Jan 02, 2009  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

Toward the end of October, about two weeks before California voters went to the polls to decide the future of same-sex marriage in the Golden State, lesbian activist Robin Tyler approached her lawyer about filing a lawsuit to challenge the results of the upcoming vote.

“I knew we were going to lose,” said Tyler, who, along with her wife, Diane Olson, were the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the most populated state in the country legalizing same-sex marriage beginning June 16.

On Nov. 4, backed by 52 percent of the vote, the gay marriage ban known as Proposition 8 became a part of California’s constitution. Despite taking place in one of the most liberal states in the nation and despite raising more than $37 million, the fight to defeat Prop 8 lost in every demographic group except one, according to an upcoming report from the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.

“The only demographic that we either won or came close to winning are people under the age of 35,” said Rea Carey, executive director of the Task Force.

Early analysis after the election blamed passage of Prop 8 on African-American voters who turned out in strong numbers to support U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in his presidential bid, and who reportedly voted for Prop 8 by a substantial majority. While those analyses have since been discredited, many gay activists have said more must be done to persuade black voters and others to support gay rights.

But Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, noted that proponents of Prop 8 owed their success to other factors.

“They lied,” Solmonese said. “I think that’s really central. They just went out there and lied.”

In the weeks leading up to the vote, supporters of Prop 8 unleashed a stream of commercials and campaign materials that falsely claimed preachers and other religious leaders who opposed homosexuality might be arrested and charged with hate crimes if gay marriage remained legal in California. Prop 8 backers further played on voters’ fears by suggesting that if the measure failed, elementary school children would be forced to learn about and celebrate same-sex marriage.

The lies were damaging and politically effective, but the response by gay activists fighting Prop 8 is what ultimately allowed the measure to pass, Tyler said.

“They came with a sledgehammer and we fought back with a slingshot,” Tyler said. “We never disputed their commercials.”

Like many critics of the effort to defeat Prop 8, Tyler said organizers didn’t do enough outreach to minority and rural voters, “de-gayed” the campaign by not making homosexuality and gay rights the central issue, and opted to spend money hiring political consultants and pollsters instead of fully tapping into grassroots activists.

While the passage of Prop 8 sparked anger and protest among many gay and lesbian people across the U.S., leaders of the nation’s two largest gay rights organizations also found inspiration in the outcome. When California residents voted on a ballot initiative related to same-sex unions in 2000, they outlawed gay marriage by a 22-point margin.

“To come back from losing, [going] from a 22 to 4 [percent margin] is remarkable progress,” Carey said. “It’s not the progress we hoped for, it’s not the progress we wanted, but it’s still progress.”

Solmonese agreed, noting, “the measure of who we are as a community and who we are as a people has everything to do with how we move forward” from the Prop. 8 loss.

“We oftentimes compare ourselves to the Civil Rights struggle in the 1960s, and if we truly believe that, we have to remember that there were people involved in that struggle, there were people who took to those streets during that struggle, fully expecting that they were not going to survive, and that they certainly weren’t going to ever see realized the issues they were out there fighting for,” he said.
“As a community, we’ve got to ask ourselves if we’ve got the will and if we’ve got the commitment to keep up that fight.”

Historic election

When the nation was engulfed in an embarrassing era of discrimination against blacks during the middle of last century, it was difficult for many people to imagine American voters ever electing someone with African-American roots to the White House.

But from the first caucuses of 2008, Obama emerged as a strong contender among what some people considered the most gay-friendly group of candidates in the history of presidential campaigns.

In order to ensure gay and lesbian voters were involved early in the primary campaign, HRC set up field offices in leadoff ...