Although it’s two months since the November 2008 election that passed Proposition 8 in California, it’s still rather big news, or at least it still makes the news with fair regularity. It’s roiled a couple mailing lists I’m on, still has public protests, sparked complains about the influence of the Mormon church ( and out of state residents contributions to a California initiative ), and has led to the creation of a number of websites which display and track the donations to the pro Proposition 8 folks. For example, yesterday I heard about www.eightmaps.com, which shows the amounts and addresses on a Google map of everyone who donated to the Yes on 8 campaign.
So, when I found the site, I was of course curious which, if any, of my neighbors had contributed to the yes campaign. We had a no on 8 sign in our window for the month or so before the election, and didn’t see any yes on 8 signs in my immediate neighborhood, but I do remember driving past them to and from work, and eightmaps.com did show me that some folks near where I live had contributed. I’ve heard a couple folks on the radio talking about places where this information is available, and that it has led to harassment of people and some folks have resigned from their jobs after their donations were revealed.
Which leads to my real point, which is now that I have this information, what do I do with it? I didn’t recognize anyone that I know, which I suppose makes things a bit easier, but there are thing there. The nVidia executive who donated $10,000 — I’ve bought nVidia video cards for my computer before, but maybe next time I’ll think more about ATI. Of course, I don’t really know how many donations any ATI executives may have made, and they’re big companies, so it may not be quite as cut and dried as that.
But, what if I found my dentist there — not that I have, but what if? He’s a nice guy, and a good dentist, but he does own his own practice, and I’d hate to think that he is using the money I pay for teeth cleanings to deny my fellow citizens their rights. There are a lot of dentists in the valley, and I’m sure a lot of them are good ones. I could find another dentist if I needed to.
And that’s what I’ll do. I’m not going to go out of my way, but if I find out that the folks at my favorite restaurant were big donors, well, I guess I can find another place to eat, because there are a lot of restaurants and many of them have good food. If the manager at my auto repair shop chipped in $500, well, I like him but I’ll miss him. Years ago, I found out that Orson Scott Card, a science fiction writer of some acclaim, was a pretty virulent homophobe. I haven’t bought or read his books since, because I don’t want to be giving money to, well, to a troglodyte. There are plenty of good science fiction writers out there, and the sooner the world says “you are dead to us because, even though your books may be good, you yourself are a horrible person” the better off we’ll be.
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