A key finding from a new report on Proposition 8 shows that parents were a decisive voter demographic in the passage of California's 2008 anti-gay ballot measure that rolled back marriage equality.
In the final stretch, after six weeks of exposure to television advertising that played up anti-gay prejudice—the fear of harm to children—approximately 687,000 voters changed their minds.
More than 500,000 of those who ended up voting for the ban were parents with children under the age of 18 living at home, according to David Fleischer, who authored the 511-page opus magnum titled "The Prop 8 Report: What Defeat in California Can Teach Us about Winning Future Ballot Measures on Same-Sex Marriage."
Because Proposition 8 passed by a slim 52 -48 percent margin or 600,000 votes, "this shift alone more than handed victory to opponents," Fleischer explained in August 3 Los Angeles op-ed piece, published the day of the report's release.
So what happened?
"Yes on 8 campaign's TV ads strategically targeted parents of young children. The most memorable ad begins, "Mom! Guess what I learned in school today," says a little girl, who allegedly learned she could marry a princess when she grew up.
It's a scare tactic as old as Anita Bryant's 1977 Save Our Children crusade, a ballot campaign that successfully overturned Dade County Florida's anti-discrimination ordinance. Play up untruths: Children will be taught about gay marriage in public schools and learn about gay sex. There, they will also get recruited into the "lifestyle "and thereby be more likely to become gay or choose to be gay.
Gay marriage proponents' "No on 8" campaign, the report finds, enjoyed some success in pushing back fears about children. But a two-week delay in rebuttal TV ads was too little, too late—a costly mistake, according to the study.
The report notes the same reluctance to strike back last fall in Maine where same-sex marriage opponents ran essentially the same kind of negative "parent-targeted fear mongering" TV ads.
A spokesperson for a leading gay parenting and LGBT family advocacy organization said he was not surprised by the study's key finding. "This report reinforced much of what we knew but emphasized those who moved away from us in droves—straight moms with kids under the age of 18," said Kevin Nix, communications director of the Washington, DC-based Family Equality Council ( www.familyequality.org ) , an LGBT advocacy organization.
"We need to better communicate with these moms outside of the rough and tumble of a campaign," he added. "We need to not only knock down the fear and fiction from the other side but also focus more on speaking the language of parents."
Family Equality Executive Director Jennifer Chrisler made that point even clearer. "We need to put the power and passion of LGBT parents to work for our cause of equality," she wrote in an op-ed posted on Pam's House Blend. "Here is the truth. Our equality—whether it's marriage rights, parenting rights, equal rights in any arena—will only be realized when those who do not know us make connections to us, to our lives and find some common bond. We don't have to make the connection with every person, but we have to forge it with at least 50 percent plus one of the population."
Chrisler added, "LGBT parents are a completely untapped secret weapon in this work. We can talk at play dates and in playgrounds, bedtime and bath time, school proms and back to school."
A product of the Los Angeles-based LGBT Mentoring Project, The Prop 8 Report is independently financed, comprehensive study, which includes analysis of 10,000 pages of previously unreleased data. The full report is available at www.Project8Report.org .
The Prop 8 Report included some other key findings.
For example, another block of voters who shifted away from marriage equality in significant numbers were white Democrats and Independents—and voters in the greater Bay Area.
Writing in his op-ed, Fleischer underscored that hate was not a motivating factor among the 687,000 voters who, in changing their minds, voted for Prop 8. "After all, they supported same-sex marriage before the opposition peeled them away," he wrote. They were, however, "susceptible to an appeal based on anti-gay prejudice."
What about confusion over the wording of the ballot measure?
Data suggests that voter confusion in fact worked to the advantage of same-sex marriage backers. If all voters fully understood how to express their true views the ballot, Proposition 8 would have passed by an even wider margin—54 to 46 percent or one million votes.
As the report states, "There were wrong-way voters on both sides. In total, 876,987 voters who wanted to eliminate gay marriage cast no votes while 651,757 voters trying to keep gay marriage voted yes. Taking all wrong-way votes into account, No on 8 was the net beneficiary by approximately 400,000 votes."
Taken all together, what does the Prop 8 Report data and analysis hold out for the future of marriage equality at the polls?
"Generations of research on voting behavior find that the largest single effect of election campaigns is to reinforce existing attitudes and predispositions. Conversion is a relatively rare effect in an election campaign," wrote guest Bilerico blogger Kenneth Sherrill, professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College-City University of New York.
"One of the most important lessons to learn from the Proposition 8 campaign is that if supporters of equality wait until rights are on the ballot, they've waited too long. Instead, there must be constant mobilization, slowly educating and enlightening the electorate. The next campaign should be about reinforcing and mobilizing enlightened attitudes toward LGBT people and our rights."
Copyright 2010 Chuck Colbert.
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