Over Prop 8 Loss
California's gay-rights movement has been beset by infighting and finger-pointing since the defeat of gay marriage at the ballot box, with some activists questioning the campaign's mild tactics, including the decision not to show same-sex couples in ads.
The movement's leaders "were very timid. They were too soft," said Robin Tyler, a lesbian comic who created a series of celebrity public service announcements with the slogan "Stop the Hate, No on 8" that were rejected because they were deemed too negative. "We were lightweights on our side." ...
Some gays are complaining that their leaders failed to organize a visible and vigorous defense of same-sex marriage. In particular, they say the movement failed to counter a series of hard-hitting ads warning that the ban on gay marriage was needed to prevent children from learning about gay relationships in school.
Leaders of the campaign in favor of gay marriage say they made a strategic decision not to highlight gay newlyweds or same-sex couples with children in their ads for fear of alienating undecided heterosexual voters ...
Geoff Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California, defended the choice of advertisements.
"Lesbian and gay people were everywhere in this campaign — as spokespeople, on YouTube, our Web site. For the television advertising, the best messengers were the messengers that were used," he said.
But Michael Petrelis, a veteran AIDS activist in San Francisco, said the absence of gay couples in the media campaign was a fatal error.
"We were seen more as a liability," Petrelis said. "When you have that kind of attitude, it's no wonder there was little community buy-in."
The criticisms extend to beyond how the campaign was run to how people are responding to the ban's passage ...
Plans have been made for a demonstration outside a Mormon church in New York City on Wednesday, and outside city halls in every state on Saturday ...
8 comments:
Geoff Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California, defended the choice of advertisements.
Sort of like Sarah Palin saying that she had no responsibility in the Republican losses.
Actually, I couldn't disagree more. I am as saddened and disgusted as you are with the outcome of Prop 8. But the blame for that lies with the Yes On 8 campaign -- with their blatant and unrepentant lies and twisted distortions of truth.
Geoff Kors, and everyone who worked with him on the No On 8 campaign, did an amazing job. They raised more money than has ever been raised for an LGBT-related ballot initiative! Only they can know what the best messengers to reach straight, undecided voters were. If they say it was not gay people, then I believe them. I would much rather have gay people not featured in ads and sway some people's minds, even if it means playing into their homophobia. Do you know how much more homophobia is running rampant now that Prop 8 passed?
And yes, we ultimately lost, but not because of the lack of gay people in ads. We lost because of lies that we could not fight because not enough people donated to the campaign in its earlier stages. Because people didn't realize the direness of the situation until too many of those lies had been let out of the bag.
And what is also true is that you cannot say the messages and messengers that Geoff and his staff went with didn't work: we only lost by 4%!!! Compared to losing by 22% in 2000, I'd say those messages did a great job. I'd say Geoff did a great job.
I think rather than blaming each other, we should stand against our real enemy: the religious zealots behind Prop 8 who lied to Californians to impose their religious views on our whole state. And we must band together. This kind of finger-pointing only strengthens our opponents.
If we don't win the lawsuit to overturn Prop 8, then we will win on the ballot in 2010. There IS justice to come in the future! But we can't get there if we poison each other with this kind of negativity and vitriol.
How can we get a tradition of seppuku started at 16th and Market?
Our opponents didn't want to show positive images of our families because they knew that would hurt them with undecideds. Let that one sink in.
Was Kors the decision-maker or a good foot soldier? I find it hard to believe he was the decision-maker.
I know people who have worked relentlessly and successfully on this issue around the country including Massachusetts and Connecticut. No ballot questions, sure, but public opinion has to move or else.
Undecided voters, even very good people, will always tell you in focus groups that they want their discomfort honored, that they like euphemisms and abstractions, that they don't want to be confronted directly and honestly. It's important to know those feelings are there, but it doesn't mean you suck gay people and honest conversations out of ads.
Think of it this way: If any of one of us let the discomfort of people we love determine our coming out conversations with them, we would never come out. This is no different. You know the discomfort is there, you deal with it, you honor it the best you can, you say right and honest things, you find common ground. It is the only way things ever work out.
The campaign blew so many millions on something that, after so many losses with closet campaigns in so many states, anyone would have known. The question is, who decided? I imagine is wasn't Kors. He's defending. The real deciders often disappear into the woodwork, and I imagine they did in this case too.
Kors: "Lesbian and gay people were everywhere in this campaign — as spokespeople, on YouTube, our Web site. For the television advertising, the best messengers were the messengers that were used," he said.
Go to YouTube and watch the big Google meeting where the head consultant of No On 8 says nothing matters in a state as large as Calif but what's on the TV ads. Nothing. Zero. Only TV matters. I think it's reasonable to ask which one of these guys is full of it, don't you?
(Gueriero is at the Google event but man don't blame him, he was flown in at the last minute and in a lot of opinions I've heard prevented a way bigger loss.)
Oh please. Geoff and his colleagues did an amazing and historic job. It is so easy to sit back and call for his head because you don't like the outcome. But the villains here are the lying, extorting, bullying proponents of Prop 8. Mr. Petralis - if you put your life on hold for the last 6 months, if you gave up sleep and family to fight for us, if you walked your neighborhood, wrote letters, phone banked, gave (repeatedly), sent email blasts and talked with every ally you know about why defeating 8 was so important (more than once), if you stood at a polling place with a No on 8 sign while ignorant and privileged young men drove by, spit, yelled obscenities and flipped you off, then maybe you have some skin in this game. Otherwise, this is just off the cuff petulance that belongs in the same gutter as the Yes campaign.
I wish I thought that persuading voters was as simple as arguing that "the ads should have showed more same-sex couples." As a contributor to the No on 8 campaign, I believe that the campaign leaders on our side, who worked tirelessly for months and poured heart and soul into this campaign - including Geoff Kors - deserve our deepest thanks. They certainly have mine. They took on the daunting task of leading the ballot fight to protect marriage rights for same-sex couples in a state where couples had begun to marry. They had barely six months after the court ruled, and even less time than that after the measure was placed on the ballot and couples began marrying, to put together a professional statewide campaign in a huge state, the most populous in the country - and yet they did it.
Am I deeply sad that so many people voted for Prop 8? Yes. Do I think that this campaign, as with every one that does not win, should be professionally analyzed to see what lessons we might learn that could help us win next time? Absolutely. But I believe that the bitterness and anger is misdirected at the people who led the fight on our side. For those who complain that the campaign did not engage enough LGBT people, I want to point out that the campaign's website was up and running with key messages and resources available for anyone to use to help defeat this ugly measure. I know lots of people who jumped in proactively on their own to help defeat it; this was not a situation where people should have been waiting to be individually called and asked for their help.
At this point, our energy should be spent on figuring out how to build greater support for marriage equality in California and elsewhere, into fighting anti-LGBT measures where they crop up next - because we know those are coming - and into moving forward where we have the opportunity to succeed in the near future, including at the local level, in state legislatures, in Congress and with the White House.
I don't think anyone is saying that winning would have been as simple as showing happily married couples in ads. No one is saying that.
What I hear is that we did not take lessons from states where public opinion has changed based on organizing, talking about it, leading, really using religious leaders who support equal marriage (who don't like the state taking the side of one religion), even advertising too. We ran another closeted campaign, featuring newspaper endorsements and dishonest words. We were fearful of just saying it. We were fearful of images of our own children who would benefit from married parents, we waited to be clobbered by other people's kids, which they always do, did the experts really think that was not coming? Why? We didn't use Obama's June letter in opposition to Prop 8, clearly and well stated with his open-hearted "congratulations" to us, we let the other side use him first and wrongly, and only then did we say anything. Prop 8 is "unnecessary?" Hey, who did that belong to? "Unnecessary"??? If you don't like the gays marrying, it sure is necessary. What are you talking about? We did not lead a helpful conversation, we just followed focus groups of people on the fence who likely said "please don't really talk about this, and maybe you stand a chance with me." It's what they say. Our leaders should know this. They know it on National Coming Out Day. They tell us to talk anyway.
No one is saying people didn't work very hard, of course they did. No one is saying that 6 months was an adequate amount of time because it wasn't. But a real post mortem on this won't come anytime soon, there is too much money, reputation and establishment in the way. The campaign failed. Unless we seriously post mortem it, we will never get better.
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