Turnabout After Prop 8 Offers Delicious Irony

While I’m riveted like rest of the nation and indeed the world, watching the events leading up to Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow, a news item buried deep in the national news section of the New York Times today nearly caused me to fall, laughing wildly, off the treadmill where I was reading it.

Yes, multitasking three things at once always makes me feel like I am using my time wisely. But I digress.

The article, “Marriage Ban Donors Feel Exposed by list”, reports a lawsuit filed by supporters of California’s Proposition 8, passed last November, that made same sex marriage illegal by overturning the State Supreme Court’s May, 2008, ruling that same sex marriages are legal under the California constitution.

Frank Schubert, the campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind the proposition, alleges that gay rights groups are checking out the names and addresses of donors to the Prop 8 campaign. “And giving these people a map to your home or office leaves supporters of Proposition 8 feeling especially vulnerable. Really, it is chilling,” Schubert said. So they’ve filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court seeking to prevent release of the names of donors who contributed late in the campaign and have not yet been revealed in campaign filings.

Well my, my. I do empathize even if I don’t sympathize, given that the same groups that supported Prop 8 also oppose reproductive rights for women. For the 30 years I was with Planned Parenthood, they dogged me personally, stalking, picketing me at home, and often sending threatening notes. Their harrassment of doctors who provide abortion services escalated over the years to violence; as a result 87% of U.S. counties have no abortion provider.

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Chilling indeed.

And even more chilling, how about those anti-choice activists who trace the names and addresses of clinic patients–whether they are there for abortions or not–and send shaming letters to them at home? Or those who send threatening letters to the homes of pro-choice advocates who, say, use their freedom of speech to write a letter to the newspaper editor, or serve on the board of a pro-choice organization?

That’s why the richest irony for me was to see that James Bopp, formerly general counsel to the National Right to Life Committee, whose resume reads like a right-wing, anti-choice playbill, is now crying crocodile tears. Apparently, he thinks that sauce created by the goose should be outlawed when applied to the gander:

James Bopp Jr., a lawyer from Indiana who filed the lawsuit on the behalf of Protect Marriage, said the harassment of Proposition 8 supporters violated their constitutional rights of free speech and assembly.

“The cost of transparency cannot be discouragement of people’s participation in the process,” said Mr. Bopp, who has argued several prominent cases challenging campaign-finance laws in California and other states. “The highest value in the First Amendment is speech, and some amorphous idea about transparency cannot be used to subvert those rights.”

Nuf said. Justice sometimes comes in like the fog, on little cat feet, silently reminding us that this extraordinary moment in our political history was worth all the travail, hard work, and sheer persistence that led up to it. It also makes clear that the job isn’t finished; there is yet more to be done to assure equality for all.

Now back to the pre-inauguration patter. And tomorrow, back to work.

4 Comments

  1. jovan b. on January 20, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    As someone on ESPN says whenever something bad happens: Oh, the irony!

    Now, the far-right extremists know how it feels to have their work exposed. Now, the Court needs to do the right thing and reject James Bopp’s demands.

  2. Christopher on May 2, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    The argument for gay marriage is always centered around their need to have the same rights to marriage as heterosexuals. But the truth is they have the same rights as I do as far as marriage is concerned. What they want is special rights. Rights that I don’t have. If a gay man or woman wants to get married they are free to do so just like me. But what the homosexual community wants is special rights to marriage that no one else in this country have. They don’t want EQUAL rights they want exclusive rights. I am a Christian and I believe in gay marriage. If a gay man wants to marry a gay woman then they have the freedom and the right to do so in this great country of ours. Anything other than that is unequal rights and should be prevented.

    By the way, I saw your interview on The O’reilly Factor and you really fouled it up with the comment about Carrie Prejean’s implants. Your true colors showed. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

    • Andre on November 28, 2012 at 3:33 am

      The mere fact that I support Gay ritghs doesn’t have to make me Gay or Lesbian you moron. You are just showing the entire world such an ignorant fool you are by stating that. Whats hard to understand ? That all of us evolved from Monkeys ? What century are you living in ? Maybe you should have been born gay and only then would you know how it would have felt. Condemning someone just because they are different makes you inhuman. Humanity can go nowhere with such an attitude.

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