I concede that I haven’t followed much about Proposition 8 other than to know that its wrong and that I would never have voted for something like that. Yet, now that it has passed I’m hearing far more about it than before. Were people just complacent that it wouldn’t pass, or something? That is, the sort of engagement I’m seeing now would have probably paid off a week ago when the thing was up to a vote.
Well the biggest factor was the Mormon church donating millions of dollars to campaign for Prop 8 and ran fearmongering TV ads that were full of untrue statements. The no crowd was not able to compete and did not do enough to get the true message out. After finger pointing the end results by the opponents after the loss, Nate Silver said it all came down to the over 55 voter saying yes. It is a long story with many factors. There is a lawsuit to reject the vote saying under CA law a 2/3 vote by the people is needed to take a right away that is already given. They are using the law allowing inter-racial marriage as the basis of the suit. It is a wait and see at the moment with a lot of anger on the no side. There is a lot of boycotts starting against companies that contributed to the yes side and the State of Utah has been targeted for boycott too due to the Mormon church. It is going to get ugly!
The no crowd was not able to compete and did not do enough to get the true message out.
Then WTF were all those celebs donating money for?
“The no crowd was not able to compete and did not do enough to get the true message out.”
It wasn’t just the money. It was the strategy, too. I grew up deep in Orange County, where my parents still live, but currently reside in Los Angeles city proper. I saw regular No on 8 protests in West Hollywood, the most gay-centric city in Los Angeles County but never read about any protests or out reach anywhere in more conservative sections of Los Angeles and Orange counties, especially in the Valley. I think there was a general assumption that the urban areas of LA and the Bay Area would be enough to defeat the measure and the No on 8 groups focussed their resources on preaching to the choir.
The early polling gave everyone a false sense of security. There was little or no advertising on either side all throughout the spring and early summer and people here assumed it would fail by 5 to 10 points.
Then a massive advertising blitz, funded by out of state religious groups, told California churches that their pastors would be jailed and churches lose their tax-exempt status if they didn’t perform gay marriages, and that children would be forced to learn about gay marriage in schools.
At the same time, a poll came out showing 8 was actually in the lead. The anti-discrimination forces rallied but were not as well organized as they could have been and through the remainder of the summer the pro-8 forces just out spent and out organized the good guys.
I’m most disappointed in Hollywood. The top production, writing, directing, and acting talent in the world didn’t mount any kind of serious ad campaign?!?! Ellen was the lone early standout who put her own money on the line and tried. Late in the game Sam Jackson put his name and voice to a pretty good ad but it was just too little too late.
The good news is that this was probably unconstitutional. In CA, you can add new crap to the constitution with a majority vote but you cannot alter the existing positions and this clearly was.
The more good news is that even if this isn’t overturned by the courts, the demographics continue to shift in our favor every year. My back of the envelope math says about 2 points per year. Give it 3 to 5 years and marriage equality will just happen. (Not that anyone should be satisfied waiting years for all of us to share the same civil rights…)
- A
Simply put: they were running the type of top-down, media/focus group driven campaign (a la Hillary Clinton) that didn’t really allow for this kind of expression.
Were people just complacent that it wouldn’t pass, or something?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: In September or October, not sure which, the first polls came out that showed Prop 8 losing by an 8-10 point margin. The No on 8 campaign and many of us in CA–self included–figured that this was proof that marriage equality wasn’t a real issue anymore, especially since same-sex couples had been getting married since June, and the world hadn’t ended.
While we were assuming this, though, the Yes on 8 campaign, fueled largely by money from the LDS Church, was pushing the line that 8 would mean churches in CA would have to marry teh gheys, and pastors would get sued for speaking against gay marriage in church, and that children would be taught gay is OK in school and their parents would be helpless to do anything about it. The Yes campaign also made a concerted effort to reach out to communities of color, pushing their message in Spanish- and Chinese-language publications and through black churches. None of this was true, of course, but that didn’t stop the Yes campaign.
By the time the No on 8 campaign realized what was happening, it was too late. We did raise money, but it all went into ineffective ads that avoided showing actual, you know, gay people, or families, or even mentioning the words “gay” or “lesbian”. Everything was about reacting to the other side rather than having a single coherent message and pushing it relentlessly, and most of it was preaching to the choir. Volunteers had to pay for Spanish-language materials out of their own pockets. Predominantly Latino neighborhoods were skipped by phone bankers because they didn’t have any Spanish-speaking volunteers. Black neighborhoods were ignored because canvassers didn’t want to go into “bad” areas of town, so they stuck to the Castro and WeHo.
The No campaign finally started getting their shit in gear around the last couple of weeks of the campaign, only to get blindsided when the Yes people did robocalls and put out fliers quoting Obama saying that “marriage is between a man and a woman”. I’m still trying to figure out why, since we all knew and complained about his wishy-washy stance, the No folks didn’t anticipate this by putting out information with Obama’s other quote about Prop 8 being “divisive and unnecessary”.
The primary reason 8 passed was because the Yes side out-organized and out-spun the No side, but they were able to do so because the No side took too much for granted.
The primary reason 8 passed was because the Yes side out-organized and out-spun the No side, but they were able to do so because the No side took too much for granted.
In short they Karl Roved a square peg (prop 8.) into a round hole (California). Ugh.
And now Arkansas is saying you have to be married to adopt or be a foster parent (and of course gay marriage is illegal). The floodgates are open, folks. The puritans think they’re taking over.
I don’t have my own insight into this, but I just finished reading Jasmine Beach-Ferrara at Democratic Strategist, and highly recommend it.
I think everybody, Californian or not, who supports Gay Marriage Rights kinda dropped the ball on this. It really should have been a national campaign, with all of us sparing a little energy from electing Obama to make sure Prop 8 didn’t pass.
The good news is though, that it really seems that it was a matter of a badly run campaign, and not some huge backlash.
The Mormon Church has a couple of things:
1. Silly underwear
2. A deep and abiding hatred of Teh Gay
3. A shitload of money
At least two of those properties came into play, big time, in the recent Prop 8 vote.
I live in California and the no side was winning until the yes side started running wall-to-wall TV commercials saying that the schools were going to be “teaching gay marriage” (whatever that means). Of course, it was a great big fat Rovian lie. Sigh.
In short they Karl Roved a square peg (prop 8.) into a round hole (California). Ugh.
That’s what he said!
The No on 8 ad campaign was lame. What is amazing is that it was lame in the way that Kerry was, or that the Florida Governor’s campaign of Bill McBride was. I mention that one because Kos covers the lameness of the Florida ads in “Crashing the Gate”, but some liberal Democrats didn’t get the memo.
Yes on 8 had ads that aimed for the gut. Some of it was lies and some of it was an appeal to bigotry, but they had a sense of how to appeal to low-information voters.
No on 8 had ads wasting precious seconds on the fact No on 8 was endorsed by the teachers’ union. Who cares? Solidarity in losing is so much better than winning. No on 8 didn’t show gay families or anything like that, they used empty rhetoric about “rights”. Some of the ads didn’t even use the word “marriage”, just the idea that if you say Your Position is for Equality and Rights everyone is going to vote for it.
No on 8 also had to deal with Mayor Newsom of SF taunting the anti-gays because his own ego trip was more important than winning. And they also shot themselves in the foot trying to deny that Gay Marriage was going to be taught in schools. I don’t know about “taught”, but if society has gay marriages, schoolchildren will know about them. Especially when their own teachers are inviting them to the weddings.
Don’t know that you noticed, but there was this much bigger Pres. election going on, as well as contests to get a super majority in the Senate while also increasing Dem holdings in the House.
Sucked a bit of the oxygen out of a fight that deserved more support is my take. I mean- make a choice: drive to Vegas for several weekends in a row to get Nevada blue? Or spend those weekends protesting against Prop 8? Only so much time.
Especially when it looked as if Obama might lose and Prop 8 was going down in flames…..
But hey, I just live here and stuff, so what do I know about it, right? Whereas you admit you don’t know much about it at all, right?
In other words- how about instead of criticizing us for not getting the effort out when it counted and helping us get it over turned.
Sorry. Nobody likes a f*cking critic who didn’t help when he or she had a chance to make a difference…..
… and you can always participate in the National Day of protest on this Sat.
Info here: http://jointheimpact.com/
Its a thought.