Sign Here for Junk Mail and Dinnertime Phone Calls?

Today's Globe reports that the state Republican party is lending resources and support to the drive to get an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment on the ballot (Pay close attention to the two pictures on this site's front page: one smiling, heterosexual, white family, and one (smaller) Asian one. They want you to know that they may be homophobic, but they're not racist!). Party leaders have apparently faced some criticism from rank-and-file Republicans, because denying equal rights to homosexu'l preverts the protection of marriage isn't in the official party platform. In response, they say they're not really against gay marriage, they just want to identify likely Republican voters so they can contact them during the election campaign next year. In other words, it's not about marriage, it's about mailing lists. That sounds more than a little disingenuous to Bostonist, but not totally implausible. It does make us wonder, though: Could the strategy backfire? Bostonist knows that the average person isn't terribly interested in politics and doesn't especially like being inundated with political mail and annoying phone calls (especially with the volume of mail at an all-time high). So if the GOP announces to the Globe that they intend to pester everyone who signs the anti-gay marriage petition for votes and money, could petition-signers who are otherwise politically uninvolved be driven away? The GOP's political director is quoted in the Globe as saying that "President Bush employed this strategy in battleground states . . . and was highly successful." But Bostonist wonders whether the Bush people told voters ahead of time that signing a petition would subject them to the full-court press. As is so frequently the case with politics, time will tell.

Picture: Another, perhaps more agreeable, petition from Massachusetts history.