Even in famously liberal San Francisco, we had to go through the process of trying to pass a simple domestic partnership law five times, and we lost twice. If you run up an unbroken string of victories in any battle for civil rights, that simply means you waited too long to get to work. Change that matters is never smooth or easy.I understand the anger and deep disappointment over the result of Prop 8. We all seemed to think that here in "liberal" California such an amendment would never pass. The resentment is deep and it hurts like a punch in the gut and a blow to the head. But what we can't do is let these emotions overtake us. Our community can't afford to stay angry. Yes...protest. Yes...let it be known from the Oregon border to San Diego County that we will not let this stand. But then...back to work.
It will be important to go over the campaign carefully and learn from our mistakes. But we need to resist the temptation to blame ourselves for the loss. The perfect campaign hasn’t been run anywhere yet. Thousands of very good people worked their hearts out on this, and they deserve our thanks. The victims of an injustice should never be blamed for failing to end it unless they don’t try. And you can’t say that we didn’t try, and try damn hard.
We didn’t lose by much. Eight years ago, on virtually the same question, we could only get 39 percent. On Tuesday, we got over 48. While our opponents may be celebrating now, the handwriting is on the wall. They won’t be able to hold on much longer. There are other states where we’ll be able to get marriage in the next few years, and others where we’ll get domestic partnerships and civil unions.
We’ll be back in California. And we’ll win. You can depend on it.
Cole is right on the money: The handwriting is on the wall. We lost this thing by a slim margin compared to the last time such hate was on the ballot. Slowly but surely we're changing minds. Our task following Tuesday's loss is to get up, brush ourselves off, and change more minds.
Californians under 30 voted "no" on Prop 8 in huge numbers, and in them I place some faith in the future. But if we want to overturn this sooner rather than later, we need to not only bring more of the younger voters to our side, we need to show the older generations - the parents and grandparents who seem to be stuck in an antiquated mindset - as well as the African-American community - who voted for this in huge numbers - that these marriages in no way diminish their own, that marriage between two people who love each other and want to make that commitment to each other is actually a conservative value. Rather than lash out at these groups and widen the rift, we need to bring them into our social circles. Getting to know us, realizing that we share the same hopes and aspirations, is the one tried and true way to get them on our side.
It's not going to be easy, and we'll need to expand the base of our fight outside of the normal organizations (with all due respect HRC, you didn't really take on this fight until it was too late); and we'll have to push key politicians much harder (Obama, Schwarzenegger, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton...you all should have stepped up to the plate; and the folks who ran No on Prop 8 should have gone out of their way to solicit the support of those leaders). Rather than wait until another hate-filled initiative is placed on the ballot, we need to get to work now.
So...mourn, get angry (but don't do anything harsh), march peacefully, let the haters know that this will not stand...and then...let's get this thing overturned.
