Great discussion.

I was chatting with Hilary Rosen yesterday about “what went wrong on 8.” It’s an important conversation that needs to happen if we’re going to turn this around.

Thanks for this.

Digg

Thanks for this!

Prop 8 passed by 24 points (62% to 38%) in 2000, when it was known as the Knight Initiative. When it was struck down in the courts in May of this year, the Mormons and RCC spent $40 million and five months on a well-planned, well-orchestrated campaign to get the public behind it; and as the guests of GRITtv mention, the No on 8 campaign was slow to get started and even slower to understand what needed to be done.

Yet, when the dust settled, Prop 8 only passed by four percentage points, 52% t 48%. If No on 8 had been ready, as the Yes on 8 folks were ready, when the Knight Initiative was overturned in May, I suspect the measure would have been defeated.

Another hopeful sign: The strongest group of persons voting for Prop 8 were those over 65. As Nate Silver shows, if nobody over 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have lost by a point or two.

This does not mean that no outreach between the GLBT and black communities needs to be done. Far from it — it means that, to the contrary of the oh-no-we’re-all-doomed handwringing I’ve seen so many folks committing, marriage equality’s chances are not permanently defeated by Prop 8.

I’m not gay.

I support gay rights.

I do not support teaching of sexual orientation in public schools.

I think that’s where gays lost on Prop 8.

Not gay either but now I don’t see why orientation wouldn’t be included in the current sexual education programs.

BTW, I thought Olbermann did a good job last night breaking this down to the real component, namely love.

Prop 8 will be struck down by the court again. It does not pass the constitutional test.
The no on 8 folks were not nearly as well funded as the mormons at the start. Alot of people believed the ads that were flat out lies. For christ sake, mormons allow bigamy. How sacred could they possibly view marriage. I think the mormons should get started passing a law that says they can only marry once. NO divorce, no excuse, period!

AIDS is killing in the black community in disproportionate numbers.
Until gayness is accepted, rather than stigmatized in the black community this will continue to be the case.
GLBT outreach to the black community is essential in solving this problem.

For christ sake, mormons allow bigamy.

Yeah, but they have God on their side. [g] So it must be OK.

Let me help begin a vigorous discussion of what went wrong, by using my state of Arizona. Look away if you can’ handle some blunt talk.

1. Using federalism as an excuse it’s out of state PACS that march like killer bees into demographically vulnerable states to push their ideology. The majority of the money and support that the sponsors of our ban, Prop 102 came from out of state PACS and donors.

2. In 2006 that same ban was defeated. It had additional language that helped it somewhat, but it still addressed gay marriage.

3. Pro 102 was defeated by a healthy 12 points this time. What happened??
Many blame it primarily on the additional minorities who came out to vote for Obama. I agree.

4. Arizona has a huge GLBT population. We also have a huge Latino population whose religious beliefs oppose abortion, gay marriage and planned parenthood. We have no other large minority groups

5. What we saw was the southern Right wing opponents of gay marriage targeting other less extreme states but who had large Hispanic populations, and used their votes to achieve their goals. It worked brilliantly.

The Hispanic community – once seen screaming down the streets of America demanding their ‘rights’, and with only self-centered idological interests just stripped another huge and also long suffering minority community of their rights.

Good luck with holding on to Planned Parenthood and Roe v. Wade.

Actually Silver (of polling site 495.com) has made a very good point that it was NOT the additional minorities that turned out to vote for Obama that did this. Older minorities would have likely have voted regardless of the Democratic candidate…and some of them who were associated with evangelical and fundamentalist religious beliefs would have voted even if there had been no candidates running.

All in all the fact that Obama drew out younger voters in large numbers actually made this closer than would have been expected given the poor planning and lackadaisical response by those associated with the “No on 8″ campaign.

Hazmaq~ you may not realize it but there was another “socially conservative” initiative on the California ballot besides Prop. 8. Prop 4, which would have required parental notification when teens sought an abortion, went down to defeat quite handily. That was because of PP doing long-term education regarding the impact of such a measure on girls seeking out secret, dangerous and illegal abortions. So the “loss” of Roe v. Wade actually isn’t likely in California.

“I do not support teaching of sexual orientation in public schools.

I think that’s where gays lost on Prop 8.”

Did it occur to you to find out if that claim was actually true. It wasn’t. You bought in to a bald-faced lie. What the christianists object to is that the schools will not be able to teach that same-sex marriage is wrong.

“For christ sake, mormons allow bigamy”

Actually, they don’t. But the Bible does.

When it became apparent that the US would not allow Utah to join as a state unless they banned polygamy, Brigham Young had a “revelation” that God would no longer tolerate polygamy. Convenient, eh? Anyway, Utah became a state, and the minority who refused to give up polygamy were expelled from the church, and formed their own.

`Unfortunately far too many Obama Biden voters subscribe to the same bigotry that Obama and Biden campaigned on. At every opportunity they made sure that America knew that they were just fine with separate but equal, that marriage was between a man and a woman based on their personal religious bigotry. They were far more interested in personal power than doing what is right as they were on FISA. Civil rights are just not their thing.

I think it would be great to teach children about different sexual orientations. Why not? This would go a long way to helping young people who are beginning to realize that they are gay understand and feel okay and perhaps be less likely to commit suicide, and it would help other children grow up into adults who accept being gay as a legitimate orientation. Again, why not? I can testify from personal experience that exposure to heterosexuality and to exclusively heterosexual sex education courses in elementary school did not make me a heterosexual, and I’m quite confident the reverse would not happen either.

This issue of gay marriage often gets trivialized. I’m single and not a big fan of marriage, and I certainly agree that there are many other priorities in this world today besides marriage rights….BUT…my sense is that marriage recognition is key to the full social acceptance of LGBT people and our relationships as legitimate, okay and fully human. Until that acceptance comes, many gay teens will continue to be homeless after being thrown out of their homes, hate crimes against LGBT people will continue, and so on. So, this battle, trivial as it may sometimes feel, is actually quite important in my opinion. I hope we can figure out where outreach may be especially needed (e.g. in Black and Latino communities, in churches, etc) without placing blame on these communities. We all need to be building alliances, not blaming each other. And I’m very encouraged that almost half the voters in California think gay marriage should be legal — that’s a huge victory!

I think we need to stop blaming the LDS church for this one. sure, many Mormon individuals, businesses and even parishes contributed to 8, but in terms of institutional money they were dwarfed by out of state Roman Catholic and evangelical Christian groups such as the Knights of Columbus arm of the Catholic Church, the #1 disclosed institutional
donor, the Catholic US Council of Bishops, the LeHaye-I-millenialist-survivalist-connected CWA, Ayatollah Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and that stupid NJ pro-marriage rethug group, several Chistian Coalition connected individuals and, of course, the fundie Prince family of Blackwater fame. There are only two obvious Mormons in the top 15, both seem to have CA connections and both are acting as individuals. This must be a major double coup for rightwing Catholics and the fundie wingnut fringe – use church funds to amend a sovereign state’s constitution to take away citizens’ fundamental civil rights and then successfully blame their bigoted annihilation of the very concept of church-state separation on those wacky LDS heretics, whom they despise nearly as much as they do gays. God
is crying at their hypocrisy.

Thank you for a great show and stimulating discussions on prop hate. It is my fault for not getting active until too late. Yes I was too late on hate. I do not watch commercial TV. Most of my TV on Dish is FSTV, Link, UCTV, & Movies on paid Movie channels. Lately I began watching Kieth and Rachel on MSNBC. I had not seen the hate ads that our neighbor, 90 years old across the street, that caused her to vote Yes on it. When I began seeing large numbers of Yes signs on front lawns around the neighborhood I became suspicious that something was bigger than I was aware of. So I got involved, but it was too little too late. Now I will have too support Lambda legal. Maybe we should start talking about legal matrimony for all humans regardless of gender and not recognizing holy matrimony or marriage as “legal”. If the State of California charged $5.00 per registration maybe it would bail out the state from our money problems. Think of those poor people who are married but not “legally” because of new a definition.
Bill for Bill & Sue, Goleta CA