In my Gay and Lesbian American History class, we spent an hour yesterday sorting through the mixed emotions in the aftermath of the election. I chose not to lecture, and turned the first half of the class into an open forum for venting and discussion about the passage of Proposition 8 and the new ban on same-sex marriage here in California. In the second half of the course, I offered a series of reasons for why the results came the way they did, based on analyses of the two campaigns and upon the exit polling data.
I had wondered if some in the class — the majority of whom identify as non-heterosexual or non-cis-gendered — would be very sad. There was sadness, to be sure, but also anger and enthusiasm. One young woman, just 18 and in the process of coming out to her family as a lesbian, said “More than ever, today like I feel like I’m part of a movement that really has to fight.” Many students said that they had simply assumed that Prop 8 would be defeated; indeed, several admitted that they had been more anxious about Barack Obama than about same-sex marriage. One said “This is California; we always do the right thing here. I was worried the rest of the nation was racist and wouldn’t vote for a black man. And it turns out Obama wins easily and Californians are bigots!” There was some nodding when that remark was made.
I know a few of my students, several of whom are budding or even seasoned activists in the gay community, had done some phone-banking against Prop 8. But I know that in general, they spent far more time working for the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. Only one student had given money to the “No on 8″ fight; seven reported having made small donations to he who is now our president-elect. It isn’t the fault of the Obama campaign that they ran such a marvelous grassroots operation that inspired the young — but inadvertently, they may have “sucked a lot of the air” out of the room, leaving fewer resources than usual to fight for gay and lesbian rights here in California. I know a great many young progressives who traveled this past weekend to Nevada to work at GOTV (get out the vote) for Barack Obama; at the same time, the Mormons and other large church organizations brought outsiders in to California to do precinct walking against gay marriage. Progressive energies were not all where they might have been.
I’m not pointing fingers. But I think it’s important to see this election in context. Most progressives in California cared about many things on the ballot: defeating parental notification, winning rights for farm animals, and defending gay marriage. We also cared deeply about electing Barack Obama. Many social conservatives, however, more or less abandoned the McCain campaign, as their fund-raising numbers show. The religious right fought, as might be expected, for parental notification, but not with great energy — and thus, for the third time in as many years, the pro-choice community won that battle. Animal rights activists such as myself gave a great deal of time and energy and money to passing Proposition 2, which cleared the electoral hurdle by a whopping 63-37 margin. And the social conservatives focused like a laser on one issue while we focused on many.
Of course, as the exit polls show, black and Latino voters overwhelmingly (70-30) backed Proposition 8. Despite Barack Obama’s clear opposition to the initiative, the Defend Marriage campaign cleverly twisted the president-elect’s words, using them in robo-calls and print advertising, suggesting that he was supportive of the effort to ban same-sex marriage. That seems to have had a disproportionate effect in the African-American community, in an election where African-Americans turned out in record numbers. Among all white voters, interestingly, the measure failed. The good news, obviously, is that voters under 30 (18-29) overwhelmingly opposed the measure to ban gay marriage, by a 61-39 margin. Those over 65 were those most in favor of eliminating the right to marry — by an identical margin! Over time, the grim reaper will help the cause of justice, I suppose, if nothing else does.
Several of my students marched in West Hollywood last night as part of a protest against the passage of Prop 8, and as far as I can tell (I rely on their Facebook updates) none were arrested. They are energized for a long fight. And we can learn a lesson from our indefagitable foes in the pro-life movement, the ones who keep bringing parental notification back to the ballot in every election: never give up. In 2010, with no presidential race on the ballot, and with the full resources of the GLBTQ community at our disposal, perhaps with a nice taped message from President Obama in support, I like our chances. In 2000, we lost 62-28; Tuesday, we lost 52-48 — and in two years…
There were no tears yesterday. We ate cookies brought by one student who thought we needed some sweetness; she remembered to make half of them vegan. And we laughed a lot. These young activists are more serious than ever now, and they aren’t giving up. I am immensely proud of them.
Once again, I have to question this idea of progressives having a fixed amount of financial and time resources available for political causes, which they then proceed to parcel out among various campaigns.
My guess would that be in a campaign season without Obama (either a less inspiring Dem nominee or in a mid-term election) you would have possibly seen that same single donation for “No on 8,” but certainly no more. I don’t know if you were teaching in 2000, but how many students in an analogous course back then donated, or would have donated, to fight Prop 22?
I have to question this idea of progressives having a fixed amount of financial and time resources available for political causes, which they then proceed to parcel out among various campaigns.
People have finite resources, TPS. The religious right made a decision to go all in on one initiative, and they won — and lost on everything else. There’s a lesson in that. My students have only so many hours for volunteering, so much money in their bank accounts. Perhaps you know other sorts of people.
Hugo,
To paraphrase an old saying, demographics is a knife that cuts both ways. It’s true that older people are more opposed to same-sex marriage. But it’s also true that immigrants tend to oppose it, and that the people who oppose same-sex marriage (i.e. the seriously religious) also have more children that people who favor it. So no, if you look at birth rates then I don’t think time is on your side in the long run.
A question for you: in your ideal society, how would you deal with those people who believe, as a matter of religious and moral conviction, that homosexual acts are gravely sinful?
Thanks, Hugo. I keep on looking for stories like these about prop 8 (and prop 2 from my new home state). They reignite my hope, which has been a bit battered for the last few days.
I’ve been having a bit of introspection lately around activism - moving to a new, red-ish state from another red-ish state is demoralizing in some ways, and I’m having a hard time reconnecting with the energy I had when I lived in CA. A lot of it is likely age, and I’m *very* happy always to see enthusiastic young kids get excited about this stuff.
Sadly, a lot of students here in FL said that they just assumed it’d be defeated, and they hadn’t given it much thought. There’s a fair bit of dismay and energy right now, but I don’t know how strong that will be in the longer fights ahead as we face lawsuits over domestic partner benefits, a spectacle for which Prop 2 opened the door. (Yet another thing that disappointed me was the coverage of Prop 2 as a ‘gay marriage’ issue - it not only outlawed gay marriage for the 4th time in FL, it has the ‘no rights or benefits similar to marriage’ language, and proponents have said they plan to sue to strip away domestic partner benefits for firefighters and other state employees.)
Anyway, I keep looking for stories like these, and of the grandmothers who took action on behalf of their queer grandkids, since they help to reduce my fatalism about queer rights. I may not have the temperament to be one of the enthusiastic protesters that keeps at it for decades, but so long as my rights and the rights of others are being trampled, I’ll keep looking for these kinds of inspiration to keep me off the couch.
//how would you deal with those people who believe, as a matter of religious and moral conviction, that homosexual acts are gravely sinful?//
I would remind them that they don’t live in a theocracy, for starters?
Hector:
Tell them that they certainly don’t have to do anything they want to do but we don’t live in a theocracy where one group’s definition of what is sinful limits what other adults are allowed to do.
I’m surprised that people expected 8 to fail so soundly, after the lesson of prop 22. But I suppose a few years’ difference can do a lot to obscure the certainty that so many of us had in 2000 that Prop. 22 could never ever pass…
i still have hope. it ain’t over yet. it used to be 60% of voters were against same sex, now it’s only 50%. can’t give up!
oh, and nicely done on the “cis-gendered” part. it made me smile.
I don’t mean to dispute that there are hard limits to the money and time students (or anyone else) can devote to various causes. I just think a very exciting and successful campaign like Obama’s does more to inspire people towards those limits — in support of all of their ideals — than to deprive causes of resources they would otherwise enjoy.
But again, no hard evidence to support that, it’s just my feeling. There were anti-gay marriage amendments in 2004 as well, and I don’t think the campaigns against them benefited from Kerry’s being a relatively less inspiring candidate.
I wonder why the religious right fought the same-sex marriage ballot measure battles (and particularly Proposition 8) with so much more vigor than they did the various abortion related ballot measures on the ballots in different states.
TPS12: I think there’s something to what Hugo is saying, though — mostly that the pro-gay-marriage side was to some degree complacent, believing that California is a liberal state and it couldn’t happen here.
I’m angry at the protestors, to some degree; if they’d shown the activism a month ago that they’re showing now, the result might have been different. But I acknowledge that to some degree this is unfair, and it is my pain speaking mroe than anything else.
Lynn Gazis-Sax,
The answer seems to be, because many ‘conservative’ activists are bloody hypocrites who want to uphold Christian values when it comes to forbidding gays from getting maried, but do not want to abide by Christian values when it means THEIR family members being required to carry a pregnancy (or donating to charity, supporting economic justice, or protecting the environment.)
Perhaps that’s uncharitable of me. While I morally disapprove of homosexual acts, I don’t particularly care if the United States government decides to recognize homosexual marriages- what I’m concerned about protecting is sacramental marriage, not civil marriage. I do care, very much, about abortion, and although I didn’t vote for McCain I was hoping and praying that the pro-life initiatives in Michigan, Colorado, South Dakota and California would pass. They all failed, which makes me think that maybe the supposed pro-life sentiment in America is largely a big sham. It’s truly sad that many social conservatives in America appear to care more about whether something is called ‘civil union’ or ‘civil marriage’ than about the protection of innocent human life.
I wonder why the religious right fought the same-sex marriage ballot measure battles with so much more vigor than they did the various abortion related ballot measures on the ballots in different states.
Two big reasons: first, it looked more winnable. Second, until we get either some genuine radicals, or a change in the Supreme Court, any change in abortion law is like a band-aid on a femoral artery cut.
SamChevre,
You have it precisely backward. Until and unless a solid majority of the people in a majority of U.S. states is pro-life, then having a change in the Supreme Court will be precisely meaningless. Overturning Roe v. Wade, while it would be nice, will just return it to the states. Will any of the states vote to place meaningful restrictions on abortion? Did South Dakota on Tuesday? The question answers itself.
If we can’t get a pro-life initiative to pass in South Dakota, then exactly where can we get one?
Which, of course, is totally unaffected either way by ballot measures like Prop 8.
I’m solidly with Hector. I once phoned in to a local NPR program when the topic was “issues voters.” I explained that there is more than one type of issues voter; for example, I side with conservatives on the issue of embryo-destructive stem cell research, but I side with the liberals on gay marriage. There are also serious fears people have on “assisted suicide” measures, not even so much for the issue, itself, but because of the real possibiility that people who haven’t expressed a yearning to die will nonetheless be put do death because they’re “obviously not of sound mind if they’re saying they want to go on living in that condition.” (It’s happened.” But, by all means, let’s not worry about that, since apparently the nation will implode if two men in Oakland want to tie the knot…
I think many religious people react to the promotion of homosexuality in the schools. These days gay unions are promoted as good or better than a man plus a woman who created their own children. Much more trendy to be two rich gay men who buy eggs from a hormone-treated 20 year old female and then hire a womb to take all the discomfort and medical risks to bear the child for a few thousand dollars. Let’s eliminate mothers all together. Let’s just wreck female bodies without letting mothers keep the child. Same thing with joint custody and lesbian couples. Men/rich women can now have the children with one woman then have the new woman with the perfect body raise the kids.
Hector, you are correct that there was a pro-life initiative on the Michigan ballot
Hector, you are correct that there was a pro-life initiative on the Michigan ballot– proposal 2, which legalizes the use of stem cells derived from leftover embryos from fertility clinics.
Fortunately for me and for many other chronically ill residents of Michigan, this initiative passed. It will be years before we see results, years that will see many of us beyond help. But all the information we have now says that stem-cell research has nearly limitless potential for treating Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease, and a lot of other illnesses. Proposal 2 gave me, and many people like me, hope. Maybe now I’ll live to see my baby niece graduate from college. Maybe now I’ll live to grow old with my partner. It’s not a certainty, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got, and I thank God for that gift.
If you really think defeating proposal 1 would have been the “pro-life” thing to do, then you are saying that my life and the lives of people like me are worth less than the frozen-in-stasis existence of a six-celled embryo abandoned in a fertility clinic. Rethink your usage of that term: pro-LIFE.