Prop 8 FAIL

Amid the anger over Prop 8 and the finger pointing towards religious and racial minority groups, Rolling Stone reports that a big chunk of the blame lies elsewhere:

evidence of entrenched homophobia and religious intolerance obscure a more difficult truth. Prop 8 should have been defeated — two months before the election, it was down 17 points in the polls — but the gay-rights groups that tried to stop it ran a lousy campaign. According to veteran political observers, the No on Prop 8 effort was slow to raise money, ran weak and confusing ads, and failed to put together a grass-roots operation to get out the vote.

This article is informative in describing the long chain of fuck-ups that led to the vote on Prop 8, but it also inspires questions about who was running the No on 8 campaign and why the decision was made to 1) not embrace a grassroots campaign strategy and 2) not proudly use actual gay people in the television advertisements (cue Milk rolling over in his grave).

Recently, activist Cleve Jones (portrayed in the film “MILK” by actor Emile Hirsch) said:

“I was frustrated by our (prop 8) campaign because when we defeated proposition 6 we did not do it by purchasing expensive television ads paid for by black tie dinners. That is not how we ran that campaign…we pleaded with everyone in the community to come out. It was a hard sell, but we won that campaign with tens of thousands of ordinary gay men and lesbians going door to door in their own neighborhoods, knocking on those doors saying ‘I am gay, if you vote for this you will hurt me, please do not do it, and that was how we won.’”