The mass of outrage and activism that has welled up in the wake of California’s passage of Prop. 8 will I think eventually be healthy. It’s a testament to the failure of the No on 8 campaign that they were unable to channel this energy before the vote, but often it takes a disruptive outcome like this to make it happen. And I think people are finally starting to ask the right questions and move from lashing out in anger to a more mature response befitting the message of equality. The scattered instances of racial intolerance were harmful and unnecessary, especially given that, based on the exit poll data, there was no one ethnic group that deserved to be targeted (Republicans who crossed over to vote for Obama made up a far larger portion of the Prop. 8 coalition than African-Americans). The various proposed boycotts (how could the owner of LA’s El Coyote donate to Yes on 8? Given their clientele that’s unthinkable) and individual actions are natural outgrowths of a movement like this and they have their place, but at least someone is making sure that the actual culprits get mentioned in all of this.
What is odd about the loss of family rights for California’s gay and lesbians is that the losing old school campaign was built while the rules of campaigning where being demonstrably rewritten by the Obama campaign.
The Obama campaign’s success was built upon not ceding territory to old myths on Latinos, African Americans, and young voters. The myth that Latinos would never vote for an African American was debunked by the Obama campaign, the idea of low voter turnout among African Americans and young people was also debunked. But in addition to ignoring basic myths on minority voting behavior, the Obama campaign knew that it had to still work hard to get the electoral results they wanted. They waged a campaign to win the votes and turnout model they needed.
At the end of the day, Prop. 8 was still a campaign and it needed to maximize its potential, which it clearly did not do. Many on this site have asked the right questions and will continue to do so.
As for the next steps, this is not, in my view, about patiently waiting back and hoping that the younger generation will reverse the decision at some unspecified point in the future. It’s about sustained effort on a variety of fronts. It is quite heartening to see 44 members of the California Legislature offer an amicus brief to the State Supreme Court on behalf of marriage equality in the ongoing lawsuit to invalidate the constitutional amendment. There are a lot of politicians on our side.
The spontaneous protests and marches can actually be a way to harness the energy if they are handled properly. I think The Impact, a series of protests organized on a distributed model in California and in every state in America, is exactly what is needed. This is actually quite promising and would move this seamlessly into an issue of civil rights. Ultimately, there is a future for equality. There always is.
It wasn’t just hatred that helped Prop. 8 pass. Money and strategy was the real reason Prop. 8 passed. We were out-gunned and out-smarted. We had a full house and got bluffed by two pair. We stood there and couldn’t believe that our fellow citizens would belive the lies that were being said about us. And now we’ve taken to the streets in anger that our right to marry was stolen from us. Well, just because your opponent claims to be Christian, don’t expect them to behave Christ-like when they hate you. Television and radio was FLOODED with those hateful ads. “They are going to teach your children about gay marriage in school.” “They are going to take away the church’s right to free speech.” “Children should have one Daddy and one Mommy.” No one taught gay marriage to anyone in school. The churches still have their free speech. There are still plenty of single-parent families, double-parent families, and every other combination there of. All that has changed is that same-sex marriage is now outlawed in the state of California. Thanks guys!
Here are my suggestions on how to get back our right to marry:
1.) Cancel all Pride celebrations until same-sex marriage is legal. The CA LGBT community spends millions of dollars every year in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego to celebrate Pride. California merchants will back our cause if they begin losing revenue.
2.) Encourage gay Americans to NOT vacation here in California. This would be a show of solidarity for us and more financial pressure on CA merchants.
3.) Pressure Hollywood to boycott the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
4.) Boycott all Utah business, Mormon and non-Mormon.
Some people will say that it isn’t fair to punish California financially, but not one resident of Utah voted for Prop. 8. It takes a 2/3 vote in the CA legislature to pass an annual budget, but same-sex marriage can be killed with a simple majority of voters.
Some people will say that only Mormon business should be boycotted, but all Utah should have to pay for the behavior of their major religion.
Money and strategy took our right away. Loss of revenue and solidarity will restore them.
“Blacks turning out in droves to support Obama also threw their support strongly behind Proposition 8, which would overturn the state Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage. Opposition to the ban held a slight edge among whites, while Lations and Asians were split.”
We’ve heard some scattered stories today. As dkirk notes in comments on the last thread, Yes on 8 is apparently using Barack Obama’s voice in a robocall:
Male Voice: Here are Barack Obama’s own words on Gay Marriage. –Then play recording of Obama response to question during debates–.
Male Voice:(Paraphrased) – Proposition 8 defines marriage as between one man and one woman, as you heard Barack Obama state. Remember to vote Yes on Prop 8.
Obama has repeatedly announced his opposition to Prop. 8. I don’t really like his splitting of the baby, that he personally opposes same-sex marriage but opposes divisive and discriminatory initiatives like Prop. 8, but let it be known that it’s the furthest any Presidential candidate has been willing to go in American history, particularly the fact that he has lent his image to ads.
This is a message for (um) all people (um) in Pasadena. The (um) place for (uh) people in Pasadena is for you to vote at Jackie Robinson on Wednesday the 5th, November 5th. The (uh) ballot can be delivered on November 5th at Jackie Robinson.
Today is November 4th.
There’s audio at the link. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that this comes from Yes on 8. Just a hunch. Pasadena is a pretty liberal city, and huge turnout obviously could be the difference in a lot of these races.
Disguised in a blond wig and in character as Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion reporter who’s the star of another mockumentary, The Bruno Movie Sasha Baron Cohen marched with haters demonstrators who support Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage at a rally across from Los Angeles’ City Hall.
Cohen who starred Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, enturbulated the Yes on 8 crowd with Bruno’s gayness until reporters and camera crews spotted him. Members of his film crew tried to shield him and “Bruno” was eventually whisked away in a van before he had to encounter real media.
Perez Hilton has some video at his site, but there’s not much to it.
Seriously, Sacha, be careful. The potential for violence is not only great, but it’s been realized to varying degrees.
The other day I wondered if the No on 8 side was being too cautious in their advertising, instead of putting an actual face on the discrimination and harm that would be suffered if marriage rights were eliminated for a particular class of people. Well, this video isn’t exactly that, but it certainly makes the point about discrimination. Via Amanda at Pandagon, this is my favorite video of the cycle. A group redubbed the voices on a video of young people ranting about all the supposed consequences about gay marriage, and changed it so they say “interracial marriage.” It’s kind of perfect:
See, this comes down to discrimination, pure and simple. The other side wants to talk about ancillary outcomes, but really they want to hurt LGBT people. I mean, we have to be willing to say that. The other side has no problem outlining what they consider to be the stakes, as crazy as they think they are:
“This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” said Charles W. Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and an eminent evangelical voice, speaking to pastors in a video promoting Proposition 8. “We lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby based in Washington, said in an interview, “It’s more important than the presidential election.”
“We’ve picked bad presidents before, and we’ve survived as a nation,” said Mr. Perkins, who has made two trips to California in the last six weeks. “But we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage.”
I’m glad that No on 8 is raising a lot of money, and that high-profile Californians like Maria Shriver are on board. But at some point in this final week, someone has to break this down. This is about harming same-sex couples.
If you tool around the Internets as much as I do, you may have noticed this. The No on 8 campaign has been using Barack Obama’s logo and image in Web ads that say “Obama Calls Prop. 8 Divisive And Discriminatory”. Clicking on the ad will take you to this page, at the No On Prop. 8 site, with a couple quotes from Sen. Obama about the measure.
The Obama campaign would not let this happen on its own. God for them for allowing the No on 8 campaign to associate with his remarks. Obama has shown a willingness to lend himself to the efforts of downticket races – he’s cut an ad for Oregon US Senate candidate Jeff Merkley – though I doubt we’ll see much more than this Web advertising from him on Prop. 8.
Here are a couple other things I think need to happen to help the Prop. 8 cause. First, Google needs to stop running ads that violate their own policies. Google has a very specific standard for those groups that use their architecture to advertise, which includes banning ads that advocate against a “protected class” like the LGBT community. Yet they allow Yes on 8 to use Google ads. I know Google as a company is on the right side of this debate, but they can either stand behind their stated policy or not.
The other thing that the no side might want to consider is putting an actual face on who would be discriminated against with this measure. I know this has been a source of controversy that’s simmered under the surface, but today Jonathan Rauch brings it up in the LA Times.
The need to walk that tightrope helps explain why the actual subjects of next month’s initiative, gay couples, were “inned” by the “No on 8” campaign’s ads. (Full disclosure: I am a “No on 8” donor.) One ad, for example, features a gray-haired straight couple. “Our gay daughter and thousands of our fellow Californians will lose the right to marry,” says mother Julia Thoron.
A subsequent ad, all text with voice-over narration, mentions marriage only once (“Regardless of how you feel about marriage, it’s wrong to treat people differently under the law”) and never uses the phrase “gay marriage” or even the word “gay.” Just as oblique was a spot, released Wednesday, in which state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell reassures viewers that “Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren’t required to teach anything about marriage.” A casual viewer could have come away from these ads puzzled as to exactly what right thousands of Californians might be about to lose.
Asked about the absence of gay couples, a senior “No on 8” official told KPIX-TV in San Francisco that “from all the knowledge that we have and research that we have, [those] are not the best images to move people.” Children, also, were missing; showing kids with same-sex parents could too easily backfire […]
Whatever the tactical considerations, the absence of gay couples and gay marriages from California’s gay-marriage debate makes for an oddly hollow discussion. It leaves voters of good conscience to conjure in their own minds the ads that are not being aired: Ads that show how gay marriage directly affects the couples and communities that need it most.
You can show me all the data you want; “hollow” is the best word for what’s happening. Neither side is talking about the actual proposition in their messaging. I expect that from the Yes side, to hide their serial homophobia and focus on made-up protections of imagined rights that would be encroached upon. But when a self-described squish like Kevin Drum terms No on 8’s ads “bland and generic,” something is wrong. Without a clear indication, as done in the Ellen DeGeneres PSA, of who would be harmed by this measure and why, there’s this subconscious message of shame about the rights that this campaign is trying to defend.
On a completely unrelated note, this is a great post from a minister discussing what the Bible actually says about marriage.
One of the biggest ways you can impact this election is to disseminate information to your circle of friends. A couple organizations have stepped up in a big way to make that process smooth and easy.
Google noticed that millions of people were searching through their site for voting information – where their polling place is, when the last day for early voting is, etc. Google created this great tool as a one-stop shop to answer all of those questions.
It’s hard to believe that in 2008, information so important to U.S. citizens and the democratic process isn’t well organized on the web. To solve this problem, we’ve released our US Voter Info site, an effort to simplify and centralize voting locations and registration information.
Are you registered to vote? What’s the best way to obtain an absentee ballot? When people visit the site, answers to these questions appear. And anyone with a website can provide the same information. The US Voter Info gadget places a simple search box that expands to show a full set of voter information when someone enters an address.
We are also offering a simpler way to find out where to vote. By entering a home address, citizens across the country will be able to find their polling place for election day.
The tool is super-easy and effective. Tell your friends.
Another incredible tool comes from our friends at CREDO mobile. It’s called TXT Out The Vote, and it enabled you to send targeted text messages in California opposing Prop. 4 (parental notification for abortion) and Prop. 8 (eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry). The messages, which you can send to any friend or family member with a cell phone, will be delivered on Election Day. This kind of “personal phone banking” is one of the best ways to get out the vote. Check it out at TXT Out The Vote. Standard text messaging rates apply.
Here’s some tidbits from the campaign trail with 12 days out:
• CA-03: Bill Durston and Dan Lungren debated last night, and it was a predictable affair, says Randy Bayne:
Nothing new, no fireworks, no knockout punch, no excitement of any kind was reported by either MyMotherLode.com or the Stockton Record. Just what we already know – Durston wants us out of Iraq, doesn’t like No Child Left Behind, and thinks the bailout is the wrong solution. Lungren supports the occupation, favors No Child Left Behind, and voted for the bailout.
If you’re looking for change from eight years of down the toilet policy, and you don’t want to continue flushing our future down the crapper – vote for Bill Durston.
If the registration stats cited by anecdotal reports are at all accurate, we’re going to be very close to registration parity in this seat by Election Day. Lungren may be acting positive in public, but inside the campaign they must be terrified. They probably didn’t expect Durston to run a credible campaign.
“Lincoln asked, ‘If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one,'” McClintock said in a statement. “And calling a homosexual partnership a marriage doesn’t make it one.”
I’m pretty sure that means nothing at all, but California’s Alan Keyes has had to distance himself from the comment. Meanwhile his much bigger problem is lacking the funds to run a proper campaign. He’s now taken to relying on cheap robocalls, and Charlie Brown has immediately called on him to stop. Dirty trick robocalls that appeared to be coming from the Brown campaign were a major factor in John Doolittle’s narrow re-election in 2006.
• CA-46: I didn’t get a chance to post Debbie Cook’s amazing closing statement at Tuesday’s debate. Here it is.
The OC Register has a story on this race today. These “Challenger hopes to upset incumbent” stories have a familiar feel to them – the pose of surprise that the race is competitive, the quote from the shallow CW fountain like Allen Hoffenblum explaining why the incumbent is probably still safe, and the overall sense of shock, which would be natural if you weren’t paying attention for the last 18 months, like, um, us.
• Assembly & Senate: Art Torres and Ron Nehring had a debate yesterday, and I think Torres needed to be prepped a little better. He claimed that Democrats could grab a 2/3 majority in the legislature but then couldn’t come up with a simple list of what seats are in play. He should be reading more Calitics. Nehring replied with a lot of bunk and a little truth.
None of that adds up to 54 and 27, of course, and Nehring said Torres’ boast “just doesn’t pencil out.”
He noted that Democratic efforts to oust Sen. Jeff Denham via recall failed miserably this year and the party ended up with no opponent to challenge Sen. Abel Maldonado in Santa Maria, a district believed to be winnable by a Democrat.
On the Assembly side, Nehring said, Republicans “have a great shot at holding on to” the 15th and “have a number of strategic advantages in the 78th (because) the Democrats have nominated the most liberal candidate (Marty Block) they possibly could.”
In the 80th, the Democratic candidate (Manuel Perez) “is getting hammered on … social issues which are important to many people in the Latino community,” Nehring said.
“I don’t know how can you be serious about trying to have a two-thirds vote in the Legislature,” Nehring told Torres, “when you blow so many of these opportunities.”
I’ll go bottom to top on this. Manuel Perez is going to CRUSH Gary Jeandron, and if anyone’s being hammered, it’s the Republicans. The IE money is pretty one-sided in the state. Between that and the registration gains, it’ll take more than just spin to dig your party out of its self-created hole, Mr. Nehring.
However, on one point I will agree with you. The Denham recall and Maldonado disaster have indeed stopped the potential forward momentum in the Senate. Of course, Torres couldn’t say the plain truth – that Don Perata is among the worst leaders in recent Democratic Party history, and has completely set back the state in major ways by his blunders. He is an embarrassment.
Here’s the latest on the ballot propositions (Remember, you can find the Calitics endorsements here).
• Prop. 1A & Prop. 3: The California Budget Project put together an analysis of these two bond measures (for some reason they left off Prop. 12). It’s a decent enough overview, but of course the CBP is aggressively neutral, and the questions they raise have answers they refuse to list. For example, they ask:
Will high-speed rail gain access to rail corridors used by commercial and commuter trains? High-speed trains likely will require access to rail corridors – so-called right-of-way – currently used or owned by commercial or commuter train operators. The growth in freight transport at California’s ports and increased ridership on California’s commuter rail lines may mean that high-speed trains may have difficulty gaining required rights-of-way in certain highly trafficked corridors.
Or maybe not! Let’s not bother to delve into this any further!
That’s kind of the tone the whole paper takes. These projects could be laudable! Then again, they cost money! Good luck, California! One would think that some hard numbers about the role of public infrastructure investments during economic downturns or the need for job creation engines or how to reach emissions reductions targets without mass transit improvements could have entered the picture.
• Prop. 2: You know that an issue has gone mainstream when Oprah devotes an hour to it. Prop. 2 will essentially get an hour-long infomercial on daytime talk today, and that’s as good as gold. Their ads, starkly displaying the effects of animal cruelty, are powerful and effective as well. But in addition, I hope that Prop. 2 advocates make the argument about a comprehensive food policy that understands the externalities of eating meat ought to be built into the product itself:
It will be argued that moving animals off feedlots and back onto farms will raise the price of meat. It probably will – as it should. You will need to make the case that paying the real cost of meat, and therefore eating less of it, is a good thing for our health, for the environment, for our dwindling reserves of fresh water and for the welfare of the animals. Meat and milk production represent the food industry’s greatest burden on the environment; a recent U.N. study estimated that the world’s livestock alone account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined. (According to one study, a pound of feedlot beef also takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce.) And while animals living on farms will still emit their share of greenhouse gases, grazing them on grass and returning their waste to the soil will substantially offset their carbon hoof prints, as will getting ruminant animals off grain. A bushel of grain takes approximately a half gallon of oil to produce; grass can be grown with little more than sunshine.
This is about stopping brutality, but also about intelligent food policy that would decrease risks and burdens on the environment and public health.
• Prop. 4: A very effective ad from the No on 4 team has returned to the airwaves:
Two years ago, opponents of a parental notification initiative on abortion put out a chilling ad. It depicted a soap bubble floating in the air in a seemingly tranquil setting of a residential backyard. The bubble drifted by windows of a house, where angry voices and rumbling noises suggested violence taking place inside.
Now the bubble commercial that opponents used to defeat Proposition 85 is back. This time, with identical treatment and text, it is being used in the campaign against another parental notification initiative, Proposition 4.
The commercial neglects to mention provisions in the initiative that allow a minor to petition a juvenile court judge to waive the parental notification requirement. It ends (with only the proposition number changed) by saying Prop 4 “would force girls to notify an abusive or violent parent that they are pregnant, and this puts them in real danger. Please think outside your bubble and vote no on Prop. 4.”
The ad is here. The commercial neglects to mention that provision because it’s a crap provision – the minor has to accuse the parent of mistreatment and claim that she fears physical or emotional abuse, which is really a great position in which to put a minor. And the idea of a 17 year-old going to a judge is just nonsensical.
The commission’s consideration of alternatives to incarceration reflects its determination to persuade Congress to ease federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws that contributed to explosive growth in the prison population. The laws were enacted in the mid-1980s, principally to address a crime epidemic related to crack cocaine. But in recent years, federal judges, public defenders and probation officials have argued that mandatory sentences imprison first-time offenders unnecessarily and disproportionately affect minorities.
Don’t these people know that sentencing commissions with expert experience in the issues shouldn’t be trusted to carry out guidelines and recommendations on sentencing? This of course should only be left to politicians who worry about attack ads claiming that they’re soft on crime! After all, look how well that’s worked in California: 1,000 straight laws over 30 years increasing sentences, overcrowded prisons, costs of incarceration outpacing education and billions of dollars needed to fix an unconstitutionally cruel prison healthcare system! Clearly, the legislature has this covered, right? So there’s no need to vote yes on Prop. 5, because that would be too “risky.” What we have now is working so well.
• Prop. 8: This being the biggest and most expensive initiative on the ballot, there’s a lot of news here. Fresno priest Father Geoffrey Farrow took a stand against Prop. 8 recently and it resulted in his firing. His is a heroic story of someone coming forward at great personal cost to commit to equality and tolerance. That is the meaning of courage.
Peter Schrag has an article out about the lies of Yes on 8.
The ad, on behalf of Proposition 8, features a law professor from Pepperdine University who cites a federal appellate court decision in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal. The decision affirms a lower court ruling denying parents of a couple of young children the right to be notified when gay marriage is discussed in their classrooms.
“Think it can’t happen?” says the professor. “It’s already happened.”
But the insinuation about what might happen in California is wildly misleading. It relies on a set of leaps likely to land the leaper in a logical ditch. In the case of one of the kids, the court said, “(T)here is no evidence of systemic indoctrination. There is no allegation that Joey was asked to affirm gay marriage.”
If you want to see bigger lies than that, check out this deeply insulting ad targeted to the Chinese community.
On the lighter side, here’s a slick amateur ad for No on 8 playing off the ubiquitous Mac/PC spots.
• Prop. 10: Speaking of lying in campaign ads, have you met T. Boone Pickens?
The ad capitalizes on popular sentiment for clean, efficient and secure energy – and no new taxes. What goes unadvertised might stir the public’s distaste for special interest-driven initiatives, particularly those that increase state debt.
Nearly all $13 million in campaign contributions so far has come from Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who stands to profit from its passage. Pickens is founder of Clean Energy Fuels Corp. of Seal Beach, the nation’s largest supplier of natural gas for fleets of vehicles, including Sacramento city and county garbage trucks.
More than half of the $5 billion would be spent on rebates to companies and consumers that buy environmentally friendlier vehicles. And most of that rebate money is dedicated to heavy-duty trucks and vans, the kind of fleet vehicles that Pickens’ company supplies.
