Same-Sex Marriage After Maine: What Can We Do Differently?

The cameras are gone now. The lawn signs will slowly disappear. Queer folk of Maine can go back to watching ads for cars and hair gel, not ads that put their humanity up for a popular vote.

And now comes the hard part.

If experiences in California - not to mention peer-reviewed studies - are any measure, LGBT residents of Maine can expect higher levels of stress and depression and greater feelings of political alienation. And an increase in hate crimes and bullying in schools.

In every state where marriage has become the centerpiece of our strategy to win equality, we have lost.

So now that the beginning, middle and end of this story have become painfully predictable, what can we do differently?

We can address head-on what is most threatening to the Right wing - our children and our schools. It's a hot button issue for sure - why else would anti-marriage folks blast the airwaves, in California and Maine and now New Jersey, with variations of the Princess ad, which depicts a young girl coming home from school and announcing to her mom that she learned she can marry a princess. But instead of running from this fight because it's too risky, we should, as the leader of the fabulous Our Family Coalition said recently, run towards it.

Why? Because our schools are, in fact, where we can make the biggest difference in the lives of vulnerable young people. The suicide last spring of a Massachusetts 11-year-old who faced relentless anti-gay bullying was just the most pointed example of why marriage (legal in his state for 5 years) is not enough. A recent study from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educators Network (GLSEN) showed that nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT middle and high school students experienced harassment at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation. And the more things get heated in the electoral arena, the more our kids feel it.

The good news is: there are so many steps we can take to make our schools safer, from training teachers and staff to intervene appropriately when kids call each other slurs like "fag," to supporting the creation of Gay Straight Alliances and other student groups. We can start with implementing curricula like Welcoming Schools, curricula that teach respect for all kids -- be they children of color, disabled, or gender variant - and all types of families.

And about that Princess ad - on one level it's hard for me to even understand how this storyline could be considered frightening, because whether my kindergarten daughter comes home telling me she is going to marry a prince or a princess, was born a squirrel and speaks Canadan (sic), or is going to fly up to the sky with Rudolph, I'm just happy to celebrate her vivid imagination. But of course the ad is deeply symbolic. It represents the world I want, a world where every child believes he or she can grow up to be with the person they love. And it clearly means something altogether more sinister to a large segment of our population.

Which brings me to my next point.

We can learn more about where prejudice does - and doesn't - originate. And we can learn how to counter prejudice effectively. Most public opinion research to date has been done in the name of winning a particular election. The questions have centered on what abstraction about the lives of LGBT people would persuade 50% + 1 of the electorate to support us? Fairness? Equality? Freedom?

But we don't live our daily lives in the abstract. We live our lives as parents, co-workers, community members, taxpayers. And while we may enjoy strong public support for our abstract right to hold a job - 87% of respondents in a 2005 Gallup poll said we shouldn't face employment discrimination - the numbers are strikingly different when we look at specific occupations. While 90% of the population says we should be hired as salespeople and 78% say we'd be fine doctors, only 54% want to see us teaching elementary school and only 49% as clergy.

We need to know more about what drives people to discriminate against us or to support our full humanity.

And not everything we think we know is accurate. Are people of color more likely to discriminate? Studies have disproven this notion. Religious people? Not always. There's a lot we don't know about the roots of attitudes and possible alliances among unlikely groups.

Let's go back to the Princess ad, breaking it down a little. The ad depicts a young girl who comes home believing that, when she grows up, she can fall in love with another woman. Clearly this ad is effective. Yet would most people truly prefer that gay and lesbian youth be taught that they will not be able to find happiness as an adult? Sure, some people are so opposed to homosexuality that they would reject any mention of family diversity or LGBT issues in the schools - but probably not all the people who were swayed by the Princess ad. So what is it that scares people so much about the topic? We need to learn more.

Thankfully there's a new organization called Face Value, engaged in research, coalition-building and public education to help us win over the long haul -- with the ultimate goal of creating a society that fully embraces the LGBT community and its values. As they put it, "Face Value is not an effort to gain rights within a political cycle. It is a large and necessary undertaking to gain support for LGBT people." See here and here for more info.

We can step off the election treadmill. The tremendous psychic and financial cost of these initiatives is now clear. Of course, when our lives are put to a popular vote, we need to mount a strong defense. But what about when we can choose our next course? Now's the time to take a deep breath and look at how to change hearts and minds so that when we go back to the polls proactively, we'll actually win.

Stepping off the treadmill could be seen as conceding, for sure. But I'd argue that actually it's doing the much harder work of addressing deeply held prejudice head on. It's easier, in many ways, to stick to arguing about our rights. When we argue about rights, we can keep the conflict intellectual, less focused on who we really are and why we are not liked by some.

But the rights strategy isn't working, so we need to do something different. Here's to organizations like Face Value, Our Family Coalition and GLSEN -- working for the day when the Princess ad will be just a fairy tale.

 

Comments

[Samson1]

As I have repeatedly said. LGBT folks need to support those who support them, politicians, churches, places of business, charities and NOT support, in any way, those who do not support them. This has to include those who are "neutral" as one cannot be neutral, neutral is the status quo. You can make a difference and this is one part of the solution. The other part is to work for equal rights on each of the parts of your lives that are not equal. This may include medical rights, inheritance rights, adoptive and school rights, tax status (ie. married filing jointly?) and the like. Go after as much as you can . One way to defuse the opposition is to live openly in the community and reduce the strangeness of the concept, the fear of the unknown by make it clear that lbgt are just people, not bogeymen.

[Choicelady]

What killed marriage equality in Maine is what killed it in California - the absolute disregard the pro-marriage equality people have for the voice of progressive people of faith. They can and have in othe campaigns of similar scope (e.g., parental notification) weigh in with calm and moral statements against the lies and for this essential civil right. In CA the secular campaign forces claimed that the faith community "had nothing to say" - absolutely WRONG. While most mainstream people of faith are often uncertain about the issue, they are open - VERY open - to their own clergy who may even be ahead of them on the issue. What would have happened if the princess ads had been countered by clergy saying, calmly, this is a matter of equality among all people, no exceptions, and that children would not be indoctrinated - in other words, clergy told the truth? If clergy had said that religious freedom not only was not threatened by civil marriage but was undermined by NOT permitting pro-equality churches to act on their own faith principles? If clergy had said that "love thy neighbor" means no discrimination? People would have understood what is true and therefore could act rationally.The LGBTQ secular community has to get over its biases against their own best allies. People of faith are the mainstream, not a fringe, and we can help. Sorry it is once again almost too late.

[Isobel White - Huffpost Blogger]

Choicelady, very interesting. I'd argue that one of the reasons we haven't done the deeper work with communities of faith is this electoral treadmill we're on, where we have to push forward fast and furious instead of doing the work of building alliances and putting in place benchmarks to assure us that when we do go back to the polls, we'll win. Phew that was a long sentence where I didn't take a breath. Which is my point ;-)

[Romulus]

I really doubt that the "princess" ad or others like it persuade anyone. I think these ads articulate what some people already believe. If I'm right, then focusing on countering these type of ads with ads of your own is both a waste of time any money as well as a tactic doomed to fail.

I saw a post on HuffPo last week sometime from someone who was in Maine during that campaign. He said that the LGBT campaign focused on the big cities (where there already was a majority in favor of SSM) while it ignored the rural areas. I think, in future campaigns, the LGBT community needs to get out in force, physically, and put a human face to the issue. It needs to interact with people and show them that gays and lesbians are real and moral people and not some Satanic evil personified.

[Glen Yoshioka]

I agree. These ads are hyperbolic and are misleading. Also you are right about targeting rural areas, which are generally more conservative. Here in Washington State there is a vast difference in culture between those who live in the Seattle metro area and the residents of eastern Washington.

[BeninOakland]

Isobel-- the problem, as I see it, was that the campaign was not-as-but­-still-clo­seted as the anti-8 campaign in california. At least Maine TALKED about familes, and showed us. But they still did not address the issues of prejudice and religion. I knew we were going to lose when I saw the first ad. There was Grandapa, taslking aobut his gay son, his husband, and their children. but the son himself did no talking, the couple did not explain why marirage was important to them.

Until we address the issues of children, prejudice, marriage as imnportant, and religion, we iwll continue to lose.

[EricIndiana]

Thank you so much for writing this! I haven't seen much out there addressing discrimination and gay rights as a generational cultural issue. Here's what I wrote on the subject:

http://daisybrain.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/seme-sex-marriage-the-maine-event/

[SiberianRat]

WA state is a good place to start. Their all-but-marriage campaign was successful and same sex couples will get quite a lot from the new law. There are some benefits of marriage which are federal so even if ME or CA had passed, they wouldn't be entitled to all of the benefits of straight marriages. So, the WA state, the sole success story, is the strategic way to go, IMO.

[Glen Yoshioka]

Yeah! We just passed Ref 71, though admittedly we are liberal west coast elitists...

[Isobel White - Huffpost Blogger]

Congrats to WA state and yes, we should look at what worked and what we can learn from it. Thanks for writing.