(Camp Courage Fresno! – promoted by Julia Rosen)

In preparing this post, I can’t but help use the first-person perspective because the impact that Camp Courage in Fresno had on me personally as a facilitator is so profound that distancing myself from it would, not only be difficult, but wrong in how I should communicate what needs to be told about the amazing change that is happening in Fresno, CA.

For the sake of time in telling this story, I first need to direct you to my Op-Ed on the first Camp Courage in LA so you can know what Camp Courage is and what it’s about.  This exact same model was brought to Fresno, but effectively expanded upon over the course of two days.

On Saturday morning, we facilitators anxiously waited for our pre-assigned group to arrive through the conference room doors, excited to know who we would be working with for the whole weekend.  The expected 160 and more attendees were randomly divided into groups to help mix it up, and I was curious to see whom I and the rest of the facilitators would get.  Many of us had either been to the energized Camp Courage in LA or had worked at several Camp Obamas, whose model Camp Courage has adopted.  So we were expectant of the same amount of energy.

The attendees, many from Fresno and the large surrounding Central Valley, trickled in and quietly sat down.  Immediately, we could feel that there was energy, but it was definitively different from what we experienced before.  Trying to put my finger on it, I observed my amazingly diverse group – a lesbian in her 70s, a middle-aged gay man, a lesbian in her 20s, a straight woman (yeah, straight!) and a bisexual girl of just 16.  Though we were talking, you couldn’t miss the initial impression – “What do I have in common with these people?  What have I done by coming here?”  As the Camp kicked off, it hit me what the energy was – “Caution.”

As I grew to learn, these residents of the Central Valley had been let down so many times before.  Fresno, CA is practically the capitol of the Bible belt in California (and yes, there is a Bible belt in California), and the local LGBT population has continually and constantly experienced discrimination and hate from their own city.  But worse, they have reached out to their own LGBT community in other cities, raising their voices that they needed help only to get no response.  (Fresno doesn’t even have a center for the LGBT population to meet at, let alone organize.)  During the No on 8 Campaign, they cried out that they needed help, that they were prepared to act, only to receive a few yard signs to put out in response.  And even more, they have witnessed the burgeoning movement blooming in their neighboring urban cities only to be forgotten about.  Again.

No wonder they attended Camp Courage with caution.  “Who are these urbanites coming to our town?  Are they going to let us down again?  Are they going to “train us” only to take off, yet again, to forget us?”  Many probably came only to see their opinion of us, which up to this point was correct, validated.

When we opened the camp, Lisa Powell, the amazing head facilitator, asked the attendees, “Who here is uncomfortable?  Who here doesn’t know anyone?  Who here is wondering, ‘What am I doing here?'”  Quite a few hands went up, and I could tell by the faces of others, they wanted to raise their hands, too.  One 16 year old had been dropped off by their mom, to come to the camp all alone, not knowing anyone.  A sure sign of the desperation and the need for community in the area.

One of the first exercises at Camp Courage is for each member of each group to answer one simple question about themselves.  This easy exercise slowly began to break the thick layer of ice.  It began to dawn of everyone that they’re not just going to sit around listening to a droning speaker talk down to them – they were going to be engaged.

But what was the turning point?  What melted the ice wall?  The brilliant but difficult exercise, “The Story of Self.”  This exercise asks the camper to distill their story of how they came out, about how they overcame a challenge that put them on the path of equality, a story that is extremely personal, a story they may have never told, down to two minutes.  Why?  Because the Story of Self is a powerful tool in connecting with people emotionally, and to help bring them into the movement, to connect even with those who oppose us.

I heard stories about the mistreatment from hospitals keeping partners apart while facing fatal circumstances, about children not relating to their gay parent, about a teenager rising above her difficulties at her school, about a straight woman raised in a religious environment who came to realize that her stance in support of the LGBT community could cost her, about a woman and her partner who can’t get full coverage for their daughter ‘s disability.  I heard more stories about a trans woman who went to school and had to wet her pants everyday until she was allowed to use the woman’s restroom, how others were spit in the face by their fellow Fresno residents simply for being who they were, and so much more.

As I was sitting there, listening to these stories, not being able to keep the tears from welling – it hit me.  I’m not here to facilitate.  I’m here to learn.  I’m hear to listen.  I’m here to show these amazing people that they are not alone.  They have truly been on the front lines, the real soldiers, facing hate in a town in which the residents are not ashamed to show it, actually proud of it, literally spitting it in their faces.  I live in the cush bubble of LA where, if someone does hate me, they’re not about to fling it in my face.

I knew so little.  But I walked away knowing so much more.  And not just that, I left with a greater sense of community way beyond the Los Angeles city limits.

After these brave campers told their stories not just to their groups, but to the whole convention, the ice melted.  These people, many of whom didn’t know each other until this day, exposed their hearts and realized that they were not alone.  They had a community that had shared experiences, not only from far away cities, but within their own neighborhoods.  This was the turning point.  The energy transformed from “caution” to “trust” and “community.”

Over the course of two days, with campers driving miles and miles to return, with speakers like Cleve Jones and Dolores Huerta of the union movement to add to the inspiration, with the Story of Us bringing everyone even closer together, with solid friendships between people who were recently strangers developing, with commitments to change and action being made, the sense of community building was tangible.

The recurring them of Camp Courage Fresno was, “I thought I was alone.  Now I know I’m one of many, and I never have to feel that way again.”

But here’s the amazing thing about Fresno.

They’re not alone simply because we urbanites came along and said sincerely, “We’ll never make the mistake of not listening again.”  The truth is, these amazing people are not alone because they have each other.  They have strength from each other.  They’re planning outstanding events and actions (which I will talk about over and over and over in many posts to come – hello MeetintheMiddle4Equalty.org!!!).  They have built their community.  And the movement is headed their direction!

And if there’s one thing I can take away from this experience this past weekend, it’s the sense that I too am a part of a greater community that’s driving an even greater movement.  It’s not just an LGBT community, it’s not just an LGBT movement.  It’s a community of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, intersexuals, queers, straights, union workers, African Americans, Latinos, Asian and everyone in between.

It’s a movement of change.

And I have Fresno, CA to thank for that.

I am re-posting this diary for Bruce Hahne (a NO ON 8 “super-volunteer”) who posted it on Daily Kos earlier today. It deserves to get much wider attention. I like the fact that it not only includes criticisms of the NO ON PROP 8 campaign from an insider but also recommendations on what to do in the next anti-gay ballot measure campaign. I asked Bruce for permission to re-post it to Calitics and he gave it freely.

The post is (VERY LONG) and divided in two parts:  

PART I: Problems with the no-on-8 campaign

and

PART II: Recommendations

_________________________________________________________________

PART I: Problems with the no-on-8 campaign

1. Reliance on focus groups, and the search for magic words

The no-on-8 campaign was focus-group driven and went searching for “magic words” to say to voters rather than following the hearts-and-minds strategy that the marriage equality movement, and the PFLAGs of the world, have been using successfully for years.  From the very first volunteer recruiting meeting that I attended, paid staff made it extremely clear that the campaign had used focus groups to determine a messaging strategy, and that the campaign intended to stick by this messaging strategy.  We were also informed that Dewey Square had been retained by the campaign as the consulting firm, and that Dewey Square “had never lost one of these ballot measure campaigns”.  In September and October, the campaign treated this factoid as sufficient to rebut any and all strategic questions about the campaign itself.

This is the second time that I’ve participated in a stop-the-anti-marriage-ballot measure effort that was “focus-group driven” (the first time was California Proposition 22 back in 2000, which had identical language).  I’ve since resolved that I will not participate in any future pro-LGBT ballot measure effort whose messaging is “focus-group-driven”.  I’ve been burned twice by this approach — I’m not going to be burned a third time.

The focus group approach resulted in a negative-language campaign which made no attempt to persuade voters to vote FOR equal marriage, but instead unsuccessfully attempted to attach a few key words such as “unfair” and “wrong” to the ballot measure.  Specifically, the key messaging of the phone script that thousands of volunteer no-on-8 phone bankers read on the phone was this text:  “Regardless of what you think about marriage, it’s wrong to take away fundamental rights.”  More on what I think about this message later below.

2. Same-sex married couples were invisible

The campaign failed to use the most valuable asset available to the campaign, which was the thousands of already-married California same-sex couples.  This strategic failure appears to be the consequence of the “focus group” strategy which resulted in a conclusion that “the voters just aren’t ready to vote FOR marriage equality.”.  Such an attitude strikes me as an insult to California’s majority-Democratic voting base, and to me fails even a rudimentary sanity check.  Since even the California legislature was willing, twice, to vote for full equal marriage, the voters can handle the same.  I wanted to see a campaign that asked the voters to vote FOR marriage equality.

The campaign could have got newly-married lesbian couple Mitzi and Fritzi and their darling 2-year-old baby Carla on the TV.  Cut an ad where the couple lovingly holding the baby looks into the camera and says “please don’t take our marriage away!”  Closing message: “protect marriage for all California families.  Vote NO on proposition 8.”  Strategically this is a much stronger position to be in.  Look at the messaging that results from this type of ad:

– The language and framing of “protection” and “protection of children” are seized as a no-on-8 value rather than a yes-on-8 value.  To be pro-LGBT is to protect people, to vote no is to protect people.

– Message: No-on-8 is protecting poor innocent women.

– Message: No-on-8 is protecting babies  (Yes, I’m quite willing to use children in ads if the parents consent)

– Message: Yes-on-8 are heartless bastards who want to hurt Mitzi, Fritzi, and poor little baby Carla.

Instead, in October the no-on-8 campaign suddenly found yes-on-8 playing the usual “homosexuals are out to get your children at school!” card (a strategy which should have been NO surprise), and by that point it was too late to reverse the media frame.

3. Refusal to advocate for yes-on-equality

The no-on-8 campaign refused to take a “yes on equal marriage” stance, again insisting that focus groups said that this wouldn’t sell.  Well guess what, those focus groups sure didn’t produce a message that sold — it’s time to try something new.  I will no longer volunteer for a marriage campaign that refuses to take a “yes on equal marriage” stance.

4. Nearly content-free web site

The noonprop8.com web site was awful.  As in, really awful.  As in, “there wasn’t any serious persuasive or well-reasoned content there at all” awful.  I didn’t even realize this problem until an acquaintance, who had clearly been doing some research about the “yes” and “no” arguments, asked me the traditional question of “aren’t domestic partnerships equivalent and sufficient?”  This is the “isn’t separate but equal sufficient?” question, and it’s a very common question from people who are actively thinking about the issue — possible “persuadables”.  I went looking for the official response to this question on the no-on-8 site, blithely assuming that there would surely be an extensive equal-marriage FAQ document somewhere in there, and was stunned to find NOTHING, no basic issues FAQ at all.  There was a basic “fact vs. fiction” document which mostly rebutted anti-LGBT claims about proposition 8, but nothing to answer the obvious questions that persuadables have when they start to seriously think about marriage and LGBT people.

I had to head over to PFLAG to get a well-written response about “why we need marriage equality and not just domestic partnerships [DP]”.  The no-on-8 campaign’s failure to adopt a YES-on-marriage-equality position meant that strategically, the campaign wasn’t willing to put up content that responded to basic and common questions like this.

A related question that also came my way, from a strong ally, was: “what rights, exactly, does prop 8 eliminate?”  The answer actually appears to be “technically, NONE at this time from a California civil perspective” because California domestic partnership already extends ALL California marriage rights to domestic partners, and the federal government doesn’t recognize either status.  A more nuanced approach is necessary to explain why domestic partnership isn’t enough, and that nuance requires going the yes-on-equal-marriage messaging route.  The no-on-8 ballot argument as printed in the California Voter Information Guide claims that there are “nine real differences between marriage and domestic partnerships” but fails to identify what these are, nor does the noonprop8.com web site ever bother to tell us.

5. Botched ballot measure argument text

The no-on-8 ballot arguments as submitted to the official California general election guide look like a right-wing lunatic rant, plus they make severe communications errors.  Per the structure of California’s printed election guides in the ballot measure section, the “yes” side gets the first set of text, then the “no” side gets a rebuttal.  Next, the “no” side gets a section to argue its case for “no”, followed by a closing rebuttal from the “yes” side.

As I write this, I have a copy of my November 2008 California election guide in front of me.

Here is the first paragraph of the “yes” argument.  This is the first paragraph that the reader saw (assuming that anybody actually reads these election guides — this year’s guide was 144 pages long) about proposition 8:

“Proposition 8 is simple and straightforward.  It contains the same 14 words that were previously approved in 2000 by over 61% of California voters: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

That’s easy for the reader to understand, and it’s probably persuasive to a significant number of people.  “Oh, this is simple and it’s just reaffirming what we’ve already done anyway.  Sounds good to me.”

Next, here’s the initial text of the no-on-8 rebuttal to the above “yes” text.  All capital letters are in the original:

“Don’t be tricked by scare tactics. – PROP 8 DOESN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH SCHOOLS

There’s NOT ONE WORD IN 8 ABOUT EDUCATION.”

The no-on-8 rebuttal text goes on like this with its INSANELY HEAVY USE of CAPITAL LETTERS which makes the rebuttal look like a RIGHT-WING CRACKPOT RANT because people who RANDOMLY MASH DOWN THE CAPS LOCK KEY inevitably look like INTERNET CRAZIES as I’m demonstrating RIGHT NOW in this PARAGRAPH!!!  The no-on-8 rebuttal text is literally about 50% all-caps.

The contrast is striking.  The “yes” argument leads with a simple argument in normal text, inviting the reader to join in agreement.  The no-on-8 rebuttal, by contrast, is as if somebody pointed a bullhorn in your face, pulled an argument about schools out of the middle of nowhere (though it is in fact buried in the “yes” text), and started screaming at you.

Note also how the no-on-8 rebuttal begins by repeating a right-wing talking point (“the gays are out to get your children at school!”) and then denying it.  This approach to doing rebuttals is a classic framing mistake.  You can’t defeat an opponent’s frame by simply repeating it and then denying it, because the repetition itself simply reinforces the frame.  Every LGBT supporter who hasn’t already done so needs, desperately, to read George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant!, which is an introduction to framing and messaging for progressives, written by an expert in cognitive science (Lakoff).  Or for a web-based crash course, you can go right now to

http://www.rockridgeinstitute….

As Lakoff has mentioned in similar trainings, Nixon said “I am not a crook” and people said “oh, crook?  Nixon’s a crook”.

Similarly, as Robert Bray, former director of the SPIN project (www.spinproject.org), noted in a framing training that I took several years ago, if you get up in front of a crowd and say:

“Child molestation?  Child molestation??  This has NOTHING to do with child molestation!!”

Well guess what, yes it does, because you just said it three times.  Congratulations, you lose.

For everybody who contributed to that horrible no-on-8 rebuttal, I hereby require you to go read George Lakoff and stop writing any ballot measure arguments until you’ve written “I WILL NOT REPEAT RIGHT-WING FRAMES” 1000 times on the chalkboard right along with Bart Simpson.

This goes for you too, Geoff Kors (Kors is Executive Director of Equality California, EQCA.org) — every damn time you go on Fox “News” and repeat the right-wing term “tax relief”, you’re playing into right-wing frames that help to elect right-wing Republicans to office. I stopped donating to EQCA (though I did donate specifically to the campaign) because you have a history of going on Fox echoing right-wing language while thinking you’re helping LGBT people.  The Lakoff crash-course web framing training has a discussion of how the frame “tax relief” is destructive to the progressive cause.

6. Fundamental flaws in the no-on-8 phone script and messaging

I disagree with the fundamental approach of the “regardless of what you think about marriage, it’s wrong to deny people rights…” phone script.  This attempt at magic words, which again was probably focus-group driven, is what I’d call “preemptive surrender on our core issue”.  The unwritten preamble that’s IMPLIED by the “regardless…” sentence is:

“[We acknowledge that same-sex marriage is sinful, sick, and dirty, but] regardless of what you think about marriage…”

The Rolling Stone no-on-8 postmortem whose URL I listed earlier agrees with this critique, and refers to this tactic as “affirm[ing] the homophobia of the swing voters it was courting.”

The no-on-8 phone script refused to take a positive stance on marriage but instead conceded that territory to the anti-gay side, leaving no-on-8 to attempt the much weaker magic-word-association game of “unfair” and “wrong”.  I say: bull hockey.  This homophobic phone script sucks.  The best defense is a good offense: we need to GO ON THE OFFENSE (he said, resorting to the caps-lock-key mashing that he had so recently mocked) and claim marriage as our own.  It’s the LGBT community and allies who are protecting marriage and making it better, not yes-on-8.  Same-sex marriage is beautiful — say it!  Say it again!  Here, I’ll do it for you — “Same-sex marriage is beautiful!” Because the more we say that, the more we make it true for everybody.  Focus groups won’t tell you that because we haven’t made it enough of a reality for the focus group participants yet.  The more we refuse to say “same-sex marriage is beautiful”, the more we concede the moral terrain to our opposition.

As with the ballot measure rebuttal, the “regardless of what you think…” language feels like it’s written by people who don’t understand the basic cognitive science issues that Lakoff covers in his books.  If you say “regardless of what you think about marriage”, or equivalently, if you say “it’s not about marriage, it’s actually about X”, you’ve already got people thinking about marriage.  It’s too late to tell them that it’s NOT about marriage, because it IS now about marriage, because you just said “marriage”.  So what thought processes are taking place in the mind of a likely voter?  Probably something like this:

“Well hmm, as long as this person on the phone has brought up the topic of what I think about marriage, what do I think?  Well, I think that marriage is between a man and a woman.  That makes sense.”

I’ll speculate that this phone script may have been focus-group tested to swing a few percentage points of voters, but I’m not buying it.  On a strategic level, it’s a fail.  Pro-LGBT ballot measure campaigns need to get rid of the inside-the-beltway bean-counting tactics and start advocating for marriage equality.

Here’s the message I want to see:  “We believe that ALL California families deserve the freedom to marry, and the protections that marriage provides.  Marriage makes families healthy, protects children, and makes our society stronger.  As Californians, let’s make California a safe, healthy place for ALL families.  Vote NO on 8.”  Note how here I’m seizing language right out of Lakoff’s nurturing-parent worldview: “protection”, “healthy”, “strong society”, “safety”.  This is a winning frame for our side.

7. Failure to anticipate and preempt yes-on-8 messaging.  

This complaint has been covered in other written venues so it probably doesn’t need much reiteration here.  You know for a fact that yes-on-8 is going to use the “they’re after the children!” argument, so for God’s sake hit them first on that and take away their ability to use it.  You also know they’re going to use the “churches will be forced to marry gays!” argument, so defuse or reframe before those words even get out of their mouths.

8. Tactical: people don’t vote after dark in Santa Clara County.  

On election day, the campaign deployed thousands of volunteers to cover polling sites around the state and hand out no-on-8 “palm cards”.  In retrospect this appears to have been a last-ditch hail-Mary attempt to win an additional half a percentage point, or to just make it look like a lot of  volunteers were being mobilized for something constructive, or who knows what.  I had the not-so-fantastic duty, as it turned out, of co-running a “hub site” which was responsible for dispatching volunteers in teams of 2-5 people to slightly over a dozen polling places in the Mountain View, California area.  We had great volunteer turnout, but I don’t think this was an effective ground game or that it persuaded very many voters.  

The no-on-8 campaign appears to have made little to no calculation about vote-by-mail voters and early voters.  In Santa Clara County, vote-by-mail is something like 50% of the vote, perhaps more.  And empirically, we found that almost everybody who does vote physically on election day does so in the morning, not after work.  This put us as co-captains of the election-day hub site into the painful situation of dispatching 50+ volunteers to polling sites after dark (sunset was roughly at 6:00 PM), where as it turned out nobody was voting.  Half of our evening shifts called in to ask if they could be redeployed because they were only seeing 1 voter every 5 minutes, and half of those voters were dropping off sealed absentee ballots which weren’t going to change regardless of how many palm cards we pushed at people (and in the dark??  Come on, what voter wants to have election material pushed at them at 6:30 PM in the dark when they’re just trying to vote and get home?)

9. Tactical: failure to do proper, well-understood election-day get-out-the-vote (GOTV)

So, no-on-8 campaign people: WTF with the election-day GOTV?  When I volunteered for the Jerry McNerney campaign, on election day we did a traditional “aggressive pollcheck-based GOTV”, which works like this:

1. You do GOTV phone calls or door-knocks to all your 1’s and 2’s, which you’ve predetermined from your phone calls in the weeks prior.  For those not versed here in my election jargon: a “1” is a very strong supporter, a “2” is a likely supporter.  Your “1’s” and “2’s” are the people you’re trying to get to the polls.

2. After you’ve finished step 1, it’s now noon, so you send a team to the polling location and look up the posted list of voters who have voted already.  Per California election law, the poll-site staff post this information every few hours and update it.  You work through this posted list and cross off the names of all of your 1’s and 2’s who have voted.

3. Now you do a second round of GOTV phone calls or door-knocks to those who remain on your now-pruned 1’s-and-2’s list.

4. It’s now 4 PM, so you go to the polling location and get the updated list of voters who have voted.  You cross more people off your 1’s and 2’s list.

5. Wash, rinse, repeat until polls close.  You keep phoning 1’s and 2’s who haven’t voted until the polls close or until they vote.

For no-on-8 on election day we had teams covering dozens of key polling locations throughout the state, yet no-on-8 didn’t take the obvious step of having these volunteers get the “voters-who-have-voted so far” information and relay it to whoever was doing the GOTV phone calls.  I don’t understand at all why no-on-8 didn’t do this.  From where I stand, it looks like utter incompetence on the part of the campaign.

10. Insufficient engagement of progressive church allies along their traditional strengths

The no-on-8 campaign could have worked better with its progressive church allies. In September 2008, I offered to campaign staff the possibility of organizing some no-on-8 religious events somewhere around election eve.  I was told in very clear terms, by staff, that “the campaign doesn’t want this” because… wait for it… the FOCUS GROUPS said that it was a bad idea.  In the end, yes-on-8 held a Qualcomm Stadium rally (which apparently sucked badly), and no-on-8 allies independently organized and held several large-scale (for progressive churches) no-on-8 religious services in 3 cities on the same Sunday.  The result, thankfully for the good guys, is that the media reported “religious groups on both sides stage events”. The no-on-8 campaign should be thankful that the churches ignored the focus groups, otherwise the headlines would have said “People of faith hold mass yes-on-8 event” with a picture of some PFOX guy mournfully praying.

To be clear, I had no problem organizing phone banking instead of organizing a religious service, which can be a pain to pull together anyway.  However, when a campaign tells some of its allies that their core competency of “doing religious events and thereby bringing moral credibility to the no-on-8 message” isn’t welcome, it tends to stunt the ability of the allies to help the campaign.

11. Secrecy = Death

In September and on into early October, the campaign actively discouraged me from posting information about phone bank times, days, and locations to the web.  Incredible yet true.  The messaging that I heard from the campaign was “don’t post information about when or where our phone banks are taking place, just leave it to the campaign to communicate this on a week-by-week basis please”.  In the early weeks of the phone banking there was a desperate hunger in the activist community for information about when and where the phone banks were taking place, yet I was actively discouraged from posting information about them on a public blog.  A few weeks later, I heard this message from staff at the phone bank “gee, we just aren’t making our total-call numbers on the phone calls, we don’t understand what the problem is!”  Well, when you actively discourage the progressive community from engaging in precisely the sort of viral advertising and communication that we do best, low volunteer turnout is quite likely to be the result.  A few weeks later, I noted that no-on-8 had finally added a web page at noonprop8.com that publicly listed the phone bank locations, dates, and times… in other words, it was doing in October exactly what I had been told not to do in September.  And sure enough, a week later at the phone bank I heard from staff, “we’re doing great on our phone bank numbers, we’re blowing through these call lists!”  And attendance at phone banking had gone way up.

Activists, please take this lesson to heart: a culture of movement secrecy will fail you every time.  I recommend Gene Sharpe’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action for a discussion how a culture of secrecy can stifle a social change movement.  I’ve had to fight this fight in various activist venues over the years, and it still often doesn’t get through.  People can get paranoid — they may want to overcontrol the volunteers, overcontrol the flow information, control who shows up at events; people get paranoid about “outsiders” or “spies” or whatever, and all that fear is contagious.  Fear strangles a movement.  Fear turns off potential allies.  It prevents a movement from taking the steps necessary to succeed.  If you’re refusing to publish information about when your phone banks are happening because you’re “afraid that spies for the other side might show up”, fire yourself and get new leadership, because you’re killing your own justice movement.  I fully support the concept of message discipline, and I strongly oppose the “do-your-own-thingism” which so often pervades progressive activism and demolishes progressive message coherence, but there’s a difference between enforcing messaging discipline, versus telling your volunteers not to share information about where the upcoming phone banks are located.

12. Failure to understand or use internet and web media  

No-on-8 got its clock cleaned in at least two areas by yes-on-8: Youtube videos, and Google Adwords/Adsense.  No-on-8 appears to have been run as a 1990’s campaign that had limited understanding of internet used as new-media communication.  Yes, there was a (wretched) no-on-8 web site, but yes-on-8 knew how to effectively use newer web technologies while no-on-8 apparently didn’t.

12.1: Youtube: yes-on-8 dominated, no-on-8 failed utterly

These particular comments are specific to YouTube, however they apply to any internet video hosting service that supports user-uploaded content for public viewing.

Technical discussion that I was privy to in the final weeks of the campaign revealed that:

— Yes-on-8 videos were consistently ranked in the top 10 when searching on basic keywords such as “california prop 8”

— Yes-on-8 made a concerted effort to get their volunteers to rank up the videos so that they’d always win in Google’s search algorithm.  And of course, video up-ranking is a computer-and-keyboard based task that can be done by armies of people anywhere in the world… such as, shall we say, to pick a completely non-hypothetical example, Utah.

— No-on-8 comments posted in the comments section of yes-on-8 videos would immediately get downrated by an army of yes-on-8 minions, making it impossible to have an open debate or post rebuttals within the Youtube comments section.

— No-on-8 videos were also posted on Youtube, but initially the no-on-8 campaign didn’t even know enough to tag these videos with appropriate keywords so that they’d hit Google searches for basic terms like “proposition 8”.

— Progressive blogs were doing a lot of “look at this horrible yes-on-8 video, it’s really nasty” web linking, which per Google’s ranking algorithm is a vote FOR the video.  This is a general problem that ballot measure campaigns will need to solve in general: simply doing opposition research by PLAYING an opposition video, or by LINKING to an opposition video, actually helps the opposition.  “Number of views of this video” is a tracked value that presumably contributes to the up-ranking of a YouTube video.

— Even after no-on-8 tagged the videos with appropriate keywords, they never made it into the higher-ranked video lists because yes-on-8 had already invested a lot of time up-ranking their own ads.

RESULT: anybody who searched on anything related to proposition 8 on YouTube always got yes-on-8 videos and ads, and never got no-on-8 ads. This is a TOTAL FAIL for no-on-8.  The campaign needed somebody on the staff who understood the tactics of upranking videos and how the comments systems can be gamed for or against you.  Pay one of those evil “search optimization” firms for some consulting time if you have to.

12.2: The Google AdSense yes-on-8 ad bomb.  

“AdSense” is Google’s ad product that allows web site owners to place Google-brokered ads onto their own web sites.  Don’t confuse this with the ads that appear on www.google.com. For example, go to www.americablog.com and scroll to the bottom, where you’ll probably see a small “Ads by Google” section.  These are “AdSense” ads.  These ads are relayed to the web site by Google’s ad system and are not pre-selected by the web site owner.

Google AdSense is used by hundreds of thousands of web page owners as a way to make some money as a commission from Google by placing the Google-brokered ads onto their site.

On Monday Nov. 3 and Tuesday Nov. 4, yes-on-8 engaged in a mass advertising bid across all “targeted verticals” available within the Google Adsense program for advertisers.  This yes-on-8 advertising also presumably used Google’s geotargeting system, which allows advertisers to pay only to display their ads to viewers believed to be in a certain section of the country.  Geotargeting saves vast quantities of money by allowing the advertiser to only pay to show the web ads to, say, people who are in California rather than people in Florida.

The result of the mass yes-on-8 ad buy was that for hundreds of thousands of different web sites, anybody in California who looked at one of those web pages saw one or more “yes-on-8” ads.  I’d speculate that yes-on-8 did the same thing with Yahoo ads, however I haven’t researched that.  So it’s likely that for all intents and purposes, anybody in the state of California who used the internet on Monday or Tuesday Nov. 3-4 saw a yes-on-8 ad.  That doesn’t mean that the user clicked on the ad and made it to the yes-on-8 web site, but certainly there would have been a lot of click-throughs.

Since the internet has just this year passed newspapers as people’s primary source of news, this yes-on-8 ad buy probably had a significant impact.

While no-on-8 was doing a certain amount of ad buys — there were very sporadic reports of a no-on-8 ad showing up on certain web pages — there was nothing on the scale of the yes-on-8 ad buy.

Pro-LGBT ballot measure campaigns need to understand the dynamics and impact of the “mass message-bombing” that the right wing is using against us — this was done with yard signs on election eve as well, for example.  I don’t know how effective it is, but obviously the anti-LGBT team believes their money was well-spent, because they went ahead and did it.

12.3 Myspace and Facebook.

I don’t use these social networking systems so I can’t speak to how well no-on-8 exploited them compared to yes-on-8, however given no-on-8’s performance in other areas, I’m not optimistic.

Strategically, the principle that we need to understand is this: the Christian evangelical community has a very long history of rapidly adopting to the use of new media technologies for its communication and expansion use.  Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network was built starting from a tiny UHF station back in the days when nobody knew what “UHF” was, and you had to buy the special UHF loop antenna at Radio Shack to even receive his show.  Prior to that, evangelicals effectively used radio in the early days of that technology.  NEWS FLASH: the Christian Right has learned how to use the internet and all of its modern services.  If you’re not savvy about modern internet media, your campaign is at a severe competitive disadvantage.  For the proposition 8 campaign, yes-on-8 completely outmaneuvered no-on-8 in the internet media space.

_______________________________________________________________

PART II: Recommendations

1.  Work proactively, don’t wait until you’re forced to react.  Do pro-LGBT education every year, all the time.

“Peacetime campaigns” appear to be easier than “wartime campaigns”, by which I mean that it appears to be easier to do the right messaging during intervals when there is NOT an anti-LGBT ballot measure coming up.  In my experience, as soon as the LGBT equality movement needs to shift into defend-against-the-ballot-measure mode, all thoughts of long-term messaging and strategy go out the window, and people are in a rush to “mortgage the future on behalf of the present”, as we might say.  So my suggestion is to start doing, or strengthen existing, public visibility and communications actions today, rather than waiting for anti-LGBT groups to put a measure on the ballot.  Start a GSA (gay-straight alliance).  GEt with the local PFLAG and join their speakers’ group, or jumpstart the speakers’ group if they don’t have one that’s active.

2. Tell stories of real same-sex couples.  Aka: “go for the heart, and the head will follow”.

My belief is that all anti-LGBT efforts, rhetoric, and arguments are fundamentally prejudice-based.  Prejudice happens as a part of the built-in human process of category creation: it happens when I put myself into a group called “in-group” or “my tribe”, and I put LGBT people into a different group called “that out-group over there” or “other”.  Once I’ve put the stigmatized group into the category called “other”, I then martial whatever cultural resources or language happen to be available to me to justify my categorization: Bible verses, appeals to history, appeals to “tradition”, appeals to “nature”, etc.  To break through the prejudice requires that we, as LGBT people and allies, humanize the Other.  Doing verse-by-verse rebuttals of Bible verses generally isn’t going to help, because it isn’t the Bible that’s causing the prejudice, it’s the prejudice that causes people to choose to read the Bible in a certain way.  I’ve done the verse-by-verse rebuttal work in the past, and it can be necessary AFTER prejudice reduction has already started, but it’s extremely unlikely to change any minds up front.  As Rev. Peter Gomes has noted (and here I paraphrase), “it is not generally possible to use logic to get somebody out of a position that they didn’t use logic to get into to begin with.”  Start with winning the heart, and then suddenly you’ll find that the Bible part falls into place.

So my suggestion is to seek ongoing ways to humanize and normalize same-sex relationships and marriage (yes, we have to use the M word!) as part of normal, healthy, positive, loving human existence.  This is part of the work that many PFLAG and GSA (gay-straight-alliance) groups have been doing for a while.

Storytelling about real, loving same-sex couples that you know is a win here.  Advocates for equal marriage need to have multiple (true!) stories at their disposal that they can share in social contexts.  Tell people about the lesbian couple raising a kid.  Tell them about the gay couple living down the street who do yardwork and go to football games together.

On the public visibility front, in California the yes-on-marriage movement has made efforts at various periodic visibility actions, typically centered on Valentine’s Day and “tax day” (April 30) when tax returns are due.  “Tax day” events try to get people to hold signs at post offices saying “we want the marriage tax” or similar, using various equal-marriage messaging.

3. Know your framing rules

The usual advice about framing applies.  Don’t repeat the arguments or language of the opposition; reframe the debate.  Read your George Lakoff, please.

4. Anticipate the opposition (duh…)

If and when a ballot measure or similar right-wing attack looms large, anticipate the arguments of the opposition and move to defuse them before they’re even articulated.  You know that the anti-gay crowd is going to say “they’re after our children!”, so come up with ways to preemptively blunt that attack.  My postmortem suggestion to the no-on-8 team was to take the “look at these lovely same-sex couples raising their own happy healthy children!” approach.  Argue that equal marriage protects children, equal marriage promotes healthy families.  We need to own (reclaim) all of those good words: “healthy”, “family”, “strong”, “protection”, etc.

Similarly we now know that the anti-gay industry will use the “churches will lose their tax-exempt status, or be forced to conduct same-sex marriages” or whatever pile of lies it morphs into next week, since that argument was very effective for them in California.  The equal-marriage movement will need to find a way to flush that argument — it unfortunately might require addressing it directly, maybe simply with a lot of credible authorities saying “that’s a lie.”  I saw the “we’ll lose our 501c3 tax-exempt status!” stunt pulled on us in a regional church governing body meeting several years ago, and in that case the argument was stomped on when the respected moderator of the assembly spoke from the floor mike and said he had checked with multiple attorneys and that the claim was simply not true. But it required a well-known, trusted authority figure to say it.

5. Campaigns: understand and use internet media

Use of a variety of forms of internet media is now a mandatory part of any ballot measure campaign’s media strategy.  For those who haven’t been watching, in 2008 “the web” surpassed print newspapers in the ranking of Americans’ primary news source.  It’s no longer acceptable to slap a few HTML pages up and call it a web site.  Your campaign’s senior media director must understand the use of social network sites such as MySpace and FaceBook, the use of online campaign-produced and activist-produced videos, viral marketing, and techniques for up-ranking videos and the attack techniques that your opposition can use to downrank you.  You need to know the difference between Google AdWords and Google AdSense, and how to use Google Analytics — with similar knowledge of Yahoo’s advertising offerings.  You need to have a campaign budget for banner ad and keyword-targeted internet ad buys.  You need to know how to build an online activist base and ask them via email to take action, both online and offline.

Because whether you’re appropriately using the internet or not, I guarantee you that the anti-LGBT  movement knows how to use the technology, and will crush you in a demographic space (voters under 29) that ought to be strongly pro-LGBT if you’re not equally savvy.

6. Campaigns: understand ballot-casting patterns and do proper election-day GOTV

When do people vote in your state?  How do people vote in your state?  Does your state have early voting?  Vote-by-mail?  What percentage of people use these voting options?  Which demographic groups use them — your supporters or your non-supporters?  Whom do you need to turn out, how, and when?  These are nuts-and-bolts questions which are critical to any election ground game.  If 50% of the people in a county vote by mail, 20% vote the morning of election day, and 25% vote between noon and 5 PM by dropping off pre-sealed absentee ballots, it’s not an effective use of your volunteer base to attempt in-person voter persuasion on election day at the polls.  Your GOTV efforts need to start whenever people start to receive ballots.  In many states, that’s several weeks prior to election day.

And for the love of Mike, for counties where election-day turnout matters, do a proper phone-call-based GOTV.  Have pre-generated lists of 1’s and 2’s and call them.  Then call them again.  Keep calling them or knocking on their doors until they tell you OK, they’ve voted already.  This approach is old-school, and it still works… if people haven’t already voted by mail, that is.

_____

Despite the enormous pain of the passage of proposition 8, the good news is that despite a badly botched no-on-8 campaign, support for marriage equality in California has shifted from about 40% to about 50% in just 8 years.  The “tipping point” years that we’re in right now are particularly painful, because it’s right when you’re just under 50% support that your opposition throws the most money, the most resources, the most of everything at you.  They know that it’s endgame now — they have to pull out all the stops now to preserve hetero privilege before public opinion shifts permanently in favor of LGBT equality on yet another front.

Proposition 8 will, in the end, go down in flames.  It might happen in 2009, if the California Supreme Court accurately recognizes that when the tyranny of the majority gangs up on a scapegoated minority to deny equal protection, it’s a “revision” of the California constitution rather than a simple constitutional modification.  Or it might not happen for 20 years, when a no-longer-hardcore-right U.S. Supreme Court gets the LGBT version of Loving vs. Virginia and issues a blanket invalidation of all of the residual state anti-marriage laws in those states that haven’t already bothered to repeal them.  Or it might happen via California voter repeal action within the next few years.  We don’t yet know when marriage equality will happen.  What we do know is that the message of the full humanity of LGBT people works, it resonates, it changes hearts and minds.  Now let’s transform our ballot measure messaging from a weak negative into a strong “yes-on-marriage” positive, stop using focus groups, and fix our internet and election-week tactics.  If we can do that, victory for marriage equality will arrive sooner, and much more easily, than we might ever expect.

_____________________________________

Bruce Hahne is a sporadic LGBT equality activist, and a former board member of More Light Presbyterians (mlp.org).  He can be reached at hahne at io dot com.  

The opinions I’ve expressed in this essay are mine, i.e. I don’t speak for any organization in which I presently serve, or have served.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Bruce Hahne.  All rights reserved.  Non-commercial, non-profit republication and forwarding of this essay as part of efforts to support LGBT equality is permitted and encouraged.  For all other reuse, please contact the author.  

(The impact has been joined. – promoted by Dante Atkins (hekebolos))

Yes, Ventura, there is a Progressive Left–and it came in force today for Join the Impact.  It’s a common joke here that we live in “Ventucky“, though our situation less resembles that of the deep South and more that of a clinging outpost of Red, stuck between the swaths of Blue that are Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.  We have the gag-worthy Gallegly as our representative, and even unprincipled liars like Tony Strickland somehow manage to attract over half the population here to vote for them.  True, the demographics have been changing with voter registrations to match, but that has translated neither into electoral gains nor significant grassroots activity in the Democratic and progressive community–though that is changing due to the tireless efforts of people like our new VCDP Communications Director Brian Leshon.

But today a sea of Blue washed up on the Ventura shores in front of the Old San Buenaventura Mission to let Ventura and all of California know that yes, we do exist.  And no, we’re not taking it lying down anymore.  Unfortunately, the pictures here don’t do the crowd justice; an amateur photographer is emailing me some pics that I’ll be putting up as soon as I get them.

The Join the Impact protestors began our march at noon in front of the Mission, walking through downtown, over the 101 Freeway overpass and back again, before regrouping on both sides of the street in front of the mission, with overflow into Mission Park.

On the overpass…

I’ve been involved in many protests over the years, but I have to say without question that this was the most amazing, uplifting demonstration I’ve ever been a part of, for a few very important reasons:

• Focus.  The bane of the progressive protest march over the last few decades has been the lack of attention to message unity.  Markos Moulitsas discusses this problem at length in his book Crashing the Gate: activists such as those with A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition end up using the occasion to fight for causes ranging from freeing Mumia to impeaching Bush to end the wars in Iraq to acceptance of LGBT rights.  Here, there was but one message and one focus, reinforced by the ubiquitous chant: “What do we want?  Equal Rights!  When do we want it?  Now!”
• Diversity and Family-Friendliness.  All too often the word “diversity” has been seen especially by those on the Right as a politically correct code word for the disproportionately vocal influence of one or more specific minorities.  But for the actual crowd that attended, it might have been easy to dismiss this protest simply as the gay community venting its frustrations.  On the contrary: the couples that had gathered skewed more hetero than same-sex, and many had brought their families and small children along with them.  The visual impact of this phenomenon on the conservative and fence-sitting mind cannot be exaggerated.   Add to this the multi-racial, truly rainbow aspect of the event, and it was not only a joy to behold, but a consternation to those who would insult this movement as merely a special interest, rather than a truly broad-based fight for equal Civil Rights.
• The Support of the Community.  There were no counter-protesters anywhere in sight, and most of the cars that passed us were honking, even as their passengers rolled down their windows to flash a quick thumbs up or peace sign.  Sure, there were a few nuts in pickup trucks screaming some gibberish about eternal damnation and displaying a hateful middle finger here and there (one of them was so consumed with rage that he very nearly rear-ended the car in front of him), but they were themselves a distinct minority.  Downtown Ventura was truly supportive of our cause, and it felt truly righteous being a part of the next step for civil rights in America.  As one baby boomer activist said,
  

  “Man, this really is just like the 60s.   I haven’t seen a gathering with this kind of positive energy in a long, long time.  It’s amazing to see.”

I couldn’t agree more.  My girlfriend KK and I spent the final 45 minutes gathering signatures for the Courage Campaign’s Proposition 8 repeal.  On that form was a checkbox asking if the signatory would like to volunteer for the cause.  Nearly every single box was checked, and nearly every single zip code a Ventura resident.  These people were not here just to vent for a day: they were here to be a part of something bigger for the long term.

It was a beautiful sight to behold, and gives me hope for the long term not only for the future of civil rights in America, but for the future of progressive politics here in “Ventucky” as well.

Xposted on mydesert.com, the online edition of the Desert Sun

Rally this afternoon in Palm Springs and tomorrow afternoon in Beaumont to protest the unconstitutional removal of ‘fundamental right to marry’ for gays and lesbians:

More below the flip…

Rally today in Palm Springs:

Who: Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet, Palm Springs Mayor Pro-Tempore Ginny Foat, HRC, EQCA, and the Desert Pride Center

What: Rally against Proposition 8

Where: Palm Springs City Hall, 3200 E Tahquitz Canyon Way, Palm Springs, CA

When: 5:00 p.m.

Why: Homophobes and Bigots pass Proposition 8

Rally tomorrow afternoon in Beaumont to protest the unconstitutional removal of ‘fundamental right to marry’ for gays and lesbians and to seek the censure and removal from office of homophobe and bigot Beaumont City Councilmember Roger Berg:

Who: Donald W. Grimm, Ph.D., Charles W. Conn

What: Rally against Proposition 8 and to censure Beaumont City Councilmember Roger Berg

Where: Beaumont Civic Center, 550 E. Sixth Street, Beaumont, CA

When: 12:00 p.m.

Why: Passage of Prop 8, Berg’s assault of No on Prop 8 supporter during rally

XPosted on MyDesert.com

Beaumont City Councilmember Roger Berg was ‘arrested’ for assault on a woman during a No on Proposition 8 demonstration in Beaumont on Monday, November 3, 2008.  In an interview on Tuesday, Betty McMillion, Riverside County Democratic Central Committee chair told BluePalmSpringsBoyz, that Berg had been placed under ‘citizen’s arrest’ by the victim and that police reports had been filed against him.  Additionally, a minor filmed and audioed the aggression and has turned copies over to Beaumont police and the District Attorney’s office for further investigation.

During Election 2008, spontaneous rallies took place around Beaumont, a city in the San Gorgonio Pass region of Riverside County, midway between Palm Springs and Redlands.  A handful of young adults and older teens would gather at major intersections and crowds would gather to protest Proposition 8.  Monday was just such a demonstration.

More below the flip…

The Record Gazette reporters, Traci Kratzer and Cindy Watson, write today:

A Beaumont woman has told police that Beaumont Councilman Roger Berg pushed her during a Proposition 8 demonstration Monday night, an incident witnessed by dozens of people and filmed with a cellphone by one of them.

The pictures of the incident that took place at the intersection of Beaumont Avenue and Oak Valley Parkway about 6 p.m. have been turned over to Beaumont police, the victim said.

Jennifer Avakian, 31, said she and other demonstrators for “No on Prop. 8” were standing in front of Walgreens while demonstrators for “Yes on Prop. 8” were on the other side of the street.  In an interview with the Record Gazette, Avakian said the demonstration was going along peacefully until a man, who she later identified as Berg, began yelling at the “No on Prop. 8” supporters.

“He was screaming and saying that we were going to go to hell and that we were an abomination.” Avakian said.  “He looked crazy, like he was going to hurt someone.”

Berg, 53, allegedly began yelling at another one of the woman (sic) who was holding up a sign, and Avakian said, she went over to intervene.  That is when Avakian said Berg made a fist and pushed it into the sign she was holding, pushing her backwards.

“I was in complete shock,” Avakian said.  “I didn’t even know he was a council member until someone told me who he was.  That just made the whole thing ten times worse.”

Attempts to reach the homophobic, bigoted Berg were unsuccessful, according to the Record Gazette.  BluePalmSpringsBoyz knows from personal experience re Berg’s erratic, temperamental behavior as when I spoke to Beaumont City Council in October in support of No on 8, Berg flailed his arms, turned beet red, and said that if Council did not support Yes on 8, then the next thing that would happen would be that men would be marrying horses.  Horses?  Horses.  Scary to think of what Berg’s and the religious extremists fantasies consist.

At the City Council meeting Tuesday, Berg became upset when resident Heather Gardner spoke and referred to the incident.  As Gardner began her comments, Berg cut her off and asked if it was appropriate to talk about any ballot item with a polling place across the hallway.

City Attorney Joe Akulfi said it was up to the council but that it was a public meeting.

Gardner said she was appalled by Berg’s behavior on Monday night and asked that he apologize…

…Sixty-fifth Assembly District candidate Carl Wood, a Democrat, said he was present during the Monday pushing incident.  He said he noticed Berg as soon as he walked up to the crowd because he looked “extremely angry and was red in the face.”

“He was getting in their face and yelling at them,” Wood said.  “Then he pushed a young woman and it was just surreal because you don’t expect to see something like that.”…

…Another witness, Amanda Pombar, said she didn’t see Avakian get pushed but did see Berg yelling at people.  “He was yelling in people’s faces and he pulled out a Bible and started waving it at the,” Pombar said.  “It was almost like he wasn’t aware anyone was there.”

Wondering here if Berg whacked Avakian with his Bible.  Hideous little creature that Berg is.

Following the incident, Beaumont police were called and a report was taken.  Avakian told police officers that she wanted to place Berg under “citizen’s arrest” for the alleged assault.  “You just don’t do that to someone,” Avakian said about the incident.

According to a city spokeswoman, Darci Carranza, the police department is working on completing the report and once it is completed it will be sent to the district attorney’s office for review.  From there, it will be up to prosecutors on whether to pursue charges against Berg.

Rumors are that the next council meeting on November 18 should be interesting with calls for suspension of Berg from council pending the investigation, for censure, and with a possible recall in the works.

It isn’t the first issue involving Berg and Prop. 8.  Last month, he expressed support for “Yes on Prop. 8,” during a council meeting.  Berg had asked city staff to put a resolution supporting Prop. 8 on the agenda for council consideration and a vote.  At the time, he said he sought council support for the measure because “this is about tradition and family values.  Marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Course, Berg’s fantasies consist of marriage being between a man and a horse.  Berg neglects to consider the fact that gays and lesbians have family values that are just as consistent and just as strong as their heterosexual brothers and sisters.

The council declined to take a position on Prop. 8, rejecting his proposal of having the city support it.

The final vote was 4-1 in favor of tabling the homophobe’s motion.

Berg has served on the council since 1993.  His current term ends in 2010.

Portions XPosted 8/3/2008 11:23 AM PDT on MyDesert.com

According to one of my activist friends, a former deacon of a religious extremist church in Utah, who attends an evangelical megachurch in the Coachella Valley in order to monitor its adherence to the tax code as it applies to its tax exempt status, churches across America today began ‘100 Days of Prayer’ against Marriage Equality and cajolled their members and attendees to vote in favor of Proposition 8 and defeat gay marriage at the polls in November.

Proposition 8 is an amendment to the California State Constitution that would ban Marriage Equality and would dictate that marriage is only between ‘a man and a woman.’ Prop 8 is another in a long line of attempts by out-of-state religious extremist organizations that attempts to further the religious extremist agenda as a step towards fomenting theocracy rather than democracy in the United States of America:

(Proposition 8) (a)mends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: The measure would have no fiscal effect on state or local governments. This is because there would be no change to the manner in which marriages are currently recognized by the state. (Initiative 07-0068.) (Full Text)

From the pulpit of the church, directly in violation of the principles of the separation of church and state, church leaders discussed the impending vote on Prop 8 and advised members to not only ‘pray’ for the success of the proposition, but to also vote for Prop 8.  My friend advises that in churchspeak, this use of the term ‘pray’ means ‘send money.’

More below the flip…

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has investigated churches that in violation of their tax-exempt status exhort attendees to vote particular ways.  Recently, those investigations have been suspiciously limited to more mainstream, more liberal churches.  It is not against the law for, say, a minister, priest, or rabbi to state how he or she will vote, but it is against the law to encourage attendees to vote in a particular manner.  The most extreme penalty for the latter action is removal of tax-exempt status.

In 2005, the IRS began to investigate All Saints Church in Pasadena, CA and its guest minister, George Regas.  According to National Public Radio, Regas issued a sermon from the pulpit about a hypthetical conversation between Jesus, Pres. George W. Bush, and Sen. John Kerry. For that effort, someone filed a complaint with the IRS, and the IRS threatened to remove the tax exempt status of the church, claiming that Regas’ sermon constituted an endorsement of Kerry. The IRS renewed its investigation in 2006.  However, All Saints Church refused to comply with the investigation.  Finally, in September 2007, the IRS bowed to public pressure and to the church and terminated its investigation.  In response, Rector Ed Bacon demanded that the IRS apologize and that the IRS be investigated.

In an attempt to strengthen democracy and to prevent institution of theocracy in America, more and more progressives and activists are attending religious extremist churches in order to monitor potentially illegal activities.

Americans United: for Separation of Church and State indicates that the greatest threat to the separation of church and state is the so-called ‘Religious Right:’

The single greatest threat to church-state separation in America is the movement known as the Religious Right. Organizations and leaders representing this religio-political crusade seek to impose a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint on all Americans through government action.

Americans United, as part of our educational responsibility, regularly monitors the agenda and activities of the Religious Right. We share our research with journalists, elected officials and all Americans who care about church-state separation, democracy and pluralism.

BlueBeaumontBoyz wonders how quickly the IRS will begin an investigation into churches’ endorsement of Prop 8 from pulpits across America.

Next time, my friend promises not funble his video/audio recorder and promises to provide the smoking gun.  Kudos to those who are working to preserve democracy in America!