Post-Mortem on Last Night's Prop 8 Post-Mortem
Last night's Marriage Equality Community Forum was neat! It started with a brief hello from former New Paltz mayor Jason West. We tried to get a picture, but as you can see, he is simply too dreamy and wonderful to be captured by normal photographic equipment.
The meeting was part of a statewide effort to collect data from everyone at a grassroots level. The "official" marriage activists want to compile an analysis of what went wrong and what went right. If you missed the meeting, you can still contribute -- just fill out the survey on Marriage Equality's site. Molly McKay, the forum's moderator, indicated that the report would be made public.
The evening was kicked off by some speakers: Shayna Gelender from the ACLU explained the current status of the legal challenge to Prop 8. Next, Andrea Shorter explained ... well, we're not sure. We like Andrea -- she's gentle and heartfelt -- but with all her dramatic pauses and lengthy digressions, we sometimes have trouble catching her meaning. And then finally, Sister Edith Myflesh (out of uniform!) talked about outreach. The protests were great, he said, but we need to take those demonstrations to other communities. "They need to see real queer people," he said, and mentioned an upcoming bus trip to Fresno. The audience audibly gasped.
And then, it was on with the discussions.
We left the meeting early, so we weren't able to hear much of the audience's input. (Were you there? Please supply your observations in the comments.) But we can report that the community is still struggling with effective strategies. There were a number of campaigns discussed at the meeting -- some with official endorsement, others suggested by random audience members. Some sound okay; others, well...
- December 10: Day Without a Gay. Take the day off of work, don't buy anything, and go volunteer in communities. Sounds like a nice idea, but how many people can actually take a day off of work and refrain from purchases? And of them, how many will actually volunteer? Our predictions: few and fewer. Also, WTF? Don't buy anything? Who organized this campaign, the Campus Marxist Brigade? We're just not sure what the goal is, or how anyone's going to track the outcome.
- December 20: Candlelight Vigil in Union Square. Sounds pleasant enough. But, okay, you lit some candles and stood around looking glum. Now what? Again, we're just not sure what the goal or the outcome is.
- January 24: Demonstrate on behalf of women's reproductive rights. Um?
- Write a postcard to Barack Obama, telling him to overturn federal Defense of Marriage. Do campaigns like this really work? We know what the goal is, but we're afraid that the postcard method won't get us there.
- Go see Milk to boost its box office. A big BO for Milk is a good thing -- as long as it's profitable, they'll keep widening the release so that more people can see it. But like the postcards, is the really do-able? We'd have to spend tens of thousands to make a noticeable surge in the film's already-big take.
- Call the manager of Pottery Barn to complain about how their Castro window-display only has heterosexual couples. Apparently the strategy is to have our marriages solemnized by home furnishing stores. Okay, okay, we know that visibility is crucial; but is this really the battle we're choosing?
- Harass Molly McKay. (This was the strategy employed last night by Michael Petrelis, who interrupted the speaker and made aggressive demands about the agenda. If his goal was eliciting uncomfortable squirming and hisses from the rest of the audience, mission accomplished.)
AmericaBlog's John Aravosis says, " I don't fault the followers for coming up with very sweet but useless ideas. I fault the leaders, in California and in Washington, for permitting this void in smart political leadership to continue year after year."
Ouch. Are these really all "sweet but useless"? Or are we just feeling particularly pessimistic after the Prop 8 loss? Hopefully, once they see some of the feedback from events like these, the leaders will be able to reassure us that they have their shit together.
Hopefully.
Disclosure: SFist_Matt is the creator of Stop8.org, and does behind-the-scenes activism for marriage equality.