Skip to main contentThe Rogue Desk has California's Proposition 8 on its mind this week.
In part, that's because the federal trial to determine if the state's 2008 ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional opened in San Francisco on Monday. Let's hope the hateful voter-approved proposition is overturned.
But there's another reason Prop. 8 is on our mind. And it's why our keyboard billowed smoke as we typed the following words: The California-based public affairs firm that helped usher in Prop. 8 with ads that suggested gay marriage would hurt children (then moved on to Maine last year to help repeal that state's marriage-equality bill) is in Oregon.
Since August, that firm, Schubert Flint Public Affairs, has earned at least $32,000 working for Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes in the effort to oppose Measures 66 and 67.
WW supports those measures (see "Class Warfare?" WW, Jan. 6, 2010). But we're not roguing Schubert Flint for disagreeing with us (although the prospect of that bumper sticker does sound appealing). We're roguing the group for injecting its cynical brand of fear mongering into our state again. (In 2007, the firm helped opponents in Oregon defeat a proposed tobacco tax to pay for children's health care.)
A representative of Schubert Flint in Sacramento referred the Rogue Desk to Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes.
Pat McCormick, a spokesman for Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes, says his group didn't hire Schubert Flint because of its work on Prop. 8. He also notes that Schubert Flint sometimes works against its natural allies; in 2006, Schubert Flint helped defeat Bill Sizemore's Measure 42, which would have changed the way insurance companies used credit scores.
"It's possible for us to be friends and not always agree with each other on every issue," McCormick says.
Friends who disagree? Sure. Friends who demonize gay people? No way. Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes could have given this work to somebody else.
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