Comments on: Three Important Questions To Ask Before Mounting A Campaign To Overturn A Marriage Ban

By: Greg Hacke

Greg Hacke — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:49:55 +0000

Jim,

Excellent article, but are the people that need to see it reading it? I hope you send it to some people in leadership positions or at least I hope SOMEONE in the Maine leadership and elsewhere is discussing these same issues.

In a similar vein, I am disgusted by the number of times I will see an article in the gay press (Advocate and BLADE) but they do not not encourage or give their readers any way to get involved. At the least, every story should have contact information for these anti gay politions or companies. I aways try to contact these companies when I can. It works in a positive direction too, I thanked Safeway for firing the checkout counter bitch in DC who called two customers “fucking fags”. I sent a thank you to the Swedish embassy thanking them for being a gold level sponsor of DC Pride(imagine, a foreign country sponsoring the Pride celebration in our nation’s capital)I had to look the contact info up myself for both of them, the gay media was no help. Whenever I post a comment I try to do more than just vent, I provide a web link to a resource or contact info, so people can follow my motto “IT’S BETTER TO LIGHT ONE CANDLE THAN TO CURSE THE DARKNESS . . .THEN THROW SOME GASOLINE ON IT”

I’ll end with a useful and entertaining web resource ” The Cost of Bishop Drag and Bling” Source: http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/11896488/1685814554/name/$30,000+for+vestments+%28weep%29.pdf

By: cd

cd — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 07:49:09 +0000

Imho the error in California was to rely on appealing to people’s charity/benefit of the doubt given gay people, which was very pre-2004. Since Massachusetts legalized & the subsequent backlash the benefit of the doubt is no longer given gay people/gay rights.

IOW, Undecideds and Don’t Knows always end up voting for the other side. This kind of strategizing how to push seemingly malleable voters is good fun, but the record seems to be that in the end 95+% of people vote the way they leaned prior to all campaigning.

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:23:43 +0000

Sorry to be cynical, but people don’t vote for. They vote against.

Give them something to vote against. Point out just how scary it is to let one church dictate law – especially one that molests children.

Point out how scary it is to let policy be decided by haters – especially the God Hates Fags folk.

Make it about THEM. And just like they pulled rare (if even existing) stories to scare the masses, the anti-gays really almost do it for us. I mean we don’t really even need the Phelps’, quotes from Brian Brown are bad enough.

People really want to like themselves. And even more, they want others to like them. Put it in their mind that if they vote against marriage, then they are like these crazy, hateful, evil, insane people. And no one likes a hater.

(or at least keep this idea present in our campaign. Yeah, its the low road… but unlike their smear campaign, ours would at least be an honest portrayal of the leaders of the anti-gay movement. Some of them literally are not mentally fully functioning and some of them really are motivated by purest evil.)

By: Theo

Theo — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 18:08:44 +0000

Excellent post, Jim. After I saw that video of Schubert, the missing element in our side’s campaign – the appeal to voter self-interest – became so obvious, I wanted to scream. Appeals to fairness and equality apparently get you to 47-48% in a blue state. If you want 50% plus 1, you need to craft an argument that appeals to voter self-interest. It doesn’t have to be a compelling argument, just plausible. Just as Schubert’s “schools” argument is just barely plausible for the voter who is not considering the matter very deeply.

In Maine, the failure to identify and develop a campaign theme that appealed to voter self-interest is primarily the fault of the outfit hired to do pre-campaign focus groups and polling. That outfit was Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

Schubert got his a-ha moment, but for some reason, we didn’t even though we were paying professionals to steer us in the right direction. Greenberg was also retained by the No on 8 campaign, and there too there was a complete failure to identify and develop a self-interested campaign theme.

We should be watching closely to see if EQME hires Greenberg yet again or if they will go with someone else. That will be a good sign as to how seriously they are taking the lessons of their last defeat.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:35:23 +0000

1. Make our opponents the issue in ways that appeal to the “it’s all about me” voter:

They’re lying again. Don’t let them play you for a fool.

Stand up to the rich, out-of-state power brokers and their secret donors.

You have to obey the law. Why don’t they?

They’ve ignored the law again and again. Don’t let them get away with it.

What will they ban next? Divorce?

Don’t let them impose their personal religious views on you.

Maggie Gallagher Srivastav wants to make her beliefs the law of the land. But which beliefs is she trying to impose? Mormon? Catholic? Hindu?

2. Go for a two-part law: a) permit couples to marry, regardless of sex, and b) permit some marriage-like benefits for unmarried couples, including straight couples.

By: F Young

F Young — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:35:24 +0000

Another strategy might be to turn the ennemy’s strength into a liability, ie to focus on their secret financing.

“Who is financing the ‘No on 1′ campaign, and why are they keeping it a secret?”

And to counteract the softness of the pro-gay vote:

“Polls show that most people of Maine support marriage equality, but, frankly, your opinion doesn’t count, not unless you vote.”

By: Steven B

Steven B — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 06:30:33 +0000

I think R. Watson has the right idea for those situations where we have to fight a marriage amendment campaign.

By: R Watson

R Watson — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:13:03 +0000

I think the issue of religious fundementalism in the schools is compeling too– I would leverage more of the bizarre things religion has tried to impose on education..like dinosaurs on the Ark– and you could even point out that the Bible was used to rationalize that the world is flat.

By: R Watson

R Watson — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:03:47 +0000

This article is right on. We need to tell this story in our future campaigns:
1> Same gender marriages save everyone money. The Congressional budget office showed that marriages give families the ability to take care of each other and not rely on the government.
2> Same gender marriages strengthen the concept of marriage: show a child talk about learning that marriage was important by seeing a classmates parents who got married. That gay families will exist anyway and if they are not married, it sends childrent the message that marriage may not be needed anyway.
3> Stable relationships support everyone. Show the statistics on marriage and mental health. If others are unstable, it adds cost to public assistance
4> Same sex marriage bosters the economy- show all positive stats from wedding booms in places where they have occured.
5> Show kids from families where their parents were able to marry and interview them on the impact–not on why it was good for their parents or right for their parents, but good for them, and their attitude on marriage
6> Feature a recent gay hero, allowed to come out after DADT is gone, who wants to marry his or her brave spouse who held down the home front in secret
7> Support with an education campaign focused on not long ago when marriages were arranged for a variety of reasons, none of them being love. Show how love was the evolveing concept of marriage at the time then, and it is now. “What does love have to do with it?” …

There are a few to start with. I bet there are better ones that make it relevant to the “whats in it for me” voter…

By: F Young

F Young — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 02:30:28 +0000

“…why aren’t people afraid of the Christian teachers pushing their fundamentalist agenda on our schoolchildren? Why don’t they see the threat to religious diversity if one group gets to say that ANYONE else’s group is wrong?”

@Kate Yes, I think that is a worthwhile message to test. Something along the lines of:

“Once we start letting powerful churches impose their views on marriage, how long will it be before they start dictating their views on divorce?”

“Do we really want to allow churches to decide whether your civil marriage is valid, and whether you can ever divorce?”