With another Proposition 8 protest expected to bring thousands to the Capitol in Sacramento today, both sides continue to accuse each other of a four-letter word in the same-sex marriage debate, and it isn’t “love.”
It’s about the polar opposite — hate.
A pro-Proposition 8 group, the National Organization for Marriage, has a new Web site, AboveTheHate.com, that allows people to sign an electronic letter to “say ‘Enough!’ to the campaign of hate and intimidation” against supporters of the marriage ban.
In the 18 days since California voters banned same-sex marriage by 52-48 percent, the heat on both sides of the issue, and the name-calling, has yet to dissipate.
One Silicon Valley government employee, a contributor to the Yes on 8 campaign, was listed on www.antigayblacklist.com. She said someone contacted her employer and tried to have her fired because of her support for the same-sex marriage ban.
“One of our children is gay,” said the woman, who asked her name not be used for fear of further retribution. “This is a very painful issue for us, but we still have to follow our conscience. What I find shocking is we are not allowed to exercise our rights, but other people are.”
Even TV shrink Dr. Phil McGraw got into the act Friday. In a show on Proposition 8 that featured San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Maggie Gallagher of the Organization for Marriage, the show asked viewers to send in an e-mail if they had been “attacked for supporting Proposition 8.”
Call it a backlash to the backlash over Proposition 8.
Since Election Day, some No on 8 supporters have used the word “hate” to describe supporters of the marriage ban. But increasingly, the Yes on 8 side is leveling the same charge.
Concerned about the increasingly rancorous tone of the clash, some Proposition 8 protests are trying a different tack.
Last week, Los Angeles stand-up comic Sean Hetherington was tired of being angry and sad about Proposition 8, and didn’t like some of the protest ideas he’d heard because they sounded divisive. So he and his boyfriend, Aaron Hartzler, hatched the idea for a “Day Without a Gay” (www.daywithoutagay.org), asking gay and straight people to “call in gay” to work on Dec. 10 — and use the time to do volunteer and charitable work, particularly in communities that supported Proposition 8.
The result in Proposition 8 “showed there some people who just don’t feel comfortable with gays being perceived as normal,” Hetherington said. “For that reason Day Without a Gay exists, because we can go back in those same communities, and say we are compassionate; we are loving. We just want to be treated fairly under the law.”
Contact Mike Swift at (408) 271-3648 or at mswift@mercurynews.com.
