The San Francisco Chronicle has a good article on how the folks behind Yes on 8 are trying to bar the Campaign for California Families, Randy Thomasson, and Mat Staver from getting involved in the on-going legal dispute because of the latter’s extreme anti-gay views, which Yes on 8 fears will make them all look bad:
The group, now known as the Campaign for Children and Families, is run by Randy Thomasson, who for years has been one of California’s most visible opponents of gay rights and what he bills as “the homosexual agenda.”
The people behind Prop. 8 have been butting heads with Thomasson for years, arguing that his efforts to outlaw same-sex marriage and curb domestic partnership arrangements are a long step further than a majority of California voters is willing to go.
In 2005 and again in January, Thomasson and his allies proposed initiatives that not only would bar same-sex marriage but that also “voids or makes unenforceable” rights conferred by California law on couples, gay or heterosexual, registered as domestic partners, including community property, child custody, hospital visitation and insurance benefits.
“It was like the nuclear option to obliterate the entire domestic partners law,” [Andrew Pugno, general counsel for the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign] said. “We were constantly hassled by that organization, who thought we weren’t aggressive enough.”
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But the disputes between the groups have grown in the past few days, with Thomasson launching an all-out attack against the Supreme Court for accepting the challenge to Prop. 8, a court decision Pugno and others from ProtectMarriage.com had welcomed.
“If the court disobeys the constitution by voiding Prop. 8, it will ignite a voter revolt,” Thomasson said in statement released after the court agreed Wednesday to hear arguments over the validity of the constitutional amendment. “The court is playing with fire by threatening to destroy the people’s vote on marriage.”
Pugno and others from the Prop. 8 campaign want to avoid such fiery challenges and threats to the court and keep matters on a quiet legal level until the court rules on same-sex marriage sometime after March.
“What we are not doing is discussing the possibility of recalling justices who oppose us,” Ron Prentice, chairman of the Yes on Prop. 8 effort, said in an e-mail to supporters Wednesday. “Making threats to recall justices from office is counterproductive and harmful to our chances of winning in court.”
So the “moderates” who want to deny equality for gays are afraid that people like Thomasson, who’s been busy freaking out about everything the use of “Party A” and “Party B” on marriage licenses and proposals for Harvey Milk Day, are going to make them look too extreme? I think that, considering that they just spent tens of millions of dollars to getting California voters to strip gay couples throughout the state of their constitutional right to marriage, it’s a little late for the Yes on 8 troops to start worrying about looking like of bunch of anti-gay extremists.
