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Blasts Strategies of Defeat |
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Strangers in Paradise By Dave Fleischer
Imagine that the place with the reputation as the gayest in your state
voted on an anti-gay ballot measure - and we lost 2 to 1. You'd be angry,
frightened and confused. How could it happen?
These are common feelings this year among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people in Michigan. Look at Royal Oak, a Detroit suburb, and you'll understand why. It isn't the Castro, but it's a magnet for GLBT people. Predominantly white Royal Oak, like predominantly black Detroit, is progressive in most elections. Yet in May, we lost in a landslide when 25 percent of Royal Oak's 52,215 registered voters went to vote. 8,864 voters - 67 percent - rejected a local human rights ordinance to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Only 4,296 people voted on our side. Why did less than 10 percent of a GLBT-friendly town stand with us? Half the answer lies in the opposition's campaign message. Their main piece of literature, distributed shortly before the election, featured a photo of two men holding hands - one black, one white. The caption below was succinct: "Is this the picture you want to see in Royal Oak's future?" Given metro Detroit's history of racial division and white flight, the flyer got immediate press attention and repetition. Our opposition picked open the scab of an existing social wound. They played on prejudice and fear, and polarized the community. The opposition made anti-gay arguments as well: that GLBT people want "special rights," that we threaten support for the Boy Scouts, that we are disease-carriers. But they obviously didn't have full confidence in those lies to carry the day; they put them in much smaller print on the reverse side of the flyer. The Right was essentially saying to white voters, "Consider all the unflattering things you suspect about homosexuals; now add all the unkind things you fear about blacks. Gay white men are so deviant and abnormal that they don't respect the racial divide. They're not like you. You can't trust them. Here's your worst nightmare, a gay interracial couple." The local campaign was stunned, both by the racist attack and the pack of homophobic lies. It tried to ignore both issues. The campaign minimized use of the word "gay" and relied on vague appeals against "discrimination" and for "basic human rights." The literature our side mailed most widely featured a picture of a senior citizen in a wheelchair, as though her inclusion in the anti-discrimination law was the principal issue at stake. For any voter exposed to the news coverage or the opposition's campaign, nothing could have seemed less honest, or less persuasive.
Likewise, when, in the face of anti-gay lies, we avoid the "g" word - when our message is a collection of evasions and omissions - we are, at best, incomprehensible and irrelevant. Voters don't understand who we are or what the election is about. They think it's a vote on whether they like GLBT people, based on their pre-existing understanding of who we are. Instead, when we speak our truth clearly - when we use the "g" word up-front, without shame or timidity, and particularly when we talk person-to-person with our neighbors - we're no longer total strangers. That's why the Royal Oak flyers illuminate only half of why we lost. The other half was our failure to talk with voters one-on-one. Because words are only half of a message. The other half is the image voters get when they meet us. They realize their vote will affect people, neighbors. They see past the unkind stereotype of a GLBT person, and pay more attention to what we're saying. Then, when we're honest, they learn that the issue is whether GLBT people, like all others, will be protected from job or housing discrimination. When they read in the paper the same things we told them, they begin to trust us. They are more skeptical when our opposition tries to demonize us. So why don't we always seek out voters one-on-one to tell the truth? Because we're afraid they will disagree with us if we are honest. We all know it feels dangerous to be different. But the walloping we took in Royal Oak teaches us that two dangers are greater. First, we risk losing every ally of conscience when we don't aggressively confront bigotry. The extreme Right understands the connection between racism and homophobia. So must we, and we must fight both. Second, when we closet our campaigns, we give the opposition the power to misrepresent us. We let them use our own shame against us. We can change that, and we must - because even in the nicest hometown, the greatest danger is to remain a stranger. Dave Fleischer, NGLTF director of training, has trained hundreds of activists and elected officials in the art of managing campaigns, running for office and taking demanding leadership roles in ballot measure campaigns. |
