mormonhatershow.blogspot.com

But sadly, while I agree with the words attributed to me, they were not mine. That particular commentary came from my fellow Box Turtle Bulletin author, Jim Burroway.

Oh, but could I write so eloquently as Jim I’d be a happy guy indeed.

But to be fair to Kincaid, I don’t think he was involved in anything like that.

He did support the idea of boycotting the San Diego hotel of a Yes on Prop 8 donor if that is what gay people wanted to do, however I don’t believe there was any demand for payment involved in that effort.

As I pointed out on my own blog, the entertainment value of watching groups that were ordering people to dig up “dirt”, who were insisting on donations in exchange for avoiding the wrath of their boycotts, and who themselves were publishing websites with peoples’ names and addresses and encouraging their followers to confront them suddenly scream about extortion is beyond measurement.

The proponents of Proposition 8 can well articulate that they are opposed to it, and why. Why can’t those who support teaching same-sex marriage make *their* case instead of making implausible denials?

A good question.

In most cases, I imagine those who want same-sex marriage (and other gay concerns) taught in schools can make a straightforward case for their position.

For the No on 8 crowd, however, the issue of civil gay marriage and teaching homosexual topics in schools were completely separate issues. Their objection was to conflating the two.

Obviously that approach didn’t work.

Yes, I knew you hadn’t bothered to read the short posts Kincaid linked to in the intro of his commentary. That was obvious. I find your explanation for not doing so disappointing.

When the proffered teasers amount to nothing, I am in no hurry to wade through the rest of the information. Especially when (in terms of the argument, or who is advocating what) it is not my job, shall we say.

If you are unwilling to look at the arguments Kincaid makes for his claims of uncivil behavior you cannot fully understand where he is coming from. And if you do not look at them you are not really in a position to say that the claims “amount to nothing.”

I am not here to defend all of Mr. Kincaid’s sentiments about the Yes on 8 campaign. I cannot because I don’t fully share them. But if you want to understand the likes of Kincaid then, yes, wading through their info is your job. I specifically invited readers here to that task. (The implied hint was to do so before commenting on Kincaid’s opinion of how gays were treated during the campaign.)

As for you being unimpressed with Kincaid’s commentary as far as I’ve quoted from it, you might have done better to read it for yourself. Then you’d see that I was telling the truth when I wrote that Kincaid “concludes the Church’s leaders acted within their rights in a democratic nation.”

Specifically, what Kincaid said is this:

One thing must be made clear: the leadership of the LDS church has every right to do this. … they are fully free to participate in the political process on the issues — including ballot propositions. To claim otherwise would be to deny the LDS Church’s right to speak out on what it sees as important moral issues. It would also deny the rights of LDS members to fully participate in the democratic process.

So there is nothing that Kincaid need get over here.

As I said in my post (#21) above, Kincaid also insists that the Mormon Chuch must accept the political consequences of its political actions:

But exercising those rights in the democratic process brings with it public scrutiny and criticism. That, too, is an integral part of the democratic process from which no one is exempt.

Kincaid’s whole point is that the LDS Church is not exempt from criticism or protest because it is a church. His point is aimed at those who consider religions to be above criticism as well as those who consider protesting a church’s actions to be counterproductive. When a church acts as a political organization in polticial matters, Kincaid consider it fair to treat it the same as any other political organization.

The entire commentary was provoked by a statement from the LDS Church. Amongst the points it made was this:

While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.

While the Mormon’s are acknowledging that airing grievances against their position is legit, they are also carving out a special place for themselves as a church. Their religion and most cherished institutions and meeting places are to be consider off limits for protest — a privilege not accorded to non-religious groups.

I pointed out Kincaid’s commentary because it is a counterpoint to Zywicki’s. GPW pointed out one point of view on protesting the Mormon Church over its Prop 8 and Prop 102 activities; I pointed out another, opposing view.

I think examing both sides of something is good.

The proponents of Proposition 8 can well articulate that they are opposed to it, and why. Why can’t those who support teaching same-sex marriage make *their* case instead of making implausible denials?

I don’t see how the term extortion is over the top since they were demanding money in exchange for not doing something the target might find disagreeable. It’s textbook extortion.

As for the public education brouhaha, there was a bit of lying by ommission on both sides here. Each party was only interested in the aspects that favored its own argument, which is typical in politics.

The Yes side made a suppositon: legally recognizing same-sex marriage will increase the drive to discuss the same in public schools. That is plausible.

The No side knew that the laws on education were not changed by the Supreme Court’s actions, and would not be changed by Prop 8. Discussion of homosexuality already occurs in schools and will continue so for them the issue was a red-hering.

Classic arguing past one another.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/277772.php

A man is arrested – arrested!! – for doing nothing but showing up to exercise his First Amendment rights peacefully and calmly by wearing a McCain-Palin T-shirt. The officers ask him to leave, and he’s willing to, but he needs to get to his car. They don’t care.

[Kincaid] When the Mormon church chose to enter the political sphere, the fact that they are a religious institution became irrelevant.

A meaningless argument. Are churches never supposed to take a political stand on anything? What about all those churches who have taken stands on issues over the years that Mr. Kincaid would find politically correct or agreeable?

This was a democratic political campaign, not a religious one

…in which everybody – EVERYBODY – has a right to take a stand. One would expect a Church’s stand to be informed, shall we say, by the teachings / viewpoint of that church, no? Mr. Kincaid apparently needs to get over it.

the leadership of the LDS cannot suddenly change roles, toss up their hands and say, “You can’t criticize us! We’re a religion!”

Whoa! Have they done so? Where? Please post a link here. I thought the LDS church had requested, in Mr. Kincaid’s own quotation of them that he is apparently well aware of, that “those involved in the debate over same-sex marriage to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other.” That’s not saying “You can’t criticize us! We’re a religion!” Is Mr. Kincaid using cheap straw-man tactics?

San Diego realtor Jim Abbot received one of those letters featuring a Yes on 8 letterhead … That letter read, in part:

“Equality California is advertising on its website that it has received a contribution of at least $10,000 from you. … Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error and restore Traditional Marriage. … Were you to elect not to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. You would leave us no other reasonable assumption. The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to protectmarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published.”

I asked for evidence to be posted, in this thread, of gay couples being vilified and harassed. That, by itself, ain’t it. It’s (1) looking at public donation records and (2) informing business people that you looked at public donation records and are aware of how they donated and may perhaps choose to pass that on to the general public, for example, to let the public boycott.

Public donation records and possible consumer boycotts are part of the democratic process, Dave; they’re neither harassment nor vilification. Some liberals have done the same, or threatened to do the same, to Republican donors. Big. deal. If people can’t take the heat – i.e., having their name pointed out in information that we as a society explicitly chose to make as open and public as possible – then they shouldn’t make the donations. When I make a donation, I assume the world will know it; in other words, I don’t make the donation if I’m not prepared for the world to know it.

(His post has links to back up these claims; readers here should check them out…)
[...]
You obviously didn’t read any of what Kincaid gives as evidence…

Indeed. When the proffered teasers amount to nothing, I am in no hurry to wade through the rest of the information. Especially when (in terms of the argument, or who is advocating what) it is not my job, shall we say.

Second, OK, so the ad said teachers would teach about gay marriage, and you admit that they would teach about gay marriage. I don’t see any lying anywhere in there. I mean, if they were going to teach about gay marriage, and gay marriage were (corrective subjunctive tense? I don’t know) the law if Proposition 8 failed, it seems logical to assume they would teach that gay marriage was the law in California. I don’t see any dishonesty, except from those who claimed teachers *wouldn’t* teach about gay marriage if Prop 8 failed.

I agree that teachers and teacher unions will try to find ways to do what they want regardless of parents’ wishes. But that was happening before the California Supreme Court intervened in the same-sex marriage controversy, and will continue to happen even after the passage of Prop 8.

None of this answers the questions raised by the pro-Prop 8 advertising, nor does the example of the field-trip in San Francisco. That was decided on a local level, and it was San Francisco after all!

As for the letter sent to Abbot (and other businesses) the Yes on 8 campaign admitted they sent the letter. You can see this for yourself if you visit the link to the newstory I give in my comment above.

I admit that threatening to release information that is already available to the public is a lame form of extortion, but extortion is what it was nonetheless.

When a lesbyun (for the filter) teacher decided that getting married in front of her first grade class was a “teachable moment” it pretty much confirmed what parents suspected all along.

I am uncomfortable with your assertion concerning Prop 8 opponents conceding what the proposition’s proponents said about teaching children.

At the post you link to, Ace said,

I sometimes grow weary with political experts like Karl Rove speaking so much about “the message.” “The message,” I tend to think, is PR nonsense; it’s the facts that matter.

Well, this is why they pay guys like Karl Rove a lot of money. “The message” can win.

That doesn’t sound like an endorsement of the truthfulness of the Yes people’s ad.

When California’s Superindent of Public Instruction spoke out against the Yes campaign he was discussing state regulations. The No proponent alluded to in the ad seems to refer to local school curricula. The two campaigns are talking past one another. (Of course the Yes ad’s claim contradicts the superindent’s claim about parental rights under California law, but looking at the applicable laws should settle that.)

Some extortion.

And that’s if the letter is even legitimate. It was pretty sloppy to leave the internet website information on the bottom of one page… which commonly happens when you print a page directly off the innerwebs.

Your post (#24) was pretty good, but you made one glaring mistake:

It was not a lie to say that “”Four Activist Judges in San Francisco imposed this on the state.”

What the California Supreme Court did was clearly judicial activism.