“Lurleen” has been blogging consistently and admirably on Pam’s House Blend about the attempt by a fringe right wing group in Washington and Oregon to launch a November vote that would, if passed, strip out the most recent rights and responsibilities that were added to Washington’s domestic partnership laws.

Called “Referendum 71”, the effort has revealed splits within the state’s religious/conservative groups, but Lurleen reports in her latest Blend commentary that the effort has also revealed significant rifts among the Evergreen State’s LGBT activists.

Lurleen now urges an independent group of LGBT activists to bow out of the political discussion about the referendum, in favor of the strategies adopted by the state’s mainstream advocacy groups. Oddly, however, those mainstream groups have adopted as an essential part of their strategy a tactic that was first used in Washington by a group of gadfly activists who were dismissed by the mainstream activists of their day, just as WhoSigned.org is being dismissed today.

Comment: WA’s LGBT activists who urge ‘WhoSigned.org’ to bow out ignore history [contd.]

A group of gadfly LGBT activists in Washington who are not aligned with the state’s major advocacy groups announced last week that they will publish on the web the names of those who sign the petition to put Ref. 71 on the ballot. The names would be available in public records if the referendum is certified for the ballot, but the independent group that calls itself  WhoSigned.org announced that it will transfer that public information to a searchable database available on the group’s own website.

Before WhoSigned.org came on the scene, the public conversation around Referendum 71 was one of positive consideration of our families.  WhoSigned.org has disastrously changed the focus to a negative one about fringe tactics.  Since the debut of WhoSigned.org last week, I have identified over 45 news stories, editorials, letters to the editor and blog diaries about Ref 71.  Not one of them focused on our families and the importance of protecting the Domestic Partnership Expansion Law of 2009, as they had done previously.

As Lurleen points out, the right-wing fringe groups backing Ref. 71 have characterized the proposed list as “intimidation tactics” and have been successful so far in getting their talking points about the list spread by media in Washington.

Lurleen amplifies the low-key criticism of WhoSigned.org that has been made by the state’s mainstream LGBT advocacy groups, including Equal Rights Washington. She urges the group to “bow out” and suggests:

Let's return to the positive conversation that Washington Families Standing Together started with their Decline to Sign campaign.

The irony of this suggestion, however, is that “Decline to Sign” has a long history in the state’s LGBT activism and was greeted by the state’s mainstream LGBT rights groups with exactly the same kind of disdain that Lurleen now gives to WhoSigned.org. The Decline to Sign tactic urges LGBT rights supporters to follow anti-gay petition gatherers and politely discuss the issues with those asked to sign. It was first introduced here by a gadfly activist named Lowell Barger in response to a proposed anti-gay initiative in 1994.

Barger and a nine-person steering committee called their independent group “Bigot Busters” and used “Decline to Sign” as one of their rallying cries.

But they were greeted with much the same criticism that WhoSigned.org faces today from more mainstream activists. The critiques came both from the right and from the LGBT middle, and were intense enough that the group released this statement (which is still available on the web) in July, 1994:

It is a common misconception, repeatedly propagated by the supporters of Initiatives 608/610, that Bigot Busters harass and intimidate both voters and petitioners. This has become a sort of accepted wisdom ("the big lie," one among many the Right is telling here lately). The truth is that Bigot Busters operate in a respectful manner (there are many good and obvious reasons for doing so), and this approach was an integral part of the training Bigot Busters received. Bigot Busters are, moreover, well aware of the legal and public relations ramifications of acting otherwise. Many people making this false claim have no first-hand information of any Bigot Buster action.

Change a couple of names in that statement, and it could be released today by WhoSigned.org. If WhoSigned did bow out, then the right wing groups would certainly shift their talking points to call the “Decline to Sign” effort a form of intimidation, as they did over a decade ago.

Source: Pam's House Blend:: WhoSigned.org Needs to Bow Out Gracefully

state_wa, referendum 71