California, how could you?
A lot of friends are posting to ask "California, how could you?!" Prop 8, which takes away gay people's constitutional right to marriage, passed 52-48. I'm not an expert on it, but here's a little more of the picture:
1) The ads against it were incredibly effective. For people who are already a little queasy over gays, it was just a matter of pointing out that now your children would known and learn about gay people. They claimed teachers would be required to teach about it; opponents said they wouldn't; they countered with footage of grade schoolers on a field trip to a lesbian wedding. What they didn't say is that the kids were there because the lesbian in question was their teacher.
2) For people who don't hate gays, the Prop 8 campaign yanked our chains really hard about how the right to marriage had been defined by a few activist judges up in Sacramento. Instead of positioning 8 as a chance for us to vote on the issue, they presented it as a referendum on whether the people get a voice in government. A vote against 8 isn't really a vote for gay marriage, they said, it's a vote for allowing arrogant, unaccountable judges to bend the laws any way they please.
3) There was a huge powerhouse of grassroots opposition to 8... in San Francisco, where no one was voting for it anyway. Perhaps if those folks had been more spread out we'd have accomplished more.
Actually, Prop 8 got 23% of the vote in San Francisco. I have no idea who those people are, and I'd like to punish them, but isn't being anti-gay and living in San Francisco punishment enough?
1) The ads against it were incredibly effective. For people who are already a little queasy over gays, it was just a matter of pointing out that now your children would known and learn about gay people. They claimed teachers would be required to teach about it; opponents said they wouldn't; they countered with footage of grade schoolers on a field trip to a lesbian wedding. What they didn't say is that the kids were there because the lesbian in question was their teacher.
2) For people who don't hate gays, the Prop 8 campaign yanked our chains really hard about how the right to marriage had been defined by a few activist judges up in Sacramento. Instead of positioning 8 as a chance for us to vote on the issue, they presented it as a referendum on whether the people get a voice in government. A vote against 8 isn't really a vote for gay marriage, they said, it's a vote for allowing arrogant, unaccountable judges to bend the laws any way they please.
3) There was a huge powerhouse of grassroots opposition to 8... in San Francisco, where no one was voting for it anyway. Perhaps if those folks had been more spread out we'd have accomplished more.
Actually, Prop 8 got 23% of the vote in San Francisco. I have no idea who those people are, and I'd like to punish them, but isn't being anti-gay and living in San Francisco punishment enough?