DEATH THREATS! WILL FEC DISCLOSURE MAKE CITIZENS A TARGET?

Haters bully donors: 'Burn their f---ing churches to the ground'
BOB UNRUH
01/15/2015

As Democrats push the Federal Election Commission to disclose information about citizens who donate to advocacy groups, a legal team that defended California’s traditional-marriage initiative argues the death threats Proposition 8 supporters received from “gay” opponents are reason to protect identities.

“Disclosure can have severe consequences, as evidenced by the experience of ProtectMarriage,” said James Bopp Jr. of the James Madison Center.

Bopp explained the FEC now is making new donor and information rules, including determining what data will be collected from donors and released to the public.

“The three Democratic commissioners are pushing for further disclosure of contributors to advocacy groups,” Bopp said
.
Bopp said the intimidation experienced in the Proposition 8 campaign “chill citizens from exercising their First Amendment rights to free association and expression.”

“That is a loss for liberty and our participatory form of government, and the FEC should not expand disclosure beyond what is already required,” he said.

Bopp said ProtectMarriage.com has filed comments with the FEC “warning of the dangers that disclosure of an advocacy group’s supporters can pose.”

As WND reported, among the threats documented against marriage supporters was, “I’m going to kill the pastor.”
Others were:


  • “If I had a gun I would have gunned you down along with each and every other supporter.”
  • “We’re going to kill you.”
  • “You’re dead. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon … you’re dead.”
  • “Burn their f—ing churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers.”


There also were churches marred by graffiti, swastikas on lawns and walls, bricks thrown through windows and doors, adhesive poured into locks, suspicious packages of white powder sent in the mail – “all for nothing more than supporting traditional marriage.”

“When some activists could sense that intimidation was not working … they resorted to threatening the families – even the children – of supporters. In one case, the perpetrator threatened to ‘kill’ the supporter’s child and the whole family; in another, to ‘harm’ the supporter’s family; and in another, to rape the supporters’ daughter,” according to testimony from previous cases.

Bopp said ProtectMarriage and its supporters have been on “the receiving end of the ill effects of such disclosure.”
He explained that contributors to the Proposition 8 campaign were disclosed as required by California law.

But as a consequence, he said, there have been “death threats; physical assaults and threats of violence; vandalism and threats of destruction of property; arson and threats of arson; angry protests; lewd demonstrations; intimidating emails and phone calls; hate mail (the old-fashioned kind); mailed envelopes containing white suspicious powder; multiple websites dedicated to blacklisting those who support traditional marriage and similar causes; loss of employment and job opportunities; intimidation and reprisals on campus and in the classroom; acts of intimidation through photography; economic reprisals and demands for ‘hush money;’ and gross expressions of anti-religious bigotry, including vandalism and threats directed at religious institutions and religious adherents.”

“There is also ample evidence that protected speech and association has been chilled because of the prospect of reprisals.”
Bopp said the comments to the FEC include 58 sworn statements from victims of harassment.

His report said: “The record of harassment in ProtectMarriage is the most comprehensive documentation of a harassment campaign ever assembled with hundreds of incidents of harassment occurring during the short period of the Proposition 8 campaign and its immediate aftermath. It is impossible to put a specific number on the total number of incidents or the specific number of persons affected, but they number in the many hundreds. By contrast, the Socialist Workers Party was given a renewed exemption to disclosure of their contributors by the FEC based on 45 incidents over a 4-year period.”

WND previously reported the issue came up in a dispute over disclosure of the names of the signers of a petition to put a marriage-protection amendment on the ballot in Washington state.

In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the names of donors generally should be public, but there could be exceptions when threats against contributors were documented. The court returned the Washington state case to a district judge, Benjamin Settle, who sided with homosexual-rights advocates who stated publicly they wanted the names of supporters of traditional marriage so they could create “uncomfortable conversations.”

Among the many documented death threats against Washington supporters of traditional marriage was, “I will kill you and your family,” which was delivered to the young son of a political candidate, Elizabeth Scott, who had signed the petition.
Scott told WND at the time she was concerned that children were being targeted, creating an atmosphere of fear for anyone who may be asked in the future to sign a petition protecting traditional values.

Bopp warned at that time “that some groups and individuals, certainly a minority, have resorted to advancing their cause, not by debating the merits of the issue but by discouraging participation in the democratic process itself.”

“The First Amendment was designed to ensure that all groups, whatever their persuasion, could participate fully in our republic,” he said. “That breaks down when some groups or individuals are cowed into silence for fear that they or their families will be targeted or threatened if they speak up.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/new-elect...5gabdUkhjaJ.99