VIDEO: NOM's Maggie Gallagher Rubs In Our Defeat In Maine, But Sadly, She's Correct

I'd rather suffer severe rope burn than listen to Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage, but sometimes the fight for equal rights demands we listen to our opposition to better counter them.

Only if I had a spoonful of sugar handy . . .



The hardest part about what Maggie says is that a chunk of it is true. We had a big leading advantage in Maine and we lost it.

So what are we doing wrong?

As I have said before, Equality Maine has done amazing work in the state, building a strong grassroots infrastructure while doing the everyday task of educating residents on LGBT issues.

On top of that, the NO on 1 campaign did learn from the defeat in California and applied most but not all the lessons learned expediently.

We still lost. And hearing Maggie point out these facts is equivalent to sticking ice picks in my ears.

It's a sad fact we need to face: our messaging is not working.

Terry Leftgoff, who formerly served as the highest ranking openly gay officer of the California Democratic Party and oversaw numerous campaign efforts, wrote in an email (shared with permission by Rex Wockner) about our messaging from the NO on 1 campaign:

"I believe it is clear: we must radically reinvent our messaging, tactics and strategy...

"Most importantly, there was no effective response to predictable lies about children and schools, the identical lies made a year earlier during Prop 8.

"The response both times was to validate the implied homophobia by denying/agreeing that we don't teach about marriage or gays in school: 'Oh no, we should never talk about those gays because they're bad.' This validates and surrenders an emotionally charged subtext with an specious intellectual response; taken in isolation, it is a loser. Rather we need to develop strong proactive and affirmative messages that completely redirect the debate and reach higher to universal American principles and human respect. And we need to hit early and hit hard."

I have to agree with what Terry says and I have been saying so for some time. Again, this is not a criticism of the amazing, hardworking people behind the NO on 1 campaign, but an evaluation of us as a whole, the LGBT population and allies, as we struggle to define the message that we know innately - that we deserve equal rights - and translate it to the masses so that they will be motivated to vote with us.

It's no easy task. Otherwise, we wouldn't have lost 31 states. But where do we begin?

"There are a number of ways to accomplish this," Terry believes. "One way is to effectively portray the real effect denigration and rejection has on us and our children. It is about gut empathy. Many voters can get that and it is completely missing from our arsenal."

Just as the Yes on 1 campaign showed children acting sad for the cameras while at school, "suffering" from "homosexual marriage being forced upon them," we need to show our very real families really suffering from being treated unequally and forced to live with state sanctioned discrimination.

I believe New Jersey takes a big step in the right direction with their new marriage ads. This ad is so powerful, so raw, it should have been our strategy from day one.



(View the other ad)

The direction this ad takes can also be applied to countering the opposition's school argument about how LGBT students and children of LGBT families suffer at schools simply because of who they are.

We have lost in 31 states. But you can view that from a different angle. The ball is in our court in 31 states. We can now choose when to go back to the ballot. This time we won't be on the defense, forced to forge a campaign with little time. We'll be on the offense. We can now learn from our 31 defeats and turn them into victories. It takes time, diligence, sweat and tears - it will be scary, but we can do it. The power is on our side now.

We must use this power wisely.

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EVENT: Learn about messaging from some of our top experts. Vote For Equality is hosting, "Why Messaging Matters." Limited seating. First come first serve. Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 7pm.

I highly recommend this. It will dissect our campaign ads and the opposition's and evaluate what worked and what didn't. Arm yourself with this knowledge. It's so important moving forward a this crossroad in our movement.

UPDATE: Op-Ed: Prop 8 - Ours to Lose? Nope.

UPDATE: Matt Foreman's Op-Ed has caused quite a stir. This is always good because it forces people to see the campaign from a different perspective, possibly learning something along the way. But it's also caused sharp criticism of Matt's argument. Terry Leftgoff, whose original review of the campaign motivated Matt's breakdown, is working on a counter response. Stay tuned.

Matt Foreman program director of The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, has written an op-ed piece on the No on 8 Campaign. Instead of focusing on where it went wrong, he focuses on the near insurmountable obstacles of changing views on marriage in 90 days. (This is an indirect response to Terry Leftgoff's evaluation of the No on 8 campaign.

California's Proposition 8--Ours to Lose? Nope. It was always an Uphill Climb.

A lot of people have been saying that Prop 8 was our side's to lose and that missteps by the No on 8 Campaign snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Those analyses ignore hard core obstacles and fundamentals underlying the contest, including how hard it is to hold and move opinions on marriage in the narrow confines of a campaign.

I need to start by saying that I had nothing to do with the No on 8 Campaign. Because the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, where I work, has been so deeply involved in public education work in support of marriage equality, the law literally precluded any contact or coordination with the electoral campaign. So, as a purely armchair quarterback it's pretty easy for me to catalogue things I -- in my infinite wisdom -- would have done differently. But I also know that even if everything -- every single thing -- had gone our way, it still would have been incredibly hard to win by anything more than a tiny margin. Here's why.

Putting Minority Rights Up to a Popular Vote: the Difficulty of Winning

First off, it's nearly impossible for minorities to win or defend their rights at the ballot box. Californians have demonstrated that time and again, voting to outlaw affirmative action, to deny grade school education and non-emergency medical care to undocumented children, and to specifically permit race discrimination in housing. This profound disadvantage was exacerbated by the fact that marriage is in a class by itself as an issue. Everyone has an intimate, personal relationship with marriage and has an opinion -- usually visceral -- about it. True, over time people are moving toward marriage -- we've quite amazingly gained about one point per year since 2000. But within the narrow time constraints of a campaign -- under 90 days -- it is pure fancy to think there's a "movable middle" on marriage. At best there was movable sliver.

More on that in a bit.

Our Opponents' Base -- Huge, Solid, Energized

Second, the other side had a huge, largely unmovable, energized base. We didn't. No surprise but they had older people all sewn up. While we won among all voters under 65, more than two-thirds (67%) of voters 65 or older voted for Prop 8. That alone -- yes, alone -- was enough to override our majority support among all younger age groups. Anyone who thinks a 90-day campaign -- even a flawless one -- is going to overcome the imprint of homophobia on those born before World War II needs to think again.

More...

In addition to older people, the other side also had a stranglehold on regular churchgoers. More than two-thirds (70%) of people who worship at least once a week voted for Prop 8 and they make up nearly half (45%) of the electorate. Yes, our side got an equally large proportion of people who hardly ever attend church (70%), but they comprise only 29% of the vote. Anyone who thinks it is easy to overcome homophobia that's reinforced on a weekly basis from a person's own house of worship doesn't appreciate the role of religion in so many people's lives or its pervasive
use as a rationale for voting for Prop 8: an astonishing 94% of "Yes" voters said "religion" or the "Bible" was most influential in deciding how to vote.

What does combining older voters, frequent churchgoers and Republicans (81% of who voted for Prop 8) yield? A rock solid, close to 50% of the vote, that's what. How solid? Nearly three-quarters (73%) of those who voted for Prop 8 said nothing -- that's right, nothing -- would have changed their mind. And almost all of the rest of them couldn't really name anything real that would have changed their minds. For example, the most common answer offered by these folks was "calling same sex marriage
by another name" -- an option not on the ballot.

Does this mean we can't ever move older voters, Republicans and frequent churchgoers? Of course not. My parents -- both 76, conservative Republicans and devout Catholics -- are prime examples. While they could not be more pro-marriage now, I know in my heart that it's only because my partner (now spouse) and I have been a part of their lives for years -- we could never have moved them in the 90 days the Prop 8 campaign essentially had.

Support on Our Side -- Smaller and Squishy

Our side? Not so big and not so solid. At best, we LGBT people make up 6% of the vote and unlike the fervor from our opponents' much larger base we weren't united on marriage equality. (Two polls said 5% of the LGBT community -- or 1% of the total vote -- actually voted "Yes.") I'm still hearing the refrain "I don't know why we're fighting for marriage -- I don't believe in it" or "It's not my issue." I think this is because for years we've mainly presented marriage as a package of rights -- like a
better dental plan -- than what it's really about, recognition of equal humanity. Whatever the reasons -- they were united and energized; we weren't.

But more important, unlike our opponents, our base beyond LGBT people is squishy on its leading edge. Going into the Prop 8 contest, only a slim majority of Californians (54%) even believed that our relationships are moral. (This figure also was our high point in the superficial public pre-election polls to which so much significance was attached.) This slim majority is all our side had to work with. After all, no one who thinks we're immoral is going to vote to protect our access to the ultimate societal institution used to judge and control sex, procreation and "family values." At the same time, it's hardly a given that people who do not see us as immoral are automatically for marriage equality.

The Ick Factor

In fact, many of those people are still deeply uncomfortable with homosexuality. This "ick" is and always has been our Achilles heel, something our opponents skillfully exploit time and again. Lots of folks I respect have been saying if only the No on 8 Campaign had put up or hit back with forceful, to-the-heart ads featuring gay and lesbian families -- instead of those soft ones with parents or surrogates like Sen. Diane Feinstein -- we would have won. I desperately want to agree, but can't.

The sad reality is that our movables get all wobbly -- they blanch, they stammer, they get visibly uncomfortable -- when faced with the reality of our couples, our families, our children. I've personally seen it dozens of times in focus groups, in one-on-one interviews, and in my own life and my friends' lives. Ads, for example, that make you and me cheer don't work with them at all, they backfire.

What's this about? The short answer is that the ick factor is alive and festering even among people who want to suppress it. These are people who truly want to be fair and who don't want to hurt other people. At the same time, they remain deeply uncomfortable with homosexuality and marriage goes right to the heart of their discomfort, given that sex is central to marriage.

Ads that Move Us Don't Move those We Need to Move

In 2004, when I was at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, we -- like so many people now -- were sick of our side resorting to intellectualized arguments like "Don't write discrimination into the constitution" when the other side was going for arguments that hit the heart and emotions. We were frustrated that our side's campaigns almost never put up ads showing our families speaking in emotion-based arguments in support of marriage.

With no small amount of self-righteousness, we taped a dozen ads featuring gay and lesbian couples speaking from the heart, many with heart-wrenching stories. LGBT loved them. But when we showed them to voters who were opposed to anti-gay discrimination but weren't there on marriage (that is, the movables) all we were able to get from a few people was a hint of empathy, but absolutely no movement on marriage. It was stunning -- incredibly hard to witness. Our elaborately planned campaign had to be scrapped -- we couldn't justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that made us feel good but didn't move anyone else.

Closer to home, nearly three years ago the Haas, Jr. Fund, Gill Foundation, the David Bohnett Foundation, Ambassador Jim Hormel and others invested nearly $500,000 to understand what would move Californians to support marriage equality and how to address the deeply conflicting views the mushy middle holds about LGBT equality. Once again, ads featuring gay people -- individuals or couples or families -- just did not work. What did work were messages that pushed people to think about the issue in a
new way, namely, asking them how would they feel if they were in our shoes. But again, gay and lesbian people didn't work as the messengers.

That's where the "Garden Wedding" ad came from -- the message being delivered silently by a bride facing numerous obstacles trying to get down the aisle that ended with the tagline "What if you couldn't marry the person you love?". Did I like the ad? Absolutely not.



Did it work? Absolutely. Let California Ring conducted rigorous testing in the Santa Barbara media market last year. A baseline poll found that only 36% of people there supported marriage equality, 8-10 points below the state average. That was followed by a substantial buy for the Garden Wedding ad, coupled with field organizing. A follow-up poll showed that support for marriage equality grew significantly, including a 16% jump among younger voters (as opposed to zero growth in markets where the campaign did not run). More tellingly, on Election Day, Santa Barbara defeated Prop 8 by 10 points (compared to it passing Prop 22 by 14 points in 2000). Santa Barbara was the only county in Southern California to vote No on 8 and the only thing that was different was the Garden Wedding campaign.

Why did it work? Instead of asking viewers to accept a gay couple -- which was simply too much too much for many people -- the ad provided them a way to be empathetic that was more comfortable to them. This made the issue about who they are -- fair minded, not bigoted -- rather than about whether they approve of gay relationships. Sadly, our side was unable to raise the millions required to take the ad statewide in the years and months before Prop 8 qualified for the ballot. Part of this failing was the simple reality that it's very hard to raise money in the absence of a campaign and crisis; the other main reason was that gay donors didn't understand the power and appeal of the ad and didn't step up to fund it.

Where Gay and Lesbian People Don't Make Good Messengers and Where They Do

Here's another painful reality all this research again showed: using gay and lesbian people as messengers not only failed to move people in our direction, it actually hurt us -- driving movables against marriage equality. Over and over the same result: showing them ads with gay and lesbian individuals or couples pushed people the wrong way. And ads that included children with their gay or lesbian parents did even worse. That's why the "Yes on 8" campaign so prominently featured children in its ads.

Think about friends who tell you their relatives are OK with them being gay or lesbian so long as they don't talk about it. Why do so many of us find it so incredibly hard to bring up gay issues with co-workers or when we visit our families over the holidays? Or when we do, what about the painful silence or uncomfortable glances that so often follow? Think your Aunt Jane -- who's only recently started to be nice to your partner -- is going to see a television ad and suddenly think, "Darn, I've been wrong all along about this gay marriage thing!"? Think again.

I am not saying we shouldn't be putting our lives, stories and faces front and center over and over again or that we can't move people solidly to our side. Most of us have seen how taking our lives up close and personal to people around us does, in fact, create change. Moreover, having these direct, real conversations is the only way we're ever going to squelch the ick and inoculate voters from attacks that exploit it.

What I am saying is that we can't leave this hard work until the last minute -- which is what a campaign really is. We can't expect some brilliantly crafted ads -- coming from our collective heart -- to be the silver bullets that kill anti-marriage ballot initiatives in the heat of a campaign, when there is no time and the other side is assaulting our movables with carefully crafted messages designed to exploit every
anti-gay fear and myth. Instead, we need to move people beyond short-term political campaigns and before they get underway.

Moving Forward

Yes, I do think we could have won -- by a fraction of a point -- if everything had gone our way. But everything didn't go our way, including mistakes our side undoubtedly made and things beyond our control like the Mormon President/Prophet's ordering his faithful to fuel the "Yes" campaign. That gave our opponents a two-to-one money advantage 60 days out, something few campaigns of any sort, anywhere, are able to overcome.

As numbing, insulting and painful as our loss was, let's take real pride in the fact that we moved the needle nine points on marriage -- yes, marriage -- in less than eight years. Of course we must face up to and learn from our missteps. But rather than getting caught up in endless recriminations of our recent loss, let's focus on the long term work ahead -- how to build our social movement to win complete equality in California and across the nation.

From a big picture view that means ramping up education and organizing within churches, among younger voters, and in people of color and rural communities. But more important it is what each of us can and must do everyday: having those hard, from the heart talks with our friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers. Time is once again on our side, let's make the most of it.

Two Different Views on the No on Prop 8 Campaign

Lorri L. Jean, CEO of the LA Gay & Lesbian Center and Exec Committee Member of the No on 8 Campaign, has posted an FAQ about the failed campaign here.

One particular question of notice for me was how they decided what ads to run. Her response:

"Steve and Celinda and their teams conducted numerous polls and focus groups to ascertain which messages were most effective with undecided voters. The polling consistently showed that about 40% of the voters were firmly in favor of Prop 8 and 40% were firmly against it. That left 20% that were either leaning or undecided. That was the population to whom the advertisements were targeted.

"The polling and focus groups showed a number of things. For example, use of the words “hate” or “discrimination” was not effective with undecided voters; in fact, it made them less inclined to support the No on 8 position. Use of the terminology “treating people differently under the law” was found to be much more effective and made undecided voters more inclined to support the No on 8 position. Our experts advised that the most effective way to win over undecided voters was to heed the lessons of the polling and focus groups. These were different messages than would have been used if we were trying to shore up our base rather than attempting to persuade undecided voters."

On the other side of the equation is Terry Leftgoff, who formerly served as the highest ranking openly gay officer of the California Democratic Party and oversaw numerous campaign efforts, and calls the No on 8 campaign "bungled" and "ineffective." You can see his guest post here.

When it came to the ads, he says:

More..."The sanitized media messages smacked of a campaign by focus group. Such an outdated orthodox approach should have been over-ridden by common sense and political savvy.

"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. Worse, there appeared to be no effective Black or Latino strategy."

In my honest opinion, I agree with Terry. The No on 8 campaign smacked of self-homophobia, ashamed to show our diverse face to the world that has clearly indicated, when presented with the personable face of the gay community, is receptive to us and our call for equal rights. The campaign kept us in the closet, fearful of the world that is already changing. The sad irony - it was the leadership of the campaign that was stuck in the past, unaware and out of touch of the changing world around them.