Keeping Our Eyes Open

Hey, did you see that snow yesterday? That was fun, I thought, it wasn't much but it was enough to tickle your cheeks and put a thin layer of white on cars, window sills, lawns. Today it's chilly, winter is really here.

Now, a month after the elections, there have been a number of articles looking back at Proposition 8 and other initiatives and how the progressives were beaten by the anti-gay campaigns. Funny how it has gone, at first there was outrage against the Mormon church, which was the major source of funding and support for the repressive movement, but as the dust settles activists are realizing that our side, the progressive side, simply didn't understand what they were getting into. It wasn't only that the Mormons and Catholics put so much into it, the pro-marriage activists failed by underestimating the challenge.

A few months ago I unhappified a few people when I criticized the campaign that was going to fight an anti-transgender referendum here in Montgomery County. The shower-nuts had gotten people to sign petitions to relegalize discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and our side needed to fight back. This was going to require a gigantic education campaign, you would have to teach the public about gender identity and issues involved, it would take not only the conveyance of important facts but a serious attitude adjustment, getting people over the initial gut reaction when you're faced with somebody who is different from you in a way you can't comprehend. The public would have to care enough to vote to support the rights of transgender people, and why would they?

It was going to be a tough fight, and when the group held its first public meeting to announce their strategy and solicit donations, I went to it, and wrote afterwards, "I'm worried." Everybody seemed earnest and committed, but it did not appear to me that they had any idea of the kind of underhanded opposition they would be facing. Those good-hearted people seemed to think that all you had to do was appeal to the higher consciousness of the public and the public would respond to you. They didn't realize that the other side will say anything without regard to truth or accuracy, the other side will do anything no matter how cowardly or gutless, the other side never sleeps, they work surreptitiously and secretly through churches, newsletters, living rooms, talk radio.

Worst of all, to my mind, the people organizing the campaign didn't understand how powerful the other side's symbolism was, the image of a sexual predator, pedophile, or pervert in a dress, lurking in the ladies shower-room, molesting our wives and daughters, protected by the new law. Our side laughed at that image, because in itself it represented everything we disdained. There was nothing in the law that could possibly justify or protect any man going into a ladies room for any sexual reason -- the image was completely irrelevant to the actual issue.

The image had nothing to do with the new law, but it was vivid, emotional, personal. It played on stereotypes of transgender people as "she-males" and worse, weird sexual monsters who will do anything -- anything -- to invert morality and mock ordinary citizens' decent way of life. It invoked protective responses to threats to our families. It unleashed the power of our cultural sexual repression, the fear that lust, once freed, will run wild and destroy us all. The shower-room nightmare was like a scene out of Psycho, alarming and frightening and appealing somehow to a dark side of people that is afraid of unseen and unknown threats. It was nonsense in every way, but man, it was powerful.

"Our" campaign staff wanted to counter that with the slogan "Prohibit discrimination."

There has been a lot of postmortem discussion of Proposition 8 in California, and other anti-gay initiatives that passed in the last election cycle, and one realization is sinking in everywhere. Here's how Rolling Stone has it (note: foul language seems justified here to me):

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 was political malpractice," says a Democratic consultant who operates at the highest level of California politics. "They fucked this up, and it was painful to watch. They shouldn't be allowed to pawn this off on the Mormons or anyone else. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and now hundreds of thousands of gay couples are going to pay the price." Same-Sex Setback: Don't blame Mormons or black voters - the California activists who tried to stop Prop 8 ran a lousy campaign

TeachTheFacts has been fighting for truth, justice, and the American way in Montgomery County for almost exactly four years now. We started out supporting the county school board in getting a decent sex-ed curriculum implemented, and then we supported the County Council in banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Our opponents are a rather lame handful of nuts who usually lose by shooting themselves in the foot. If you want to beat them, all you have to do is put them on television and get them talking. There are a few who can put a sentence together, but after a while you realize that they are trying to justify hatred, and people in our county don't buy into that. The thing is, they are tireless, they never let up, I don't know what motivates them but they keep it up. We have learned a lot dealing with these people, lessons that the progressive community in general hasn't quite grasped yet. The Prop-8 situation is a clear example of that, our side simply underestimated the intensity of the lunacy.

It's ironic that the coalition to define marriage in California as the union between "one man and one woman" was anchored by a church whose founder claimed 33 wives. It's also ironic that the coalition — which framed Prop 8 as a fight to protect California's children — was quietly knit together by the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, who once excused the molestation of children at the hands of a pedophile priest as mere "horseplay." But once the Mormons joined the effort, they quickly established themselves as "the foundation of the campaign," says Frank Schubert, the consultant who directed Yes on 8. "We could count on their money and their people being there early."

It is absolutely ironic that the Mormons, of all people, would be mounting a campaign to define marriage as heterosexual monogamy -- the word "ironic" is used wrong most of the time, but this is an incredibly perfect example of the concept. And the Catholics, well, that is somewhat less ironic, but they do have a problem with priests who prey when they should be praying, they are not in a position to be invalidating someone's heartfelt love.

The Mormon Church has become tentatively involved in our county's controversies, as well. Several of the leaders of the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever are Mormon. The Family Leader Network claims on their web site that they are not affiliated with any church, but they are. With Proposition 8 we saw the LDS church emerge as a major political force, exploiting their tax-exempt status to campaign and influence secular politics in a way this country has never seen before. We need to stay on our toes in Montgomery County and keep an eye on these guys.

The No on Prop 8 campaign, meanwhile, was oblivious to the formidable field operation that the other side was mounting. Worse, its executive committee refused to include leaders of top gay and lesbian grass-roots organizations, which deprived them of an army of willing foot soldiers. "We didn't have people going door to door," admits Yvette Martinez, the campaign's political director. The field operation consisted of volunteers phone-banking from 135 call centers across the state, an effort that didn't begin ramping up until mid-October.

"They had no ground game," says a leading Democratic consultant. "They thought they could win this thing by slapping some ads together. It was the height of naiveté."

Naiveté is not our friend. If we are going to fight for reason and fairness then we will need to keep our eyes open, it is frightening sometimes but we need to be aware of the trickery and ugliness that the other side is capable of. It's hard to fight the sound-bite, it's easy to make fun of it but at the end of the day people are too busy to think things all the way through, you tell them that gay people are recruiting our youth and undermining the traditional family and they'll believe you, that's just how people are. Our side needs to put out a strong and concise message that will get through to the public, we can't rely on conscience, we can't expect people to empathize with someone who is very different from them, we can't expect our argument to be accepted simply because it's sensible.

As we saw in the recent elections, the tide in this country has changed, yes some anti-gay bills passed but at least we the people elected reasonable legislators and executives. We are going to see a progressive shift as the citizens learn that we don't have to live in fear of everything that's different from us. But there has never been a time that you could stop paying attention, we have to go into this with our eyes open.