Low Blow From Equality California

The sign allegedly seen outside the California Supreme Court building in San Francisco last week may have been a fake. It seems the only photo taken of it was by the folks at Equality California, the hapless saps who ran the No on 8 campaign. Dan Savage has the story...and some questions:

Equality California sent it out last night along with a fundraising pitch. "Imagine that kick-in-the-gut feeling I got when I saw a sign that said 'Dan White: Hero. Killing a Queer' in front of the Supreme Court building last Thursday," writes Equality California ED Geoff Kors. Then asks for a donation.

I have some questions about this sign: Who took the picture? Where? When? Is the person holding the sign standing inside a building? Weren't the demonstrations outside? And who is holding the sign? Why is the picture cropped the way it is? Why was the person holding the sign cropped out of it? If someone was carrying that sign at the massive demonstrations outside the California Supreme Court's hearing last week about Prop 8, wouldn't dozens of people have taken pictures of it? Wouldn't it have been all over gay blogs and news website right away? Why did it take nearly a week for this picture—seemingly the only one taken of this sign—to surface? And it surfaces not on blogs or news websites, but in a fundraising email for the group that fatally mismanaged the "No on 8" campaign?

If we heard about a gay person carrying an outrageously incendiary sign at a large, public demonstration ("Kill All the Christians and Let God Sort 'Em Out!" or whatever) and a picture didn't surface until days later, and the person carrying the sign was carefully cropped out, and it wasn't entirely clear that the person carrying the sign was even at the demonstration, we would be skeptical, to say the least. We'd be screaming bloody murder, actually, and demanding proof.

I've removed the link to Equality California's donation page from the blogroll to your right. It's been replaced with a link to the Courage Campaign. EQCA doesn't deserve another cent of your money, and should have absolutely no roll in overturning Prop 8. Their mismanagement of the No on 8 campaign, and their subsequent refusal to take responsibility for the proposition's passage, are absolutely abhorrent. And if the story behind this sign is even remotely true, they can't be trusted.

Update: Apparently the sign is real. That said, I stand by my criticism of EQCA. They failed us at just about every turn.