Voters’ guide amuses, annoys

Satirist sharpens pen for the election, but others see disservice

By Jacob Quinn Sanders

The Portland Tribune, Oct 22, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Maybe it’s the reference to “wimps and sissies.” Or perhaps it’s the mention of “heterosexual breeding.”

Or it could be that the best clue is the most obvious: “The Beaver State Defense of Beaver Coalition” sort of gives it away.

This is satire. This, right in the Oregon Voters’ Pamphlet, is sarcasm. And it’s directed at Measure 36, the proposed amendment to the Oregon Constitution that would embed language defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.

Not only that, the satire appears in four arguments Ñ including the very first three Ñ in the pamphlet’s section in favor of Measure 36. M. Dennis Moore paid $500 each for the arguments to be published.

Of course, Moore’s point has never been about being coy. The Northeast Portland freelance book editor has included barbed commentaries and bracing satires on religious-conservative measures in the voters’ pamphlet since 1992.

“I think that satire helps to illuminate what the real issue is,” Moore said. “My point in 1992 is the same as it is today, that they were abusing the Bill of Rights in that they were not creating rights, they were destroying rights.”

Moore’s second argument, which cites his Web site at www.HeterosexualBreeding.com, urges Oregonians to also deny marriage rights to 10 groups of people who could not or do not procreate, among them postmenopausal women, men who have had vasectomies and couples planning to use birth control.

Then he loosely paraphrases Bible passages from Genesis 38:6-10 and Deuteronomy 25:5-10, saying: “And if a man dies without leaving a male heir, it is his brother’s responsibility to impregnate the widow. É If he refuses, he shall be fined one shoe.”

Coalition complaint rejected

Moore’s epistles won the quick ire of the Defense of Marriage Coalition, the main group supporting Measure 36. A coalition lawyer, Republican former state Rep. Kelly Clark, filed a complaint Sept. 14 with the state Elections Division, arguing that because Moore’s statements ultimately were against Measure 36, they should not be included in the area set aside for arguments in favor.

“The author is using what he believes to be sarcasm to convey his point,” Clark wrote.

Voters’ pamphlet supervisor Fred Neal rejected the complaint in a letter to Clark dated Oct. 5.

“Certainly some of the statements in the arguments appear to be harshly (and perhaps heavy-handedly) sarcastic of religious reasons for supporting Measure 36, and may test the boundaries of good taste,” Neal wrote. “But they do not, for that reason alone, constitute ‘obscene, profane and defamatory language,’ ” as Clark had charged.

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