SAN FRANCISCO -- Paul Hogarth remembers how angry he was when Proposition 8 passed in California. “I witnessed the train wreck,” he says. “I was angry with how we blew it.” When same sex marriage came under attack in Maine, Hogarth, a blogger for the Web site Beyond Chron, decided he had to do something to help.
Hogarth’s friend Jay Cash had started a program called Travel for Change during the Obama campaign where people could donate airline miles so volunteers could go to swing states. Hogarth also started Volunteer Vacation so out-of-towners could get free housing if they went to volunteer for a week in Maine. For people on the Northeast’s I-95 corridor who might want to come up for a weekend of walking the precincts, Hogarth put together Drive for Equality, a carpool program.
“We were applying the lessons of the Obama campaign,” says Hogarth as the polls closed in Biddeford, Maine. “The No on 8 campaign was a top-down Hillary Clinton-style campaign. This was more of a bottom-up Obama-style campaign.”
In California, activists are split over whether to take on same-sex marriage again in 2010 or 2012. Maine, for many, was the dress rehearsal. “Maine might be different from California but the National Organization for Marriage in Maine (which opposed same-sex marriage) waged a cookie cutter campaign,” says Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign, which is considering a push to repeal Proposition 8 in 2010. “They even used the same TV ad.”
Now marriage equality supporters are having to come to terms with another loss. Same-sex marriage in Maine was repealed 53 percent to 47 percent according to latest numbers.
In California, the fight against Proposition 8 had been led by Equality California. The organization, which had been heavily criticized by many in the LGBT rights community for how it handled the No on 8 campaign, had tried to be on the offensive in Maine. They had sent 11 field staff to Maine. They had run phone banks from California that had made over 60,000 calls. “People took a day off work to make those calls,” says Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “A lot of people said they had wished they had done more against Prop. 8.”
“When something bad happens, and people’s rights are taken away, that’s when a movement is galvanized,” says Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign. Courage Campaign set up its own phone banks in the Bay Area in people’s houses. They had four full-time staff in Maine and 11 volunteers. “We did not budget for this,” says Jacobs. “The 11 volunteers raised their own money. We raised over $60,000 from members that went directly to the campaign.”
It was looking good. For the first time, the marriage equality folks were ahead in fundraising early in the campaign. Protect Maine Equality raised $4 million, compared with $2.5 million for Stand for Marriage Maine. Equality Maine had learned from the hits the No on 8 campaign had taken in California. When the first ads about schoolchildren learning about gay marriage showed up in Maine, they were ready with a counter ad featuring Maine’s teacher of the year.
Now with Maine voters having struck down same-sex marriage, activists in California are wondering what lessons to take back home. John Bare, a San Francisco resident who is part of a donor circle that gives money to marriage equality campaigns nationwide, cautions against reading too much into the today-Maine, tomorrow-California theories.
“Maine is in no way scalable up to California,” says Bare. “Maine is French Catholic, white, middle- and upper-class.” It also has the population of the size of San Diego. When marriage equality campaigners wanted to target their message to a precise demographic they found a French Catholic grandmother and her gay son and his longtime partner. “In California we need messages for Latino immigrants and Cantonese immigrants,” says Bare. “We need more tailoring than we could afford.”
Paul Hogarth agrees. “In California there was a serious problem with outreach to communities of color. Whatever happens in Maine, we will still have that problem in California. And a lot of liberal, progressive groups are not good at reaching these communities,” he says.
But he is optimistic that some good will come out of Maine. “The campaign learned how to listen to the grass roots. It reached out to people outside the gay havens. They did not let the opposition own the religion issue. Or the children issue.”
He says, unlike in California in 2008, he at least feels he did everything he could to save same-sex marriage in Maine.
Bare worries that the loss in Maine, coupled with the recent resignation of the chairs of the National Equality March, will be a double blow for the movement. “I think the energy might go out of many who want to go to the ballot in 2010,” says Bare.
The Courage Campaign is still studying the results of a massive survey of the state’s voters to see if it makes sense to launch a push for marriage equality in 2010, says Jacobs.
But Kors of Equality California says despite putting the best face on it, “losing is always devastating. Never before has a majority voted on a minority’s right. It’s time for that to end.”
A version of this story was originally published by New America Media.
Jamie Frevele wants you to take her hand in right to marriage. So much so, in fact, that she has put it up for auction on eBay. In the item listing, she writes: "I'm an unmarried heterosexual woman, and since I probably won't be using my right to get married, I would like to give it away." She lives in New York, the state that just rejected a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, so she well knows that the right to wed is a hot a commodity: "I will write you up a fancy, wonderful, articulate proclamation handing over my right to get married," she says. "I have no official documentation because this is something I was born with since I was born heterosexual."
She was also born with a sense of humor. Frevele is a comedian who produces her own short comedy sketches online and this auction is part of her routine -- only, she's aiming for a political point, not just laughs. She explains that all proceeds will be donated "to an organization that supports LGBT rights since the government designed to protect all of us is picking and choosing based on what they think is icky, weird, or [unknown] to them." She may be offering up a strictly "symbolic gesture," but Frevele promises that "your bid, on the other hand, is real, and the donation you make to an organization that supports those who have been treated as second-class citizens will be well worth it."
It isn't every day that basic civil rights are auctioned off on eBay -- and bidding has stalled at the low price of $138. What a steal! Also? Shipping is free.
Just as my sadness began to sink in over the news that New York state had rejected a gay marriage bill Wednesday, it was -- dun-da-duh! -- Sen. Diane Savino to the rescue. A video clip (posted below) of the Staten Island Democrat's comments from the State Senate debate earlier in the day was all it took to lift that cloud of depression. We know her comments didn't actually make a difference, the bill didn't pass -- but that doesn't change how extremely righteous her speech was. I tell you, my response to her remarks ranged from actually pumping my fist in the air to tearing up in my cubicle.
Savino humbly acknowledged her own privilege as a straight woman: "I'm over the age of 40 -- and that's all you're going to get from me -- but I have never been able to maintain a relationship of the length or the quality that [Senator] Tom Duane and [his partner Louis Webre] has," she said. "These are relationships that I envy, and in fact we all should envy. All they ask for is to be treated fairly and equally." She didn't let off straight folks that easy, though: "We in government don't determine the quality or the validity of people's relationships," she continued. "If we did, we would not issue three-quarters of the marriage licenses that we do." Savino still wasn't finished excoriating hypocritical heterosexuals: "If there's any threat to the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right -- and we have abused it for decades."
She also went after The Wedding Channel, "The Bachelor" (in which "30 desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life"), brides who throw away obscene amounts of money trying to be "a princess for a day" and the way "young women are socialized from the time they're 5-years-old" to fantasize about their wedding day when "they don't spend five minutes thinking what it means to be a wife." The stand-out statement from her must-watch speech came at the very end, however: "We have nothing to fear from people who are committed to each other and want to share their lives and protect one another," she said. "We have nothing to fear from love and commitment." Bravo! The woman deserved a standing ovation.
New York's State Senate dealt a crushing blow to proponents of same-sex marriage Wednesday afternoon, defeating a bill that would have allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry 38-24.
The loss will be particularly disheartening for those working for passage because Democrats had been confident in recent days that they had the votes necessary to win. Moreover, had the Senate approved the bill, it would most likely have become law very quickly, perhaps even by the end of this week. The State Assembly has already passed it -- three times, in fact, because of previous failures in the Senate and a peculiarity in New York law -- and Gov. David Paterson has been a strong proponent; he's said he'd sign the bill as soon as he receives it.
One other factor had made New York a particularly attractive battleground for proponents of same-sex marriage: Whereas opponents were able to use referenda to successfully fight the legalization of same-sex weddings in states like California and Maine, New York law doesn't allow voters to overrule their legislature in that way.
Want to defend the sanctity of marriage? Try banning divorce. That's the message of a satirical campaign in California to force wedded straight couples to stay shackled together forever -- as in forever, forever.
John Marcotte, a 38-year-old married man who voted against the state's same-sex marriage ban, is petitioning to get a divorce ban on the state's 2010 ballot. "Since California has decided to protect traditional marriage, I think it would be hypocritical of us not to sacrifice some of our own rights to protect traditional marriage even more," he told the Associated Press. It's simply the logical extension of the illogical thinking behind Prop. 8, the state's gay marriage ban. The initiative's Facebook page explains: "Marriage is forever. No escape clause. God said so." End of conversation.
Marcotte is clearly having a ton of fun and is brilliantly exposing the idiocy and hypocrisy behind the marriage inequality movement. I must say, though, I'm not into the idea of making a political point with an ironic ballot petition. Why not put the energy into, like, a serious one? Also, the proposal has approximately a snowball's chance in hell of getting the required signatures to go on the ballot -- and beyond that even slimmer odds of being passed -- but, ehh, why poke the hornet's nest? Comedy-deafness is rampant in this country and some will take this as a serious rallying cry: The AP spoke to a recent petition signer -- a single 47-year-old man -- who quite seriously believed in making a constitutional amendment to require permanent indentured partnership. Yee-ikes.
Anybody who expects this column to lampoon beauty-pageant contestants has another think coming. Last time I made a satirical thrust in that direction, two women whose friendship I treasure coolly informed me they'd been Rodeo Queens of their respective county fairs. Did I have a problem with that?
Absolutely not. Indeed, during a sojourn at an excruciatingly correct liberal arts college, I once reacted to a campus newspaper crusade against the sin of "lookism" by urging students to contemplate "The Iliad." The oldest narrative in the Western literary tradition (circa 1500 B.C.), and what's it about? An overrated jock named Achilles, and Helen, a troublemaking beauty, aka "the face that launched a thousand ships."
So no, it didn't start at your high school, this business of hunks and cuties getting too much attention. It's human nature. Nor will it end with the ritual humiliation of Republican sex symbols Carrie Prejean and Sarah Palin.
Said humiliation, in the media-driven, Dionysian cult of celebrity that's rapidly overtaking American political culture has been not so much fated as voluntarily entered into and all but agreed upon by the well-compensated victims. The only question is how much cash their notoriety helps them to accumulate before everybody gets sick of them and the next Holy Hottie comes along.
Yeah, the former Miss California USA got sandbagged. Anyway, who cares what a 22-year-old in high heels and a swimsuit thinks about gay marriage? Do they ask quarterbacks about the Stupak Amendment? Anything Carrie Prejean said was sure to annoy half the TV audience busily engaged in calculating her sex appeal to three decimal places.
Her awkward rejoinder favoring "opposite marriage" infuriated the questioner, a Hollywood gossip maven who styles himself the "Queen of All Media." After the pageant, Perez Hilton called Prejean a "dumb b----." When she objected, he went deep into the gutter, describing her with the coarsest possible term for the female genitalia. His Web site features scores of attacks on Prejean earmarked "icky-poo."
Clowning like Hilton's, of course, hurts the gay rights cause as much as Prejean's subsequent behavior embarrassed straight Christians she purported to speak for. But because she'd given the wrong answer -- and never mind that, as Sarah Palin pointed out, Prejean's position is basically identical to President Obama's -- liberals who normally denounce "sexism" only snickered.
The embattled beauty queen who soon began making the conservative talk-show rounds promoting a hastily written book describing her deep piety and victimization also happens to be a real knockout, who, if you ran into her in the grocery store, would make you think, "Wow, that girl oughta be Miss California USA." Or something.
Poor Sean Hannity practically had steam coming out his ears listening to Prejean alibi about how the sex video she'd made strictly for her beloved boyfriend ended up going public. Then seven more sex videos and a few dozen nudie photos emerged, and Carrie Prejean's brief career as a martyr to liberal hypocrisy basically ended overnight.
Great beauty always threatens as many people as it enchants. So nice try, but it looks as if you're going to have to get a real job after all. Which brings us back to Sarah Palin, who quit the best job she's ever had to capitalize on her newfound celebrity. The former Alaska governor and beauty pageant runner-up got the book rollout of every author's dreams for her ghost-written memoir, "Going Rogue."
Far from persecution and mockery, Palin got the red-carpet treatment. On supposedly liberal CNN, Jessica Yellin asked, "Can't we just acknowledge it? Sarah Palin is sexy, and she doesn't seem to hide from it. She shows her gams. She openly embraces her femininity."
Her "gams"? Yellin, a Harvard graduate, must have majored in Frank Sinatra studies. She also complained that dames like Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein "keep their femininity under wraps." It's definitely true that older broads avoid bicycle shorts.
Even at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum rhapsodized over Palin's "sex appeal that practically oozes out of every pore." Liberal and conservative commentators alike engaged in hair-splitting debates about Newsweek's "sexist" cover photo -- the one she posed for, just as she agreed to appear on "Saturday Night Live," sit for an interview with Katie Couric, etc. Anything to promote Sarah.
Personally, I'm immune to Palin's charms. Her voice alone would send me to a monastery. But no matter: Making a fetish of your sexiness and your holiness is a dangerous game. Fans can be fickle, demanding a thematic consistency rarely attainable in real life.
Palin appears far too clever for a comic pratfall like Prejean's. But how long before her enraptured public notices that she spent her triumphal comeback trashing other Republicans, sneering "Heathers"-style at Katie Couric and exchanging insults with a 19-year-old kid?
Where I grew up, the issue of whether gays and lesbians made OK parents was a non-starter. In the liberal enclave of Berkeley, Calif., the answer is considered so obvious the question almost seems rhetorical: Of course there are both "good" and "bad" homosexual parents -- just as there are both "good" and "bad" heterosexual parents. So, when I saw an article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine announcing proof that same-sex couples are capable of raising children who turn out to be perfectly healthy adults, I rolled my eyes with a huff.
Then I regained perspective: This has to be said.
Abbie E. Goldberg, an assistant psychology professor at Clark University, has done just that in her book, "Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children," which analyzes more than 100 studies on same-sex families. The Times' Lisa Belkin summarizes the book's finding like so: The children of gay and lesbian couples "show no increased incidence of psychiatric disorders, are just as popular at school and have just as many friends." Then there's this stereotype-shattering fact: "Neither sex is more likely to suffer from gender confusion nor to identify themselves as gay" as a result of being raised by same-sex parents.
On the other hand, "These children tend to be less conventional and more flexible when it comes to gender roles and assumptions than those raised in more traditional families." They have more progressive and egalitarian attitudes toward sex roles. For girls, that translates into a less restricted sense of their own possibilities: Daughters of lesbians are far more likely to "aspire to professions that are traditionally considered male, like doctors or lawyers." Both sons and daughters of same-sex couples are more likely to end up working in social justice -- presumably because they witnessed first-hand some of the profound discrimination that is considered acceptable in this country.
The book's findings may seem glowingly positive to progressives -- in fact, it makes you wonder, as Belkin does, how it is that children are so rarely used as an argument in defense of gay marriage. Still, there is plenty for homophobic, strident traditionalists to interpret negatively. Some will inevitably argue that egalitarian households and other non-traditional influences pose a threat to the fabric of marriage (or something).
Then there's this little gem, as explained by Belkin: "Girls raised by lesbian mothers seem slightly more likely to have more sexual partners, and boys slightly more likely to have fewer, than those raised by heterosexual mothers." Surely some will interpret this to mean that lesbian mothers invert the natural way of things, making daughters promiscuous and sons sexless. Of course, others like myself will be more inclined to assume that being raised in a more egalitarian household where sex roles are not rigidly enforced allows daughters to pursue sex without the usual shame imposed on girls and discourages sons from doggedly pursuing it as proof of their masculinity; in other words, it corrects for the sexual double-standards found in the world at large.
These findings are important and should be shouted from the mountaintops by supporters of non-traditional families and same-sex marriage. But statistics alone aren't likely to change political opinion when the results are so subjectively interpreted. For every person who looks at the data and concludes, as Goldberg does, that "these children do just fine," there is another who does the exact opposite -- or disregards the research altogether. Take, for example, this comment in response to the Times article: "Sons deserve and need a father AND a mother. Daughters deserve and need a mother AND a father. This is exactly what was originally modeled for us by God in the Bible."
I suspect the real reason children haven't been fully utilized as an argument in support of gay marriage isn't due to a lack of data up until now, but because so many opponents see this debate as having nothing to do with what's actually good for kids and everything to do with staunchly upholding tradition. It's perhaps a bit too generous to presume that children's well-being will actually change those minds.
Why churches fear gay marriage
The crusade for Proposition 8 was fueled by the broken American family, explains gay Catholic author Richard Rodriguez.
By Jeanne Carstensen
Gay marriage, so what?
Maybe I should be more grateful, but the California Supreme Court hasn't told me anything I don't already know.
By Louis Bayard
My big fat straight wedding
What’s the difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals? In matters outside the bedroom, American culture and law are at last acknowledging that there is none.
By Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic
National Center for Lesbian Rights: Marriage
A database on the subject of gay marriage in California, including links to official court documents, press releases, and relevant statutes.
New York Senate Votes "NO" on Gay Marriage
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