If I lived in California, I’d check out the maps. I’d want to know which neighbors were no longer welcome in my home. And they would be informed of why they were no longer welcome.  Just like when I checked on knowthyneighbor.org to check who had signed petitions for a similar initiative here in MA. Didn’t throw anyone out of my life, but did contact someone who had illegally signed one using my address, and forwarded that to the AG.

I think it’s funny how the boycotts keep getting brought up, like it’s somehow illegitimate for me to say, “I don’t want my money to go to people who are actively seeking to harm me.”

It just shows how fucked up our country is.

“Interfering” in the customer-producer relationship is a horribly abusive act now.

Jesse’s got it nailed in one: if you want a group’s money, don’t support legislation that pisses them off.  If you really believe in the legislation that strips their rights, go right ahead and donate, but don’t expect them to continue to support you.

You do not get to strip someone’s rights away and insist they still willingly give you their money, or that by boycotting you, somehow *your* bigoted rights are being violated.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the “liberal” MSM is in favor of privacy for bigots and against transparency and truth and consequences for actions.  Bush trained them well.

I hope the assholes who send white powder and death threats get prosecuted.

I hope the assholes who supported Prop 8 lose money.

I hope the assholes who want to use Eightmaps to convince people that political contributions should be private are told to shut up.  Anyone who thinks politics should be secretly funded is either corrupt, stupid, cowardly, or evil.

The article very clearly said that SOME of the donors have had death threats AND their businesses have been boycotted.  It is clearly separated out by the word “AND.” You’re upset over a grammar misunderstanding.

I think the issue is that, by placing them right there in the same sentence, the author conflates the two.  You’d never see someone write a sentence like “Some donors to groups supporting the measure have received death threats and envelopes containing a powdery white substance, and they have also been given wedgies.”  Or “Some donors to groups supporting the measure have received death threats and envelopes containing a powdery white substance, and people have said some very unpleasant things to them.” No.  The tone of the sentence implies that the forms of retaliation listed will be really, really bad.  Like death threats. 

Everyone has a right to take their business elsewhere if they don’t like some aspect of a company.  Nobody has a right to murder (or even to threaten murder).  Those two actions don’t belong in the same sentence.

AJones,

Mr. Taylor was not asserting that the two are the same.  In fact, he placed “death threat” and “boycott,” in bold type no less, next to a definition of each term.  What Mr. Taylor’s thesis centered on a repudiation of the article’s assertion that “the ugly threat of intimidation” was a result of each of the actions (death threats and boycotts) and the article’s implied lack of relativity between the two.

Also, everyone knows crabs are going extinct because of brazilian waxing.

The key point of the Times article and lots of other reporting is simple: poor widdle bigots.

A Jones wrote:

Death threats are a type of intimidation.  Boycotts are a type of intimidation.  The Times gets that.

The difference is that one is illegal and one is not.  But Mr Taylor’s article was an extremely poor one; it is too easy to interpret it as saying that the death threats were no different from the boycott threats.

With tools like eightmaps — and there are bound to be more of them — strident political partisans can challenge their opponents directly, one voter at a time. The results, some activists fear, could discourage people from participating in the political process altogether.

Apparently the NYT is so caught in its insular world of mass media and broadcasting that it has forgotten about the fact that the political process is all about engaging people one voter at a time.

Nice derail, AJones.

if the article had used the word “also” like you did in your example, I’d agree with you.

I cut and pasted from the article itself, only replacing the last clause.  I added “also” to the last clause in my first example, though it could easily be removed without changing the meaning.

The presence or lack of the word “also” in the last clause does not in any way change the meaning of the sentence.

AJones,

Boycotts are legal.  Death threats are not.  That they both can be called “intimidation” doesn’t mean the Times gets anything other than a salacious, misleading story.

College football involves pushing, as does shoving children off a cliff, but putting the two into one story—even if you use the term “stiff-arm”—wouldn’t be appropriate to most respectable journalists.

AJones:

“I’ve had such terrible diseases as tuberculosis and athlete’s foot.”

Tuberculosis and athlete’s foot, for the purpose of that sentence, are being treated as the same thing: terrible diseases.  Unfortunately, the two are not both terrible diseases anywhere near on the same scale, and therefore not the same thing.

I do apologize, as I should, of course, fully explain every jot and tittle of every single phrase I use, and the sentence will be hereby amended to:

Death threats and boycotts are not the same sorts of intimidation as referenced in the above sentence set off by a blockquote, which is an HTML tag used to indent and highlight certain information.  In fact, they are different types of intimidation, and it’s arguable that boycotts can even be reasonably be classified as intimidation, but even if they are, they are certainly a much lesser form of intimidation than putting someone at fear for their own lives, which is a different word from livelihood, which is what boycotts may threaten.

Flows off the tongue.

The difference is that one is illegal and one is not.  But Mr Taylor’s article was an extremely poor one; it is too easy to interpret it as saying that the death threats were no different from the boycott threats.

How do you respond to a complaint that I wrote the sentence “Death threats are not the same thing as boycotts” with a complaint that I didn’t differentiate between death threats and boycotts?

One of the overarching memes of our time is the idea that your consumer choices are an integral part of your personality - that buying X product says something about you as an individual.  Which is considered a brilliant marketing strategy as long as it’s used to keep people shopping.  The minute people take that same concept and decide to avoid patronizing businesses that openly want gay people to be second-class citizens, consumption-as-identity is tantamount to murder.

Here is the effect of zombie lies: Last month Nashville defeated an “English Only” bill that would have prevented the metropolitan government from offering any services or communications in a language other than English. The councilman who backed the proposal refused to reveal who funded his campaign—even missing a campaign finance deadline—citing supposed “death threats” over Proposition 8 in CA.

Of course, after the fact, it turned out that one out of state group tied to white supremacists funded 98% of the campaign. The other big donor was a major local car dealer, Lee Beaman, who was no doubt afraid of massive walk-offs at his car lots and protestors carrying signs in front of his highly-visible downtown dealership.

Zombie lies are what the establishment uses to stifle dissent.

If you want to be a bigot, fine, but at least have the courage of your convictions.

Not to mention that this whole “transparency in political donations” thing isn’t exactly a new idea.  If you want to be a bigot, and you want to put your money where your mouth is, you’d better be prepared for the fact that other people are going to find out.

“If I lived in California, I’d check out the maps. I’d want to know which neighbors were no longer welcome in my home. And they would be informed of why they were no longer welcome.”

...unfortunately, I’m all too aware of which of my neighbors supported Prop H8.  They proudly displayed their “Protect the Children!”, “Protect Families!”, and “Protect Marriage!” signs for weeks before the election.

My daughter and a friend of hers (I found out later) trashed several of the signs out of disgust, but in the area I live in the tide of hatred was overwhelming.  (I don’t have figures, but it had to have been 75-90% in favor of H8.)

I’ve put down roots in this area, so it’s not easy for me to pack up and leave, and outside of this display of bigotry my neighbors are decent people.  But I won’t forget what they supported…

Religious persecution of bigoted white people is totally the same thing as torture and death of those people who wanted rights they didn’t deserve! The greater the status of the person being persecuted, the less the persecution has to be. Meanwhile, people who just aren’t as important have to really get the shit kicked out of them to matter. Duh.

I wish I weren’t kidding, that seriously, that’s the way they think.

“Meanwhile, people who just aren’t as important have to really get the shit kicked out of them to matter.”

...it might not even work then.  Matthew Sheppard had to be tortured and killed in the most extreme way for his case to lead (some) people to take gay bashing a little more seriously.

This was one of the reasons why I was excited when the CA Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, and why I was hoping H8 would be defeated.  We’ve gone as far as we can as a society in dealing with anti-gay bigotry.  Until LGBTQ people are allowed to live their lives openly, legally, we won’t be able to move to the next phases of eliminating yet another form of mindless hatred and bigotry…

Years ago, Dan Savage chastised a reader who said that homophobes need to learn that gays are everywhere by pointing out that a) they know that and b) they feel entitled to gay money and services while dishing out their hate.  A ton of people feel like they’re owed a gay hairdresser or pilot or computer programmer but would never support equality, to be blunt.  He compared it to the Michaelango thing, and suggested attitudes hadn’t changed one whit.  They’ll use you for your artistic genius, but they don’t think you’re a full person.

I thought he was overstating the case, but the reaction to this boycott proves me wrong.  I can’t believe how much homophobes feel 100% entitled to the labor and cash of gay people and their allies.

Hey, AJones, your protests would make sense if you didn’t fully, 100% agree with the implication of the article, which is that gay people owe their business to people who hate them.

God, I hate conservative trolls.  I have yet to see one that doesn’t argue in bad faith.  Can’t fucking just state their real opinion, but instead tries to split hairs through blatant lying and pretending not to get the point.

OT: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/she_is_in_the_condition_to_hav.php

Italy is experiencing its own version of the Terry Schiavo case. A woman, Eluana Englaro, was in a car crash 17 years ago that caused catastrophic brain damage — she’s been in a vegetative state ever since, and the family has been engaged in a legal fight for many years to pull the plug and allow her to die with a little dignity. They finally won that battle recently, and are easing her off life support and a feeding tube.

Cue the right wing. Silvio Berlusconi, Bush-like Prime Minister of Italy, has rushed to impose an emergency decree blocking the suspension of life support, a decision made after consulting with the Vatican. ... He claims to be “rescuing” Englaro — not true, since she was effectively dead 17 years ago — and in what has to be the most tasteless and disgusting excuse made yet for the actions of these villains of the right, has further justified it by saying that physically she is “in the condition to have babies”.

Uh, no. Boycotts are not a form of intimidation. They can can be used as part of a campaign of intimidation by people who have serious power over the people being intimidated, but by themselves they’re not any more of a form of intimidation than verbal criticism. (Note that I say “criticism” rather than verbal abuse, because under some circumstances even the mildest language can be used to intimidate, e.g. an employer with a record of union-busting saying “I would not be best pleased if one of my employees engaged in union organizing.”)

But really, didn’t we hear this kind of nitparsing back when everyone decided the Bush administration really hadn’t said Saddam was developing nuclear weapons? Writers put things together in the same sentence without qualifiers for a reason.

Dan:

that’s not quite true. They can imagine, dimly, what it would be like to have the same narrow thinking patterns they do, but animated by what they’ve been told are liberal talking points. That’s what animates all of their crazy projection stuff.

Meanwhile, the other place where the article fails terribly is omitting the context of Prop 8 and the ongoing atmosphere of violent anti-gay bigotry in the US. When people believed to be queer are still being beaten up and killed just for appearing in public, death threats to bigots take on a somewhat different complexion. (Still beyond the pale, but nowhere near out of the blue.)

Powdery white substance ... right ... is this just a rumor or are there some police reports to back it up?  Oh, we received powdery white substance and must blog about it ... not actually notify the police who will find our teenage stepson’s prints on it.

Boycotting businesses is fair game when Disney and Ford Motor Company actually show respect for their customer base ... but when Joe Homophobe kicks in money to nullify your human rights, it is soooooo unfair to take your business elsewhere.

Death threats are a type of intimidation.  Boycotts are a type of intimidation.  The Times gets that.

I just had to highlight this as possibly the stupidest thing ever said on Pandagon.  It’s like saying, “Trains are a form of transportation.  Bicycles are a form of transportation.”

Yeah?  Well, let’s put them into a head-on collision and see what happens since trains and bicycles are equivalent forms of transportation.

Projection isn’t an expression of imagination, it’s an expression of narcissism.

Projection is, in fact, the polar opposite of imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes. It’s based on the fundamental presumption that everyone else is exactly like you in every way.
Dan, Grand High Emperor of Bananas Foster on 02/08 at 09:22 AM

Now, let’s not fall into the fallacy of “nothing but” here.

If you define “imagination” as being all about imagining difference, then you are correct by definition. But I think that’s a poor definition of imagination. It may be a vital part of having a good, vibrant, fertile imagination, but “imagination” in general is just the process of visualizing stuff that isn’t literally observable at the moment, and it’s an inherent part of human intelligence.

Because their worldview won’t allow them the flexibility of trying to actually understand that other people who disagree with them might be right—either they have a different but valid perspective or that facts the projecting nuts are either ignorant of or denying render their own perspectives false—their imaginations must work overtime, with some hands tied behind their backs as it were, to come up with elaborate, epicycle-filled theories of what is going on with those who won’t see their point of view as the only valid one.

The idea that there is a Satan of some kind, some evil being or conspiracy that is motivated to do harm for the Hell of it, is a pretty important concept to them.

boycotts are not actually a form of intimidation, but nice try there. they are a VALID form of protest supported by how a democratic republic run on capitalism works. boycotts mean the system works. the freedom of association and the free market are doing their thing. wanna whine about it, maybe consider moving to a less democratic society. why do conservatives hate america?

Is it just me or do they sort of just tack “death threats” onto every single story about any group or individual getting blowback from doing something incredibly stupid and assholish?

Can the newspapers just accept that in an age of email everyone will at some point get a message saying “you suck I hope you die!” and just, like, move on?

The idea that there is a Satan of some kind, some evil being or conspiracy that is motivated to do harm for the Hell of it, is a pretty important concept to them.

Ironic, that, given how motivated THEY often are to do harm for the hell of it (take the hospital deathbed visitation-rights case that’s been running through the blogosphere).

Am I the only one reading this who lives in California? Because I’m calling serious bullshit on the claims made in this article. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen/heard of/read about/watched on TV/etc any arrests for making death threats, nor any credible stories. NYT Epic Research Fail. Or maybe there’s an editorial decision here to report the news as favorably to the bigots as possible. Because I’m pretty sure actual death threats would A) result in actual arrests, and B) would be hugely reported on.

Yeah, the gays have been under such strict scrutiny for anything to discredit them in anyway during the counterprotests including the conflation of “protesting outside churches” with “they were marching between the pews, oh lordy, one of em touched me”. Without a direct example, I’m going to have to call bullshit and that’s not a tall order as these people are so “insult”-sensitive that they’ve been crowing about boycotts as some sort of new evil used to torture Christians right after they tried to BLACKMAIL donations from companies under threat of, oddly enough, BOYCOTTS.

They’ve literally got nothing.

Though, I do not doubt that many neighbors and family members and business owners have gotten suddenly irate calls or public snubs and nasty words over this. Good, I say, maybe next time they’ll think about people’s lives rather than abstract “threats” the next time a bigoted bill rolls around and they have to ask themselves if they really want to block illegal gay black aliens from learning sign language or whatever they imagine as the next great existential threat. Seriously, the best thing that could come from this whole affair would be to slap the drama queen out of the “Christian” followers and make them think next time about their neighbors before blindly following the nice man on the radio to stupidity.

This is the first time I’ve heard anything about these alleged threats/white powder/etc. NYT is just showing how liberal it is NOT, as usual. Typical NYT-style “some people say” reporting not backed up by any evidence other than the claims of those mysterious “some people”. And I just love how bigoted business owners are allowed to kick in some money towards prop 8, thus exercising their “democratic right” to <strike>participate in the process</strike> buy legislation, but the customers aren’t allowed their right to take their money elsewhere. Oh no, that’s “intimidation,” woe.

Jesse’s got it nailed in one: if you want a group’s money, don’t support legislation that pisses them off.

And the people doing the boycotting are just the gays?

I still think this course of action is a deeply dangerous path for activists to go down. No doubt further developments will be reported on Pandagon as they occur.

Will Rogers once said (paraphrased) Speak always, even in private,  so you could sell the family parrot to the town gossip and still sleep at night.

Guess those supporters of Prop 8 don’t like Will Rogers - how UnAmerican of them.

“Am I the only one reading this who lives in California? Because I’m calling serious bullshit on the claims made in this article. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen/heard of/read about/watched on TV/etc any arrests for making death threats, nor any credible stories.”

...I’m a native and I haven’t heard these either. 

Next up, rumors of Prop H8 supporters being spit on and being pelted by a blizzard of Oreos…

I loves me some Will Rogers.

It has been said, I forget by whom, that it’s a funny thing that most (if not all) Rogers imitators have been Republicans, but the man himself was a Democrat.

Dan, I guess I have this triggering thing about Othering people by making them out to be lesser somehow than “us,” whoever “we” might be. That’s why I was basically quibbling with you. But I still think you are doing that very thing.

I think it should be obvious that I think there is something terribly wrong with what Fungelicals and other expert Projectionists do, which is why I said that metaphorically they have tied their imagination’s “hands” behind its back. But I stand by the idea that actually, this just means that they are overworking their poor brains in other respects, toward an end that is objectively speaking, less intelligent—but they aren’t doing this just by dialing their brains down, nope they are making themselves downright feverish.

Because they are in fact engaging with reality that isn’t as they would wish it, and they do come up with some elaborate stuff in all this wheel-spinning. They do a damn poor job of actually predicting what will happen of course, and they could be a lot happier and calmer if they would only accept a more flexible and balanced view of things—that at any rate is how I came from my own version of fundyism to where I am today, and I recommend it to them. But, assuming as I do that these Others are really just people like you and I, and coming from a comparably rigid and intolerant background myself, I am interested in how and why they are so damn mean, to themselves as much as those in range of their lashing out.

I’ve gone on at some length here as to how and why that is, having to do with a particular model of society they are committed to upholding. Frankly those speculations seem to fall on deaf ears, either because they are themselves half-baked and illogical or because they are so damn obvious they don’t bear comment; I never get any feedback as to which, so I will spare everyone yet another reiteration. If there are valid points to be made along those lines that aren’t already commonplaces around here, I obviously lack the skill to make them effectively.

I’ll just say this much—it is a model of society that is based on fear, and on sense of tribal identity as the Alpha and Omega of morality. Which is why their image of Satan, or the International Communist Conspiracy, or what have you, is an obvious projection of what they do or would do to others. It’s a very Manichean worldview, but it’s one that has developed over many thousands of years and more or less underlies just about every major society that exists and certainly all of the ones that one hears much of in history.

At the same time, I say it’s wrong, and that people throughout history have also felt that wrongness, more or less. And these kinds of societies have mechanisms that use that very discomfort to prop themselves up and keep grinding on.

Am I the only one reading this who lives in California? Because I’m calling serious bullshit on the claims made in this article. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen/heard of/read about/watched on TV/etc any arrests for making death threats, nor any credible stories. NYT Epic Research Fail.

In that case, this reminds me, more than anything, of all the rumors/delusions/mass hysteria swirling like diarrhea in a toilet bowl in the aftermath of Katrina.  All the stuff about how people on their roofs had shot at government rescuers, Katrina refugees were contributing to out-of-control crime in the cities hosting them, out-of-control stories about looting, etc etc etc.  Very few of which were ever substantiated in any way in the media, and most of which were actively debunked. 

Seriously, to this day I cannot run an errand at the Canal Place mall with any family member without being told all about how it was looted to high heaven, how terrible and sad, blah blah blah.  I have no idea whether it’s true, and if it is, so what?  Most of what’s in Canal Place is Saks and various other designer boutiques.  Ohnoes, somebody got a Louis Vuitton handbag they didn’t pay for!  BURN THEM!!!1!1!!ELEVEN!!!

I still think this course of action is a deeply dangerous path for activists to go down.

Yes, how dare we leftists have the NERVE to take our business elsewhere!  ZOMG!

“I still think this course of action is a deeply dangerous path for activists to go down.”

Well there is always Option 2. Full socialist revolution displacing the aggregation of power in the hands of money so that money wasn’t the language that talked.

Personally, I believe socialist reforms would greatly counter a large amount of the inequalities (including that by which a couple of mega-churches can without sweating burn a large amount of money buying an election among others), but given that we are in a manically capitalist country where money dictates culture and the shape of the debate (which is the only way we’re still having to talk about tax cuts), we need to use the tactics that work. Taking the fight to them is working. Protesting the churches, tracking the funding, marching in the thousands, boycotting hateful businesses that used our money.

But if that’s too dangerous to our purity, Option 2 is looking better and better.

And the people doing the boycotting are just the gays?

Nope.  In fact, much of what’s going on is a reaction to the fact that a couple of months before the election, the Yes on 8 campaign sent out extortion letters to companies that donated to No on 8 and threatened to publicize their donations if they didn’t make a similar donation to Yes on 8.

IOW, the Yes on 8 people threatened boycotts and are now whining that they’re being boycotted against.  If they can’t stand the thought of people being boycotted because of their political beliefs, maybe they should have thought twice before threatening boycotts against others.

...In fact, much of what’s going on is a reaction to the fact that a couple of months before the election, the Yes on 8 campaign sent out extortion letters to companies that donated to No on 8 and threatened to publicize their donations if they didn’t make a similar donation to Yes on 8….
Mnemosyne on 02/08 at 03:36 PM

Wow. Did any of these businesses, organizations, or individuals cry foul at that time? Or did the H8 people carefully target only entities that probably wouldn’t dare peep?

Anyway one can see why the H8ers have to try to conflate their opposition with anthrax mailers now and can hardly just complain about donors being outed as such!

Other than the sentence that Jesse highlighted, can anyone find any other reference to boycotts in the article?  There’s one part about optionally listing employer, but does anyone here really think it would be justified to boycott a business because one of their employees donated to a cause you oppose?  Shoot, what’s to stop an employer from punishing an employee for donating to a cause that the employer dislikes, or is inimical to the employer’s business interests?

I absolutely agree that businesses that donate politically need to have that information publically available, but then again, that’s why corporations and people shouldn’t be seen as equivalent under the eyes of the law.

Similar to the boycott reference, death threats are also only mentioned in that same sentence.  The rest of the article covers two cases of unsolicited e-mails being sent because of political donations those people made.  Let’s just limit it to that:  E-mails sent to private citizens because of a political donation, no death threats, just approbation, Jesus-referenced and otherwise.  People here don’t have a problem with that?  Sending e-mals to private citizens who donated money to “No” on Prop 8 is OK, too?

The boycotts were against companies where the fucking owners or board members were the donating bastards, so no, it’s not the same thing as boycotting a company because Joe Steno Pool donated a fiver but thanks for the concern trolling Expat. Furthermore, a friend of mine was physically assaulted for speaking out for No on 8 so shove your “oh no, emails” and random death threat floating up your ass.

In other words, concern troll is concerned.

Cerebus,

Where exactly did I say I was against boycotts?  Do us both a favor and read what I wrote again, this time without assuming I’m against you.

Also, where did I give credence to the death threats claim?  I explicitly say that the mention of death threats is cursory to the main thrust of the article.

BTW, I normally wouldn’t do this, but it’s late and I might not have time to respond again, so once you figure out that I wasn’t concern trolling, feel free to take your strawman and shove it up your ass.

Yes, how dare we leftists have the NERVE to take our business elsewhere!  ZOMG!

You also have the right to walk into a biker bar and make disparaging comments about their mothers.  It’s free speech. Still doesn’t stop it from being a rather dangerous way to pass the time.

Playing into the culture war narrative is the wingnut’s game.

I keep forgetting that I have a positive obligation to spend my money at businesses owned by people seeking to harm me.  Right, PIATOR?

“I keep forgetting that I have a positive obligation to spend my money at businesses owned by people seeking to harm me.  Right, PIATOR? “

Because, if you don’t, it’s ALL YOUR FAULT when something bad happens.  We don’t know what, because PIATOR didn’t explain the ominous things he’s forseeing happening if leftists dare boycott.  BUt whatever it is, it will be BAD and all YOUR FAULT!

(sounds a bit like rape apologetics, doesn’t it.)

I keep forgetting that I have a positive obligation to spend my money at businesses owned by people seeking to harm me.  Right, PIATOR?

Nope.  -10 points for the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle, MAJeff.