Ballot Measure 9 was first released in 1995 and director Heather MacDonald took her camera into the war rooms of both the Yes and the No campaigns interviewing people on both sides of the issue. As an audience member that means that initially you get a fairly unbiased view of each side's presentation; although since the one side is calling for stripping a group of people of their human rights and the other side is saying no that's not right, unless you're an advocate for the religious right chances are you're not going to be overly sympathetic to their cause.
I have to admit that when the footage started to include speeches by the proponents of Ballot Measure 9, I skipped to the next scene. Listening to people telling outright lies and propagating hate turns my stomach and I couldn't watch it. Besides, it wasn't anything different from what's been said before or since by people like Pat Robertson and Adolph Hitler. Perhaps what was worse was listening to the stories of the hate crimes carried out against people who were working on the No side of the issue. One woman's horse was attacked with a pitch fork, another found her brake lines cut, and quite a few were physically assaulted.
The person who came out looking the best was then Chief of Police, now mayor of Portland, Oregon, Tom Potter. He was genuinely appalled that one community within his city was being specifically targeted for violent actions, and he took steps to ensure that their safety was as guaranteed as possible, as the violence escalated the closer it came to voting day. Of course the leaders of the Yes movement refused to see how their spewing of hatred towards homosexuals could possibly be at the root of the violence.
I think the most unsettling part of the movie was the realization of how little has changed since 1992 when that measure was first proposed. I only have to look at Canada and all the hate that was spewed when the Supreme Court of Canada declared it unconstitutional to ban same sex marriage. In fact our current government tried to pass a "Defence of Religion" law which would have allowed people to discriminate against gays and lesbians if their God told them to. They only backed down when they realized even if they somehow managed to sneak it through parliament, it would be declared unconstitutional the first time it was challenged in court.
Included in the DVD of this film is an update that was filmed in 2007 featuring a core group of people on the No side discussing the after-effects of the campaign and the current situation in Oregon. These are intelligent people who aren't afraid to be self-critical and point out the problems within the homosexual community and the left in general when it comes these sorts of battles. Maybe I appreciated it so much because it echoed what I said earlier about always reacting to someone else's agenda and never setting it.
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