Burnt Orange Report

I want to agree with you. Tactically, these ads will muddy up the issues--turning the question from the legalistic and narrowly focused topic of categorizing particular citizens for the allotment of certain civil rights to the wider issue of whether gay people can and should raise families. If we stood a ghost of a chance of defeating prop 2, I very well might agree with you. Don't smash the beehive and stir up the bees when all you want to do is extract a little honey.

The problem, however, with running a stealth campaign in a volitile homophobic state is that it won't work. The hate-based fundamentalist vote in favor of prop 2 is already stirred up. They're already going to vote this turkey in and we're not going to stop them. This is the equivalent of holding a school integration referendum in Alabama in 1950. The basic questions of justice, fairness, and human dignity aren't even agreed on yet. We will lose this vote. NGLTF at least seems to want to lose this vote semi-honestly.

If anything, they're not going enough into people's faces with their campaign. The only right way in a democracy to turn the issue of fairness around for our gay fellow citizens is to turn the hearts of the voters away from paranoia and toward simple economic justice. To do that properly, we shouldn't have gay people showing up on television. We need to have gay people showing up at church picnics.

The message should be, "Look me in the eye. Tell me to my face my life partner shouldn't have survivor or health insurance benefits. Look my daughter in the eye and tell her the two fathers who love her are going to hell. Try and convince my son one of his two moms isn't his real mom."

The Founding Fathers were terribly concerned in 1787 that a civic republic could not work as a form of government if people lived to far away from each other. Democracy works best when all citizens feel a level of identification with each other. It falls apart when we turn on each other. The only way justice will win out on all the "gay issues" (they're really civil rights issues) is thru gradualism, not legalism. We won't win this war by cleverer tactics. We'll only win by getting our more numerous opponents to quit the fight.

Well said Bucky. Except that I don't think insulting Christians is the correct tack to take, I do think that the GLBT movement would be better served through openness and honesty.

Some of the shortcomings are self-inflicted in your "community": Failure to chastise the "street-culture" etc. Some of the shortcomings are heaped upon you by Social Conservatives who know no better. (the fallacies of immorality, the "death" of marriage etc.)

As a heterosexual-caucasian-Christian who happens to be upper-middle class and lives in the suburbs (the anti-Christ to your group I know) I could really care LESS what the GLBT community does in regards to marriage. Since nothing you do has any effect whatsoever on my personal relationships.

However, arguing the point that secrecy from the masses is the key to victory makes even someone like me (who is sympathetic to your cause) start to wonder what it is you have to hide?

Ask yourself this: What is it that we, the GLBT community, have in common with the other side?

I think the answers might surprise you.

S.

"Gay couples talking about marriage and equality? It makes you think that we were actually voting on Gay Marriage in November"

No matter what message comes out of No Nonsense the majority of voters at the polls will be voting on this as a referendum on support for gay marriage. We need to realize that truth.

but that is not the truth, we aren't voting on gay marraige in november, realize the truth.

Exactly, Karl-T. The other side is trying to make people think that if this amendment fails we'll have civil marriage for gays, November 9th, hurry and save Western Civilization from this great threat!

This is where U. Minn law prof Dale Carpenter's "Who do they think they are kidding" corollary to the "It's already the Law" argument comes into effect. The proponents of the amendment say unnamed activist judges will overturn existing law. I Challenge: Name the Names. Name the judges on the Texas Supreme Court who will vote to overturn the existing state law, forget about the lower courts, even though those are overwhelmingly filled by elected, conservative, Republicans. Proponents of amendment 2 are telling an untruth about this amendment in order to foment fear (of gay marriage) and get votes.

They disingenuously state: "We don't know how we got to this point, where we have to define marriage", when the truth is that Amendment 2 proponents forced this to a statewide ballot with a bare majority in the Lege (1 vote in the House, 2 I believe in the Senate). They are presenting a siege mentality in order to justify an aggressive attack on a tiny minority of the population. This is called being a bully, and picking on someone weaker than yourself, and it is evil. We need to tell the truth about that too.

Incidentally as to the "look people in the eye" comment. I asked BYU Prof Lynn Wardle at a debate, with everything going on in Texas, what word of assurance could he give to the family of my daughter's Sunday school teacher, that the integrity of her family would reamin intact. He launched into a discussion of studies that "prove" that children should not be raised by same-sex couples and then an anecdote about an evangelical adoption agency that was forced under California law to adopt to a lesbian couple, asked how I could assure that such a thing would not happen in Texas if the amendment fails. Basically, not an answer to the question. I *Think* the response to the question was telling and convincing to the audience, albeit it was fairly sympathetic to our side to begin with. Point is, we need to try to pin proponents down on the harm to families. Many proponents want to dismantle gay families. We need to get them on record with that, because the vast majority (I believe) are uneasy about GLBT's BUT they also don't want to destroy other people's families.

Just my 25 cents.