This Thursday in a federal court in Washington state, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle will, ahem, settle an important question. (Come on, who could resist?)

The matter concerns Referendum 71, a petition to put the domestic partnership law Washington’s legislature passed last April to a statewide popular vote. Should the NOs prevail, the vote would reverse its enactment.

Supporters of the new law describe it as “granting all the legal benefits and protections of marriage (save the legal title) to same-sex partners.” Now the referendum will stay the “everything but marriage” law from going into effect until the state’s voters can determine its fate this November.

The adjoining federal court case has nothing to do with the provisions of this particular referendum, and yet, it has everything to do with the volatility of the debate over same-sex marriage and gay rights. Witness a public policy train wreck: crashing the good government ideals of disclosure and transparency against the political values of encouraging citizen involvement and protecting privacy.

Specifically, Judge Settle must resolve whether Washington state’s Public Disclosure Act, requiring the Secretary of State to publically disclose the signers of petitions, violates First Amendment protections for voters signing a petition.

That is, does it violate the rights of those signers not wanting to be threatened or intimidated . . .

“There have been few precedents on whether the names and addresses of people who sign petitions should be considered a public record,” wrote Ballot Access News editor, Richard Winger, recently. “Some states provide by law that the records are not public, but most states do not.”

Thus, in most states, any citizen could request (and pay for) copies of the actual petitions turned into the Secretary of State, containing all the names and addresses and often other personal information.

Enter Brian Murphy. He started a website — WhoSigned.org — in essence to “out” the signers of Referendum 71 petitions. He pledged to create a searchable database of all those people who had signed the referendum petition and he encouraged supporters of the domestic partnership legislation to have a “dialogue” with those who had signed the petition.

Unsurprisingly, some petition signers became more than a little concerned about the nature and tone such a dialogue might take.

Larry Stickney, the head of Protect Marriage Washington, which sponsored Referendum 71, accused opponents of taking “the politics of personal destruction to new levels. I am a personal recipient of dozens of obscene and threatening e-mails and phone calls since we filed this.”

Memories of a nasty aftermath to California’s Prop 8 election last November remain fresh. For years, in fact, petition efforts have faced increasing harassment as such streetwork has become the favored new strategy to block a vote. It is what a measure’s opponents do if they fear that they cannot prevail at the ballot box.

It isn’t pretty.

And for the record, the main organizations in favor of the domestic partnership legislation, working for a YES vote on Referendum 71, have clearly repudiated the “outing" tactic of WhoSigned.org.

Stickney’s committee asked the Washington Public Disclosure Commission not to release the personal information of Referendum 71 signers. When the PDC declined that request, the committee, along with two “John Doe” plaintiffs, brought in James Bopp, a nationally renowned First Amendment litigator, to file suit in federal court to block the public disclosure. Continued...