Gay marriage backers explain why they lost Proposition 8

There's been a lot of outrage from the No on Proposition 8 camp since California voters approved a ban on gay marriage. But until now, there has been less soul searching about what went wrong. But Terry Leftgoff, founder of the Gay and Lesbian Business Assn. of Santa Barbara, has a thoughtful piece on WeHo News looking at how the opposition to Proposition 8 fell short. It did, he says, on several levels: A mixed message, failing to respond to attacks from Yes on 8 forces, little black and Latino outreach. A snippet:

The No on 8 campaign began by allowing the Yes on 8 proponents to define the debate and it was never able to recover. This violated the first rule of political campaigns, which is to never let your opponent define you first. After a near fatal slow start, every emotional attack ad from Yes on 8 received a tepid intellectual response from No on 8. This violated another rule of political campaigns, which is to quickly respond in equal kind to an attack so it is not allowed to penetrate the public mind. Instead of running a diverse multi-message campaign of persuasion, the media message was emotionless, monotone and uncompelling. In short, the media messages failed to move or even educate voters about the issue and instead appealed to a single abstract principle -- equality -- that was not sufficiently persuasive or connected to the content of the proposition.

Ben Ehrenreich, writing in The Advocate, looks at whether No on 8 could have been run better. Lorri Jean of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center told him apathy was a problem:

Jean and others at the helm of the No on 8 campaign say they had a hard time awakening equivalent enthusiasm in the LGBT community, particularly because of the steady stream of polls showing Proposition 8 trailing by as much as 17 and 14 percentage points. “It was difficult raising money because of those polls,” Kors says, adding that the campaign’s internal numbers never reflected such comfortable margins of victory. “If we could have found a way to energize our community faster, we could have competed with them,” Jean says. “We experienced enormous complacency in our community until we finally put out the word that we were going down.”

-- Shelby Grad

Comments

[Ricky C]

the fundamental problem is the marriage issue is steeped in religious belief more than civil rights.

Why was a religious issue but on a ballot for a state? That's the way it got answered in my opinion.

I have heard people (Keith Olbermann comes to mind) argue what would Jesus do and the Golden rule when addressing this vote. GEEEEEEZ!

Similary I have heard people rail on AAs and compare it directly to laws preventing blacks from marrying whites. GEEEZ2!

The problem is many view marriage as a sacred religous union between a man and a woman. Period. You can disagree but their view on that is often founded in their religious views.

Corinthians 7:2: “Because of sexual immortality let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband.”

Also loosely known as Prop 8

So obviously people can disagree if they believe the above. Many voted that way (as the question was essentially worded that way) which is why allowing a state to codify the back half of corinthians 7:2 is wrong.

AAs probably view marriage this way even moreso than whites. And? I speak with some experience I suppose. It wasn't that AAs couldn't marry a white person, it was that they couldn't marry a white woman. I really doubt black men were fighting for the right to marry a white man during Jim Crow. Many would cite Moses marriage to Miriam for example. But I digress wildly. But that's my point. Blaming anyone for this gets to the point of blaming people for their religous views as well which unfortunately they got to voice in a ill-worded church state issue on a ballot.

Marriage itself is treated simultaneously as a religious status by (some but not all) participants and a state conferred status resulting from that religous act.

My view is that everything the state confers to marriage can be handled by civil union. Thus the solution is as follows.

anyone can get married (i.e. marriage itself is a church /state hands off issue) BUT....the ONLY rights conferred by the state are in the follow-up state process of having a civil union declared.

So a straight couple gets "married" and then files the certificate with the state for the civil union status. They get the rights formerly associated with marriage just as before and nothing changes really. Basically the state does not recognize marriage in this example but for the purpose of granting civil union status.

A gay couple gets married (which also the state does not recognize or deter becasue it cannot..so what?) and files for the civil union status which is granted. Problem solved and the states (including recognition in other states) get out of the religion question business on ballots. Fix the fundamental church/state ballot question and the problem is more easily solved.

As long as you try to convince people (especially in other states not as progressive as CA that need to recognize this marriage when you move) their religion says gays can get married you will lose.

Problem is solved by getting the state(s) "out" of the religious ceremony recognition business of the two step process...without telling AAs, catholics, atheists, straight or gay "what Jesus would do." Just my .02 as an AA married to white woman seeing no real parallel to marrying a white man in my own view of what I think my marriage is.

By the way I would have NOT voted to strip or prevent gay marriage rights ...but that is not something I think I should have to probe as a religious issue on a ballot. Others did see it that way and the result could speak more to my position on civil union status of marriage than to anti-gay sentiment.

Fix the question and find out. I think you will win.

[BobN]

"The foundation of concerns about young children is that they shouldn't be confronted with sexuality in school, let alone advocacy for gay sexuality."

Then the foundation is full of malarkey. One of the primary purposes of schooling is to socialize children. The problem is that some folks want them to be socialized in ONLY ONE WAY. From Valentine's Day cards to stories about princes and princesses to Prom Kings and Queens, school is one long celebration of the heterosexual ideal. YOU don't notice it because, to you, it's natural.

The worst case is that same-sex marriage MIGHT be brought up in the context of opposite-sex marriage. If that's "indoctrination" then all you're really arguing for is the exclusive right to indoctrinate all children in heterosexuality.

[richard schumacher]

Well, there you go again, trying to cast opposition to marriage equality as a "save the children" campaign. On the contrary, how does it serve the children of gay and lesbian parents to forbid their parents to be married? Do you enjoy stigmatizing those children as little bastards, or do you imagine that unmarried people don't have children?

And you're fooling yourself if you think that children are not already aware of gender and sexuality. Children are keenly aware of everything that makes the adults around them uncomfortable.

[Jim]

Benham,

Clearly you need to spend a few minutes reading the California EdCode. Children can't be taught a single word about sexuality in school without parental consent. That's true in private school as well as public school.

I'm afraid you're buying into the lies put out by the Yes-on-8 camp. It's important to check facts even when you want to believe what you're being told.

[S.Benham]

The foundation of concerns about young children is that they shouldn't be confronted with sexuality in school, let alone advocacy for gay sexuality. My suspicion is that the MA school cases are left out of the media discussion in favor of "Bigotry! Civil Rights!" is that its dishonest; if the broad public understands possible implications - which have already happened in MA - the public will oppose gay marriage in every state by 75-25 margins.

[BobN]

Benham: 'Proponents of gay marriage are crafty about not dealing with the Massachusetts elementary school picture book cases where young children were confronted with gay love. I do not trust them because they scream "bigotry!"'

Well, why don't you want young children "confronted with gay love"? And why do you phrase it that way? All this "concern about the children" is thin-veiled bigotry. The appeal is to parents who either 1) don't want their kids to "turn gay" or 2) don't want their kids to know about gay people and grow up to tolerate, nay, LIKE them. What is the foundation of these "concerns" if not bigotry?

[Aaron]

I don't live in CA so I don't know a lot of the ground game details. It does sound like they dropped the ball in reaching out to black and latino voters, perhaps taking their votes for granted, despite all the poll data to the contrary.

One thing I definitely agree with Leftgoff on, though, was that the No campaign should have made more emotional appeals, showing gay couples who got married, who wanted to get married, who could talk directly to the viewers about their happiness and the years they waited to get married.

Where were the stories from Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, the octogenarian couple who were the first to wed in May? While I didn't see what made it onto TV down there, looking at the ads on their website, the most emotional the campaign got was Itzhak Perlman's appeal on behalf of his daughter. And where was his daughter?

It's almost like the No on 8 campaign was afraid to too many gays. No one was fooled by what the proposition was about, though. Instead of making solely intellectual appeals to lofty and abstract principles, the campaign should have spent more time putting a human face on gay couples so that people would remember that there's real people who would be affected by their vote.

[Zach]

So Benham, we now ought to deny equal rights for fear of what it might lead to? Should we have denied equal rights to blacks or women, because now we know it went too far with black and women's history observances and Affirmative Action today?

This "there goes the neighborhood" argument, too, is a very slippery slope!

[MadProfessah]

tDMG, the reason why the Mormon Church is being "scapegoated' is that a 1997 official church memo has surfaced which details their strategy to attempt to ban gay marriage in California by linking up with the Catholic Church, and explicitly says that they will let the Catholics be the face of the political movement to deny marriage rights to same sex couples while the Mormons will form the fundraising and volunteer infrastructure.

The YES ON 8 side estimates $20 million was donated by Mormons to pass Prop 8 and 90% of volunteers in the summer (July August) when the public polls showed the amendment losing by 15+ points.

The fight over marriage in California and nationwide is about CIVIL MARRIAGE. It's about how the state will recognize relationships. The law change has no impact on what religious marriage. The belief that the law has to reflect one particular religious viewpoint is pernicious and anti-thetical to the concept of separation of church and state.

There are thousands of same-sex couples who are married and tens of thousands of kids who have same-sex parents who need the rights and responsibilities of marriage in order to protect and support their families. Domestic Partnerships are not the same as marriage. There's no way the legal construct of domestic partnership created by the State of California in 1999 could have the same societal and legal significance as marriage which has been a part of the legal framework of this country since BEFORE there was a state of California!

Denying people access to marriage is a real and lasting harm and confers second-class citizenship upon that class of people.

That's unfair and wrong.

[S.Benham]

How about some honesty and full candor for a change? What are the long range implications of legalized homosexual marriage rights? How much that most people see as "gay advocacy" would come into the public schools? How much will the rest of us have to keep vigilant against gay advocacy in public schools, schools that are not doing a good job teaching reading, math and science?

And thats just public schools. I can't know how legalized homosexual marriage might be used in lawsuits that might impact ordinary life. Proponents of gay marriage are crafty about not dealing with the Massachusetts elementary school picture book cases where young children were confronted with gay love. I do not trust them because they scream "bigotry!" rather than deal with known, actual implications of legalized gay marriage, implications that the majority of Americans would not like to see universally imposed.

[GeorgeMcCumiskey]

Maybe as suggested, everyone was reasonably sure it would go through. It does get closer each time focus is concentrated on getting it passed. I bet next time everyone will try even harder and will succeed.

[Marco Luxe]

Even simpler: Anti-8 GLBT played the intellectual high-road while the Pro-8 camp pulled a winning strategy from Anita Bryant et.al. and used wild distortions and outright doomsday lies to appeal to base emotions, esp. parental fear -- Dispicable but highly effective politics. Never underestimate the primiitive brain; fear always trumps logic in the masses.

[Hecturtle]

Another thing that led the to the down fall of this prop was just the whole issue on YES and No. By which i mean most people who did not see people out marching or campaigning were clueless as to which was which. every where you could here people sayin they were voting for prop 8 when they were really against it.

That detail most have been thought out so that miscommunication would occur

[tDMg]

So then, what did the Mormons have to do with the loss, and why the scapegoat?