I would love to give you a copy of the handbook, but I don’t have one. I kept it for aobut 15 years. When the oregon anti-gay wars started in the early ’90’s, one of their people I was in contact with requested my copy for the speakers. I didn’t have time to make a copy myself, so I sent him the only one i had with the proviso that he send it back to me after xeroxing. He didn’t, and it is gone.

I admnire that you are so much more positive about our leaderhsip and the campaign than I am capable of feeling. I’m still really angry about their density.

At the beginning of the campaign, I went to speak to (I think) the communications director. I told her I wanted to speak to community groups, and had put my business on hold to allow me lots of time to do so. She said, “We’re not seeing any demand for speakers.” I replied, “Then lets go out and create some.” She said she would get back to me.

Of course, she didn’t. That, and another incident concerning the words we were not supposed to use– children, rleigion, and prejudice– told me that the campaign was a definite waste of time.

At least for me, this is only about acknowledging that the campaign was not perfect. It is only about learning from our mistakes and always striving to do better.

It is just about coming together as a community and finding a way to reverse the damage done to us. I don’t want to lay blame at anyone’s doorstep because I don’t want to be stuck in the past. I want to move forward and do my part in fixing this. I know that is what we all want.

We are all in this together and we WILL make it right! Like almost everyone else I felt ANGER and a DEEP sorrow when this divisive Prop had a majority vote on the wrong side of fairness.

We have to have faith that we only lost the battle and NOT the war!! As much as it hurts, as angry as it makes us, we WILL win this war because we are on the RIGHT side of Justice.

This was a defining moment in our history of oppression and it has re-energized a movement that goes way beyond our CA borders!

I have faith that I will live to see the day when marriage equality will be a reality across the USA, the day when TRUE equality will reign once and for all! Am I hoping for too much? Possibly, but I’m still going to do everything I can to strive for it nonetheless.

“So, who’s really to blame for Prop 8’s passage? I am!”

So let me get this straight. People hate us, and it’s OUR fault if they do?

Jim, if your own White Guilt were a planet, it would be Jupiter: the size of hundreds of Earths.

In related news, she was just asking to be raped. Didn’t you see what that slut was wearing?

Yes I know – I just hope that this mistake will not be repeated next time. I just got through writing another long-winded email to one of the board members of EQCA and among other things it again listed the importance of putting a ‘human face’ to this issue.

It is to me undeniable that we could have and SHOULD have won this fight! When you look at how close it was even with those key mistakes, to me it is clear that we would have won had those things been handled differently. For anyone in the LGBT community to deny that would be encouraging those mistakes to be made again.

I am committed to working with EQCA to get these critical changes made a REALITY, going forward; not just for the fight to undo the damage of Prop 8 but for future struggles which we will most surely be involved in.

Though I disagreed with the AD issue in particular I worked closely with the campaign to do everything I could to help make it a success. In that regard I have NO feelings of guilt because I know I truly did everything possible both financially and volunteer wise.

As an aside I wanted to ask you something. Feel free to say no if you want but I was wondering if it would be possible to read a copy of your handbook? You impress on me that you have some very enlightened views and I think it would be a good learning and growing experience for me as well.

One thing I am ashamed of. Prior to Prop 8 I was not very actively involved in issues I believed in. I mean I voted, donated financially and such but I realized this is NOT enough – at least not for me! The very personal nature of the discrimination of Prop 8 was a pivotal moment in my life when all at once I realized that I HAD to take a more active role in affecting change for causes I believe in. I know in my heart that this will continue to be true for other causes I firmly believe in – not just this one. But it took Prop 8 to make me see that and for that I feel a little ashamed.

One of the things i remember from my work against Briggs was how accessible the people running the campaign were. I remember walking into the office (I think it was on 24th St) and saying “Hi, My name is Ben.” I was asked what I could do. I said, “I’m out of the closet. I can write. I am presentable. I’m not afraid on anyone.” (I was 180 lbs of castro clone muscle, sans mustache, and I wasn’t.)

I spoke a to a few community groups. but I noticed there weren’t enough speakers who knew anything about gay issues. They were merely willing. I remember saying to (I think) Anne Kronenberg, “We need a speaker’s handbook to address all of these issues and questions.” She said that if I wanted to write it, please to go ahead. The 50 page handbook I wrote in about a week’s time was used statewide.

We had one disagreement. I was told that the handbook had to pass a review board of some sort to make sure it was politically correct (the first time I ever heard THAT sarcasm). I replied that I would be happy to remove anything that wasn’t FACTUALLY correct, but they would have to provide a citation. I was a very careful researcher. If it was a matter of someone else’s opinion, being politcally correcter, or merely different from mine, no, that would not be removed, but the differing opinion could be added in. If they didn’t like that, they didn’t need my book. I won on that one. There were a few addendums, but no changes. Nobody telling me I wasn’t on message, or to make things look pretty lest we offend some hypothetical undecided voter, or to avoid certain words like children, religion, and prejudice. That closeted and shame-filled mentality, masquerading as political wisdom, offended me.

I tell this story because it illustrates the difference between the two campaigns. Briggs was open to anyone willing to help, and using them and their abilities to the fullest. I was encouraged this time to phone bank, as if I had nothing else to offer. I tried it and hated every single insincere, dishonest moment of it. Our current leadership– and I use that term with some intention of irony– ran a very closed, insulated campaign. They were listening only to themselves and their political culture, the political equivalent of a hand-job.

Frankly, I knew we were going to lose when Mark Leno told me that they were once again trying to appeal to liberal values, rather than facts. As I wrote earlier: “Let’s ask straight people who are afraid of gay people about how to win gay rights, instead of asking gay people what has worked in their lives. You can see the result of focus group viewpoints.”

Their hearts may have been in the right place, but their heads were suffering from severe recto-cranial inversion.

Actually I don’t think we disagree at all – I am in complete agreement with you. When I said the campaign was well run it was within constraints of the framework that it was housed in.

What I’m really trying to say is that the choice to not put a personal face on this issue was wrong and I think they really do understand that now. But that choice if you really think about it, caused a HUGE ripple effect throughout every aspect of the campaign! Had that one decision been made differently, then many things would have been handled differently in the day to day operations and interaction with voters. Because that decision NOT to put a personal face around this issue SHAPED the entire framework of the campaign. The children of same sex couples would have turned some away from us but I think it would have brought MORE *TO* our side than it would have turned away by far! I believe that decision was the most key flaw in their approach, with the failure to truly reach out to the African Americans being a secondary but also important piece.

I met quite a lot of people in pretty high positions within the campaign but not to the level where I could have influence one way or another over that key decision. I was always skeptical over not having same sex couples represented in the ads myself and I brought it up a few times but they were convinced it was the best way at the time. They were wrong, quite simply put. I know they had a consulting company who suggested this approach and it significantly influenced this decision.

BTW, I finally had a chance to meet folks like Mark Leno, Gavin Newsom, Ron Dellums and so many other supporting politicians through my involvement with the campaign. Mark and Gavin particularly are very riveting speakers and so passionate! We do have some really wonderful and supportive politicians in this state!

I’m reallygoing ot have to disagree iwth you on this issue of the campaign being “well run”. I have written extensively on the subject, so I won’t repost all of that stuff here.

In short: it was run from the closet, with a closet mentality. It hasn’t worked in 30 campaigns in the last ten years, and it won’t ever work.

At the campaign kickoff, I asked Mark Leno personally if campaign leaders were going to do the liberal-tolerance-equality strategy again, pointing out that it has failed repeatedly. Or, were they going to show actual gay people, actual families, and actual lives. You know: reality. He said that focus groups indicated that everybody-make-nice and civil liberties were the way to go. This would move the undecided voters who were so crucial. I made the same point to HRC’s Marty Rouse and several campaign leaders, and got the same response. The approach would be political rather than human, in every sense of both words.

What a concept! Let’s ask straight people who are afraid of gay people about how to win gay rights, instead of asking gay people what has worked in their lives. You can see the result of focus group viewpoints. We have been focused over big-time.

Politics may move undecided voters, but the movement is only as valuable as the last person they spoke to. Human connections move hearts and minds, even minds that are made up. People who know gay people don’t usually vote against them. But it’s easy to vote against someone who is invisible, faceless, a menacing other, instead of friend or family, or even someone you just met on the street. And in No on 8, we were invisible. We saw the supportive, loving parents, but no gay daughter, no grandchildren. No on 8 was uninterested in a speakers’ bureau to reach out to community groups and churches; I gave up asking. They wanted volunteers for phone banking and sign waving, not personal contact with real voters. At a training we were told NOT to use words like children, because Pro-8 people had appropriated the issue. Because we refused to claim it– to claim reality– it was used against us. Likewise, we can’t talk about this ancient and deeply rooted anti-gay prejudice, either, because by calling attention to a reality in our lives, we might offend the very people who call us a threat to family, faith, and country. Newsflash! Our existence offends them.

This all may make sense to professional political people in their world and culture, but not in mine. It fails as a strategy because it embraces THE CLOSET, which is our real enemy. The closet is US. It is making ourselves invisible and unknown, rather than showing the simple fact and humanity of our lives. It is our consent to the lies, our silence in the face of naked prejudice. It is us not standing up for ourselves, and when we don’t, who else will stand with us? I absolutely praise and thank our leaders for their efforts and sacrifices and dedication. But frankly, if our leaders don’t know that we have to stand up for ourselves, as ourselves, then they shouldn’t be our leaders. Because here’s the result: we gay people were barely visible, and more people thought that the standard of living of California chickens was more important than the families of their fellow Americans.

My husband and I were married on Feb 14th, 2005 in Niagara Falls Canada.

I live in San Francisco, CA and wanted to let you know that I am one of those people who the NoOnProp8 Campaign considered a ‘Super Volunteer’. I don’t say this to toot my horn so to speak but really to say that because of my deep level of commitment I got a chance to know several permanent staff members in pretty high positions within EQCA and HRC.

The campaign was run well but there absolutely were mistakes made and we do have to own up to that. I am continuing to work with folks in the Campaign and I have email addresses of EQCA board members which I received directly from Geoff Keors at an appreciation event in San Francisco last month.

There are two key areas where I see that mistakes were made. 1) We did not reach out to the African American community well enough. 2) The TV and radio ads were too ‘soft’.

Quite honestly I can tell you that I believe there was an assumption (not on purpose) that the African American community would be WITH US because they know all too well what oppression was like. I think it was sub-consciously assumed that they would just automatically understand our plight.

Regarding the TV ads, the political strategists felt strongly that having ads which depicts same sex couples (particularly ones with children) would back-fire on us and turn more people against us than it would FOR us. So instead they opted for ‘softer’ ads which really did not put a ‘personal face’ on the issue. In their defense I have actually been on forums where some who voted NO said they would have voted YES if we HAD aired ads like that.

However, what I think we know now is that both of these assumptions were inherently wrong. We really should have reached out to the African American community more actively and let them know WHY we equate this struggle to the Civil Rights movement they were engaged in.

I think we also realize that the ads should have been more FORCEFUL. E.g., we SHOULD have had ads which really put a ‘personal face’ to the issue of Marriage Equality! We should have let the public see REAL LOVING SAME SEX COUPLES and their children – let people know from a PERSONAL level just how much damage to FAMILIES Prop 8 would really do!

In the end I think these ‘personal face ads’ would have turned a LOT more undecided people to our side!

But we are where we are and we have to move on and somehow undo the damage which was done with Prop 8.

We should reach out to all people and let them know of our stories. Ask them to engage in our struggles while we show concern for and become engaged in theirs. There are many Ultra Conservative people who will NEVER be convinced (you can see many examples of this on TH) but there are a LOT more who just need to hear our personal stories and they will become involved in our JUST struggle for Equality.

We are hopeful that the CASC will do the right thing and overturn Prop 8 as an improper Revision (not an amendment) but we obviously cannot afford to count on this and lose ground in the mean time.

It will be up to all of us to turn this around, for as CA goes so goes the NATION!! If we are the ultimate victors in CA we WILL win the NATION in time. This is why the anti-gay forces (most from out of state) were willing to spend MILLIONS on this campaign, because they know this too.

Please visit http://noonprop8.com and http://www.eqca.org for ways to stay involved.

By the way, this is not to lay blame on our LGBT community but rather to just acknowledge that the campaign was not perfect and like anything in life, mistakes were made.

Like everything else in life we learn and do better next time. And next time we WILL WIN, because TRUTH and JUSTICE are on our side!

Let’s hear it for the LGBT community!!