Timothy at Box Turtle Bulletin writes:
I propose that we, as a community, consider the following strategy:
We place a constitutional amendment on the ballot of every statewide election until Proposition 8 is overturned. Such an amendment would be written to do nothing other than reverse the language that was inserted on Tuesday night. […]
I propose that beyond the cost and effort to collect and submit signatures that we do nothing towards passing the amendment. Nor should we go in with any expectation of success. Our community cannot well afford either the financial or emotional cost of a battle like the one we have just gone through.
But we should make it clear to the voters that we can and will continue to place this issue before them until they side with equality.
I think that’s a great idea. I’d only suggest one change: Why not write the ballot measure to undermine all the horrible lies “Yes on 8” people tell to persuade swing voters?
One intriguing (and hopeful) wrinkle of the “Yes on 8” campaign is that they never showed a same-sex couple in their ads, nor did they ever talk about lesbian and gay couples. This is because many “swing” voters on gay ballot initiatives don’t want to think of themselves as bigots. So “Yes on 8” told them, again and again, that this isn’t a vote to hurt gay people; it’s a vote to protect the children! It’s a vote to protect churches!
If there’s no legal barrier, then a ballot measure — or a series of ballot measures — could call for:
1) An explicit constitutional right for parents to opt out of having their children taught about same-sex marriage in public schools, and
2) An explicit constitutional right for religious institutions, and religious officiants, to decline to host or perform same-sex wedding ceremonies, without any legal penalty or any loss of tax status.
3) Removing proposition 8’s language from the California constitution.
The down side is, it’s pointless, legally — all those rights already exist in California. The “Yes on 8” people are lying when they say otherwise. And let’s face it, it’s galling to have to defer to this garbage in order to have justice. But politics are like that.
The up side is, it would cut the anti-marriage movement’s most powerful arguments off at the knees. Yes, they’ll switch to other nonsensical arguments — but the reason they chose these arguments is that they’re the most powerful arguments they’ve got. If they had anything better, they would have used that instead.
Remember, we only need to peel off 3% of voters or so for a victory, so every voter pealed off their side counts. If there are a lot of swing voters who were persuaded to vote for proposition 8 because of the “protect the children/churches!” argument — and that’s certainly what the “Yes on 8” organizers believe — then taking those arguments away could change the outcome.
At the very least, the more the “Yes on 8” proponents are forced to argue that gay couples are bad, the more their true natures will be revealed. That’s worthwhile in and of itself.
This is really a great idea … one of the best I’ve heard.
—Myca
I actually think that a full-on repeal effort might be worth a try.
Admittedly, I’m not in California, so I really have no idea if it would stand a chance.
Come to that, we should be doing the same thing here in Oregon, where an anti-marriage amendment passed by a narrow margin back in 2004.
You’re right, that is a really good idea.
I wonder what the effect of reduced voter turnout would be, if such a measure were to be proposed in a non-Presidential election year.
I’d love to see a full-on repeal effort too. (This time around, I’ll visit CA for a week or two to volunteer.)
But even in the case of a full-on effort, I (tentatively) think it should be done in the way I describe in this post.
As for Oregon, I’m not sure. 57% to 43% isn’t really that narrow a margin. But it might be worth trying.
The people that voted No on this aren’t really worried about this stuff. They think “homosexuality is wrong” and that it’s something to be ashamed of and kept away from impressionable young folk. You’re trying to use reason on bigots.
Joe, I think you’re right in many cases. But if even 10% of the folks who voted for prop 8 are potentially persuadable swing voters, then it’s worth trying.
The only other alternative, if the court challenge fails, is to say “nothing to be done about it until enough older voters die.”
But your other, more favority, words say:
and:
Also, in my own words… 2004 was a long time ago in terms of SSM. I think it’s worth doing in Oregon.
Any clue as to how we get this started, Charles?
Start talking to people at Basic Rights Oregon.
I volunteered a bunch with the No on 36 campaign here in Oregon back in 2004, which was run by BRO, and I thought they did a good job of it. They didn’t have No on 8’s enormous budget, so they stuck to the ground work, rather than going for the TV ad based campaign. Any campaign to repeal the anti-marriage amendment would want BROs databases to start from.
Actually, the first step in a repeal campaign would be to convince the BRO folks that it was the right step to take.
Amp, good point. Any ass can say it won’t work. And I’m not just any ass. So what would I do is…get allies. Also try to keep people that disagree with you to stay home. Get democrats to ask black religious leaders to sit the next one out. Don’t have to endorse, just don’t say anything and don’t try to get out the vote. It’d be nice if you could do the same with white evangelicals but GLBT doesn’t have much pull with the GOP.
The gun nuts do. So make it a constitutional amendment about personal liberty. State’s got no place to tell me who i can and can’t marry. It’s got no place telling me I can’t defend by home with a shotgun. So add in a castle doctrine (if CA doesn’t have one already). This won’t change the number of guns in existence, where they, are or who has them. Also, iirc sates have been doing this with no appreciable affect on people getting shot.
Libertarians are up for grabs. Yeah, there’s a lot of progressive ideas that they don’t like. But there are a lot of conservative ideas they don’t like either, and this is one of them. Maybe throw in a restriction on eminent domain. Nothing crazy like classifying regulation as a taking, maybe just a rule that no level of govt can take land to give to another private party or a rule that the payment must be 3x fair market value or something. Many of the takings I’m familiar with have involved the rich and powerful taking land from the poor and weak for one reason or another. So this could be progressive issue.
Oh, and do all of your ideas also. I don’t think they’ll work much, but it might make it easier to get people that usually vote GOP to grab for the goodies.
I’m not sure that really makes sense. We don’t need people who normally vote GOP, nor do we need 10% of those who voted for Prop 8; we need less than half that amount to change their votes, or an equivalent chance variation in turnout. See constitution, stupid method of changing in California.
CA just voted down a parental notification proposition for the third time, so I’m very wary of putting something on the ballot just to have it on there. It seems like people get tired of voting on the same thing over and over again, and just vote the way they voted the previous time. After awhile, it just becomes a joke.
If the lawsuits don’t work, I feel like it’d be smarter to gather up resources and make another big push.