Pam Spaulding has an excellent post on just this topic over at Pam's House Blend.
Anyone interested should check it out, as well as the links she provides to the CA Secretary of State's Office.
David Benkof is right about this much, the information is no doubt out there on the internets for we marriage equality supporters to find. I'm off to do some research of my own and will post back with more information as my time and schedule allows.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Who supports Prop 8 in CA?
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2 comments:
Jane-
The comments over at Pam's House Blend are really interesting. Since you just said something (kind of) nice about me, and nobody over there ever has, I'll react here, with your permission (and I left my religion at the door - really - see below):
1) Some of the posters really don't understand how to win a campaign. They said things like "I'm going to contact that company and tell them they are supporting discrimination against gay people!" Well, duh. The people giving money to Prop. 8 are fully aware they are discriminating against gay people - in fact, that's kind of the reason some of them are giving the money. But if they can contact those donors and say "Did you know that the Prop. 8 campaign has a "torture puppies Tuesday" party in their office once a week and is run by a woman who embezzled $50,000 from an orphanage, causing four babies to starve to death?" then they're on to something that might even change the mind of a traditionally religious conservative Republican.
2) Somebody actually complained that the Prop. 8 petitions aren't public information. That is a good policy for LGBT Americans, because someday we're going to want to put something on the ballot - to protect the children of gay parents, or to help gay prisoners, or whatever. If the petitions are public information, closeted members of our community - and people who support us but don't feel comfortable telling their friends and family and members of their church etc. - simply won't sign. It's not good for us.
To recapitulate #1, which is really the most important point, although if you disagree Jane I'd be curious to hear your perspective:
To convince the whole state, you need to move beyond simply recapitulating the arguments about how "this is bigoted initiative to hurt gay families" and I'm not saying that just because I disagree with those arguments. To win, you have to make arguments that 60% of the state will agree with, because with the vagaries of turnout you don't know who's actually voting on election day, so 50% plus one isn't always enough. And these are really, really bad people. I'm not ready to say why, but it's not hard to find on the Web. They don't actually torture puppies, but in the eyes of the typical voter who knows all of what they're about, they represent worse things than just supporting a measure that defines marriage as between a man and a woman - and no matter how bad you think that is, if you want to convince the Golden State in November you have to focus on arguments that will reach as many people as possible.
David,
Again, I think you are raising several points that I agree with. Who knew? ;-)
I've had an incredibly busy day and haven't had time to give your comment the response it deserves, but I will get back here at some point in the next 24 hours.
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