Tag Archives for prop8

GO Equality California!

One of the biggest and most painful complaints levied against the No On Prop 8 campaign is that the campaign failed to use images of real gay people and their families in the official ads.

As sad as Prop 8’s passage was, what a sea-change there’s been since then. After so much pain and real harm by its passage, we’ve had a national dialog like never before. With now five states on the side of marriage equality, “the arc of  moral history” appears to continue to bend towards justice — even as we speak.

And we’ve learned — a lot.  And shared — a lot.  Equality California, in a major evolution in campaign messaging, has just announced that they are featuring *real live gay people* and their families in their newest ads.  They listened and they got it.

Thank you Equality California, and come on everyone: Take a look at last. Don’t be afraid to find out there’s more in common between “your lifestyle” and “my lifestyle” than you might have thought.

Read more about Equality California’s campaign at http://www.eqca.org/winmarriageback.

Hope alone


“Dan White Hero”

Originally uploaded by cawins

I was in the NCLR overflow room helping to Twitter about the oral argument challenging Prop 8 on Thursday. I have some thoughts about online vs. offline activism and the socialization of the court that are far from fully developed and I’ll save for later, but first I wanted to do my little part to spread my current delusion.

My friends, champions who have been working around the clock for marriage rights for all, are tired and disappointed that the situation does not look good for actually overturning Proposition 8. I know that’s the general consensus. I was thrown into a dark place when I had to step around “Yes on 8” people when I took my daughter to school. That was a bad day, and I know hate features much more than hope in the word-cloud surrounding the event. And thanks to cawins for Flickring the picture on this post and to Dianna for blogging more of the reality of these truly disturbing images.

But I am hopeful …? I must be delusional, naive, and sick.

Probably all that, and this: Because Tony Wilson said this to me on my way to the oral argument Thursday morning:

@moyalynne Saw the marches this morning and it makes me proud to know you. You’re making the future better for our sons & daughters. GO!!

Because Kate Kendell said this:

My kids understand, sometimes even better than I do, what’s real in life and what really matters. We have to reflect that hope back to them, and the belief in what is ultimately possible.

And because I only know these wonderful people and so many more because of this fight — in the first place.

Today I choose hope over hatred or hurt exactly because this choice matters — words matter — and you don’t need to be on one side or another to know that. I will probably need you to remind me of this tomorrow or the next day and maybe the next and particularly on that day sometime within 88 days from now, when the court rules. But not today — today I feel the tiny pinprick to my heart, the very tip of the long tail, wagging the dog.

And because in the end, I was there at the doors of the Supreme Court that day last year on which they decided that words *do* matter, and for a few (all-too-short) months, everybody knew exactly what that meant. Let me fight for my life when I start to forget this again. And I will forget – but at this moment I think that if I look, you will be there for me.

PS: To support hope, consider a gift: http://bit.ly/SupportNCLR

How to NOT advertise against yourself

Thanks to @qrty for this blog post today:

Masterminds Behind ‘Yes on 8’ Reveal How They Did It

I’ve spoken before of some of the tactics used online in campaign to pass Proposition 8, but at the moment I want to call out this one, as underscored from the Yes campaign in the above blog, and more specifically how to protect yourself against it:

A Google surge. You may remember that even gay websites running Google Ads were running ‘Yes on 8’ ads in the final days of the campaign. That’s the power of internet advertising dollars at work.

“As the campaign headed into the final days, we launched a ‘Google surge.’ We spent more than a half-million dollars to place ads on every single website that had advertising controlled by Google. Whenever anyone in California went online, they saw one of our ads in the final two days of the election.”

I was alerted to this tactic by the No On Prop 8 online community itself, during the last few days of the campaign.  Gay and straight people alike called out with concern about what was happening on their blogs. Many wrote to tell me how to defeat it, and I’m thankful that, because I was able to pass it along.

Here it is, courtesy of @calipidder — please spread it to anyone who has an AdSense account they’re concerned about now or in the future:

In your Google AdSense account, go to AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter. You can block ads from specific URLs or destinations.

In this case, the Yes ads came from “protectmarriage.com” – so that’s what you would enter in your filter list if you wanted to not serve ads from them.

Says @calipidder:

The only thing sitting in my Filter list is protectmarriage.com. I was so angry to see that on my site I took down the ads until after the election, PLUS I blocked it here just in case they kept running them.

Amen. And thanks again, Rebecca.