.
As a radio host, I've had my career threatened by conservative advocacy groups over my position on the Iraq war and I've been personally threatened for my support of gay marriage --death threats. Advertisers refused to advertise, which is absolutely their right, mind you, but while they may think they're boycotting my opinion, what they're boycotting is free speech. And their decision to pull advertising from the station hurt sales people far more than it hurt me, just as a boycott of a music theatre over a director's honest and heartfelt decision hurts actors, technicians and assorted employees dependant on ticket sales.
And it's not just the issue of gay marriage. Last year, a family in a San Francisco suburb awoke the morning after the presidential election and found the tires on their cars slashed, profanity spray-painted on their house and their cars, their house egged, and their political signs destroyed. The signs were in support of Barack Obama.
No other signs on the block were hit, no other property vandalized. In fact, the other sign on the family's front lawn was a Yes on 8 sign, in support of a ban on gay marriage. That wasn't touched, though they had to replace their Obama sign more than once during the campaign.
I've no doubt this form of political vandalizing was perpetrated by both sides against the other, and far too often.
But the point is that this behavior is not the sole providence of "homoterrorists" or people on the left or people on the right.
So what's going on here? I understand that these matters are very close to the individuals who take sides in an argument, particularly over gay marriage, which involves civil rights and religious beliefs. These are core issues very close to the center of our being as a nation and as human beings and when they are challenged, we tend to react viscerally and when we react viscerally we tend to do some of the things we saw in last year's election campaign, at some of the town hall meetings, in some of the rhetoric spouted by pundits, and in ominous promises like the one made by Mr. Connerly in Maine.
It fits right in with what we've seen in the country as a whole for the past 20-25 years, the politics of personal destruction… the idea that your political opponent is not just your political opponent, but he is your enemy, and he must not only be defeated on the political matter before us but destroyed personally and professionally --crushed, ruined, driven out of politics, driven out of business, out of public life, humiliated and denigrated. Some practitioners of my own profession which I've been fortunate enough to practice have indulged in that kind of behavior.
Winning on the merits of the argument isn't good enough? Not unless and until you've left your opponent battered and bleeding in some back alley, rendered incapable of ever engaging in public discourse on issues of the day?
The irony is that such vicious retaliation against someone because they hold an opinion different from your own is not only puerile but also strikes a blow at the very concept of democracy.
No self-governing society can survive this kind of behavior. Disagreement is why we treasure democracy. Without free debate, intellectual honesty is impossible, and without intellectual honesty, progress is impossible. Healthy democracies have ongoing debates on all manner of issues. But these are debates among fellow citizens, co-habitants of the same political subdivision. Not the Nazis or the fascists.
It doesn't matter if it's Prop 8 in California or Prop 1 in Maine and it doesn't matter if it's about gay marriage, immigration, health care, Afghanistan or the economy. Leaders of both sides of the issue need to take a leadership position and publicly chastise any member of their organization in this type of politics of personal destruction and disavow it publicly and urge others of their organization to abandon this malevolent desire to injure people whose only crime has been to disagree with you…as if that's a crime.
Voters in Maine share thoughts about Prop 1
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