You're missing the point, Jeff. The Knight initiative is a STATEWIDE ballot
item. It means nothing for me, or Outright Libertarians, or even the LP of
San Francisco to oppose it. We aren't even one of the five largest regions,
so we have no say whatsoever at the state level. For this to be considered a
Libertarian issue by the press, the STATEWIDE Libertarian organization, the LP
of California, has to take a position.
So, here's my plea: will someone on the state ExCom (I know of at least a
couple on this mailing list) please bring this up for a vote? Does the LP
California support or oppose the Knight initiative?
Similarly, I'm sure Outright Libertarians would be happy to draft a
counter-initiative to get rid of all marriage statewide. But getting
signatures costs money, and while I wouldn't expect the state ExCom to fund
that signature gathering directly, I would expect its early endorsement of the
effort (just as it endorsed the Davis recall before it became a sure thing),
so we'd have the momentum to raise that kind of money.
Again, as I said previously when someone put forward a cop-out similar to your
"why don't YOU start an initiative? Or do you expect 'the party' to solve all
your problems for you?" -- if our state party isn't willing to do any work to
support these kinds of initiatives, then why do we even have a state party?
Seems to me like a bunch of bureaucracy that doesn't get anything done. We
should take all that money being misspent on the state party and reinvest it
at the local level, where more is accomplished.