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SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record
Reader SheeEttin reminds us that back in October, the Supreme Court accepted a case testing whether or not petition signers' names could be kept anonymous. (The premise was that the act of signing a petition is covered by free speech, and thus signers are entitled to anonymity, especially to protect them from harassment.) Now the Court has issued its ruling: signatures are part of the public record. "By a strong majority Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a setback for opponents of gay marriage who wanted to keep their identities secret. The justices favored transparency over privacy in a case testing whether signing a petition is a public act. The case began with a bill that the Washington state legislature passed in 2009, expanding the state's domestic partnership law. The new referendum was known as 'everything but marriage' for the enhanced rights it gave same-sex couples. People who opposed the bill gathered 120,000 signatures for a ballot measure asking voters to repeal it. That measure eventually reached Washington voters, who upheld 'everything but marriage.' Those who signed the repeal petition feared that they would be harassed if their names became public, so they went to court challenging Washington's Public Records Act. They argued that signing a petition is speech that is protected from disclosure. But in Thursday's 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed. 'Such disclosure does not, as a general matter, violate the first amendment,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court."
How ironic this argument is being used in support of protecting homophobes who were venting their own hatred of others and doing their best to cause them harm via restricting their rights.
Actually, I think I would view that as "violent rebellion" and not oppression. The gays are the ones being oppressed by Proposition 8. They're not trying to force people who don't agree with gay marriage to actually be gay themselves. The anti-gay community on the other hand is trying to deny them equal rights to marriage under the law. You know, the law that's supposed to keep church and state separate and all that good stuff. After being denied equal rights for so long, only to win a decisive victory, then have it taken away so quickly, I would call that rebellion. And I'll put my name on that publicly.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
How about signing your worst enemies names to the petition instead, so people will retaliate against them?
- Barack Obama
To the idiots who modded flamebait: so how's the rent boy go?
lol, coward - go back to your rentboy