The libel from supporters
of the Horse Petition originated from persons
involved with the Emerson Umbrella Center for
the Arts in Concord.
The New York Times joined
in the smear of MCM with a large story about
the horse "fraud" in its national
edition on April 7. The paper committed libel
at that time, according to MCM lawyers.
The lie about fraud" has constantly been
repeated and was prominently included in the
Bay Windows editorial, which said, "If
lawmakers were reluctant to defeat the anti-gay
measure, the blatant fraud persuaded them to
do so."
Although all the reporters at the Boston Globe
and elsewhere were careful not to libel the
supporters of MCM, an unknown headline writer
at the Times read their article in April and
wrote this headline, Drive to Ban Gay Marriage
is Accused of Duping Signers. The reporters
had been careful to avoid accusing MCM of any
wrongdoing, but the headline writer just wrote
the obvious.
"How would anyone like it
if a large headline in the New York Times went across
the country falsely accusing them of fraud?"
wondered Sarah McVay Pawlick at the time.
"We don't have the time right now to make a big
issue of it, so we will just say that the New York
Times lied on purpose on April 7 in a conspiracy with
its subsidiary, the Boston Globe, in order to defeat
the Marriage Amendment in Massachusetts.
"No one across the country would be interested
in this story from Massachusetts. The only reason
they ran it was to give it credence in Massachusetts.
They lied on purpose and they knew they were lying.
Will they have the courage to sue us for saying they
lied on purpose? Of course not, because what we said
is true." Began in November 2001
The smear by Save our Horses started in the fall of
2001. Bay Windows reported in its November issue that
Save Our Horses was saying that petitioners for MCM
were using a bait-and-switch tactic by telling people
they were signing the horse petition when they were
actually signing the marriage petition. But it was
the horse people who brought the petition gatherer
to Massachusetts, and he was also being used by Carla
Howell for her petition when MCM hired him. Bay Windows
quoted at that time a local Arizona paper which said
he was highly respected.
MCM immediately investigated in the field and found
no evidence of foul play. They asked the horse people
for any information as to how they could help avoid
any problems, noting that there could possibly be
unscrupulous people working for their joint contractor.
But they received no reply.
The smear should have stopped on April 24, 2002, when
a judge in Boston's Superior Court threw out a lawsuit
by the horse people to force the state to put their
petition on the ballot despite the fact that they
fell short of the required number of signatures. The
judge said, "The harm here, if any, was caused
by the plaintiff's own retained commercial signature
gatherer."
But the smear hasn't stopped to this day and is used
constantly to attack the Amendment, as is evident
in the Bay Windows editorial.
MassNews Revealed
Palmer & Dodge Lawyers as Source of Smear
The source of the smear was reported by MassNews on
April 22, 2002, as two lawyers from Palmer & Dodge,
Neil P. Arkuss and George Ticknor. The lawyers were
both original signers of the horse petition and are
active in the Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts
in Concord. All of the other signers of the horse
petition are also from Concord and are active in the
Emerson Center.
Pawlick said at the time that she would like to ask
them, "Why are you doing this to us? Have you
no sense of decency or honesty?"
It immediately became clear to any lawyer that Arkuss
had no justification for a lawsuit and he was using
it only as a smear against MCM. Even though five months
passed before he filed the suit, he had located only
13 people, out of over 100,000 who had signed the
petition, who said they were duped into signing.
When it became known that a legislative hearing would
be held on the Marriage Amendment on April 10, Atty.
Arkuss and Ticknor let loose a barrage of 19,613 letters
to signers of the petition claiming fraud. This meant
the letters arrived in the mailboxes just a week before
the Marriage hearing. In addition, they placed the
story in the New York Times with exquisite timing,
just three days before the hearing.
Their machinations did have results. At the hearing,
two Reps kept raising the smear over and over as did
witnesses. Bay Windows still reports it as unchallenged
truth.
The full story of this
smear can be found online by searching our May 2002
issue. Additional stories can be found in June 2002.
