Sonics Owners: Not Fans of Gay Marriage

Josh Feit of The Stranger, a Seattle weekly, says campaign finance records show two of the new Sonics owners bankrolled a political group opposing gay marriage, to the tune of $1 million.

I'd love to express surprise, but cannot for these reasons:

The owners in question, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, are Republican businessmen who have given to many Republican causes over the years.
The ownership group is from Oklahoma, a state which in 2004 not only amended its constitution to ban gay marriage, but made it a misdemeanor to issue a marriage license to a gay couple.
Said 2004 Oklahoma anti-gay marriage amendment passed by a 75% to 25% margin. (Warning: PDF.)

Seattle is not Oklahoma, obviously. Feit touches on the two intriguing issues in all of this: Ward and McClendon are also owners of the Seattle Storm. Women play for the Seattle Storm. It has been suggested numerous times all over the Internets that a solid constituency of WNBA fans are, in fact, lesbians. These claims have never been disputed by anyone who could dispute them.

The second elephant in KeyArena: the owners, Ward and McClendon included, are asking the (mostly) progressive people of Seattle to bankroll a new arena for the Sonics and Storm. All while the owners bankroll unprogressive causes. Hmm. However, the sum of money needed to build an arena ($500 million) greatly exceeds the amount need to apparently seed a political cause.

Anti-arena forces will use this destroy any hopes the not-pristine arena plan has. It's not quite Carl's Jr commercial material, but it's pretty heavy ammunition.

(Via True Hoop, whose comment section might explode any second.)