Little money or time was spent during the campaign against Proposition 8 on trying to persuade voters in California to change their minds. The lion’s share of the campaign’s resources were spend identifying voters who were already pro-equality and then making sure they turned out to vote on Election Day.

That strategy, it turned out, fell just short of victory, as we all witnessed last Election Day.

Now, some groups in California have changed their tactics. Rather than just trying to turn out more voters who already believe in marriage equality than the other side does, some activists are taking on the infinitely more difficult task of trying to change hearts and minds. Vote For Equality, an organization that is a project of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center, has been doing persuastion work (successfully) since the results came in on Election Day, and this past weekend, the Courage Campaign joined their efforts.

The Courage Campaign organized a Saturday rally in Fresno, California that they called “Meet in the Middle 4 Equality.” Meet in the Middle was designed to show that support for marriage equality in California isn’t limited just to the Castro and West Hollywood neighborhoods. Equality will be won by rallying support in towns, like Fresno, CA, that didn’t vote against Prop 8 last time but could be convinced to in the future by brave activists willing to have person to person conversations about why marriage equality is important to them.

By all accounts, Meet in the Middle was a great success, with thousands of pro-equality voters pouring in from around the state to demonstrate their support for a new ballot initiative in 2010 that would overturn Prop 8.

One city down, thousands to go.

“Are the people of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire more sexually literate than Californians?” asked the National Sexuality Resource Center, a San Francisco-based think tank, naming the states where gays can or soon will be able to wed.

The California Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the ban on gay marriage, known as Proposition 8, in a state that’s home to 14 percent of the nation’s same-sex couples and was the first to offer gays the spousal rights of marriage without being ordered to by a court.

Voters in 2008 passed the constitutional amendment, which trumped an earlier state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

In spite of the setback in the state, gay rights advocates say they still believe what happens there is important no matter the outcome. Supporters and opponents spent $83 million on the Proposition 8 campaign last year, making it the most expensive election on a social issue in the nation’s history.

“Certainly California remains very important in this epic struggle just because it’s so big,” said Richard Socarides, who served as President Bill Clinton’s adviser on gay civil rights.

And because of its size, gay rights advocates say they’ll continue their campaign to win over more voters. Leaders of Equality California and Courage Campaign said they have started canvassing in more conservative parts of the state, working with religious and ethnic groups and otherwise learning from mistakes made during last year’s failed campaign.

“The biggest thing California can do is win back marriage at the ballot box,” said Mary Bonauto, the civil rights director of Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which brought the lawsuit that led to Massachusetts becoming the first state to sanction same-sex marriage.

“We have won marriage in courts, we have even now marriage winning in legislatures,” she said. “To win it with the people would crumble the right wing’s whole house of cards.”

Bonauto said that if California advocates succeeded in getting Proposition 8 reversed, it would mark an unprecedented milestone: 28 other states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage but none have been challenged with a popular vote.

As California gay rights groups prepared to launch a campaign to repeal Proposition 8 at the ballot box next year, two lawyers announced Tuesday they had filed a federal lawsuit challenging the initiative in the hopes of getting the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, the lawyers who represented opposing sides in the 2000 Bush v. Gore election challenge, said they think the high court is ripe to take on the issue. They filed on behalf of two gay men and two gay women.

“I felt it was very important we present the American people and the courts a unified front and tell the courts and the American people through our presence and our participation this is not about right or left or partisan politics,” Olson said. “This is about what we all share as Americans.”

But it wasn’t a move welcomed by all advocates. Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said the suit “sends a powerful message that the time for change has come,” but also warned the lawyers of the “only one shot at the U.S. Supreme Court.”

They and “any attorneys bringing a case that will affect the freedom and legal status of an entire community bear a very heavy responsibility to be certain they have fully considered the consequences,” Minter said.

Gay rights activists also were pressuring President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to work toward repealing the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act. The law prevents couples in states that recognize same-sex unions from securing Social Security spousal benefits, filing joint taxes and other federal rights of marriage.

The focus, however, remained on working though state legislatures and voters to win marriage rights, said Evan Wolfson, executive director of New York-based Freedom to Marry.

“Winning marriage in more states is crucial not only for the families living in those states, but for creating a comfort level that sets the stage for a national resolution,” he said.

The lesson?

That grassroots activism and comprehensive outreach to communities of color and faith are necessary strategies in this fight as we move forward.

The first piece of news to break was that Marc Soloman, the current director of MassEquality will be coming on to lead the campaign to restore and preserve the right to marry for all Californians. Given that Soloman is the only person to have run one of these campaigns before and come out on top, I’m all for his taking this position of leadership. While the Massachussetts fight was very different from last year’s struggle over Prop 8 or what presumably will be a whole other battle in 2010, Solomon’s experience managing the message of a campaign like this one is unparallelled.

The other hiring decision that indicates EQCA has recommitted itself to doing this campaign, and doing it right, is bringing on Andrea Shorter as the coalition coordinator. Shorter’s background is in coalition work– she is the founder of And Marriage for All, an advocacy organization that works to engage communities of color in the movement for equality– and her hiring reveals the increased emphasis EQCA is putting on outreaching to communities they might have failed to reach last time around.

In addition, the Human Rights Campaign announced today that it would be sponsoring additional iterations of Camp Courage, the weekend-long activist training camps that the Courage Campaign has been running since the election. The HRC announcement, in particular, demonstrates a shift in conventional wisdom and an investment in a larger grassroots movement for equality.

While none of this guarantees a victory the next go-around, I think it at least indicates that EQCA has listened to its critics, and made necessary adjustments. So for that, kudos.