End De facto Discrimination by Facebook

Be it resolved that we the undersigned petitioners, each being a legal citizen of the United States and entitled to all the privileges and immunities thereof, admonish Facebook to rescind posthaste its decision to disable the profile “Defend Marriage” OR both substantively and verifiably remove all “non-individual” profiles per the stated Facebook policy in effect on 02/20/09.

Be it further resolved, that inaction, considering the on-going circumstances, will be construed as evidence confirming de facto discrimination.

Be it further resolved, that should Facebook continue to disrespect and alienate an entire class of customers, it faces the same fate as any corporate citizen, namely the loss of customers and revenue.

And finally, be it further resolved that, notwithstanding any action taken through this instrument, all signatories retain their rights to take any and all action deemed necessary to remedy this harm.

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Note : See the bottom of this petition to see a “plain English translation”.
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Here are three (3) easy steps you can take to help us out:
1) Sign this petition and email all your friends, family, and acquaintances.
2) Bookmark http://defendmarriage.info in your browser and check out other ways you can help our movement when you have time.
3) Copy and paste the email text below into your own email server and send it to Facebook:

TO: info@facebook.com
CC: disabled@facebook.com
SUBJECT: Discrimination Seems Evident To Me (regarding defendmarriageus@yahoo.com, Defend Marriage profile disabled)

text:
Dear Sir/Madam,

I am sending you this email to let you know that I stand with DefendMarriage and heartily object to your disabling of the "Defend Marriage" profile. I understand that "Per our[Facebook] Terms of Use, Facebook profiles must represent an individual" you claim to have justification for taking this action, but in fact you are allowing many others (companies, organizations, etc.) to use pseudo-profiles for varying purposes. A quick search of your profiles turned up well over 100 homosexual/GLBT pseudo-profiles on 02/20/09 (searching terms:GLBT, LGBT, DignityUSA, Marriage Equality). Can you possibly have a legitimate reason why you have left these non-individuals on your system, and singled out Defend Marriage? This looks like de facto discrimination, and I am appalled. I respectfully request that you level the playing field, either by eliminating all other "non-individuals" from the profiles or restoring “Defend Marriage” immediately.

sincerely,
xx-your name-xx

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In plain English:

The Facebook account that was disabled was a "Profile" account -- like a name. Therefore, most of the groups on Facebook are not in immediate jeopardy unless someone at Facebook decides to find another reason to delete groups. The reason that this action should concern all of us, but especially traditional marriage supporters, is that it is, in our opinion, an arbitrary decision to eliminate an opposing view. It tramples our freedom. And, it could happen on any social network. That is a threat to free speech for all of us. It should be opposed with vigor before it happens again.

We are very familiar with the terms of use agreement from Facebook. They actually do have a provision for not allowing "false" identities. On the other hand, let us introduce to you a legal term that you may not be aware of called de facto law:
Main Entry: de facto
Function: adjective
1 : ACTUAL; especially : being such in effect though not formally recognized —see also de facto segregation at SEGREGATION
2 : exercising power as if legally constituted or authorized de facto government> de facto judge> —compare DE JURE
The practical meaning of this law term is that it does not matter what written policies may, in fact, be in place if they are not regularly and uniformly applied. Someone said, “that you must be a "real person and use the person’s real name" [… or it] will always result in account removal”. This is not so. It is not the de facto practice.

We want a level playing field, not de facto discrimination. We do not object to rules as long as they are applied regularly and uniformly. As it stands now, this is not the case. In fairness, then, we are respectfully requesting that all the non-individuals from the rolls of Facebook (including many, many other company and group profiles of all kinds) are similarly removed, or that re-instatement of the “Defend Marriage” profile take place immediately.

We have no malice toward Facebook, but do absolutely feel that we have suffered discrimination. We refer you to the above partial list of pseudo-names.