Gay rights groups in Maine are gearing up to get marriage equality on the ballot in 2012, only 3 years after a gay marriage law was repealed by voters. I've been getting email flyers from them. Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin wonders if the gay groups in Maine have learned the lessons from their previous efforts. He reduces the lessons to these points.
* Straight people mostly don't care about gay marriage simply because it doesn't personally affect them. It doesn't work to try to get them to care about someone else.
* The anti-gay crowd in both Calif. and Maine reframed the debate to be about something straight people do care about, in this case education (as in "They'll teach your 1st grade son about gay sex!").
* Don't appeal to vague terms such as "fairness" because most of them (including the bigots) already think they are being fair.
* Instead, find the angle about how the law affects straight people. Arizona defeated an amendment that banned both gay marriage and domestic partnerships because the gay side showed how straight relationships (such as an elderly couple that would lose benefits if they got married) would be affected by the law. No similar hook was found for the version that banned only gay marriage, which passed.
That means hire campaign consultants to do the research to find the angle that resonates. That's what the anti-gay crowd did to find how effective the education angle is.
Perhaps we can play up being aligned with demonstrably hateful people. Or go back to my first post today and talk about how gay marriage improves the lives of straight women (though that would annoy a large number of straight men).
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