CRW Newsletter: No Explanation for Signature-Gathering

We're wondering why the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever are still trying to collect petition signatures. Maybe there's a clue in the newsletter they sent out a couple of days ago.

At the top, a big box with a brown background says:

Maryland High Court rules that dead voters should be counted - Appeal Planned
START COLLECTING SIGNATURES AGAIN

That last sentence is in yellow. Huge fonts, all.

The "dead voter" thing again, we've seen that. In case you forgot, the Board of Elections keeps records of "active" and "inactive" voters. Inactive ones haven't voted in the last two general elections and didn't return a letter asking if they still live here. There are thousands and thousands of them. Some may be dead. Most aren't. The law says you need five percent of registered voters, which includes both active and inactive. They didn't have that. More than two hundred "dead voters" signed the CRW's petitions, which didn't seem to bother them.

We note that the headline says "Appeal planned." I hope they tell us who they're going to appeal to, since the appeals court has already ruled against them.

Then they link to a number of articles about the gender identity nondiscrimination controversy, including, oddly enough, the Washington Blade and Equality Maryland's web site, then they accuse The Gazette of "factually inaccurate reporting."

Well, whatever, what we want to know is why they were out in front of the Giant Sunday, gathering signatures for a referendum that's not going to happen.

Okay, maybe this what we're looking for. Read this and see if you can explain to me the sense of it:

Sep 13,2008
Greetings!

Last Tuesday morning, Maryland's High Court ruled in favor of Equality MD, finding that the Board of Elections should have included inactive voters when tabulating how many signatures were needed for the referendum. Thus, months after the signature deadline MCRG was given in November, the Court decided that approximately 2500 more signatures should have been collected. The original target was 25,001 signatures. The new target the Court handed down would be approximately 27, 600. The board originally certified 26,892 signatures. The delta is about 800. So ladies and gentlemen, go get them !

Start collecting again
sign petitions Go get more !
If you didn't get a chance to sign the petition, now's your chance. We will announcing collection locations tomorrow, but if you haven't walked your street or brought the petitions to the football or soccer game, do so ! Download the PETITIONS and get started folks. We are trying to do this very quickly.

It sounds like they think they just need more signatures and they can still get the referendum on the November ballot. But the deadline for submitting petitions is long past, the Court of Appeals has said there won't be a referendum, the law has gone into effect already, the election is in something like six weeks.

I'm looking down the page ... here's this ...

Watch out for FINES
FINES
Be careful what you say !

Washington DC's gender identity law punishes users of the "wrong pronoun" with a fine - if you refer to man in women's clothing as a he, DC's Human Rights Commission can levy a substantial fine. Montgomery County's gender identity law goes further.

According to the Maryland based Gordon Feinblatt,"The ordinance provides for significant liability if employers or places of public accommodations engage in discriminatory conduct. For example, an individual who prevails on a claim can recover up to $500,000 in damages for humiliation and embarrassment, in addition to damages for any economic harm which was suffered and the attorneys' fees which have been incurred."

First, it doesn't matter what Washington DC's law says. Our law doesn't say anything about pronouns.

Let me comment on the "wrong pronoun" thing. Some transgender people are very comfortable and convincing in their current identity, some are less so. Sometimes when you're talking about a transgender person, if you're human and speak the English language fluently you might say "he" instead of "she" or vice versa. I don't know how transgender people feel about this, but it's a fact that our language bifurcates by gender, and sometimes you'll make a mistake, I'd figure it's something they learn to put up with. It's a subtle thing, sometimes you get talking fast and the wrong word slips out.

On the other hand, we have witnessed at least one occasion where Ruth Jacobs, one of CRW's leaders, intentionally referred to a transgender woman, a friend of ours, as "he." They go out of their way to do this sometimes, to insult the person, it's like in the CRW's affidavit to the appeals court where they said someone "claimed to be transgender," when the person has changed their gender by any measure you can think of, social, medical, or legal. This is rude and reveals the CRW's true feelings, which is just to express negative attitudes about a group of people they are prejudiced against

They link to a Baltimore lawyer's web site, but he doesn't say anything about pronouns. Anyway, nobody's going to pay a half-million dollar fine for saying "he" instead of "she," that's just dumb.

I think something is obvious here. Those people in the parking lot are not collecting signatures for a referendum. The highest court in the state has said there will be no referendum. They're out there to scare people, to make people shopping at Giant associate transgender citizens with sexual predators and pedophiles. They stop you and talk to you and tell you how dangerous this new law is, when all it does is to prohibit discrimination. They tell you that you can sign to have a referendum, but that isn't going to happen, this is just an excuse to stand out in public and say ugly things about people based on their gender identity. Let's see how long Giant continues to allow their property to be used to promote bigotry.