A heads-up about my resignation from the LP California ExCom

Before all the rumors start, I wanted to confirm that I did resign as an At-Large Member of the Libertarian Party of California Executive Committee at the conclusion of our meeting in Long Beach on Saturday.

I will admit that I signed my resignation letter within seconds of the ExCom voting to endorse the Republican poison-pill initiative meant to stop the repeal of Prop 8 from passing. (This is the initiative, started by two college students, that renames all marriages in California, gay and straight, to domestic partnerships -- I don't think the two kids themselves are homophobes, but rather naive college seniors. The Republicans who hopped on their bandwagon, however, know full well that the whole point of putting a competing initiative on a ballot is not to see the competing one passed, but rather to see both initiatives fail, due to voter confusion -- we Libertarians actually considered the same strategy to defeat the top-two primary initiative.)

Anyway, I'm sure the rumors will soon start that when the vote happened I got up and screamed something and resigned on the spot or whatever. Dismissing gay men as irrational, emotional, and unreasonable is standard Republican modus operandi, and the people behind this initiative are well-rehearsed at Republican tactics.

The reality is that I merely SIGNED my resignation letter the minute that the endorsement passed. I had typed it up and printed it out (multiple copies, in fact) a couple of days before. I then sat and finished the entire meeting, including presenting a report of my own, and only left the meeting after we adjourned at 5pm.

I went to Long Beach with every intention of resigning, and having no clue that the resolution to endorse this Republican initiative would even be on the agenda. In fact, the resolution was not even part of the printed packets given to ExCom members, but rather was only displayed on the screen as a PowerPoint slide. Given that one of the young men who started the initiative was present to speak on its behalf, I think there was plenty of time to have informed us that this was going to be voted on, so it's obvious that it was sprung upon us in this manner to silence dissent.

Anyway, I'm going to be writing a detailed explanation of why I decided to resign, and while the LPC's endorsement of the Republican poision-pill initiative to kill the Prop 8 repeal was certainly the icing on the cake, I already had plenty of reasons to resign prior to that vote happening. Also, stay tuned for the official Outright Libertarians response on this matter.

Sincerely,

Rob Power
Chair, LP San Francisco