Changing opinion in 90 days

Matt Foreman, who used to head the Gay and Lesbian Task Force (I saw him when their Creating Change conference was in Detroit) and now heads a gay philanthropy, discusses why we lost the Calif. marriage ban. He says up front that because of his job he could not have been legally involved in the campaign. Even if the campaign did everything right we would have won by only a sliver. This is what stood in the way:

* It is nearly impossible for minorities to win when their rights are up for a vote and the campaign is 90 days long.

* The opposition made up almost 50% of the voters. 46% even think gay relationships are immoral. They're huge, solid, and energized. They can raise tons of money. Can their opinion be changed? Yes. But not in 90 days. And not during the heat of a campaign.

* The gay vote was tiny, maybe 6%, and not solid. Too often we present marriage as a package of rights, like a dental plan. We can't raise as much money in 90 days.

* The moveable middle is squishy and highly susceptible to the ick factor. That means when faced with the reality of gay couples they wobble. Which is why the anti-gay crowd can use negative emotion-based ads to torpedo us, yet our own positive emotion-based ads also torpedo us. Ads that we like don't move voters. There were other kinds of ads that did move voters but we couldn't afford to run them statewide. Foreman backs this up with evidence yet this was the major criticism of the gay campaign and of this article.

* What to do? Stop pointing fingers. Start the next campaign (there will be one) now. We have already moved the needle on gay marriage 9 points in 8 years.