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Loading ...Blame game over Prop 8 divides gays
11.12.2008 9:54am EST
(San Francisco, California) California’s gay-rights movement has been beset by infighting and finger-pointing since the defeat of gay marriage at the ballot box, with some activists questioning the campaign’s mild tactics, including the decision not to show same-sex couples in ads.
The movement’s leaders “were very timid. They were too soft,” said Robin Tyler, a lesbian comic who created a series of celebrity public service announcements with the slogan “Stop the Hate, No on 8″ that were rejected because they were deemed too negative. “We were lightweights on our side.”Proposition 8, a measure to stop gay marriage in California, passed with 52 percent of the vote last week in a painful defeat for gay rights activists. The ban overrode a California Supreme Court ruling last spring that allowed 18,000 same-sex couples to tie the knot over the past four months.
Some gays are complaining that their leaders failed to organize a visible and vigorous defense of same-sex marriage. In particular, they say the movement failed to counter a series of hard-hitting ads warning that the ban on gay marriage was needed to prevent children from learning about gay relationships in school.
Leaders of the campaign in favor of gay marriage say they made a strategic decision not to highlight gay newlyweds or same-sex couples with children in their ads for fear of alienating undecided heterosexual voters.
The movement’s first commercial, aired in late September, starred a couple with an adult lesbian daughter. Later ads included a fictional woman with a lesbian niece, California’s public schools chief, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein saying, “No matter how you feel about marriage, vote against discrimination.”
Geoff Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California, defended the choice of advertisements.
“Lesbian and gay people were everywhere in this campaign – as spokespeople, on YouTube, our Web site. For the television advertising, the best messengers were the messengers that were used,” he said.
But Michael Petrelis, a veteran AIDS activist in San Francisco, said the absence of gay couples in the media campaign was a fatal error.
“We were seen more as a liability,” Petrelis said. “When you have that kind of attitude, it’s no wonder there was little community buy-in.”
The criticisms extend to beyond how the campaign was run to how people are responding to the ban’s passage.
In the past few days, demonstrators have hit the streets in California, sometimes clashing with police and snarling traffic. They have rallied outside Mormon temples to protest the church’s major role in banning gay marriage.
Plans have been made for a demonstration outside a Mormon church in New York City on Wednesday, and outside city halls in every state on Saturday.
Some gay rights leaders have encouraged the heated gatherings, while others worry they could backfire and offend churchgoers and others.
Evan Wolfson, executive director of New York-based Freedom to Marry, raised no objection to the protests but said it is important that they be carried out peacefully.
“Peaceful protest is important, time-honored way of mobilizing people to action for justice,” he said. “It’s completely understandable that people would be expressing their sadness and determination.”
Gay marriage is now legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut only, with Connecticut holding its first same-sex weddings on Wednesday.
Exit polls in California showed that the gay marriage ban received a majority from black voters, which has prompted some gay leaders to complain that they were abandoned by a minority group that should understand discrimination.
Kathryn Kolbert, a black lesbian who is president of People for the American Way, a Washington-based group that monitors the religious right, was so worried about a backlash that she wrote a memo to colleagues, warning it is wrong and self-defeating to blame black voters for the outcome.
“It’s always easy to scapegoat when you are feeling bitter about a loss,” Kolbert said. “What we do in America when we are frustrated is blame the people we always blame.”
RadicalRealist, if you think talk of burnig black churches and the other very hateful things posted on this site are “whining and screaming” then you are not a ‘peson of colour” They have called you what you are on this very site. I cannot believe that a true person of colour would try to justify, excuse or try to shame anyone who speaks out about this type of treatment. You embarass yourself
Radicalrealist, coming from you, I take this as a compliment. i know you are a “gay of colour” I just think you are an idiot. I am not whining and screaming i am speaking about racism, but i guess you know nothing about that. As a civil rights lawyer, i hope you never need the help from my profession. But you would prob put the noose around your own neck..with a smile.
And as for the whining and screaming, this is exactly what you are trying to justify from your white brothers. Put a sign around your neck so that those of us truly of colour can spot you and avoid you.
diego,
You have apparently taken it upon yourself to be just as racist as you perceive white gays to be. Congratulations. I hope that makes you feel better. And before you dismiss me as being another “racist white gay”, I am a gay of color. Stop whining and screaming over something you clearly blew way out of proportion.
Is California’s GLBT leadership so ashamed of our community that they cannot show positive, healthy gay relationships on TV? Perhaps – I would say probably – many of the undecided were waiting for just that positive image to sway them to our side.
Even if that isn’t true, to try and hide the truth rather than try to educate is always a formula for failure.
But, the bottom line, is it is all history now. We can either point fingers in anger or learn for the future. And yes, I am convinced there is a future . . . for California and for the U.S. But only if our community becomes increasingly visible (and that doesn’t mean just from whatever leadership there may be), and if we, as a community, commit to the task at hand.
Perhaps our Pride Parades need to return to their roots and become marches. We’ll either be successful together or we’ll fail independently.
WHERE THE HELL IS THE MODERATOR. This is now just a racist web site.
TigerTZU said “the blame is most appropriate. Those in the black community who voted against us should be held accountable and this attempt by some black leaders to excuse or justify their bigotry shows they don’t have a clue. Some seem to feel that any criticism of the black community is simply racism and they never bother to look further than that. Where are the black leaders speaking out AGAINST the racism and homophobia in their own community?
He is an idiot!
Where was and is the gay(white) community speaking out about racism in the gay community? Gays of colour, yes we do exist, know all too well about our communities and have been fighting against it for decades. You didnt notice because you thought, incorrectly, that it was a “black thing” and didnt have anything to do with you and your lilly white sex club, circuit party, crystal meth using world. As usual you have marginalized yourself in your UB2 environment and missed the point.
NO ONE has said that what happened was good, right or just but we gays of colour, yes we are STILL HERE DICKWAD, are saying that work needs to be done and that we were not spoken to about this issue or asked how best to preceed in our communities. BECAUSE WHITE IS ALWAYS RIGHTS. We are complaining about the very large number of white gays speaking about racist acts like “burning down black churches, never voting for candidates of colour again, firing people of colour from well earned jobs, never supporting people of colour again.
That is all racist, said here and agreed upon by whites. Yes, this is who you are. Not the peace loving, equal rights seeking “victims” you claim to be but the selfish, self-centered right wing bigots that will call us all “niggers” when we dont do what you want, when you want and then expect us to return to our ghettos. How is that working out for you now?
I had written about peace and finding solutions, but you people have pissed me off.. worse, turned me off. I took some of the threats to send these post to leaders of colour including the NAACP and done just that for you cowards. And their memory is long. Further, I will NEVER let any gay white person forget what I have read and heard on these sites. For gods sake, you people called GAY PEOPLE OF COLOUR NIGGERS at some of these rallies. What is wrong with you?!
Oh, your feelings are hurt. I only trust what people say in anger and when drunk because that is when the truth comes out.
You all have set the gay rights movement back at least 25 years, and New York’s major state senator is a “black latino” against gay marriage. Yes, I sent him a copy of your posts.
Finally, you have a lot of mouth in the privacy of your homes, under cover of darkness writing racist rants without solutions BUT I havent heard about black churches being rallied against…I wonder why. Try it and get the ass kicking you deserve!
Hate to say it, but proof again that “hiding” and “blending in” doesn’t work. As long as Gay Couples are invisible, no one sees the harm, no one cares.
The assumption that the presentation of Gay Couples will somehow “offend” undecided straights comes from a deeply rooted insecurity. Our greatest gains have come when we are just ourselves and are honest about it.
Why should we try to be lying bast*rds like the other guys? See where it gets us?
Yup. Please let’s not scapegoat other gay folks here (be they black/white/Christian/or whatever …).
A lotta straight people (be *they* black/white/Christian/or whatever …) don’t “get it” and maybe some of ‘em never will.
Meh? Maybe the anti-gays will “get it” soon?!?
After reading many of the negative comments about the non heterosexual leadership, it brings back the underdog campaign of Ron Paul MD. We community put faith in our “leaders” when we should have put faith in ourselves. We really do not need “Equality California” per se. We should have organized at the grass roots level before we lost not after the fact. But live and learn.
We know know that just sending money isn’t going to do it. We have do it ourselves. We cannot trust Equality California to do it for us.
it didn’t help when the lesbian couple took their students to thier wedding. That gave the opposition ammunition. What were they thinking??? If they had the permission of the parents then ok, but by bring their students to their wedding it gave those idiots reason to think that we are trying to “change” them into homosexuals.
Hit the streets. Hard. Break some windows. Show anger. Kow-towing gets nowhere.
It’s just too bad there weren’t more people rallying and donating to the cause before it was voted on. I was appalled at the comments from people who were opposed to donating their time or money because they just knew we had it won. Then there were the others that said if we lost the courts would change it. It will take lots of time in the courts to get this changed and in the meantime there will be couples who will not live long enough to see it, or family members who live long enough to make it to their wedding. Put the blame where it belongs …… THE GLBT PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T GIVE A SHIT BEFORE THE VOTE!!!!!
You know, the protest sites are a great place to get signatures to start another initiative to repeal prop 8 and while we are starting initiatives lets start one to tax political involved Churches at a tax rate of 50% on all of their income. and take away the tax deduction for tithes and offerings too.
So does anyone know how to start an initiative?
Many of us tried in vain to get the No on 8 leadership and Equality CA to listen to alternative ideas about the campaign. They only advertised in the big metros (preaching to the choir), they didn’t want show gay couples in the ads, they didn’t want to make ads explaining it was also about freedom of religion, they didn’t even have good coordination with groups in the rural areas. In effect, they were so convinced of their own “rightness” that they ran one of the worst “Milquetoast” campaigns many of us have ever seen!
But all attempts to promote alternative ideas to them fell on deaf ears. Now they’ve actually patted themselves on the back for making a “good” effort! Are they serious?!!!
Personally, I’m asking all of my gay friends to not give Equality CA any more money until Geoff Kors resigns. He’s become an embarrassment to our movement.
I was there at the defeat of Prop 6 (and for Harvey Milks assination), and the AIDS crisis. Now is the time for action (we can decide blame after we win)! Join a protest rally, write the IRS (form 13909), contact your Senators and Representatives, ACT-UP…Silence = Death
I agree with soid that we should carefully analyze the No on 8 campaign to learn whatever we can from it for the next campaign. I’m not from California. My state banned same-sex marriage several years ago (where was the outrage then?!). But it occurs to me, as an outside observer, that the leaders of the No on 8 campaign were in a very difficult position where there were no clear answers. If you get in their faces, you risk losing people who don’t like discrimination but are not totally comfortable with LGBT families yet; but if you try a more subtle approach, you risk appearing weak. It’s truly a no-win situation. Sometimes, you just have to go with your gut and see what happens.
Of course, there will always be people like Ms. Tyler and Mr. Petrellis, two people whose style has been confrontational and argumentative for many years. People like them are never satisfied with any idea that doesn’t come from them. I am familiar with both of them and have watched as they have not only alienated our non-gay supporters, but many in our own community as well. Their style was very helpful in the 1990s, when it was necessary to beat people over the heads to get their attention. Well, I think we may have gotten their attention now, so beating people is no longer particularly useful. A more sophisticated approach is called for now, and Tyler and Petrellis don’t do sophistication.
This fight is certainly not over. There are lawsuits pending, and we can hope that they will be successful in overturning Prop 8. However, I see future ballot initiatives in GLBT Californians’ future, both from the right wing, and possibly from us. Let’s learn our lessons, not blame each other, and get ready for the battles ahead.