You’ve probably heard all the post-mortems.. so far, most of the ones I have seen have missed some obvious and important points. We know that the No on 8 campaign waged an unsophisticated war, talking only to the cerebrum in typical liberal fashion and not fully answering the more outrageous claims made by the opposition. But what really was the head-water to a campaign failing to stop something that appeared sure to fail from passing? They played it too safe, that’s what.

It’s well-known that gays give most people the heebie-geebies. That’s the true cause of most opposition to same-sex marriage (the theological excuse is created ex-post-facto). Knowing this, the campaign decided not to mention or ever even show anything about gays or same-sex couples. Big mistake. The opposition showed children (sleazy, sleazy, sleazy) and raised fears that children would be hurt. Only by showing actual humans whose lives will be affected negatively could the anti-8 people have won. Showing gays would have been risky, but the alternative, relying only on logically sound but emotionally uninspired arguments (“no one’s rights should be taken away”), could not possibly have succeeded. If you want to see how an emotional campaign could have worked, please see letcaliforniaring.org. Yes, it was in magazines, but did the official campaign put anything like that on TV? no. Do the gays and lesbians in those ads repulse you? I don’t think so. And even if they do, I’m certain you feel for them and see why the word “marriage” just might be important to them.

The other way they played it too safe is by not answering the claims made by the yes on 8 camp fully. Doing so would raise other issues and possibly alienate some people. But yet again, not making the risk was a mistake. The only faction that matters is people in the middle. Alienating extreme religious conservatives with arguments like “religion should not rule” should be considered a non-issue. Indeed, Americans’ fear of religious extremism could’ve been played, had they not played it safe… The yes on 8 campaign raised fear that gay marriage would be taught in school. You know, school is there to teach tolerance and naturally is not going to teach sex (gay marriage is no more an adult subject than straight marriage…children do understand attraction!) The no on 8 camp could not say any of these obvious rebuttals. Why? Because they naïvely thought they could get the votes of people who believe schools should not teach tolerance. Foolish!

The safe path was “no matter how you feel about marriage…”, which is logical. However, it is clear that people who feel gay marriage is immoral will vote against it. The populous, sadly, doesn’t grasp basic libertarian principles. So, the only way is to shoot the moon and try to change people’s hearts, not just their minds. Here’s hoping that gay rights becomes the rare civil rights issue that can be won at the polls (next time), rather than relying on judges to slap the people’s wrist and say “no, that’s a bad American people. stop taking your own rights away.”