Fearless

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There's probably a reason anti-gay marriage advocates won't or can't answer Steve Chapman's simple challenge; it's because he called their bluff. Maggie Gallagher offers a weak tea response, which Conor Clarke has no trouble seeing right through.

As is so often true these days in political debate, subjective fears seem to be the path of least resistance, the lazy advocate's way of making a case. Maggie's not normally lazy, but her appeal to fear is not even credible by the low standards of anti-gay argument.

For example, I'm not sure which of Maggie's folks will be "afraid to speak up for their views" in a pro gay-marriage state. Will it be this pastor, who said:

The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals - sodomites, queers! That's what it was instituted for, okay? That's God, he hasn't changed. Oh, God doesn't feel that way in the New Testament … God never "felt" anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed.

Or these guys with the Facebook gay-bashing page; or this pastor who, even today, is blaming gays for tornados? Even the much vilified federal courts sometimes rule that high school students can wear anti-gay t-shirts to school. Heck, those students even have a federal law to protect them. There is simply no shortage of anti-gay sentiment in the world, and I doubt we'll be running out any time soon.

But even if some of Maggie's supporters do experience this paralyzing fear -- against all of the evidence -- it's certainly not likely that Maggie herself will. So cheer up, Maggie!

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2012, Not 2010

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Equality California (EQCA) is not sitting back and waiting in the struggle to regain marriage equality in the Golden State. They are "ready and committed to fighting, persuading and working tirelessly - doing whatever it takes to win the right back as quickly as possible." The question for them, in a smart analysis and plan released last week, is when a return to the ballot will give the best chance for victory. Their conclusion: 2012, not 2010.

EQCA offers many reasons why a rematch in 2010 is problematic. Recent years have seen a stall in the movement by California voters toward marriage equality. Experienced political consultants strongly feel "that neither the data nor their intuition supports moving forward with an initiative to win marriage back in 2010." Among those who gave $50,000 or more for last year's fight, EQCA found that most top donors will sit out a 2010 campaign, or, if a measure reaches the ballot, "will participate at a much reduced level of funding."

The leading coalition partners in communities of color consider 15 months insufficient to build the cultural competency and trust required to change minds in those communities. LGBT family groups, noting the increased harassment faced by their school-age children in a heated campaign, argue that the costs of returning to the ballot would outweigh the benefits without a high confidence in victory.

$2 to 3 million would be needed just for a professional signature-gathering effort to gain ballot access. Experienced hands estimate that an affirmative campaign would cost between $30 million and $50 million - a tall order so soon after last year's loss - and the voter and funder fatigue from back-to-back losses would push the next try back at least four years. EQCA also points out the hardships being faced by social service organizations due to the economic downturn, and questions the ethics of spending tens of millions on a 2010 campaign that would be dicey at best.

EQCA has found that for most voters, marriage is more a cultural than a political issue, and changing minds is a lot easier outside the heat of a campaign. Pushing the deadline back to 2012 will give the best chance for California's 18,000 same-sex married couples to crystallize what is at stake, to connect with voters as only friends and family can, and to refute the wealth of misinformation.

The pro-equality numbers look 4 percent better in 2012 when you consider the higher turnout of young voters in a presidential election year, the young people who will join the voter rolls in the next 38 months, and the older people who will leave the voter rolls in the same period. That's without considering the effect of any efforts at persuasion.

EQCA lists many puzzle pieces that must be assembled for success: "field, messaging and media, coalition and leadership outreach, activating our base, work in people of color communities, activating the faith community, supporting the grassroots, campus organizing, voter registration and coordination across the state." Canvassers must be trained to listen as much as to convey the campaign message. EQCA is setting up a speaker's bureau and training speakers, and is working with other groups doing field work to coordinate scripts, voter targeting, and message testing. An innovative online campaign is needed for areas in the state without a field staff presence, since field offices are located where support for Prop 8 was strongest.

An additional 24 months will give equality advocates more time to plan, organize, fundraise, build the grassroots, integrate allied efforts, recruit new allies, and improve outreach to the people of color who comprise a majority of California's population.

Those who insist on returning to the ballot in 2010 should explain how EQCA's analysis is wrong, rather than merely serenade us with stirring rhetoric. Strategy is not a dirty word, and enthusiasm is not enough.

None of us with a stake in this fight wants to wait. Every day that I am separated from my own foreign partner is painful. Unfortunately, wanting is not having. There is a great deal of work remaining to overturn Prop. 8, not to mention the ballot fight looming this November in Maine, where our opponents hold a fundraising edge. Let us do the preparation needed to win a lasting victory in California, and not let our hearts rule our heads.

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2010 or 2012: A False Choice

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Most states have their own struggles for gay marriage, whether in the long term like Illinois or near term like Maine, where a referendum is coming up almost immediately. But it is California that seems to have seized an outsized portion of the attention.

For one thing, California is by far the largest state. For another both the legislature and the state Supreme Court have voted in favor of gay marriage. But last year voters rejected gay marriage by a vote of 52 to 48 percent.

Now the question roiling California activists is whether to return to the voters to try to have the ban reversed in 2010 or in 2012. Equality California, the group that managed the 2008 effort to preserve gay marriage argues for 2012. But an apparently large group of "grass-roots and net-roots" activists calling themselves the Courage Campaign are pushing for a revote right away-in 2010.

It is difficult to take Equality California very seriously these days. They ran an exclusionary, top-down campaign, hired high-paid consultants, made several strategic misjudgments, spent $40 million dollars-and lost. Not an impressive showing. So why should we believe them now?

On the other hand, what is the Courage Campaign offering? Enthusiasm, to be sure, and a good portion of righteous indignation. But not much else. Consider what they don't offer.

Money. Will the well-off donors who made large contributions to the 2008 struggle want to repeat the process just two years later? Are they not likely to be suffering from "donor fatigue"? Rick Jacobs, Courage Campaign founder, bragged to The New York Times that they had raised $75,000 in just one day.

Fine. Do that for 460 days and you have the amount of money that Equality California spent to lose. If donors can say to Equality California, "No more money for losers," they could say to the Courage Campaign, "No money for people with no track record at all."

A Strategic Plan. If the strategy of Equality California was flawed, where is an alternative strategy by the Courage Campaign? Where is their plan to persuade cultural conservatives, religious voters and ethnic minorities to support gay marriage, to clear up the (alleged) doubts and uncertainties many mddle-of-the-road voters felt about gay marriage, to somehow lure more pro-gay voters to the polls?

Polling Data. The advocates for a 2010 vote have no polling data to suggest that the outcome would be any different from 2008. They should want polling data showing substantial gains in public support for gay marriage among likely voters before they advocate another referendum. Given the tendency of some people to lie to pollsters and purport to have a more gay-supportive or laissez-faire attitude toward gay marriage than they actually do, advocates should want to see polling data showing at least 56 or 57 percent support.

The conclusion forces itself forward that neither 2010 nor 2012 is a really good bet. What California gay marriage advocates should give us is a number-a level of support for gay marriage that would let us know that a referendum finally has an excellent chance of passage. Up to now, support for gay marriage has been growing at a rate of roughly one-half to one percent a year.

In the meantime, to hasten that result, they could work in various ways on changing people's minds about gay marriage. But no one has shown us any plans to do that. Until either side offers that, it is hard to take them seriously.

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Tailwinds…and Tail-Covering

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Don't miss Ryan Sager's post (especially the graphs) on the chasm between younger and older people on gay marriage. Citing a new paper by academics Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips, he sez:

If people over 65 in each state made the laws, zero states would have gay marriage; if people under 30 made the laws, 38 states would have gay marriage.

Also must-read: In the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman wonders why the same folks who predict social catastrophe if gay marriage is allowed refuse to make specific, testable predictions.

I have a strong suspicion that both sides of the debate are right. The supporters of same-sex marriage are right in predicting that it will have no bad side effects. And the opponents are right not to make predictions.

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Turning Over a New Brief

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Here's a flip-flop to welcome. In its original brief in a California lawsuit challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama Justice Department adduced a bevy of standard anti-gay-marriage arguments to defend DOMA's constitutionality-including the old standby that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples isn't discriminatory because, after all, homosexuals can have opposite-sex marriages too.

Now, in its latest reply brief, the administration switches tack. It states unequivocally that the ban on gay marriage is a form of discrimination, as IGF contributor Dale Carpenter notes over at Volokh.com. And although DOMA passes the so-called rational basis test (ergo Congress had the power to enact it), it's not rational because banning gay marriage is rational (it isn't), but only because Congress is entitled, for the time being, to leave the issue to the states. There's no attempt to characterize DOMA as anything but discriminatory and unjustified.

Unlike some gay-marriage advocates, I believe that DOMA is, in fact, constitutional, in the sense that Congress has the power to enact it. I also believe, however, that setting up a federal definition of marriage at odds with those of (now) six states is bad policy. So, second time around, Obama gets it right.

And better late than never. Dale concludes:

While gay-rights groups complain that the DOJ is continuing to defend the constitutionality of DOMA, and are understandably disturbed by the still-unabandoned arguments the DOJ made back in June, they should be delighted by the turn taken in this reply brief. It will serve the cause of SSM in state and especially federal courts for years to come.

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Famly Guy: Just Kidding

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As I've mentioned before, I think the right's attempt to conflate gay marriage and abortion is both wrong and deceptive, certainly as a constitutional matter. And I'm coming to believe this false analogy might also be wrong as a cultural matter.

Fox's " Family Guy " is easily the most wildly satiric, boundary-crossing show on network television. It is sometimes compared to "The Simpsons," but no matter how far out "The Simpsons" gets, it always swings back to television's essential sentimentality; "Family Guy" will have none of that. "South Park" is more caustic, still, but "Family Guy" sets the network standard for how far comedy can go.

And that's pretty far. For the unitiated, one year-old baby Stewie is gay (and has made several aggressive attempts to murder his mother), next-door neighbor Quagmire is a sex-addicted airline pilot, and any attempt to chronicle the carnal lives of husband and wife Peter and Lois would not be publishable in most newspapers. And that's not to mention the old pedophile who lives across the street, with his eternal affection for very underage boys.

Amidst all that explicitly sexual content is a lot of homosexuality, which Fox seems to have had no problem with. But abortion is where Fox draws the line. The show's inspired creator, the divine Seth MacFarlane, finally decided to do a show about abortion (35 years after "Maude" did, with no intervening encounters), and the network wouldn't air it. The best they'd agree to do is include it on a DVD of the series.

Even reading a description of the episode, and watching the three darkly riotous clips read by the cast, shows that abortion is in a completely different class from homosexuality -- it is still incendiary as the subject of humor.

That is as telling as anything I can think of. In fact, it may clarify what distinguishes the right from the rest of the country. With sitcoms like "Ellen" and "Will & Grace" happily ensconced in syndication, most of the nation is comfortable enough with homosexuality to laugh about it and with us. It's not a touchy issue for the most part, except among a shrinking number of cranks and malcontents. In contrast, abortion is something that really is, always, deeply serious and off-limits to jokes.

To be fair, a lot of lesbians and gay men can tend to be ill-humored, particularly when our rights are at stake. I'm that way, myself, sometimes. But it should comfort us all that there is room in the culture for kidding around about homosexuality. It shows a healthy acceptance.

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Breathing Room

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For the most part I'm with Dale, and am, if anything, more optimistic than he is about 2012. Two extra years gives us, and the voters, breathing room. My biggest disagreement with him is whether a vote in 2010 would be a "calamity."

In my opinion, we get to keep doing this until we get it right. Marriage equality is no longer a mere possibility. It will happen. It's not necessary for anyone to think opponents are bigots to see that they misunderstand us. The seemingly ancient argument about us demanding "special rights" has faded into obscurity. That rhetoric depends on people viewing the status quo -- and our exclusion from it -- as eternal. That's no longer the dominant cultural assumption, and as it eroded, heterosexual voters (and judges) could see that we really are asking for nothing more than exactly the same rights they have and take for granted. They can see the status quo as tilted in their favor, and once you see that, our own inequality really does come into focus.

That means we can lose elections without losing our moral standing. More important, our opponents look smaller and meaner with each increasingly fragile victory. As their numbers fall off, their empty arguments seem more incoherent. The case of Doug Manchester illustrates the point. One of Prop. 8's largest early donors, he opposed our equality because of his "Catholic faith and longtime affiliation with the Catholic Church," as he told the NY Times. That's fair enough, except that a couple months after that donation, he and his wife separated and began divorce proceedings, which are now at their most disagreeable stage. Neither divorce nor hypocrisy is alien to human nature, but cases like this help people see the selfishness and convenience of hoarding religious favor for yourself and denying it to others.

The cornucopia of groups supporting same-sex marriage almost assures that it's possible someone not affiliated with our leadership might be able to qualify a repeal initiative. Equality California's very good report, Winning Back Marriage Equality in California lists 78 distinct groups they are working with. That's a testament to the vibrancy and diversity of our cause. But it's also a sign that our self-selected leadership cannot be as monolithic as it sometimes seems to wish.

And that is my concern. Here is how EQCA views the job we have to do in California:

We need to do outreach to every progressive organization in California: to labor unions, to progressive churches (more on that below), to women's groups and civil rights organizations.

Are there really that many progressives out there who need to be convinced on gay equality? The assumption of our leadership continues to be that they need to appeal to the liberal in everyone. That assumption is clearest in their invocation to broaden their base:

At the same time, we need to continue and expand our work on issues of concern to our partners in the broader struggle for social justice. We must also identify and enlist new spokespeople, particularly those who are not "usual suspects"-Republicans, business leaders, leaders from communities of color, "mainstream" clergy, cultural and entertainment stars and others. And we must identify appropriate outlets for them to help make the case.

Am I the only one who detects just a whiff of condescension here to the very people I think are the key targets of any attempt to overturn Prop. 8 at the ballot box? While there are still "partners" in the fight for social justice to be embraced, the movement is just looking for "new spokespeople" among Republicans, business leaders and others, for whom the leaders "must identify appropriate outlets" in order to help them out.

The fact that EQCA does not see Republicans -- and business leaders, for heaven's sake! -- as partners (or even as independent thinkers when it comes to gay marriage) reveals the worst aspects of the Democratic left as it tries to achieve the best aspirations of Democratic philosophy. Two years may not be enough to cure that, but there are enough Republicans, not to mention those ever-suspect "business leaders"who can suck up this kind of condescension for the greater good.

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Right Call

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Despite what I had feared (see here and here), it seems common sense has prevailed. Equality California, the main gay lobbying group in the state, has announced it won't support a Prop 8 repeal effort in 2010. See the group's analysis here. This despite the group's hint last May that it probably would support a 2010 effort. It seems that EQCA looked hard at the voter projections and polls, the short time frame, the lack of unity among gay advocates for 2010, and especially at the lack of support for 2010 among big donors, and has decided to target 2012.

I'm still not persuaded that even 2012 is the right time, but at least it's more realistic. Further, I understand the need to start a fundraising, organizing, and educational campaign now on the basis of a target date that isn't five or more years away (2014 or 2016).

Of course, some of the "grassroots" activists on Facebook and elsewhere who think a campaign is a matter of sending around a bunch of emails and starting a website will continue the quixotic 2010 effort. But without the backing of the main existing California group, and especially without the backing of major donors, they will probably fail even to qualify language for the ballot. At least let's hope they fail, because if they succeed we'll face a real calamity: a 2010 fight we won't win.

Now comes the hard part: actually raising the money and organizing for a possible ballot fight in three years.

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Gay Marriage in California: More Than Spreadsheets

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One of California's best -- and quirkiest -- political writers is Bill Bradley, whose New West Notes is essential reading if you're interested in California. He has a new piece at the Huffington Post on the strategic debate over when to repeal Prop. 8 that surveys the landscape pretty well.

But his discussion of strategy, like most discussions of strategy, I suppose, is too clinical. Political strategy can be a cold science, but as we learned from Yes on 8's Frank Schubert (who is now in Maine, trying to establish himself as the nation's go-to guy for the anti-gay marriage crowd), politics is very often best practiced by intuition and guts. A less nimble opponent might have missed the implications of Gavin Newsom's "Whether you like it or not" gaffe, which no strategy could ever have anticipated. Schubert's instinct for populist homophobia was right on, and he capitalized on it, to his -- well, "credit" isn't exactly the right word for his amoral achievement.

But there's not much life left in that horse, and maybe next time we'll have some folks of our own whose instincts are better than their spreadhseets. It's that aspect of politics -- and particularly the politics of gay marriage -- that I think our leaders are missing. The other side claims a vague and tattered morality, but we've got the real thing.

There is another non-strategic fact about any repeal of Prop. 8 that transcends the pie charts. Whether it happens in 2010 or 2012, or even, god forbid, 2014, California will, almost certainly, be the first state to have its voters amend their constitution to eliminate a ban on gay marriage. The constitutional bans, and particularly Prop. 8, were the last creakings of the machine of discrimination. The repeal of Prop. 8, whenever it comes, will be looked back on as the death knell for an unlamented age. And I'm still quite sure California will be the state that strikes that blow.

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Crashing the (Grand Old) Party

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The scene at the White House East Room on June 29 was incongruous, if predictable. Nearly 200 gay leaders were assembled to hear the soothing words of the president, who has yet to do anything significant regarding the causes for which they lobby. But that didn't stop the activists from fawning over Barack Obama; the Washington Blade reported that cries of "I love you!" could be heard from the crowd. Such embarrassing expressions of infatuation were not owing to the open bar.

In the four decades that it has been politically active, the gay community has stood foursquare behind the Democratic Party. Gay identification with liberalism in general and the Democrats in particular is so strong that many conflate the success of the party with that of the movement. Gays overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates and pour millions of dollars into Democratic coffers. Homosexuality and political liberalism are inextricably intertwined in the popular consciousness. Even when Democrats support antigay measures - like the odious Defense of Marriage Act and "don't ask, don't tell," for which we have Bill Clinton to thank - gays rally to the party with votes and cash.

More telling than this ostensibly "pro-gay" president's dilatory strategy on moving legislation, however, is the mix of indignation and bewilderment on the part of so many gay activists. Given their unconditional support for Democrats, how can gays credibly claim to be surprised that Democratic politicians take us for granted? Why move pro-gay legislation forward when there are no consequences for doing nothing? The relationship between gays and Democrats is like battered wife syndrome. We keep coming back for more abuse.

"The facade of the gay movement has always been that Republicans are the bad guys," says Rich Tafel, the former executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. "Now that [Republicans] are completely powerless, the illusion that the Democrats are everything is being torn down." That's a wise perception as far as the cowardice and double-talk of the Democrats goes. But is there any hope for gays on the other side of the aisle?

In an ideal world the GOP would be a more hospitable place for the gay electorate. Battered in the 2008 congressional election and having waved goodbye to one of the most unpopular presidents in the history of polling, the Republican Party is now in the early stages of a long and vicious rebuilding phase. One would hope that as they examine the factors that have contributed to their downfall, Republicans will recognize that their positions on issues affecting gay Americans have played some part.

Unfortunately, with the internal disarray of the Log Cabin Republicans, the party is lacking the institutional apparatus to support pro-gay figures from within. Many gay Republicans understandably gave up on their party long ago; President Bush's support for the Federal Marriage Amendment was the last nail in the coffin for this beleaguered crew. The creation of the Log Cabin splinter group GOProud earlier this year should not be taken as a resurgence of gay support for Republicans, as it had more to do with personality differences between the leaders of both organizations than a newfound burst of conservatism among gays.

If Republican leaders were smart (which, to be sure, they show few signs of being), one of the first steps they could take to persuade younger voters of their electoral worthiness would be to drop active opposition to gay rights. If they can't be persuaded to do this on substantive grounds, then the polling numbers ought to convince them that their platform will soon prove to be a huge electoral liability.

That's because the political utility of gay bashing is past its peak. With each passing day more and more Americans see the sense of allowing same-sex couples to gain legal recognition for their relationships and patriotic gay Americans to serve openly in the nation's armed forces. Younger voters overwhelmingly support gay rights, and the more the party solidifies its reputation as a bulwark against this major societal shift, the greater will be the lasting damage to its reputation, much like Richard Nixon's southern strategy doomed the Republican Party - once the political home of African-Americans - with black voters. Adopting a more tolerant stance is also in the best traditions of a party that purports to stand for individual liberty, limited government, and the fundamental right of Americans to live their lives as they see fit - all tenets of the gay rights movement.

The more perceptive Republicans realize this. Take Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain. In a matter of months she's written, talked, and tweeted her way into becoming the most outspoken Republican advocate for gay rights, doing everything from a photo shoot on behalf of the No H8 campaign to raising money for the Trevor Project anti-suicide hotline to acting as the keynote speaker at this year's Log Cabin Republicans convention. Gays should welcome whatever support they can find within the ranks of the GOP, but at the end of the day McCain is the daughter of a failed presidential candidate who was never particularly popular among Republicans in the first place. She's not a potential party leader.

As for an actual elected official who could lead the party out of the antigay wilderness, such hopes rested largely on the shoulders of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, a Mormon who, in contrast to the leaders of his church, supports civil unions for gay couples. Earlier this year, however, in a brilliant political move that neutralized a rising star and potential rival, President Obama appointed Huntsman as his ambassador to China. And so the gays' loss is the country's gain.

In June former vice president Dick Cheney reiterated, however vaguely, his support for gay marriage, stating, "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish." This was not exactly news; Cheney, after all, has a gay daughter, and he registered his opposition to the FMA in the 2004 presidential campaign. And it's slightly disingenuous for gay conservatives like those in GOProud to trumpet Cheney's halfhearted endorsement of gay marriage as proof that he's better on the issue than Obama. Cheney did nothing to press the cause of gay rights when he was in the White House. Now that he's liberated to speak his mind on a whole host of topics - something he's shown no hesitation in doing - he can only be bothered to talk about gay rights when pressed by reporters. If Cheney can launch a campaign attacking the Obama administration's antiterrorism policies, why can't he find time to rebut the antigay figures on the right wing of his own party who wish to treat his daughter as a second-class citizen? Surely, as a former secretary of Defense, Cheney has insights into the utility of "don't ask, don't tell"?

The apparent self-inflicted immolation of Sarah Palin's political career cannot be viewed as anything but a boon for gay rights. Though she has a scant record on the issues, as the GOP's vice-presidential candidate, Palin opposed the man at the top of the ticket with her support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. And her careerist attempt to position herself as the standard-bearer of the party's socially conservative wing suggests that she would effortlessly embrace its antigay politics were she to run for national office. But even with Palin out of the picture (for now), there's little reason to be hopeful about the 2012 GOP field. Front-runner Mitt Romney cemented his reputation as a flip-flopper largely due to his cynical positioning as a "pro-family" candidate during the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, trumpeting his opposition to gay marriage during his years as Massachusetts governor to win over evangelicals wary of his Mormonism. Mike Huckabee, another 2012 contender, campaigned on explicitly conservative Christian themes, while Newt Gingrich railed about "gay and secular fascism" in the wake of Proposition 8.

So is a gay-friendly GOP too much to hope for? Probably, at least in the near future. But just because the Republican Party shows little sign of moderating does not mean that Democrats should get a free ride, and the decision by some major gay activists and donors to boycott a June DNC fund-raiser is a welcome development. Obama has delivered major speeches on divisive topics like race and abortion, speeches that, unlike so much political pabulum these days, made Americans think. Why can't he deliver a White House address tearing down the last acceptable social prejudice? His unique station as the nation's first African-American president provides him with a historic opportunity to do just that.

Divining what the president might say were he inclined to deliver such a game-changing speech is not difficult; a recent proclamation he issued celebrating June as LGBT Pride Month contained a few hints. "As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled," Obama declared, "all Americans are affected." By framing the lack of equality for gays as an issue that affects all citizens - and not just those directly affected by discriminatory laws - the president went further than any of his predecessors in emphasizing the fundamental injustice of the status quo, and he intimated that his sweeping promise of "change" will also benefit gay people. As a candidate, Obama complained about those who criticized his campaign as offering "just words." But words are all he's offered thus far, leading us to the conclusion that the conflation of the Democratic Party's interests and those of the gay rights movement is a status quo equally in need of change.

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