Prop. 8 protests engage activists, but risk alienating voters

<p>Leaders of the campaign against Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, raised nearly $40 million and ran a careful, disciplined campaign with messages tested by focus groups and a few people authorized to speak to the media.</p><p>They lost.</p><p>In the week since, California has seen an outpouring of street protests against Proposition 8, including demonstrations outside temples and churches and boycotts of businesses that contributed to the campaign.</p><p>Many of these activities have been organized not by political professionals and established leaders in the gay community, but by young activists working independently on Facebook and MySpace.</p><p>The aggressive tactics have generated national attention -- and set up a series of Saturday demonstrations that organizers hope will attract tens of thousands of people to city halls around California.</p><p>But they also have raised questions about whether the in-your-face tactics will alienate voters, who may be asked to approve gay marriage as soon as 2010. Twice in the past eight years, voters have rejected the question.</p><p>"I think the 'No on 8' forces have devolved into mob justice," said Jeff Flint, a campaign strategist for the "Yes" side.</p><p>Bruce Cain, a political-science professor at UC Berkeley, questioned what effect the protests would have on public opinion.</p><p>"It can backfire," he said.</p><p>Many of those organizing the protests say they are giving voice to a sense of outrage and disappointment that California voters approved a measure that took away the right, granted by the California Supreme Court last spring, of same-sex couples to marry. More than 18,000 such couples were married between June and Nov. 4, when the proposition disallowed the weddings.</p><p>"There is an incredible outpouring of energy, of people wanting to do something," said Trent Thornley, a San Francisco lawyer who created his Facebook site, Californians Ready to Repeal Prop 8, the day after the election. Thornley said his roommate told him to expect a few hundred people to join. Instead, a week later, the group has more than 200,000 members.</p><p>Another Facebook group, Repeal the California Ban on Gay Marriage 2010, also has attracted more than 200,000 members.</p><p>The growth is a tribute to political organizing in the digital age. But many say it also marks a new era in the gay-rights movement.</p><p>"There are people who are used to going to the Abbey (bar in West Hollywood) four nights a week and drinking Apple-tinis and complaining about their boyfriends. They don't understand that two decades ago they could not be doing what they are doing," said Andrew Oldershaw, 30, who has become active in organizing protests. "It took a catastrophe like this to really wake people up. . . . This is not something that is going to happen. . . . It's going to take people rising up and pumping their fists in the air."</p><p>But the protesters risk alienating those in the middle, whom they will need if there is another ballot measure.</p><p>Supporters of Proposition 8 have expressed outrage over the demonstrations and boycotts -- particularly ones targeting Mormon temples and Catholic churches.</p><p>"This activity shows great disrespect for the will of the voters," said Andrew Pugno, the lawyer for the "Yes on 8" campaign.</p><p>"It also shows religious intolerance," he added, noting that his local Catholic church was vandalized.</p><p>Meanwhile, governments have continued to add their support to a legal challenge to the proposition. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 3-0 Wednesday to join a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the proposition.</p><p>While they wait for the court to rule, gay-rights activists say they are prepared to put another gay-marriage initiative before California voters -- perhaps as soon as 2010.</p><p>If that happens, they say, they want to make sure not to repeat the mistakes of the last campaign.</p><p>"Too many of us, gay and not gay, didn't get engaged enough in the conversations . . . about the real harm that discrimination inflicts," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of the nonprofit group Freedom to Marry.</p><p>Michael Weinstein, president of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, called for a thorough analysis of the failures of the "No on 8" campaign.</p><p>"The protests are an important vehicle for expressing a community's feelings, and I applaud that," he said. Still, he added, "ultimately we will have to decide what our strategy is going forward. . . . We need to show we can win in the court of public opinion."</p>