Source: Seattle Times, Spokesman Review
The names of those who have entered domestic partnerships in Washington are available on a state-run database.
If opponents of the state’s domestic partnership law manage to get enough signatures on petitions that would strip away part of that law, then the names of those who sign will also be available, thanks to WhoSigned.org, a new grassroots group in the state.
On its website, the group states:
We believe the process for initiative and referendum petitions that maintain discrimination by opposing equal rights and protections for Washington State residents must meet a high standard of transparency to ensure a fair and open discussion in the public forum.
“We want to be able to talk to [petition signers] about what impact it [Referendum 71] has on our families,” a spokesman for WhoSigned.org told Seattle Times. “It’s an opportunity to ask them, ‘What would you do if the same thing was being done to your family?’ — if rights were being taken away from them.”
Partnered with Massachusetts-based gay-rights group KnowThyNeighbor.org, which has done the same thing in Oregon, Florida, and Arkansas, WhoSigned.org plans to create a searchable database of names and addresses of people who sign petitions asking the legislature to put the the most recent domestic-partnership measure before voters in November.
If anti-gay campaigners in WA get enough names for referendum, they’ll be published [contd.]
The names of petition signers would be made public by the secretary of state only if petitioners collect enough verified signatures, which could happen sometime this summer.
The petitions are now being printed for Referendum 71, according to a spokesman for the Oregon-based right wing group that’s promoting the effort. If they collect 120,577 valid signatures before July 25, then referendum would appear on the November ballot asking if voters want to overturn a law passed in this year’s session of the legislature that grants to registered domestic partners some additional rights and responsibilities.
The petition effort for Referendum 71 has revealed fractures among the region’s right-wing anti-gay activists, Spokesman Review reported last month. Several of Washington’s most prominent anti-gay Christian leaders have expressed concern that the effort could backfire for their agenda.
“I would be very disappointed to be dragged into an effort that is unlikely to succeed and very likely to ultimately be counterproductive,” wrote the prominent anti-gay political activist Rev. Joe Fuiten, of Bothell, in a memo to fellow anti-gay pastors.
Fuiten cited recent polling that suggests the Ref. 71 effort could fail. “Doing the strategically wrong thing, even in a good cause, is not wisdom.”
In his memo, which was obtained by the Spokane paper, Fuiten warned that lawmakers in Olympia might interpret a failure for Ref. 17 as public support for legalizing same-sex marriage. “I know that some will say I just lack faith,” he wrote. “It might be. I don’t have any interest in being another General Custer.”
The Bothell pastor told Spokesman Review, “The fact is that pastors across the state do not want to do this.” It would be far better, he said, to get organized for a ballot measure next year that focuses on same-sex marriage.
Garry Randall, an Oregon resident who is leading the effort for Ref. 71, insisted to the Spokesman that now is the time to pass put a discriminatory to a vote. He said of the state’s domestic partnership law, “It is everything but marriage without the word, but it elevates the homosexual relationship to the same level as marriage,” he said. “There’s no legal difference. All it is is the name.”
Larry Stickney, is the public face for Randall’s group which called “Protect Marriage Washington”. He said of the WhoSigned.org effort, “They take the politics of personal destruction to new levels.”
He claimed, “I am a personal recipient of dozens of obscene and threatening e-mails and phone calls since we filed this.”
WhoSigned.org spokesman Brian Murphy of Seattle told the Seattle Times that the purpose of making the petition names accessible isn't to incite harassment. “The main thing we want to have is a conversation,” Murphy said. “We expect that people will go to the site, see names of people they know, people in their neighborhood, and say, ‘Oh, so they signed that.’
“We expect them not to act at that moment, but to bump into them at grocery store, at the soccer field or mowing the lawn, and that's when we expect the conversation to come up,” he said.
The state’s largest LGBT advocacy group, Equal Rights Washington (ERW) is not involved in WhoSigned.org, and has, instead, been seeking signatures for a “Decline to Sign” petition.
ERW’s Josh Friedes told the Times that the WhoSigned effort might be a “distraction” from the conversation about equal rights. He urged people, instead to go to the ERW website, and add their name to ERW’s “Decline to Sign” effort. WhoSigned.org also provides a prominent link to the ERW petition.
Source: Gay-rights group wants to name petition signers | Seattle Times
Campaign targets same-sex rights | Spokesman Review