How we might improve the fight for gay rights next time...

Prop 8 passed, and California has joined 3 other states in passing anti-gay measures last night.

California is in the unique position of having existing gay marriages - about 18,000 of them. What happens to those? According to Yahoo news, "The state attorney general, Jerry Brown, has said those marriages will remain valid, although legal challenges are possible." We shall see.

We've learned some things in this process, that will maybe help us to approach things differently next time:

1. It really is about the money. So much money was pumped into the Prop 8 campaign, to spread lies about the measure. In places where the No on 8 folks were able to afford our own ads to counter those, people were more inclined to vote no. Where that didn't happen, people were more inclined to vote yes. Next time, better and sooner fund-raising is needed. And more of us need to donate more. I donated... but I could have donated more than I did. I bet a lot of us are in that place.

2. We can't get complacent. Weeks ago, the numbers were so far ahead, and we thought it was a done deal. Then lots of money poured in for the Yes on 8 folks, and it was a scramble to catch up, and neither the money nor the organizational structure was ever quite in place.

3. We need a better organized push. I salute the good work of the people who tried, so hard, to make this work. But there were a lot of places where the efforts could have been improved. For instance, the EQCA website - one of the earliest groups acting for No on 8 - had tons of flaws on their website that made it difficult to donate, and even if you got to the page that let you donate, it was a mail-in page, not a convenient paypal button. And more of us need to get involved - surely one competent web designer could have helped them generate tons more cash.

4. We can't let the other side define the narrative. The commercials all focused on "will marriage be taught in the schools," with the No on 8 ads not even mentioning the word "gay." (For those outside the broadcast radius - the main lie that the Yes on 8 folks were spreading were that if the marriage bill passed, kids would be required to be taught about gay stuff in schools, when in fact there was nothing in the proposition at all about that). Our radio ads never even mentioned, "Hey, it's not like promoting equality in the schools would be a bad thing," let alone portraying all of the positive aspects of gay marriage and how it improves society as a whole for people of all orientations. Or coming out strong and saying things like, "Today there are a lot of people who are embarrassed to have opposed integration and interracial marriage. Do you want to be in that place with respect to gay marriage, some 20 or 40 years hence when the culture has collectively come to its senses around why discriminating is a bad thing?"

I think that we will see the day, not too many decades hence, when times like now are looked back on and the younger generations, so used to many kinds of families, will wonder why equality wasn't just an obvious thing in these elections. But I'm sad that that day isn't today.

A more uplifting rallying cry from toob is here.