Post Election: Study Looks At What Happened With Prop 8

and the news is what??

The study tells the community nothing new.  Harvey Milk knew the power against homobigotry of being Out to family, friends, and co-workers thirty years ago.  I experienced the same when fighting the 1985 Houston referendum to repeal non-discrimination in hiring and benefits, and we've seen it across the country over and over.  In light of our decades of experience, the subtext of this release reeks of blaming the victim -- if only more LGBT people were more Out, we would not have lost on Prop Hate.  

Umm.... then why did No On 8 "leaders" plead for money to piss away on wimpy media buys that hid the truth of LGBT lies?  That's undoubtedly a question that will never be answered.

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by: greatwhitebear @ Sat Jan 24, 2009 at 15:47:27 PM CST

Comment from Geoff Kors...

...I wrote about in a 4:00 PM post here:

There were interesting admissions by the official campaign leadership during the session. One of the admissions by Geoff Kors that particularly struck me is that he believes that the campaign gave to much power to set strategy to the political operatives. The political operatives ran an issues based and reactionary campaign, whereas the No On Prop 8 Campaign needed to be a hearts-and-minds campaign.

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~~Autumn~~

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
--Henry David Thoreau

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by: Autumn Sandeen @ Sat Jan 24, 2009 at 17:58:56 PM CST

[ Parent ]

The Binder study seemed to indicate that having out family members

was not an independent variable - that religiosity, conservative political ideology/Republican Party membership were the main independent changeable variables affecting vote on 8. (Age was a big independent variable, but you can't talk anyone into becoming younger.) The Yes and No voters had surprisingly similar exposure to LGBT family members, more-than-casual friends or other family members' friends, or close co-workers. The percentage of Yes voters that knew at least one LGBT person well was surprisingly high, suggesting  what we all know - family members can be estranged for years or decades, friends drop out of site when a person comes out.

This study was a telephone study that queried people a week or two after the vote, asking about voter's demographics, political identity, level of religious attendance, actual vote, how likely would you have been to change your vote given (unspecified) additional information, etc.

What I gathered from reading it was that the authors concluded that short term campaign ads were unlikely to shift people much. From this they suggested that long-term education of and coming out to family, friends, co-workers would be required, with a time scale of years rather than a few months.

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by: NancyP @ Sat Jan 24, 2009 at 19:11:09 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Yes, but...

Visibility is an on-going thing, not something to be trotted out when political enemies mount an election campaign. On-going visibility changes minds, not trotting out gay people at election time. This has always been the case: When you know gay people, you are less likely to vote against them.

Based on this article, it sounds like no one focused on correcting misconceptions, and more importantly, on identifying anti-8 voters and getting them to to polls.

I'm copying this from another comment because I think it is an important point about message and visibility:

The right-wingers are trying to make same-sex marriage about having sex with parts that you're not supposed to use for sex, and don't fit together properly anyway -- to make people focus on the sex, which, of course, they think is icky. As a friend of mine says, it isn't the "homo" that bothers people, it's the "sexual".

Every person I know thinks what their parents do in the bedroom is icky. Most people think it is icky to think about others having sex, period. In fact, lots of people think what they do in their own bedrooms is icky.

So, same-sex couples have to be presented in ways that focus on other aspects of relationships than sex. That is where focus-groups come in.

It isn't about hiding you in the closet, its about presenting you in a way that doesn't allow the right-wingers to turn it into an icky what-you-do-in-the-bedroom issue, because most people think what everybody does in the bedroom is icky - even themselves.

That's why I was suggesting ads where parents talk about their children who are getting married, how happy they are, etc., and then at the end, you discover they're talking about a same-sex couple.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. -- John F. Kennedy (inspired by Dante's Inferno)

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by: oldbrit @ Sat Jan 24, 2009 at 17:28:23 PM CST

California's Prop. 8

Thanks for posting the results of the post-election study.  The issue same sex marriage appeared in Post No. 66c on my blog, and the comments ran the gamut.  The results of the study placed them in better perspective.  From a California resident for 30 years...

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by: Reggie Greene/The Logistician @ Tue Jan 27, 2009 at 13:53:11 PM CST