Dostal wants name off marriage petition
By Laurie Loisel, Daily Hampshire Gazette | January 3, 2006
NORTHAMPTON - City Councilor James Dostal, whose name appears as one of the 123,356 signatures on a petition seeking to put an anti-gay-marriage referendum before voters, wants his name removed.
Dostal, 68, who today starts his fourth term as an at-large city councilor said he never signed the petition which seeks to put a referendum to a statewide vote in 2008 that would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
The referendum is meant to counter the Supreme Judicial Court ruling of 2003 that paved the way for Massachusetts to be the only state to legalize gay marriage, although it wouldn't apply to gay couples already married.
Dostal Monday said he never knowingly signed an anti gay-marriage petition. He said when his signature was brought to his attention after being published on a Web site called knowthyneighbor.org, he filed an affidavit stating so, asking that his name be removed from the list of signers.
Dostal said he wants to see his signature on the petition for himself.
'I did not sign a petition, and I'm not willing to say whether I would or I wouldn't,' Dostal said in a telephone interview. 'As far as I'm concerned, this is my private information and I don't want to make a big deal of it.'
Any referendum petition is available for viewing in the secretary of state's office.
Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute and spokesman for voteonmarriage.org, the group sponsoring the ballot question, said his organization stands behind the petition drive.
'We find it hard to believe that anyone could have signed it without knowing what it was,' said Mineau. 'I know that when I sign a piece of paper, I don't sign it without knowing what it is.'
In hearings before the Legislature in October, people described so-called bait-and-switch tactics in which they were asked to sign a petition for a ballot question about allowing the sale of beer and wine in grocery stores, and then asked to sign a backup copy - which upon inspection, was the anti-gay-marriage petition.
Dostal said it is possible that he signed what he thought was a petition seeking to allow the sale of beer and wine in grocery stores.
Mineau said his organization used volunteers to gather the bulk of the signatures on the list, although a California-based firm called Arno Political Consultants gathered about 40,000 of them. He said those workers were gathering signatures for multiple petitions, including the beer and wine petition, but he said they did not use deceptive tactics.
Signers listed
The names of all the people who signed the petition are listed on the Web site called knowthyneighbor.com, which allows browsers to look at the list town by town or by ZIP code, or search for a particular name.
Thomas Lang, director of knowthyneighbor, said the organization was formed to support the newly won right to marriage for gay people and oppose the campaign to bring the question to voters.
He said beginning in early September when supporters of the referendum were out gathering signatures, his organization got daily telephone calls and 'emails nonstop' from people complaining that they'd been deceived by signature-seekers.
He said knowthyneighbor decided to post the list of petition-signers because it is public information, available to anyone.
'This information is in the hands of everyone else. It's in the hands of the PACs (Political Action Committees) and the political parties,' said Lang. 'And don't think that the people who collected the names didn't give them to Focus on the Family and other Christian right organizations.'
He said the posted list also offers an opportunity for people to see if their name is on the list, and for supporters of gay marriage to see who signed the anti-gay marriage petition.
'They have the right to advocate for themselves if they choose,' he said.
Mineau called the publication of the list of signers 'a subtle form of voter intimidation,' although he acknowledged that the list is public information and 'within the purview of freedom of speech.'
In the legislative hearings, several people opposed to gay marriage said there had been intimidation tactics on the part of gay activists used against people seeking signatures.
Mark Carmien, owner of the store Pride and Joy on Crafts Avenue, said he has heard from people who stopped by his store describing how they spotted a name of someone they knew on the list of petition-signers and then engaged them in a conversation about the issue.
'It does get into a deeper conversation about should civil rights be put up for a popular vote,' Carmien said.
Initiative supporters have gathered well over the 65,825 signatures needed to get the question before voters, and now must get support from 50 out of 200 state lawmakers in two separate legislative sessions.
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