I wish more people would give money so No On Prop 8 can saturate the airwaves with the truth, and drown out the pro-8 lies. Even though we live in Illinois, my partner and I think defeating Prop 8 is important enough to have donated $5,000 to No On 8 this past weekend.

I can only dream of CA voters nixing this so completely that it goes away forever. Best of luck to all working on No On Prop 8!

Um, Ben, that isn’t a legal right.

You are making a supposition based on your reading of the culture. The legal fact is that the people and the legislature can vote upon the legal existence of heterosexual marriage.

It is pretty funny that this sort of Potemkin village performance is being used to advance what we are told is a moral issue. It is not so funny that the package of lies used to advance the issue is exactly why the campaign is so indecently expensive.

One of the less-than-ingenuous claims about Prop. 8 is that we gay people, via domestic partner laws, already have all of the rights afforded heterosexuals by marriage.

Not really. and certainly, not this one: the rightness, the validity, the very existence of any heterosexual marriage will NEVER, EVER be debated, much less voted upon, by complete strangers.

But you can debate about our rights and equality before the law, and you can vote on our marriages. And if you can vote on that, then you can vote on the continued existence of those domestic partner laws. Just like you can vote on any statutory recognition of our lives and families. Just as you can vote to create laws that validate some people’s prejudices.

Just like Prop. 8.

You could be right that “the desired conclusion was far more important than an honest assessment” of opinion. It is also possible that the biases of the poll’s authors entered the poll in spite of their best intentions. (This is why it is best to be skeptical of poll results.)

The string of “what if you learned” questions is particularly interesting. I don’t see anything wrong with asking such questions so long as it is clear that the situations are hypothetical. The wording here is rather ambiguous. Perhaps the Marist College organization that created the poll should be contacted and questioned about the wording of such poll questions.

I have to disagree with you (you knew that was coming, didn’t you, Tim?) over your complaint about the poll’s discription of the ballot initiative.

I can’t fault you for expecting the poll to “ask a question that reasonably approximates the ballot question.” But that is what the poll did. “Amends the California constitution to say that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” is just another way of saying “provides that only marriage between a man and woman is valid or recognized in California.” The bit about the amendment eliminating “the right of same-sex couples to marry” is inherent in the statement of how the amendment defines a legal marriage.

To complain about the polls use of the initiative’s original heading “Limit on Marriage” rather than AG Jerry Brown’s rewrite is much ado about nothing if you’re concerned about an accurate description of the ballot measure.

Frankly, if complete honesty is the issue, both the poll and the ballot initiative should read something like: Amends the California Constitution to reserve the word “marriage” as the legal description for wedded male-female couples.

While I’m at it, I might as well take you to task for your consideration of the first “What if you learned that” question as a completely dishonest claim. (The emphasis was yours.)

The poll is wrong about civil unions. They do not exist in California. But that error isn’t enough to render the question/claim completely dishonest.

Couples in Californiadomestic partnerships have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. It has not been demonstrated that the proposed amendment would alter California domestic partnership law in any way. In California domestic partnerships and marriages have always been treated as distinct institutions, and the amendment mentions only marriage. See Wikipedia citing Knight v. Superior Court and Armijo v. Miles:

“California courts have entertained several challenges to legislative expansions of the domestic partnership scheme enacted after Prop 22. Generally, these challenges alleged that the legislature inappropriately amended Prop 22 by making California’s domestic partnership scheme too similar to marriage or more broadly that Prop 22 made ‘any’ subsequent recognition of same-sex partnerships beyond the legislature’s inherent power. California Courts of Appeal rejected those claims, noting that domestic partnerships already existed as a legal institution separate from marriage at the time Prop 22 was enacted.”