Why We Lost Prop 8 and How We Can Win Gay Civil Rights and Marriage Equality – A Countdown of Political New Year's Resolutions! #1: Defense

D-Fence. Get it? " De-fense!"

Reason Number One: Defense

Embarrassed by President-Elect Barack Obama’s stance, (Against Same-Gender Marriage but also Against Prop 8.) the “No on 8” campaign failed to let voters know that Obama was against Prop 8. And when, in the last few days of the campaign, the “Yes on 8” campaign misrepresented Obama’s position, by that point it was too late to clarify.

We were playing defense the whole time. With the “No on 8” campaign. And even more, with our entire civil rights strategy.

We need – here and now – to STOP PLAYING DEFENSE. Ours is a civil rights struggle, and we need to play OFFENSE.



Let’s rally to Amend the constitutions of EVERY state, and the Federal Constitution as well, to spell out that we are a country that gives EQUAL rights to ALL our citizens.

If South Africa can include its GLBTQ citizens in their Constitution, shouldn’t the United States of America be up to the call of

“Liberty and Justice for All?”

Didn’t you hear it? President-Elect Barack Obama included us in his acceptance speech the night of the election. When talking about if there was anyone who still questioned the power of our Democracy, the forces that mobilized to elect him as our next President were their answer.

“It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.”

Here's something else President-Elect Obama said during his campaign:




New Years Resolution: We Gay Americans are part of this country. And it’s time to get OUR hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

The Protests against the passage of Prop 8 have been a great example of this in action -








in fact, there have even been some surveys that showed that just 3 weeks AFTER all the protests in the wake of our losing the Prop 8 battle, if the vote were held again, this time a majority would vote in favor of the legality of civil Same-Gender marriage... (check out Keith Olbermann's report on it here.)


Word for 2009: OFFENSE!