Last month, North Carolinians voted 61-39 percent to amend their state constitution to ban same-sex marriages and civil unions. That’s led to debate over whether the campaign against the amendment used effective messages in TV ads and other media. As the Washington Blade reports, some have expressed concerns that:
messages in TV ads [stressed] the harms the amendment would have on straight unmarried couples. … Campaign officials said they believe the ad was effective in showing how the amendment would have serious consequences for unmarried couples, gay or straight, and it likely persuaded some voters to oppose the amendment. …
Leaders of the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families said they chose [a] message focused on how Amendment One goes far beyond banning same-sex marriage and, among other things, would ban civil unions for gay and straight couples. It could also lead to a wide range of harmful effects on all unmarried couples, gay and straight, and their children, the group stressed in its “messaging” campaign.
Monday-morning quarterbacking tends to be easy, but given the degree of the campaign’s failure it’s a necessary exercise. And it seems kind of obvious that focusing on the harm that banning civil unions would have on heterosexuals who choose not to marry is the sort of message that resonates well within the progressive echo chamber, but which in conservative, highly religious North Carolina was likely to play into the hands of those arguing that gays are attacking marriage and must be stopped.
More. Reader “pauly” makes a point in his comment that I should have noted. He writes:
The campaign was both too “politically correct” and, at the same time, too “de-gayed” — the worst of both worlds, in my opinion.
Too politically correct because a segment of the left has long advocated that civil unions and domestic partner benefits be granted not only to same-sex couples as a stop-gap until we have marriage equality, but to all couples, gay or straight, because marriage should not be necessary to get spousal benefits from government or employers. Gay “conservatives” have tended to argue that civil unions and partner benefits should be restricted to same-sex couples, and should go away once we get the right to marry.
As for too “de-gayed,” that seems obvious and was reported on in the Blade article.
Years ago, I wrote about the problem of including heterosexuals who choose not to marry under domestic partnerships, here: “…linking benefits for gay partners who are not allowed to be married with benefits for heterosexuals who don’t want to make a commitment… plays directly into the hands of the religious right…”
But ideologues won’t learn from past mistakes; they just double down on failed strategies (another trillion dollars in “stimulus,” anyone?).
21 Comments for “Message Re-evaluation”
posted by Houndentenor on
It’s frustrating to watch campaign after campaign go by where we lose so badly and fight such an ineffective fight against anti-gay ballot initiatives. Maybe it’s time for new leadership in the gay rights organizations. Or rather, it’s long overdue to replace the staff of organizations like HRC, which has never accomplished a damn thing on behalf of gay people.
As for messaging, why don’t we just cheat off Ted Olson’s notes. He seems to be good at making the case for gay marriage.
posted by JohnInCA on
to answer your question, it’s because the problem has never been with “making the case”, as it were.
That’s the part we have pretty much down pat. It’s why we win in courts. It’s why we win in debates. It’s why we win the arguments.
The problem is that the people who come out and vote against us just don’t care. They don’t care that we’re talking about civil law, they don’t care about equal protection, they don’t care about separation of church and state. Hell, they don’t even care about real theological discussions and honest debates of scripture.
Arguments aren’t going to work on them. Discussions aren’t going to work on them.
And they’re the ones motivated to go out and vote for these things more then any other group.
*That* is the problem. It’s not that we don’t make a good enough case. It’s that we don’t get independents fired up.
posted by Houndentenor on
I think that’s true of a lot of people. But I see the winning arguments used in front of judges and then I see the lame ads put out during these ballot initiatives. If one is working and not the other, isn’t it worth a try, in at least one state, to put forth rational arguments for the people who might be interested in that kind of thing? We keep letting the Maggie Gallaghers of the world spew lies without challenging them. If people have only heard one side, is it their fault that’s all they know? Yes, we know the rest, but gay rights isn’t a top priority for most people and they aren’t educated on the issues.
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posted by Tom Scharbach on
I think that the messaging was inept, and I wonder why the NC group didn’t employ poll testing of its message. Maybe they did, and nothing better was available. But it seems inept.
But the amendment was almost certain to pass, according to Nate Silverman’s regression model, which has proven to be accurate so far.
In fact, Silverman’s model predicted a vote that was remarkably close to the outcome, within the commonly-accepted margin of error.
In 2012 polls, the amendment consistently was favored by 15% or more, and polls have a history of underestimating the anti-marriage vote. So it doesn’t seem to me that the amendment would have been defeated even with the best possible message.
Silverman’s model predicts that the flip point in NC will be 2019, and that seems about right.
posted by Mark on
I agree completely with Tom that this campaign had no chance of victory–as, the Blade article reveals, the original pollster for the No on 1 campaign contended. And there are lots of grounds for criticizing the HRC and its followers (why, for instance, was the HRC pushing a campaign manager who had failed in every political effort that he had coordinated?), along with people like blogger Pam Spaulding or the Courage Campaign, both of whom attacked Freedom to Marry for making the correct observation that people who wanted to donate to marriage equality in 2012 should focus on states (Wash, Maine, Minnesota) where we have a chance at winning.
What I don’t understand is where Stephen determined that the “progressive echo chamber” (or anyone else, for that matter) urged a vote against Amendment One on grounds of “the harm that banning civil unions would have on heterosexuals.” As far as I can tell, no one in NC has been urging or planned to urge civil unions for heterosexuals. Certainly the No on 1 campaign ads didn’t talk about “the harm that banning civil unions would have on heterosexuals.” The campaign did talk about the effect the Amendment could have on the state’s domestic violence laws–but that line of argument (which I believe was a stretch) had nothing to do with “the harm that banning civil unions would have on heterosexuals.” Does Stephen have access to a “progressive echo chamber” that no one in North Carolina noticed?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Pam Spaulding is from North Carolina, so her determination to fight the amendment in her home state is understandable. But anyone from outside the state with any political sense should have written North Carolina off and focused on fights we can win. It isn’t as if we have a shortage of fights to win this year.
Face it – if Silverman’s analysis is correct, marriage equality will follow the path of interracial marriage, and we will achieve marriage equality in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas when SCOTUS decides the issue, and not before. We should not be putting significant outside political resources into those states at present. Legal resources in court fights, sure, but not political resources.
In my opinion, the biggest danger we face is court-packing at SCOTUS. The days when Republican presidents (e.g. Reagan and Bush I) appointed judges and justices not committed to an “original intent” agenda are over.
At least two, and probably three, justices will be appointed during 2012-2020, and if any of the appointments are “original intent” justices, we are not going to win the SCOTUS fight on the 2018-2020 schedule.
The “original intent” justices we now have — Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas — are relatively young, and there is a good chance that all four will be sitting in 2018-2020. If we lose any of the other seats, we’ll be set back.
posted by pauly on
The campaign was both too “politically correct” and, at the same time, too “de-gayed” — the worst of both worlds, in my opinion.
Too politically correct because a segment of the left has long advocated that civil unions and domestic partner benefits be granted not only to same-sex couples as a stop-gap until we have marriage equality, but to all couples, gay or straight, because marriage should not be necessary to get spousal benefits from government or employers. Gay “conservatives” have tended to argue that civil unions and partner benefits should be restricted to same-sex couples, and should go away once we get the right to marry.
As for too “de-gayed,” that seems obvious and was reported on in the Blade article.
posted by Mark on
Where, during the Amendment One debate in North Carolina, was anyone–on the gay left, center, or right–advocating civil unions for straight couples, as Stephen’s post implies?
As I said, I think there are lots of grounds for attacking the powers that be (HRC, Courage Campaign, etc.) for their handling of the North Carolina race. But if Stephen is going to claim that the issue was the “progressive echo chamber” advocating civil unions for straights, doesn’t he have to point to an example of this in NC?
posted by Houndentenor on
No, he actually has a point. The argument was made that the amendment hurt more straight people than gay people. But really if straight people want partner benefits then they can just go get married. They aren’t harmed in any way that can’t be fixed with a quick trip to City Hall. This is a problem that goes way back. We try to fight anti-gay ballot initiatives without showing any gay people. (This topic comes up in the film Milk so it’s hardly new.) Sorry, but the issue is that we are people too and our lives matter. Making it about anything other than our collective humanity is not going to work. So far we have won only one of these votes (in Arizona because the amendment went too far). If you keep losing, doesn’t it make sense to try something new?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
This is a problem that goes way back. We try to fight anti-gay ballot initiatives without showing any gay people. (This topic comes up in the film Milk so it’s hardly new.)
I think Stephen is right about the lameness of the message, and I think Houdentenor has it exactly right.
To my way of thinking, messaging about everything under the sun other than the harmful effects of the anti-marriage amendments on gays and lesbians is wrongheaded.
The available studies show that the single most critical factor influencing whether or not a person votes against an anti-marriage amendment is whether or not the person has a gay or lesbian as family member, friend, co-worker or neighbor. If a person does, he or she is many times more likely to vote against an anti-marriage amendment as not.
The correlation is so strong, in fact, that it explains the “generational divide”. The ratios of “I know someone who is gay or lesbian” and “I believe in marriage equality” across the age demographics is an almost perfect 1:1. Young people aren’t on our side because they are more “liberal”; they are on our side because they know gays and lesbians their own age and care about them.
It is a no-brainer to me. The votes are about straight people’s attitudes toward us, and it is all about little else. The most effective argument we have is “the amendment will hurt [x] — my relative, my friend, my co-worker, my neighbor.
It might have made sense to use arguments about straights forty years ago, when few were out, when being gay or lesbian was considered shameful, and few Americans knew that they knew a gay or lesbian. Today, most of us are out, attitudes have changed about homosexuality, and recent polling suggests that about two-thirds of Americans count a gay or lesbian as someone they are close to and care about.
In the current cultural environment, we ought to be talking to straights as we talk among ourselves.
I don’t understand the continued “this is about straights” messaging. I can’t believe that it is been poll tested. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
posted by Mark on
To quote his post directly, Stephen wrote, ” And it seems kind of obvious that focusing on the harm that **banning civil unions would have on heterosexuals who choose not to marry** is the sort of message that resonates well within the progressive echo chamber, but which in conservative, highly religious North Carolina was likely to play into the hands of those arguing that gays are attacking marriage and must be stopped.”
Where, again, was anyone in NC talking about civil unions for heterosexuals? If he’s going to make such a provocative argument, doesn’t he have to supply some evidence for it? Or is the approach that he can simply make things up as part of his crusade against the gay left?
I agree generally that the NC strategy of focusing on the alleged harm of the amendment to straights–which tried to mimic the successful campaign in 2006 in Arizona–failed, as the campaign’s first pollster (quoted in the Blade article) predicted it would. Of course, as Tom S. has pointed out, a campaign focused on gay rights also would have failed in North Carolina, which is why the most powerful critique against the “gay echo chamber” is not that it backed some imaginary form of civil unions for straights but that it took more than $2M from donors nationally without being candid with donors that it had no chance of victory.
posted by Carl on
Some straight couples will lose benefits if they were widowed and remarry.
I just don’t believe that if they’d run ad campaigns talking about how this hurts gay people, that the amendment would have been defeated. If anything it would have passed by an even larger margin. And I can guarantee that if they had run ads like that, then we’d hear, “They ran ads that alienated and excluded the majority.” Gays are always blamed here and elsewhere for any ugly legislation that hurts them.
posted by Smith on
The campaign in North Carolina had not the slightest chance of success because in North Carolina human rights for gay people cannot trump Leviticus. The great majority of North Carolina voters–straight white evangelicals–simply will not consider even the hypothetical possibility of gay marriage. North Carolina is hostile to gay people. Remember it took Lawrence v Texas to strike down the state’s anti-sodomy law. The only reason that North Carolina hadn’t already amended its constitution (like every other southern state) was that until 2011 the Democrats had managed to maintain a majority in the legislature and had avoided giving the Republicans a rallying point for consolidating conservative votes. No amount of campaign fine-tuning, targeted argument, or PR would have defeated this amendment. This loss does not validate facile right-winger criticism of previous strategies and tactics. Neither the all-knowing, all-wise right-wingers nor anybody else could have achieved victory in North Carolina in 2012.
posted by Houndentenor on
Here’s an example of how bad our messaging is.
Yesterday my facebook news feed exploded. Someone I went to school with but didn’t know all that well was offered a teaching job at a private school. A few days later they called him back to their offices and asked him if he is gay. He said yes and they rescinded the offer. Obviously all his friends are outraged. But the response is typically, “they can’t do that! That’s ILLEGAL!” Actually there is no law preventing such discrimination in that state or under federal law. People still don’t know that and I find myself constantly having to educate people on this matter. No wonder we can’t get ENDA passed. People think it’s already the law. Granted, the right did a good job back in the 90s with their “equal rights but not special rights” line of attack which they used to fight any bill requiring equal protection under the law.
The national gay rights organizations do a horrible job representing us both to the media and to the various legislative bodies. When are we going to demand better from groups like HRC?
posted by Mark on
Of course, no amount of good messaging would have mattered here, since even if ENDA had been passed, it wouldn’t have applied to this case: religious schools like the Christian academy that rescinded the job offer to Mr. Zeng (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/06/jonathan-zeng-music-teacher-christian-school-gay-_n_1573906.html) would be exempt from ENDA. As Jonathan Rauch tells us often here at IGF, it’s important that governments build in robust exemptions to marriage and anti-discrimination laws to allow religious entities to continue their discriminatory practices against gays and lesbians.
posted by Don on
Maybe it goes without saying, or maybe nobody gets this. I can’t really tell. The message: Passing this amendment will hurt straight people didn’t get through for a very simple reason. All the protections that would be repealed would be cohabitation rights that have evolved in light of people not getting married. Domestic violence protection for cohabitators, etc. It’s not difficult in my mind to ask oneself, how would the Christian Right respond to this argument? She shoulda gotten married before living in sin! She coulda had protection, but instead chose the wages of sin. The argument nearly seems to be a two-fer for social conservatives. Ban gay marriage and attack the sluts. (not an opinion, i share, mind you)
I get that it was an attempt to say “it’s not just us, you’re going to hurt heteros, too” but there will be no “identification of us” in lifting protections for cohabitating couples. social conservatives would never do that; they see it as an evil thing akin to gay marriage itself.
And ordinary, non-evangelical people would agree with that argument. it’s just a simple, common sense approach.
does everybody get that here? clearly Protect all NC Families didn’t. it seems most here think its a left-of-center cabal to create domestic partnerships for all. i highly doubt that ever entered most voters’ minds.
posted by Mark F. on
@Houndentenor
Was this a religious private school? I believe religious schools are exempt from anti-discrimination laws. They can require you to sign off on a “moral code.” That said, I’m not sure why your friend would want to work in a place he is not wanted.
posted by Houndentenor on
1) Yes, it is. 2) Yes, they can, but it’s also in a state with no ENDA protections for gays so that’s moot. 3) No clue. I know I wouldn’t. I do not understand why people remain in churches, political parties and other organizations where they are clearly not wanted. But they do. someone else will need to explain that I guess.
posted by tomjeffersonIII on
1. Frankly, I am not sure if a victory in North Carolina was remotely possible, given its political culture. Highlighting the fact that it also banned civil unions is probably a smart move simply because public opinion tends to be higher for things like domestic partnerships and civil unions, where it might not be as high for marriage.
2. The amendment was written in such a way as to possibly hurt lots of couples, gay or straight. Their was some concern that people living together, but not married, might no longer get protection from the State’s domestic violence rules.
3. In certain States, the organized gay community is pretty small, in terms of actually openly gay people trying to change public attitudes and laws.
So, be careful of being an armchair critic. These people probably do what they do, with little money or publicity and a limited number of straight allies willing to help out. I am not saying do not have an opinion, just remember who actually was willing to do the legwork and who could not be bothered.
4. I am not sure how bashing the President is terribly relevant on a discussion about the state ballot measure. However, the federal stimulus is not a bad idea. Frankly, I know gay people who have benefited from it.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
1. In Minnesota, we amended our (back in 1993, when I was just a wee kid) State civil rights law to include sexual orientation (defined to also cover gender identity issues) and it probably the best law of its kind. It covers both sexual orientation and gender identity and covers employment, education, banking, housing and public acc. At least in Minnesota, their are exemptions made for small businesses, religious groups, voluntary civics clubs and youth groups.
2. Some State civil rights laws that include sexual orientation do not have exemptions, which tends to be where the right-wing “they are taking away our religious rights’ lawsuits (for better or for the worse) come into play. With NJ it was with the Boy Scouts and more recently its been with certain faith based adoption agencies.
3. The problem with federal lobbying is that Congressmen or Senators in certain States or districts believe that their careers hinge on them opposing the ‘gay agenda’. This is not to suggest that no difference exists between the two major parties, but elected officials in more socially conservative districts or States have quite a bit of power to stall civil rights bills.
‘Blue Dog’ Democrats (for example) tend to be conservative on social issues and they are sometimes the only sort of Democrat that is going to get elected. So, basically you get a right-wing anti-gay Republican or a conservative anti-gay Democrat.
In the Minnesota 7th Congressional District — very large and very rural and very right-wing culturally — their is a conservative Democratic party incumbent and all of his challenges; Republican and Independents are all more right-wing them he is.
Gay people or straight allies in a district like that cannot expect much help from elected officials when it comes to support gay rights bills. You go over one or more Congressional Districts and its Michelle Bachman land.