After the devastating passage of Proposition 8, queer communities' rage has transformed into constructive future focus. Initially reluctant, queer elected officials teamed up with journalists to bring the principals of the No on 8 campaign to a local community accountability forum on February 26, thanks to Michael Petrelis.
The event revealed conceptual errors that led to our electoral defeat. To their credit, some members of the panel accepted responsibility and apologized to the community. This article would consolidate some of those lessons to avoid repeating errors and inform victory in future campaigns.
Queer civil rights campaigns must represent the priorities of the queer communities. For the past 16 years, the national queer agenda has been led by heterosexual politicians pursuing conservative goals. In the 1990s, polls showed a majority of Americans, along with queers, in support of job and housing protections for lesbians and gays, while a majority of Americans opposed "gays in the military," offered up by Bill Clinton, and Gavin Newsom's same-sex marriage.
Campaigns that antagonize haters such as military or marriage require greater unity amongst the queer base to succeed. Measures that do not touch on hot button conservative issues and enjoy broader public support will pass with less effort. If our communities are not relatively unified for more difficult projects, then it will be much more challenging to make our case to the general public.
Queer communities had not consolidated behind same-sex marriage until relatively late, around 2004. Progressive and non-assimilationist queers had always viewed marriage with a gimlet eye, property rights and children not a priority, just as we'd never fully supported "gays in the military." Thus, critical mass in the queer community in support of marriage was still building as the marriage project progressed and we were unable to overcome conservative antagonism.
Now that we've all taken another black eye, that unity now exists; may a thousand young Hank Wilsons have arisen!
The approaches we use to campaign for queer civil rights must be intellectually and politically authored by queers with experience in messaging and campaign management. Otherwise, the message will be inauthentic, and the campaign less viable. Labor must be divided between experienced campaigners and the nonprofits that advocate so that our scarce resources are efficiently deployed.
A civil rights campaign must be a grassroots-centered election as an accumulation of years of Cesar Chavez-style "people to people" organizing. The time to convince people to vote with you is not during the campaign, it is before the campaign. That kind of field work should be going on now.
Imagine what the political landscape would look like now had housing and job protections defined our agenda instead of Clinton's glib military promise on MTV? Building more ambitious campaigns upon a record of success is always easier than crawling up from the hole of defeat of your own making. Instead, as our acceptance grew, we spent 16 years as federal political "desperate divas."
California is enormous with politically distinct regions. Campaigns must decentralize so that culturally and politically appropriate messages can be crafted by locals who know the territory. Blue county queers must follow the lead of the locals if we go to the red counties to make our case.
Never underestimate unintended consequences of political action. Whenever an attorney gives advice to initiate a lawsuit or to invite a lawsuit by executive action, they had better have a plan to deal with the worst case outcomes. Newsom "legalized" same-sex marriage in 2004, to consolidate local queer support. While securing support, Newsom's actions also initiated the legal drama that ended (for now) in electoral defeat. That Newsom contributed not one of his own dollars, that he didn't campaign once outside of the liberal Bay Area exposes Newsom's priorities once he's got his.
Queer campaigns must learn from the past. Prop 8 leadership claimed that conservative fear that Prop 8 would teach kids homosexuality could not be overcome. But Harvey Milk talked about gay teachers in 1978 and defeated Prop 6. Were the four hetero political consultants on No on Prop 8 ignorant of our history? We didn't need to reinvent a wheel here, but the campaign leadership knew nothing of wheels.
Finally, we need for advocacy nonprofits to democratize. Otherwise, funded groups set our agendas and that rarely accurately reflects queer communities' sentiments.
Strategically, when funded groups on the margins of our communities set the agenda absent democratic grassroots legitimacy, we lose. On the right, this was demonstrated with marriage and the military, and on the left by efforts to scuttle the Employment Non-Discrimination Act until transgender protections were in place. All three went down in political flames because advocates moved further afoot from consensus than they were able to sustain politically.
The goal here is to win, not to "fight the good fight" and lose. To win, we have to chart our course democratically, queers calling the shots for queers, and pursue projects with the highest likelihood of success. Political success breeds more success, failure takes the wind out of our sails.
Thanks to Cynthia Laird and Kim Corsaro for moderating the forum, to David Binder for his always insightful election demographics presentation, to the principals of the campaign who were, to varying degrees, contrite to their successes and failures, to queer electeds Senator Mark Leno, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, Supervisors Bevan Dufty and David Campos and Treasurer Jose Cisneros, and especially to Michael Petrelis for keeping everyone honest and focused.
Marc Salomon is a queer who has worked on a variety of progressive and queer campaigns, electoral and otherwise, and really dislikes losing those that we should win.