Some of you may have seen this by now: a group in Massachusetts is publishing online a list of names and addresses of people who sign an anti-same-sex-marriage petition. .
The website, KnowThyNeighbor.org, states about this campaign:
In the fall of 2005, extremists will attempt to convince 65,825+ Massachusetts voters to sign a petition that would add anti-family language to our state constitution. Those who sign it will be listed here.
Quite straightforward. Now, there is nothing illegal in this. It?s all open and aboveboard. And furthermore, I have no objection to activists using social pressure as a tactic. That?s the point of boycotts, protests, letters to the editor, and pretty much every other weapon in the arsenal of the political activist. Plus, this seems like it might actually be more effective than most of the small arms lefties carry. So there?s that.
But I?m just not comfortable with the fact that this tactic so obviously employs intimidation. Because it?s clear that this will only work if people are too afraid to be seen by their neighbors online to actually sign the petition. If people didn?t care, or were passionate enough about restricting same sex unions to do it anyway, then this effort would be wasted. What?s having petition signatories available online gonna hurt, if the petition gets delivered with sufficient signatures anyway?
The org itself indirectly acknowledges its intimidation tactic by warning the sites users not to actually, ya know, intimidate people:
KnowThyNeighbor.org hopes to inspire Civil, Legal, and Respectful Discourse on the topic and discourages with its fullest conviction the actions by anyone to harm a person or their property in retribution for exercising their democratic right to sign the petition.
Yeah ? right. You know what this reminds me of? The whole argument for permitting the government to use torture to interrogate terrorists. The threat of possible torture has been shown to be very effective in interrogation. Therefore, proponents argue, if you publicly permit torture, you mostly don?t have to use it. But if you really do prohibit torture and everyone knows it, then you?ve lost your most effective, non-torture tactic.
Likewise, this effort only works if the threat of neighborly retribution for ?exercising their democratic right to sign the petition? stops people from signing. If they know that those lefties are too pc pussified to attack, then the website has failed. Like with torturing terrorists, KnowThyNeighbor.org operates in the shadowy zone between threat and fulfillment.
Furthermore, if we move out of the shadowy zone, KnowThyNeighbor can?t be expected to take responsibility for the actions taken by those who read the website and actually exact retribution. But the cause benefits from the added intimidation factor that would create.
I don?t like it. I know, I know ? but I don?t like it.
