Imagine that several reasonably beloved people — a local sportscaster, a B-list celeb recently out of rehab, and, say, a friendly Irish Setter — are killed by handguns in California.

Say that Californians Against Handguns gets an initiative on the ballot saying simply "California's constitution is amended to reflect that handguns are illegal in the State of California." They argue that it doesn't violate the Second Amendment because it reasonably restricts only one category of easily concealable firearms, and that there is no reason to believe the the Framers — who had in mind big, obvious, hard-to-conceal-or-load-or-fire-or-even-carry guns — had Saturday Night Specials in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.

Say several other mildly likable people get nined just before the election, and the initiative narrowly passes.

Say that Californians For Putting Holes In People Who Are Askin' For It files suit in federal court in, say, Orange County.

Say that a George W. Bush appointee, a rootin' tootin' shooter himself who is reputed to carry beneath his robes either a Desert Eagle or a particularly unsightly gunt, finds that the initiative violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Californians Against Handguns want an appeal. But the Governor and Attorney General agree with Judge Rootin' Tootin's ruling, possibly because of political and cultural affiliations, crass evaluations of impact on future elections, and contempt for the views and values of anti-gun folks. They refuse to appeal. Californians Against Handguns purports to appeal. Naturally, a major focus of the appeal becomes standing.

Who would be talking about the will of the people, and disregard for the same?

Who would be talking about un-elected black-robed tyrants?

Who would be talking about outrageous cultural and political bias among judges?

Who would be talking about a de-facto "veto" of the initiative by the Governor and Attorney General?

Who would be talking about the death of democracy?

I have guesses. They may not be the same as yours.

The Yes on Proposition 8 campaign relied heavily on the argument that the California Supreme Court engaged in "judicial tyranny" when it ruled that California marriage law violated the California Constitution to the extent that it prohibited same-sex marriage. Judicial tyranny, we are often told by some political groups, involves black-robed tyrants ignoring the Will of the People by striking down democratically enacted laws based on an analysis of constitutional rights.

Now the Yes on 8 campaign would like you to know that not all judicial tyranny is bad.

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In the debate over California Proposition 8 and similar anti-gay-marriage measures, one of the more popular tropes is the notion that if gay marriage becomes legal, the state will be able to force churches to conduct gay marriages — in other words, the notion that the legalization of gay marriages will lead to the state regulating how churches administer sacraments.

It's bunk. Some of it is uninformed bunk, and some of it is deliberately false propaganda.

People raising the argument most frequently refer to a New Jersey case of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, affiliated with the Methodist church, which ran afoul of state anti-discrimination laws when it refused to rent a pavilion to a gay couple. Such people rarely reveal that the OGCMA rented out the pavilion to all and sundry for weddings, without any religious restrictions or guidelines, permitting Christian and non-Christian weddings, until a gay couple wanted to use it. In other words, OGCMA offered the pavilion as a public accommodation. Box Turtle Bulletin illustrates in minute detail how proponents (ed: proponents, not opponents!) of Proposition 8 flat-out lied about this case and its significance. Meanwhile, the indispensable Religion Clause blog has links to two decisions by the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights released yesterday further clarifying the point.

Some libertarians believe, on a principled basis, that anti-discrimination laws are an unacceptable violation of individual liberty and property. Others believe that anti-discrimination laws pose problematical threats to individual liberty. These are arguable points. But the scare tactics of gay marriage opponents are not so nuanced. They claim that gay marriage will lead down a slippery slope to the State Anti-Discrimination Department regulating who may or may not receive communion this week. But their arguments, as in the New Jersey instance, are based on misrepresentation of the law. If anything, the law is leaning in quite the other direction — sometimes to a frankly terrifing extent.

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to review the case of a former Colleyville woman who says that a forced traumatic exorcism left her so physically bruised and emotionally scarred that she later tried to commit suicide.

A divided Texas Supreme Court ruled in June that the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God staff and members are protected by the First Amendment because the case involves an ecclesiastical dispute over religious conduct.

Laura Schubert Pearson described a wild night in 1996 that involved casting out demons from the church and two attempts to exorcise demons from her. The incident led Pearson, then 17, to eventually attempt suicide, she said.

Edit: More excellent analysis from Not a Potted Plant here.

In the wake of the passage of California Proposition 8, there have been protests, boycotts, and denunciations leveled at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (often called the Mormons, though I am not entirely clear on when that is considered polite and when it is not) and some of its members in response to a disproportionately large number of Pro-8 donations by individual Mormons made at the urging of church officials. There have also been some assaults, threats, and at least one terror incident, in which some douchebag sent white powder to a temple.

The obvious and ideal public relations strategy for the Mormons is to associate the protests, boycotts, and denunciations with the assaults, threats, and terror incident. That's classic politics; it's why pro-Obama forces strove to associate McCain's campaign and anti-Obama sentiments in general with the sort of isolated jackasses who shouted "terrorist!" at McCain rallies in particular.

Fortunately for the Mormons, they have friends prepared to school them in this fairly fundamental propaganda point. The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty, through a new entity and web site called NoMobVeto.Org (rule of thumb: never trust an entity that has a web site in its name. But let us move on from that), took out an advertisement in the New York Times to decry . . . well, certainly violence, but the full scope of what NoMobVeto.Org is decrying is left deliberately vague.

The advertisement condemns "violence and intimidation." Now, nobody but the most peripheral whackjobs are condoning violence — most of the fiercest critics of Proposition 8 despise the thugs who commit it, as in addition to being morally wrong and illegal it detracts from the core message of the movement. Nobody of consequence is defending sending white powder to Mormon temples (assuming that the white powder was not a clever piece of agitprop by pro-8 forces — a proposition that is no longer comfortably in tinfoil-hat territory, when we live in a world where numbskull coeds can get their fifteen minutes by carving a backwards "B" on their faces).

However, the term "intimidation" is distinctly malleable. So is "coerce," another term that NoMobVeto uses in the advertisement. NoMobVeto conspicuously fails to define them and fails to exclude protests or boycotts from their scope. Moreover, NoMobVeto takes pains to point out that the violence is being "stoked" by public statements decrying the Mormon church; it also claims that "far too many" demonstrations were not genuine protests but mere "mobs" bent on … yes, you guessed it … "intimidation." The advertisement ends with a rousing flourish that notes that anti-religious propaganda is wrong, but that NoMobVeto will stand against it and expose its perpetrators. Wait a minute. I thought we were talking about violence, not about propaganda?

The advertisement is meandering, and deliberately so. It achieves the primary goal of the Prop 8 supporters in general and the Mormon church in particular — it conflates violent illegal protest with dissent and condemnation. After a brief and transparently insincere brief assurance that churches are properly subject to criticism, it spends the rest of its length backing away from that proposition, eagerly suggesting that advocacy that "fails to condemn or seems to condone" violence is responsible for violence.

You can't understand NoMobVeto.org's tactic without observing the context in which it arises. The usual conservative suspects have worked relentlessly to equate boycotts and advocacy with "mob" behavior and intimidation (and continues to do so today, using "mob" to denote all boycott and protest activity.) Moreover, as of this writing, roughly half of NoMobVeto.Org's documentation page is made up of links to to media stories about nonviolent protest and advocacy, including the rather sharp "we're here to take away your rights" advertisement I talked about before, protests at temples, and a general Time magazine survey of all sorts of post-Prop-8 activism. The message is clear — even though NoMobVeto and the Beckett Fund won't come out and say it explicitly, they are pushing an equivalence between violence and physical intimidation, on the one hand, and a wide range of protests, boycotts, and condemnations, on the other hand.

In my opinion, an entity that names itself after Becket ought to have the stones to say this shit directly and wade into the marketplace of ideas on the topic, rather than hiding behind the skirts of deliberate ambiguity. So what I'd like to ask them, and NoMobViolence.Org (once they get their blog working. Hey, it's complicated, we know), is this:

1. Do you intend to assert that boycotting people and business that donated to Yes on 8 is beyond the scope of legitimate discourse? What is your argument in support of that proposition?

2. Do you intend to argue that protesting in front of a Mormon temple is inherently beyond the scope of legitimate discourse? If so, again, why?

3. Is it your position that people who do (1) or (2), above, are in any way morally culpable for violence, racial or religious epithets, or threats by others who oppose Prop 8? If so, how do you defend that proposition?

4. Is there any reason these points could not have been made explicitly in your advertisement?

The life of Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was marked by intellectual and moral rigor. NoMobVeto and its advertisement offers neither. What it offers is weasly but politically astute insinuation.

If the signatories to the advertisement wanted to walk in the shoes of Becket, they would levy their charges explicitly and defend them.

I'm not holding my breath.

(Hat tip.)

Edit: The NoMobVeto.Org blog is now up. I left a firm but civil comment summarizing this post and asking the questions above. Let's see if they leave it up.

Edit2: About 24 hours, and it seems that NoMobVeto has not approved any comments on its blog.

Edit 3: Comments, including mine, now appear on that blog.

The "Yes on Proposition 8" Campaign was heavily financed by forces within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, more frequently known as the Mormons. (More precisely, Mormon leaders urged followers to donate to the campaign — including from out of state — and Mormons did, reportedly to the tune of $20 million. In the wake of the passage of Prop 8, there have been bitter protests outside the Mormon temple in Westwood. And an independent group supporting the No on 8 campaign released a very hard-hitting advertisement on the subject that infuriated Mormons:

A commercial opposing Proposition 8 also drew criticism. In it, two actors portraying Mormon missionaries forced their way into the well-kept home of a married lesbian couple.

"Hi, we're here from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," one says.

"We're here to take away your rights," says his partner.

The missionaries then rip the wedding rings from the women's fingers and ransack their house until they find the women's marriage license, which they destroy.

"Hey, we have rights," one of the women says.

"Not if we can help it," answers the missionary.

That's rough, and the Mormons and No on 8 supporters call it bigotry. I think it's fair comment. If a church urges it members to support a particular political position financially, then attributing that position to the church is entirely appropriate.

Kip at a Stitch in Haste has a understandably angry piece about LDS involvement in Prop 8 that is well worth reading. I wouldn't use and don't condone some of Kip's language about religion, but share his view that the LDS leadership now calling for healing is outrageous and contemptible. The LDS church has cast the die; it has chosen to use its power with its supporters to generate vast financial support for a measure calculated to prevent people who love each other from getting married. The dark dreams of McCain/Feingold aside, its supporters have that right. But now the church and its supporters are marked. History, and the people of California, will remember and judge them accordingly.

If you want to be loved, don't be hate's piggy bank.

Edit: Via John Scalzi, a fun and constructive way to make your voice heard.

Edited again: For a dissenting view, see the Volokh Conspiracy.

I have some real questions about my State. We affirmed the rights of chickens, cows and pigs, and codified discrimination against human beings into our Constitution. Now that's a mixed message…

Consider this the teaser for my annual "What's on the Ballot" feature. Proposition 8 is an attempt to have the State Constitution amended to say that marriage is only between a man and woman. It has been a pretty brutal campaign with tons of out of state money coming in on both sides. Most of the pro Prop 8 funding has come from big churches and the Mormons. A surprising amount of the No on 8 money has come from businesses, which I find fascinating. Gay marriage has reached a point that Comcast, PG&E and Time Warner will support it.

So, what do the religious nuts behind 8 do? Organize a boycott? Protest? Nope, they send a bizarre quasi-extortionist letter to any company supporting gay marriage. The letter demands that the company make an equal donation to their campaign or "The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published." Hmm. Weren't they just published in this article?

I'm not sure I've ever seen a campaign demand reciprocal donations from their opponents donors, or else. It's a weird move. Even funnier, because (despite claiming that the letter would only be sent to large corporate donors) the letter ended up going to every business that has donated.

I think this could lead to a new era in politics. Instead of needing any donors myself, I will run for office by demanding that my opponents supporters support me as well. Or else!