Gay Marriage Backers Explain Why They Lost Proposition 8 (It Was The Values, Stupid! Alert)

Los Angeles Times ^ | 11/20/2008 | Shelby Grad

[goldstategop]

There's been a lot of outrage from the No on Proposition 8 camp since California voters approved a ban on gay marriage. But until now, there has been less soul searching about what went wrong. But Terry Leftgoff, founder of the Gay and Lesbian Business Assn. of Santa Barbara, has a thoughtful piece on WeHo News looking at how the opposition to Proposition 8 fell short. It did, he says, on several levels: A mixed message, failing to respond to attacks from Yes on 8 forces, little black and Latino outreach. A snippet:

The No on 8 campaign began by allowing the Yes on 8 proponents to define the debate and it was never able to recover. This violated the first rule of political campaigns, which is to never let your opponent define you first. After a near fatal slow start, every emotional attack ad from Yes on 8 received a tepid intellectual response from No on 8. This violated another rule of political campaigns, which is to quickly respond in equal kind to an attack so it is not allowed to penetrate the public mind. Instead of running a diverse multi-message campaign of persuasion, the media message was emotionless, monotone and uncompelling. In short, the media messages failed to move or even educate voters about the issue and instead appealed to a single abstract principle -- equality -- that was not sufficiently persuasive or connected to the content of the proposition.

[Repeal 16-17]

The No on 8 campaign began by allowing the Yes on 8 proponents to define the debate and it was never able to recover. This violated the first rule of political campaigns, which is to never let your opponent define you first. After a near fatal slow start, every emotional attack ad from Yes on 8 received a tepid intellectual response from No on 8. This violated another rule of political campaigns, which is to quickly respond in equal kind to an attack so it is not allowed to penetrate the public mind.

TRANSLATION: Those who are pro-traditional marriage are "emotional" idiots and we need to shout them down.

[ari-freedom]

they want to say they are for gay marriage because they are for love and monogamy and then they run around half naked and attack people

[N3WBI3]

Taking grade school kids to a gay wedding a few weeks before the vote did not help ;) ... Well it did help depending on your view..

[Eagle Forgotten]

You are right. But what scares the devil out of me is that, every time the vote is taken on the gay marriage issue, the margin by which the good guys win, is narrower.

That's the key point, IMO. Some Prop 8 opponents want the courts to set it aside. The more realistic ones, though, are simply preparing for another referendum.

Conservatives may not want to admit this, but the Obama candidacy helped to pass Prop 8. Blacks turned out in large numbers and they also tended to support Prop 8. Obama won't be on the ballot in 2010.

[AnnFor8]

What I don't even get is they had so much of an upper hand.

When you looked at the ballot for Prop 8 it stated ARE YOU FOR GAY MARRIAGE?

If someone chose not to read it and just marked “no” that was in their favor...

They also raised a lot, being in the millions, more money than the “Yes on 8” campaign.

And everyone knows someone that's gay...so it's just ethics really, what's more important; the right to have gays marry or the way future generations will be brought up.

My mom and I were watching a fairly older show on television and the “husband and wife” couldn't even sleep in the same bed together! And now you can get close to nothing, pertaining to the amount of clothing actors/actresses wear, on the television which a 3 year-old is accustom to watching!

My generation is the one coming up and what I can't fathom is why my generation wants their offspring to be raised in filth and disgust! If it hadn't passed I can almost guarantee that in 5th grade sex between a man-man and woman-woman would be taught because it would than be discrimination to exclude it.

And why is it everyone loves democracy...until it doesn't bend to their wishes?

[Chode]

i guess being filthy disease ridden queers never crossed their minds...

[Carry_Okie]

IMO it had nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with the indoctrination currently going on in public schools.

IOW, in the long run we've lost this battle unless we undo that body of existing legislation.

[dbz77]

They've blamed every one else but themselves for their defeat. Even now the queerly beloved are clueless about why they lost on Proposition 8. Let me spell it out for them: IT WAS THE VALUES, STUPID!

How true. Note that they hid the queers during the campaign.

[dbz77]

As Solomon Brown put it, “”They wanted change for the country but weren’t going to change their religion.”

[dbz77]

“The door’s wide open now! It’s gonna happen! Whether ya like it or not!”

Prop 8 passed whether they like it or not.

[dbz77]

The whole 50% failure rate comes from many of the same people who marry multiple times

Some people really like weddings.

[dbz77]

Has anyone ever considered the fact that same-sex “marriage” was not seen as a civil right either during the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the Civil War, or the Civil Rights Movement?