First published in Bay Windows, November 23, 2006
Election Week 2006 marked a turning point in the gay civil rights movement. Our battles are far from ended, but the same midterm correction that reaffirmed the wisdom of our nation’s founders has confirmed that the tide of history is with our cause of equality under the law. Several anti-gay politicians were defeated. We won our first statewide marriage initiative. The amendment to write gay families out of the U.S. Constitution is gone with the Republican majority. And marriage equality is reaffirmed in Massachusetts. Let the naysayers grumble all they like. It’s time for Thanksgiving.
It is also a time for taking stock. Although we lost 7 of 8 state initiative battles, the fact that the anti-gay vote was held to less than 60 percent in Colorado, South Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin indicates public opinion is shifting toward us, and we can win given sufficient resources. The improved numbers are partly due to increased professionalism. Arizona Together, which led the successful effort to defeat anti-gay Proposition 107, spent $200,000 on voter research, and ultimately raised $2.1 million for their successful campaign.
Key to the Arizona victory was message discipline, which meant not allowing the anti-gay side to control the framing of the debate. While it is easy to fault leaders on our side for not emphasizing the rights of gay couples, our challenge in these ballot fights is to win votes in a particular electoral context with necessarily brief campaign messages. Educating the public about gay families is a crucial ongoing project for our statewide groups (and for each of us), but initiative campaigns must be carefully geared toward the likely voters here and now. Knowing that most Arizonans oppose same-sex marriage, Arizona Together focused its messages instead on the adverse effect the initiative’s provision outlawing domestic partnerships would have on many heterosexual couples.
I myself have been a client of Lake Research Partners, the voter research firm used by Arizona Together, and I learned a lot thanks to the sophistication and experience that went into their polling design. It is expensive to hire first-rate consultants, but such research is indispensable in providing the framework for campaign messaging.
In addition to solid research and messaging, hard work made the difference. A Nov. 8 press release from Arizona Together stated, “With a coalition of more than 18,000 volunteers, outreach and education spanned the spectrum including the placement and distribution of more than 3,000 signs statewide; distribution of more than 100,000 pieces of literature through events and door knocking; tens of thousands of phone calls; one million pieces of mailed literature; and a three-week run on TV.”
Several who lost their initiative fights said that their states were better organized as a result of the experience, and they might have won had they been able to reach more voters with their message. The state-by-state fight in the years ahead will take a great deal of coordination and identification of new funding sources. National GLBT and allied groups, working with the Equality Federation of statewide groups, have made a good start with grants, field organizing and training.
Fair Wisconsin stated after the election that their get-out-the-vote efforts helped defeat several anti-gay state legislators. South Dakotans Against Discrimination pointed out that, while they lost, they won 48 percent of the vote compared with the 24 percent to 33 percent shown in polls last January. Colorado’s referendum to approve domestic partnerships came agonizingly close, winning 47 percent of the vote.
In the long run, the only people who can defeat us in our drive toward equality are ourselves. Claire Guthrie Gastañaga of Virginia’s pro-gay Commonwealth Coalition stated, “One of our biggest obstacles in this campaign was that many thought the outcome was a foregone conclusion and were afraid or unwilling to invest themselves in this effort.”
Virginians did provide the finest irony of the election. The Washington Times reported on Nov. 1 that Virginia’s anti-gay amendment, designed to help Sen. George Allen’s re-election bid by rousing conservative voters, appeared to be backfiring. This was because black voters, while they supported the amendment by more than 60 percent according to polls, overwhelmingly favored Allen’s Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. Additionally, the Commonwealth Coalition spent nearly $1 million and gained a million “no” voters, who also broke for Webb. Thus, demonizing gay people arguably cost Republicans the Senate.
Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association crowed after the election that “only one [state] voted against traditional marriage.” I wonder if Mr. Wildmon considers the higher divorce rate in the Bible Belt a part of traditional marriage. The endless hectoring by these hypocritical busybodies is like an inveterate slob criticizing someone else’s personal hygiene. If the tormented closet cases and parents in denial about their own gay children were purged from the leadership of the anti-gay movement, it would virtually disappear. Our adversaries’ poll numbers are declining because their position depends on defamation and self-delusion.
The Arizona victory was no thanks to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who taped two television spots for Prop. 107. In Tennessee, Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford Jr. joined his Republican opponent, Bob Corker, in supporting that state’s anti-gay amendment. Ford also attacked the October 25 New Jersey Supreme Court decision on marriage, and boasted of having voted twice for the anti-gay federal marriage amendment. The Tennessee ballot measure won 81 percent of the vote, but Ford was defeated. How must it feel to sell your soul, only to leave empty-handed?