A LACK OF OUTREACH RESULTS IN NO REACH-AROUND

By Guest Contributor, Attorney and Fellow Anarchist,
Jeff Hagedorn

As elections go, the election of 2008 will go down as a sea change of historical proportion. It’s already being evaluated, ad nauseum, by every talking head on TV, radio or in print, so I won’t deign to add my 2 cents worth beyond saying, as a Democrat, I’m pretty damned pleased. We elected an African American to the highest office in this great country of ours, and it really was “we” that did it, in that Barack Obama received over 50% of the vote (even Bill Clinton never received more than a plurality) while being funded by average contributions of under $100 per contributor. I’d call that “we” in every sense of the term.

But hidden in our bloviating, gesticulating and outright gloating response to the national success of our party was a real loss for the Progressive Cause ... in California, of all places. You see, California has a goofy voter referendum law that allows certain issues that are near and dear to various wackos to be placed upon the ballot if said wackos can find enough additional wackos to sign a petition to certify it for a vote (which they invariably can … it’s California after all). In this instance it was an initiative to overturn a recent California Supreme Court ruling legalizing the right for gays and lesbians to marry, called Proposition 8.

Now let me make one thing very clear: I am a card-carrying heterosexual. Well … I would be if we had cards for that, but just ask my wife, she’ll tell you that I’m straight ... I think. I have gay friends, as many folks (mostly non-Republicans) do, but I’m also not some radical supporter of gay rights either. I’m one of those people that just can’t get myself worked up enough to feel threatened by the prospect that Jim and Bob want to get married, especially if it frees up Stacy and Melissa for the rest of the straight guys to fight over. But once someone has been granted a right, I find it morally reprehensible to take it away from them. Therefore, I think Jim and Bob should be able to get married and enjoy all of the benefits that flow from that legal right. It sure isn’t going to make me want to turn gay, and I think my wife can probably maintain her hetero status (although I probably wouldn’t mind if she decided to try out bisexuality!!!).


Proposition 8 was the brain child of the typical right-wing psychos that are afraid the GAYS are going to take over the Country if we don’t kick them around as often as possible. The proponents were very well funded, and they set up a formidable ground operation in support of banning gay marriage, specifically including outreach to church groups in every demographic group.

The gay and lesbian groups that organized to fight Prop 8 were more of a confederation of groups, with their own inner disputes, that sought to capitalize upon an obvious liberal groundswell to defeat what was viewed as a hateful attempt to deny them rights that they had only just recently been guaranteed. They did some ads, and they schmoozed with some Hollywood celebrities, and they ASSUMED that the Democratic tide would carry the day for them.

OOOOPS! It’s Wednesday, November 5, and Prop 8 has passed by a slim majority. And it just turns out that the black community – yeah, the folks who supported Obama almost unanimously – voted in favor of Prop 8 at about a 70% clip. The Latinos also supported it at about a 60% rate. But aren’t those some of the constituencies on “our” side? As it turns out, the way this issue was framed, no.

Now here’s where this story really gets ugly. What do the gay rights groups do in response (aside from filing the inevitable lawsuit to challenge the validity of Prop 8)? Well they do the most obvious thing in the world. They blame the minorities. Wouldn’t you? Hell … it’s not like they aren’t involved in the same struggle to recognize their civil rights. Don’t those black and brown people understand? Turns out that black people aren’t the only ones capable of rioting in Los Angeles, as gay mobs apparently disrupted traffic and used racial epithets to refer to many African Americans and Latinos (let’s not even discuss how many Republican fetishist dreams came true when the gays took to the streets).

But looking back at the months leading up to the actual vote, it’s easy to see how the opponents of Prop 8 dropped the ball (notice I did not say “dropped the soap”). It all boils down to that fatal assumption that people that have been oppressed will fight oppression when it is directed at others. Blacks and Latinos have long been the victims of racism and the many forms of oppression that emanate from a racist system. So the opponents of Prop 8 just assumed that they’d have the support of those communities. They did nothing to understand the devout Christian heritage of those groups, nor did they recognize the efforts that the right-wing wackos were putting forth to woo the support of people of faith – of all colors – through their churches. The gay rights folks maintained a “keep your religion out of our bedroom” position, and it came back to bite them in the … well … it turned out to be a bad approach.

And the sad fact of the matter is that many of the people of color who voted for Prop 8 were the type of folks that could have been persuaded if the opponents of Prop 8 had dared to court them with a reasoned and rational justification for supporting their position as a CIVIL RIGHTS issue, instead of a moral or religious issue. You can bet that many of the African Americans and Latinos that voted in favor of Prop 8 hadn’t really taken the time to consider it that way, and that’s primarily because they were ignored … until it was too late. Now those same folks that could have been persuaded are being blamed.

So what are the lessons that those of us who are able to find a dark cloud inside the silver lining of the Election of 2008 can glean from the California Prop 8 debacle? After all San Francisco is still to homosexuals what Mecca is to Muslims, and you’re really only one ballot initiative away from changing the law again, but just don’t plan on getting married to that special someone anytime soon … at least not in California ... unless you’re willing to show a little love to your natural allies, instead of just ignoring them. Let’s hope that the lesson takes hold before the ugliness causes real political harm.