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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.”
oh please do tell us of all the great leaps and bounds you have made in the political arena.
honey, you need to get your ass up off that seat, get outside and visit the real world.
who cares if they are sending post cards AT LEAST THEY ARE DOING SOMETHING other than sitting here bitching on a website.
I think its hillarious some of yall are in here attacking other gays. If we werent out marching, or even sending post cards, we would all be invisible STILL.
As a black gay man with a partner of 22 years. I disagree with Kathryn Kolbert. Please do not speak for me or any other black gay person. Black people have no business voting against anyone when they have experienced discimination all their lives. They are wrong and need to be called on it! Please don’t make excuses for these stupid behind fools!
Doug – I couldn’t agree more and I sent a message to No on 8 immediately following the election. Of course, I received no reply – beyond a general e-mail asking people not to place blame. Well, you know what? There were many wonderful people who worked on this and I truly thak them for their efforts – HOWEVER – the main people who oversaw this were beyond inept and SHOULD resign! Those commercials were ridiculous! They’re entire approach was insulting to the intelligence of any independent or moderate voter who may have been unsure how to vote. How do you talk to someone about GAY MARRIAGE and NEVER BRING UP THE WORDS “GAY” or “MARRIAGE” – how STUPID do you think people are? I know it was a tactical decision – a BAD tactical decision! These “leaders” were BEYONF incompentent and should be replaced!
While I agree we should come together to fight this, we can’t effectively do that until the inept leadership of No on 8 and Equality California resign. Virtually everyone I know in the rural areas have been disgusted by how out of touch they were with the reality of what the opposition was doing. Even now ome of them are wasting more money sending post cards to the Mormon president. Are you serious? How can we come together when the same failed No on 8 leadership is continuing their same out-of-touch policies. No more money until they resign.
The people who supported Prop 8 would love it if we started attacking each other – “divide and conquer” at its best. Lets remain focused and work together to accomplish our mutually beneficial goals.
I have read post in this blog of church burnings.
I can certainly understand the disappointment of prop 8 passing but church burnings is sure not the way to go.
First you will be battling every possible denomination possible and if you think the catholic and Mormon church
did some damage think of what it would be like if all 200 other denominations were fighting us also.
If even a few of do something so stupid that will convince the un commited to vote against us next time around.
True the black folks did things like that and things did change but at a terrible cost, and what they did, did not raise their standing in the public eye.
I am a Calif. native now living in Florida we had the same thing here only worse. Our prop 2 passed banning marriage but also banning civil unions too.
Be careful because there is a movement in the works to unwind the marriages (in Calif) that were left intact in Calif. That is their next move.
My Gay brothers and sisters in Calif. You have no time to waste. Do not sit idol. Start to organize with constant demonstrations every week with out letting up.
The opposition thinks this will simmer down and you will finally go away.
If you don’t keep up the demonstrations and make your cause in the headlines you will lose big time and they win.
Remember the sweekest wheel gets the grease.
Make sure the next campaign is not run by anyone from the Log Cabin Republican Party.
How anyone can be a republican and gay is beyond me, and I have heard every argument they have put up, but I have never trusted them.
I like the comment about offending church goers…didn’t they vote yes on prop 8 by some 73 or 83% ? That was funny.
I think we have a serious generation gap within the Gay community….let the young folks hit the street join them if you feel like you can get your old bones out there. Let them go….they are holding peaceful rallies and making change happen now.
I am going this Nov. 15th to the SF rally at City Hall….I think this is a great time to use the internet to re-define our movement Nationally and Globally.
Want to know who to blame for prop 8 passing? Then go look in the mirror and ask yourself the following questions:
• Did I donate money and time to the campaign, or did I just sit back and watch the events unfold?
• Did I leave my comfort zone and converse with people that I knew didn’t agree with my beliefs?
• Did I attend and promote “no on 8” rallies?
• Did I encourage non-voters to vote by bringing them voter registration forms and telling them how important this issue was to me personally and how its passage would impact my life?
• Did I remember to mail in my absentee ballot on time or get to my polling place before it closed, or was I just too busy to bother?
• Did I actually vote “no”? (Sadly, it has been reported to me that some of the yes voters were members of the LGBT community. Shameful, even if you yourself do not believe in marriage.)
• Am I openly gay and proud, or do I hide my lifestyle from co-workers, family and friends?
• Did I assume that everyone that is deemed a minority, a second class, or has faced oppression would automatically side with my cause and place my rights over their cultural and/or religious beliefs?
• Did I allow my straight allies to carry the burden of the load because I felt their voices were more influential than mine?
If you did little or nothing in support of the “no on 8” campaign, then you have only yourself to blame for its passage.
From what I recall of my school days, ALL field trips require parental permission. I can’t believe that those parents didn’t know where their kids were going.
Besides, the “yes on 8″ campaign exposed children to more homosexual rhetoric than any of our ads did.
People of color (black, red, yellow, brown, polka-dot) will not and should not bend to the will of white folk.
And white folk will not and should not bend to the will of those people of color.
If we, as individuals, allow ourselves to turn this issue into a matter of what color of skin we have . . . we have lost already. The closet awaits as the only safe escape.
I say, for myself, “Never Again!”.
Rather, the gay community must bind together regardless of the color of our skin. We must be bound together regardless of our orientation. We must become a people who will not bend to the will of those who wish to oppress us. And those who can not do so . . . or will not . . . can fight their petty race war and be left behind. They can find their own comfort in that closet.
And they can watch the rest of us strengthen and grow and, finally, be free.
Prop 8 Myths
Writes Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee:
Last week, 10 percent of voters were African American while 18 percent were Latino, and applying exit poll data to that extra turnout reveals that the pro-Obama surge among those two groups gave Proposition 8 an extra 500,000-plus votes, slightly more than the measure’s margin of victory.
To put it another way, had Obama not been so popular and had voter turnout been more traditional – meaning the proportion of white voters had been higher – chances are fairly strong that Proposition 8 would have failed.
Certainly, the No on 8 folks might have done a better job of outreach to California’s black and Latino communities. But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters — the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) — voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin. More experienced voters voted for the measure 56-44, however, providing for its passage.
Now, it’s true that if new voters had voted against Prop 8 at the same rates that they voted for Obama, the measure probably would have failed. But that does not mean that the new voters were harmful on balance — they were helpful on balance. If California’s electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, Prop 8 would have passed by a wider margin.
Furthermore, it would be premature to say that new Latino and black voters were responsible for Prop 8’s passage. Latinos aged 18-29 (not strictly the same as ‘new’ voters, but the closest available proxy) voted against Prop 8 by a 59-41 margin. These figures are not available for young black voters, but it would surprise me if their votes weren’t fairly close to the 50-50 mark.
At the end of the day, Prop 8’s passage was more a generational matter than a racial one. If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two. It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.
The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that — and there’s no polite way to put this — the older voters aren’t going to be around for all that much longer, and they’ll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era. Everyone knew going in that Prop 8 was going to be a photo finish — California might be just progressive enough and 2008 might be just soon enough for the voters to affirm marriage equity. Or, it might fall just short, which is what happened. But two or four or six or eight years from now, it will get across the finish line.
( I now return you to reg station of being racist against black/latinos)
diego Said: “wow tiger and radicalrealist, you have much to say when you get your own words and deeds against you.”
You have used nothing against me except your racist views, which I ignore. I stand by my words and deeds. Your ignorance and prejudice speak for themselves once again. Case closed.
wow tiger and radicalrealist, you have much to say when you get your own words and deeds against you. I have not issue with standing against white gays on this or other issues. I am honest about it, unlike Radical who claims to never see racism from gay whites. I dont care what you think but i will speak out against this site becoming a gang up on blacks site. childlike or doing unto others as they do to you..I am good with both. But, never stop believing that we cant feel the same way about you that you feel about us. And some of us, have very long memories. I have never been fooled by white gays or straights of colour about their true nature. none of the act by you or them surprise me. But i am angy, just like. Radical can you say that my anger is justified, like yours like your white brothers? Of course not.
I dont have a test on who is black, and never said i did. but claiming that racism doesnt exist in the white gay community is stupid. and i called you an idiot!
And there you go with the “true person of color” bullshit. The funniest thing is that you are now doing exactly what you are so mad about some of the gays on this site doing: You feel marginalized by some gays on this site for blaming blacks as though there were no gay blacks, and now here you are telling me I am not a “true person of colour”, that I “cannot” be black by your twisted definition because I don’t agree with your opinions or your radical fringe anti-white ideology. You do a great job of marginalizing and discriminating yourself. You are one hell of a crackup. I must say, thanks for the laugh.
By the way, the person who commented about burning black churches later apologized and said that ALL churches should be burned down. As well they all should be. But I guess you conveniently missed that self-correction because it would take away from your anti-white ammo.
Too bad irrational people like you will never change. I am done wasting my time on you.
diego Said: “Where was and is the gay(white) community speaking out about racism in the gay community?”
Perhaps you were too blinded by your own racism to notice I have spoken out against condemning the entire black community in other posts. I find racism appalling in any form, even yours.
“Gays of colour, yes we do exist, know all too well about our communities and have been fighting against it for decades”
Yes, I suppose all those on the DL have been fighting from the closet, undercover style. Got some news for you too…some of us white activists have been fighting against homophobia wherever it’s been found, even in the hood.
“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.”
Stereotype much? Could you be any more bigoted? None of those categories apply to me or those I associate with. Funny how you have to attack me personally and not my arguement. Did my words hit a little close to home? FYI, one of my dearest friends is black and gay and I have spent considerable time in “the hood”. Perhaps you should try dealing in facts instead of prejudicial stereotypes and assumptions, lest you be thought a fool.
“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.”
Dickwad? I haven’t heard that term since the 5th grade. Try showing a little maturity if you want your arguement to score any points for intelligence. As far as the white gay community not reaching out to the black community, I agree, but then how much reaching out did the black community do? This reaching out business is a two-way street. If you believe the white gay community isn’t reaching out enough, the get off your arse and do something about it yourself instead of waiting for other people to do it for you.
“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.”
Again, I have spoken out against these very things as I also consider them racist and do not condone any of these actions nor support those who called for such actions. By claiming all whites agree with these racists acts, you are showing your own racism. This is not who I am, this is who you are as proven by your own post. You have condemned yourself.
“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.”
If this is an example of you trying a peaceful solution, then I suggest you look up the word in a dictionary. Your post is inflamatory and label you as a hate-monger. Perhaps you should forward your post to your black leaders and the NAACP and let them see how you are representing their cause of justice thru equality. I stand by my comments and postings and I am quite sure they will find nothing racist about any of them. Unlike you, I adressed the issues at hand without resorting to inflamatory labeling, childish insults & name-calling and threats.
“For gods sake, you people called GAY PEOPLE OF COLOUR NIGGERS at some of these rallies. What is wrong with you?!”
I never did any such thing and I will state here and now that anyone using the term “nigger” in my presence will hear from me. Labels that dehumanize and degrade have no place in my world.
“Oh, your feelings are hurt. I only trust what people say in anger and when drunk because that is when the truth comes out.”
Well you are obviously angry, are you drunk as well? I guess you have just confirmed you are indeed a racist yourself.
“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.”
And your comments and actions will progress gay rights how? How do your spiteful actions, if you actually carried thru with them do anything positive for the gay community in general? Do you think that if these posts have any impact the black or latino commkunity will be spared the wrath and it will rain down only on us white gays? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!
“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!”
You are part of the problem, not a solution if you think you should sit back and wait for white gay people to picket your own churches. Lame threats certainly don’t help your cause either anymore than it does the bigots who want to burn down black churchs. Next time you see one of the racist white gays, smile and say hello, shake his hand and give him a hug and know in your heart there is only the difference of the color of your skin between you, but your hearts are the same.