Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Prop 8 passed because of pathetic planning
Call me a racist or bigot. Say I’m a reactionary queen who feeds off the hard work of others. Throw out the “excuse maker” line. Accuse me of what you will, but Prop 8 passed because the “No on 8″ side had no clue about strategy.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Start typing those comments about how “ashamed MLK would be of today’s blacks” or maybe point to those CNN “numbers” showing 70 percent of black voters supporting Prop 8. Meh. After you are done venting your moral outrage and furious anger, riddle me this: why didn’t the folk running the “No” campaign use a letter from then candidate Barack Obama?
The letter was written to the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club in June of last year and this is what candidate Obama had to say at the time.
“As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law. That is why I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same sex couples under both state and federal law. …
“And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states. …
“Finally, I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks.”
Why was this kept on the sidelines? Apparently the argument went the letter got press in the New York Times and no one outside of the Bay Area knew anything about the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club
“That was a close call,” said Steve Smith of DeweySquare, a Sacramento-based consulting firm involved in the “No” campaign. “Maybe we should have.”
A close call?!?!?! A close call?!?!?!? I know what I want to say, but this is a family site. Go at it Dan Savage.
“Pathetic planning” only begins to describe the “No on 8″ campaign. We were ripped off.
couldn’t agree with you more. but you could’ve written a better article on the subject. learning from past mistakes is important and your article is little more than a headline. there’s dozens of ways the No on 8 leaders failed us all and we’ll pay the price potentially for generations to come. it was no small loss. it was a shattering defeat that slammed our equality back into the closet indefinitely. the supreme court will uphold prop 8 and all the 18,000 marriages. those of us that were lucky enough to marry can find solace in that, but it was a victory i wanted for us all. AND not i’ll have to constantly qualify my marriage as one of the legal ones. this was a major @%&* up and the No on 8 ppl dropped the ball BIG TIME!
I feel badly judging from the sidelines. The most we did was give money to the No on 8 campaign. But when you give a good chunk of your income to a ’cause’ you expect the people on the other end to know what they’re doing. This clearly wasn’t the case. I can’t believe that every single person involved in the advertising campaign didn’t know about the letter. It just boggles my mind. You can be sure the end result would have been different had it been used.
Of course, the best thing we can do is move on and plan for 2010… perhaps with new people in charge.
First, I don’t know how much good the letter would have done. It sounds all pretty but Obama didn’t have the balls to make a stand for gay marriage, but instead offered a “separate but equal” version of equality that a black man should be embarrassed and ashamed to support. I doubt anything said in the letter would have offset his statement that he believes a marriage is between a man and a woman.
Second, whomever put a Republican in charge of the No on 8 campaign should have their heads examined. Everyone who donated money to that should be demanding an accounting of how their millions were spent and asking hard questions on why there weren’t more families shown or why their ads failed to show a diversity in the gay demographic. They should do this before another attempt is tried on the CA electorate. Actually, they should have tried to put a stop to the rediculous notion that civil rights can be voted away by the mob.
Yeah whenever black people victimize gay people, it’s always the fault of someone else.
i, for one, will NOT be contributing any more money to a future ballot initiative. not until someone has the guts to publicly own up to what they did wrong and give me good reason to trust them to do better next time. fool me once….
You mean the same Obama, that went on NATIONAL TELEVISION around the same time (the debates), and said he didn’t believe in gay marriage? THAT Obama? You got your ass-colored(democratic) glasses on their James.
It’s what many of us in California have been saying all along. Geoff Kors, Lori Jean, Kate Kendell and the other leaders of the No on 8 campaign ignored everyone who had different views!
Many of us told them they were ignoring the rural areas. We warned them they were ignoring the churches and the religious freedom angle. They turned down offers of money to make commercials that were oriented on freedom of religion. They wouldn’t show gay couples in the ads they did make. they focused money on the big urban centers where the populations were already mostly on our side.
In short, they ran perhaps the most incompetent campaign in modern history. They squandered the money we raised, they took extended vacations, they furthered their own political careers at the expense of every gay person in California.
I as well as many of my friends will not donate more money or time if these same people try to lead the new campaign to overturn 8.
We deserve better, and they deserve to be run out of California.
1) No on 8 played way to nice.
2) They should have shown real gay couples saying why we need marriage equality. Especially ones in long term realtionships.
Told real horror storeys about partners being denied hospital visiting rights ect. Loosing common property to greedy realatives.
3) We should have had that debate about schools that yes on 8 wanted to have. Instead they just issued a statement about the superinetedant of schools.
4) Should have hired real talent, a real media firm.
Tom in Long Beach, Still paying off some of my donations made by credit card. I know stupid me.
I agree completely. Worst political campaign imaginable. Lifeless commercials, pointless noise, no focus. The community leaders have spent too much time preaching to the choir and not enough time thinking creatively about how to change the minds of those who disagree with us.
And immediately after the arguments last week, what did EQCA do? They sent out a blast Email whining for dollars again. These people live to perpetuate their existence. They all need to go. Then maybe we can make progress again.
I am curious to hear what everyone here thinks of the job that we did during the hearings? Are we still on the same self-destructive path?
Can anyone here say “boycott California”! Time to let the hetero pukes in cali know EXACTLY how we feel!! If the Religious Pukes think that the boycott against their putrid little WITHIN state businesses sucked well guess what….imagine their dismay when this lil’ ol’ faggot refuses to buy ANYTHING coming out of the puke conservative state of californication!!! LMAO! Yupper, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, give me New England cider over Right Wing Red Wine! LMFAO!! Oh, that includes ANY and ALL tourism to California too! Peace all.
Statements from that letter, along with Obama’s photo, should have been on a postcard sent to every home in California. And Obama would have had to explain how he doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage, but still wants to repeal DOMA, oppose Prop 8 and FMA, and congratulate same-sex married couples. Clearly the Democratic club decided it was more important to make Obama look good, than it was to defend us.
You want to know why?
We don’t have a national leader with foresight, intuition and charisma. Until we do, we are going to be screwed. And not in a good way.