In the wake of Proposition 8’s passage, which banned same-sex marriage in California, thousands of people rallied and marched in support of same-sex marriage across the state and across the country. Shouldn’t these have been victory rallies? After all, in late September opponents of Proposition 8 outnumbered its supporters.
There have been plenty of reasons thrown out for why the No on 8 campaign didn’t work, and the Advocate, the leading LGBT newsmagazine, details them all in its campaign postmortem. Did the Mormon church swing the election, with its large donations? How well did the No on 8 campaign rally support when poll numbers began tightening?
Poll numbers did consistently tighten, and that first narrowing happened after the Yes on 8 campaign introduced its first television advertisement. What role did the No on 8 media campaign have in the proposition’s passage?
John Barrett, the editor-in-chief of the Advocate and Karen Tongson, an English and gender studies professor at the University of Southern California whose research interests include queer popular culture offered insights to why Prop 8 passed.
The first No on 8 television spot featured Julia and Sam Thoron, a couple married for 46 years with a gay daughter. While Tongson thought the couple was “sweet,” she said the spot started the campaign on the wrong message. “Fighting on the turf of family representation is not the turf to fight on,” Tongson said. “That will push people deeper into their sense of protectionism of so-called conventional families.”
While the TV ad did mention the Thorons’ “gay daughter,” viewers only saw a brief still photo of her. “Gay people were never seen in the ads,” Barrett said. “We should be seeing gay people, not talking about them. The only time we saw gay people was in the Yes on 8 campaign. There are much more favorable images out there.”
Lorri Jean, the CEO of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center and one of the directors of the No on 8 campaign, told the Advocate the campaign was expecting different responses to the ads from gays and undecided voters. “We knew all along that it was very likely that the ads that would be effective with undecided voters would not be viscerally appealing to our community,” Jean said. “Every single one of those ads tested well with undecided voters.”
The No on 8 campaign followed with a television spot of two women sharing photos over coffee, including photos of a niece’s wedding to her female partner. The spot didn’t show the pictures. Tongson said the ad was “ambiguous and odd,” because “they didn’t mention the word ‘gay’ once.” She said stepping around the issue of who would be directly affected by the passage of Proposition 8 wasn’t useful. “I don’t think anyone needs to make anybody feel comfortable. I think if you use the language of rights, you should ask ‘look, should people be unequal?’”
And by stepping around the issue, Barrett said, the No on 8 campaign did itself a disservice. “There was just so much confusion,” Barrett said. “People didn’t know what they were voting for. I know a lot of people who thought they were voting yes for gay marriage.”
The Yes on 8 television ad that arguably did the most damage suggested that if Proposition 8 wasn’t passed, gay marriage would be taught in schools. It began airing the first week of October. The No on 8 campaign responded swiftly, but with a fairly generic ad about the other side’s “lies.” It wasn’t until two weeks later that an ad responded directly to the Yes campaign’s school allegations. While California’s superintendent of schools said that “Prop 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids,” many voters’ opinions had changed. A poll conducted on Oct. 17 showed the race tightening further.
Because it needed to take precious time and money responding to the Yes on 8 ads, the No on 8 campaign also wasn’t able to spread its own message, and show voters that since gays had started marrying in June, voters’ lives hadn’t changed in any significant way. “The No on 8 side was so much more on the defensive,” Barrett said. “It was trying to reply, instead of getting a positive message out there. If you’re putting positive images out there, you are addressing the fact that this [proposition] is a scary thing happening. You’re asking voters, ‘Since June, has your marriage really be threatened?’”
In a campaign season where one of the major presidential candidates was black, and minorities were predicted to come to the polls in record numbers, Tongson said the No on 8 campaign didn’t do a good enough job reaching out to minority voters. An advertisement narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson reminded viewers about California’s past miscegenation laws and internment camps, and said Prop 8 would eliminate other fundamental rights.
“Most people are responsive to the idea of keeping their hands off civil rights for people, and especially for rewriting the Constitution,” Tongson said. “I think that any image that can be tied to that, especially the broader concept of civil rights, would have been much more effective.”
The No on 8 discrimination ad certainly did what Tongson suggested, but it started airing less than a week before the election.
After the election was over and Proposition 8 passed with 52.3 percent of the vote, thousands took to the streets. Where were these people during the campaign? Maybe it was the No on 8 campaign’s fault for not rallying their base, or maybe the base needed the election to wake them up.
“Those of us who live in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, we are able to live our lives without coming face to face with people outside of the cities where we live,” Barrett said. “And when we had a vote that came down against us, it was a slap in the face against us. People responded to [Proposition 8] afterward because people didn’t know how others truly felt before.”
