Proposition 8 opponents should not live in the past

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community is still angry.

Last week, at the Equality Summit ’09, held here in Los Angeles, members of the LGBT community gathered to discuss the reasons why Proposition 8 passed. The common answer among many of the 400 people present was that the leaders of the “No on 8″ campaign focused too much on politics and not enough on the needs and stories of the LGBT community.

Equality Summit members were angry that the campaign was handed over to professional consultants instead of gay and lesbian leaders and blamed them for the losing tactics.

But with Proposition 8’s passage now several months behind us, it seems a little too late to be playing the blame game. Rather, the LGBT community should be focused on improving and increasing the hype, organization and unity that accompanied the “No on 8″ campaign in the days before the election and making sure this time it works. They need to be ready to confront the issue yet again.

That’s not to say that the frustration of the LGBT community is unfounded, but it can and should be channeled toward productive purposes, and finger-pointing is not one of them.

Proposition 8’s passage was painful, but as the hurt subsides, the LGBT community can emerge even more resolved than before and take this time to learn from the past.

Raffi Sarkissian, president of the Student Coalition for Marriage Equality at UCLA, an equal rights organization that spearheaded the “No on 8″ movement on campus, spoke of his disappointment on the night of the election but then described a renewed sense of determination that he felt the following day.

“I knew I had my meeting later that night with SCME, so I couldn’t go in there with a defeatist attitude,” Sarkissian said. “I didn’t allow myself time to play the blame game, and I just looked to the future, and I think that’s what everyone should be doing.”

So let’s take Sarkissian’s advice and start looking ahead.

The work done in the coming months will determine Proposition 8’s future, and while the state Supreme Court is considering a suit that would overturn the proposition, the LGBT community shouldn’t put all its eggs in that one basket. Work still needs to be done on every level, and until a decision on Proposition 8 is reached, they need to be ready to fight the battle all over again.

But this time around, much of the framework is already in place. Where organizations were once divided, the “No on 8″ campaign provided common ground and unified disjointed parts of the LGBT community into a network committed to a single cause.

This renewed sense of unity needs to be maintained. “I think the focus should be on keeping that network as closely tied as we can in the future so that when another Prop. 8 comes,” Sarkissian said. “There’s an immediate, in-place resource ready to tap into.”

But the question remains, how do you keep the various groups unified? The answer has to be in making sure the “No on 8″ hype stays alive. If the hype keeps growing, then the passion will keep flowing, and the marriage equality issue will stay in the spotlight. With the issue acting as a veritable beacon to point the way for the equal rights movement, the groups with common interests in seeing Proposition 8 overturned can continue to move forward together.

But keeping the attention focused on marriage equality does not mean the LGBT community needs to try and find a scapegoat for Proposition 8’s passage.

The professional consultants hired to run the “No on 8″ campaign were trying to create a winning campaign the best way they knew how. Unfortunately they were unsuccessful in part because the LGBT community was not involved enough in upper level planning. But while campaign tactics are undoubtedly important, we can’t gain much perspective by trying to blame the leaders of “No on 8.”

So the LGBT community must be ready to spark a new campaign that uses what we’ve learned from the past campaign without becoming bitter about the way it was run.

Ultimately, there’s a big difference between learning from the past and living in the past.

Living in the past is what Proposition 8’s supporters do because they refuse to see a changing world and can’t recognize that allowing equal rights will not destroy the way of life to which they so desperately cling. But it is also what the LGBT community does when they point fingers and play the blame game.

Learning from the past, however, is what all of us must do in order to ensure that this injustice does not continue. There is much to learn from the “No on 8″ campaign and its outcome, but we must remember that we can’t dwell on petty issues by scapegoating to try and assuage our frustration. There’s work that still needs to be done, and we can’t wait for somebody else to do it for us.

Think it’s time to stop playing the blame game? E-mail Fitzpatrick at cfitzpatrick@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.

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