Why do we need marriage? I think it was Robin Williams who summarized it as, Why shouldn't gay couples be as unhappy as everyone else?
Your mileage may vary, but: I needed marriage because I might need divorce.
Like a lot of same-sex couples with kids, we decided that it would be best for our family to have a stay-at-home parent for early childhood. The complications for us included finding health insurance for our family, as well as selecting one of us to leave the work force and lose her connections and skills. The 'mommy track' isn't just for two-mom families, but the risk to an unmarried parent in making that sacrifice is larger.
If I had needed the practical benefits of divorce, which include making the outcome fair for the parent who loses out on current and future income to take care of the family, this would have been vital to my future. Marriage protected me, while my kid was small, from the possibility that I would be thrown out of my home by my girlfriend, who had found someone she liked better. As long as we're 'girlfriends', I'd have no way to recover financially.
For the 55,000 kids being raised by their same-sex parents, marriage is a big deal.
Not only because they have as much right as all the other kids to see their families reflected in the curriculum of public schools.
Not only because tax systems favor married couples, allowing them to pass more wealth to their kids.
And not only because California's same-sex couples in every race and ethnic group are raising their kids on less money than their married peers.
Because our kids didn't choose their parents, and because we're not perfect people, it's only fair to open up marriage to all couples who want it.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Yes, we can too.
Sitting down to stand up is a fine tradition.
If we want our rights, we're going to have to do quite a bit more of this. Making the mushy 20% in the middle feel uncomfortable and bothered by our suffering IS the solution, regardless of which branch of government we're trying to influence.
The good news is, we're probably not going to be required to risk our lives or allow our children to be sprayed with fire hoses. All we will be called on to risk is our freedom, for short periods of time. And that process will strengthen our movement, our resolve and our political power.
Johnson didn't ask MLK to the White House because he had heard something on the FBI phone tap that interested him. The access to power we will need to solve our political problems grows from the root of making people aware and uncomfortable. We can do this.
If we want our rights, we're going to have to do quite a bit more of this. Making the mushy 20% in the middle feel uncomfortable and bothered by our suffering IS the solution, regardless of which branch of government we're trying to influence.
The good news is, we're probably not going to be required to risk our lives or allow our children to be sprayed with fire hoses. All we will be called on to risk is our freedom, for short periods of time. And that process will strengthen our movement, our resolve and our political power.
Johnson didn't ask MLK to the White House because he had heard something on the FBI phone tap that interested him. The access to power we will need to solve our political problems grows from the root of making people aware and uncomfortable. We can do this.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
After action report
Within our community it's time for a little After Action Reporting. This is something we tend to get confused with blamestorming--but we have to know what went wrong.
Specifically, we need to explore why a strategy that was reliant on polls of voters being accurate could be executed without anyone raising that we know voters lie. The Bradley Effect is dead, but the Wisconsin Effect is still with us.
Hiding from the attacks on our families, behind a comparison to interracial marriage* and pleas for fairness, could only have worked if we were ahead outside the margin of error plus the undecideds. Whoever planned this gets sent back to sophomore year Marketing Statistics.
I'm tempted to rant on the racial aspects of the incompetence, which was perpetrated as far as I can tell by white men, but will say this: You do not need to be black to know that Obama's presence on the ballot was going to drive turnout way up among black people, and that therefore they might represent a larger portion of the voters than your model predicts and that therefore...you might want to try doing outreach in Oakland's bazillion churches!
Have a damn hat sale as a fundraiser, half the proceeds for the church's action fund, make custom designs by SOMA guys, put that auction in the East 14th AME and you're making connections with voters who get to see who we are and what our lives are like.
*Loved the Samuel L. Jackson ad. But that knife cuts both ways. Yes, this is a lot like interracial marriage, which Oakland's church ladies LOVE so damn much that had they been polled, their response to the statement 'Marriages between blacks and whites were once illegal in CA' would probably have been 'Good!'--but apparently no one asked them. Why associate ourselves with something that everyone doesn't actually agree on, when anymore the strongest adherents to the statement 'I'd prefer that my children marry within our race' are going to be...people of color and immigrants. Exactly the people whose votes we wanted to move. So in the After Action Report: Did a conversation happen in which someone raised this objection and it was addressed, or was there no one in the room who knew to raise it?
Specifically, we need to explore why a strategy that was reliant on polls of voters being accurate could be executed without anyone raising that we know voters lie. The Bradley Effect is dead, but the Wisconsin Effect is still with us.
Hiding from the attacks on our families, behind a comparison to interracial marriage* and pleas for fairness, could only have worked if we were ahead outside the margin of error plus the undecideds. Whoever planned this gets sent back to sophomore year Marketing Statistics.
I'm tempted to rant on the racial aspects of the incompetence, which was perpetrated as far as I can tell by white men, but will say this: You do not need to be black to know that Obama's presence on the ballot was going to drive turnout way up among black people, and that therefore they might represent a larger portion of the voters than your model predicts and that therefore...you might want to try doing outreach in Oakland's bazillion churches!
Have a damn hat sale as a fundraiser, half the proceeds for the church's action fund, make custom designs by SOMA guys, put that auction in the East 14th AME and you're making connections with voters who get to see who we are and what our lives are like.
*Loved the Samuel L. Jackson ad. But that knife cuts both ways. Yes, this is a lot like interracial marriage, which Oakland's church ladies LOVE so damn much that had they been polled, their response to the statement 'Marriages between blacks and whites were once illegal in CA' would probably have been 'Good!'--but apparently no one asked them. Why associate ourselves with something that everyone doesn't actually agree on, when anymore the strongest adherents to the statement 'I'd prefer that my children marry within our race' are going to be...people of color and immigrants. Exactly the people whose votes we wanted to move. So in the After Action Report: Did a conversation happen in which someone raised this objection and it was addressed, or was there no one in the room who knew to raise it?
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Some thoughts on Prop 8
1) What I saw in the campaign against Prop 8 was a set of California families with an emotionally-accessible legal problem get absolutely destroyed in the (paid and earned) media by backward-compatible nutters who think that their magic underwear lets them baptize dead folks.
In July we had a lead and 12% undecided. Roughly all of the 600,000 voters who weren't sure what they thought when Prop 8 went on the ballot voted against us, which is valuable feedback on how well we spent 28 million dollars of support for marriage equality.
Had 'our side' been united about the importance of this fight, we might have been able to create a more effective campaign. But we failed to move even some gay voters to get off their barstools and vote, with the theoretical, abstract equality-based arguments the No on 8 campaign insisted on.
I'm guessing here, but perhaps suburban moms in Fresno would be more responsive to ads featuring our adorable children and well-kept yards than to a boring, factual wonk-fest.
What we know for sure is that this focus-grouped fairness crap has now failed everywhere it's been tried. As it turns out, no one is emotionally moved to purchase soap due to its superior bubbling qualities. Who could have predicted that a recitation of past inequalities against people of color would be outgunned by kindergarten kids throwing flowers at their teacher's lesbian wedding? You cannot overcome an emotional appeal with facts, or we'd be discussing how the second term of John Kerry would compare to the Dukakis years today.
If we want to win, we're going to have to use marketing and psychological techniques to manipulate the feelings of low-information voters. If we want the moral high ground of sticking to the legal issues, maybe we can ask for a Schoolhouse Rock segment on Adam and Steve.
2) Next one to blame Oakland's church ladies for this loss gets a tall cold glass of Shaddup. This campaign was basically doomed from June 21st, when we already knew that Obama was the candidate. We knew Prop 8 was on the ballot, and we knew that turnout among the 6% of CA voters who are black and reliably Democratic was going to be extremely high.
We have several large problems as a community, and one is that we're ignorant of the history of our country's most successful civil rights movement.
I'll even go further: As a white person I have had the cringe-inducing experience of listening to white gay men compare themselves to Freedom Riders more than once. They never respond well to a mild mention of how ignorant and disrespectful that is, which is indicative of how far we have yet to travel as a community.
While there are parallels in the moral dimension between the two movements, I think we're in desperate need of further education. Until then, no one is allowed to speak for gay people who doesn't understand that in the practical dimension it's simply rude to compare our situation with that of sharecroppers who couldn't vote.
Before we can move votes among black women, we need a vocabulary to describe our problems that doesn't rely on inaccurate metaphor. If we hope to ever again face a referendum with better results, that's job 1.
3) The GLBT movement has played itself out. This was all predictable and therefore preventable. For 28 goddam million US dollars, this performance was pitiful. At that budget level, you don't use Wisconsin data that's two years old to determine message and tactics. You run an A, a B and a C test mailing on postcards and let the responses TELL YOU what the message is; then you let that successful message drive your tactics. So from my perch as a successful marketer of every damn intangible in the world, who has been thrown out of the GBLT community's treehouse so many times I've got grass stains on my scalp, I've had it.
My position is: What I want is legal equality for my family. If that's what you want we can work together. If what you want is 'something' for the community to feel better about how we're treated, or the right to a health care power of attorney, you can't lead me because we're not going to the same place. That was what I wanted in 1993, 'something'. Today I want citizenship and I don't plan to settle for less.
If you want to time travel backward to a point where hospital visitation rights and adoption (may not be valid in all states) are the goals, lead on--but don't expect to be followed.
I refuse to be led by people who will settle for any old thing as long as their own places at the feet of the Democratic Party are secure. This is just embarrassing. 'Equality organizations', you're fired.
In July we had a lead and 12% undecided. Roughly all of the 600,000 voters who weren't sure what they thought when Prop 8 went on the ballot voted against us, which is valuable feedback on how well we spent 28 million dollars of support for marriage equality.
Had 'our side' been united about the importance of this fight, we might have been able to create a more effective campaign. But we failed to move even some gay voters to get off their barstools and vote, with the theoretical, abstract equality-based arguments the No on 8 campaign insisted on.
I'm guessing here, but perhaps suburban moms in Fresno would be more responsive to ads featuring our adorable children and well-kept yards than to a boring, factual wonk-fest.
What we know for sure is that this focus-grouped fairness crap has now failed everywhere it's been tried. As it turns out, no one is emotionally moved to purchase soap due to its superior bubbling qualities. Who could have predicted that a recitation of past inequalities against people of color would be outgunned by kindergarten kids throwing flowers at their teacher's lesbian wedding? You cannot overcome an emotional appeal with facts, or we'd be discussing how the second term of John Kerry would compare to the Dukakis years today.
If we want to win, we're going to have to use marketing and psychological techniques to manipulate the feelings of low-information voters. If we want the moral high ground of sticking to the legal issues, maybe we can ask for a Schoolhouse Rock segment on Adam and Steve.
2) Next one to blame Oakland's church ladies for this loss gets a tall cold glass of Shaddup. This campaign was basically doomed from June 21st, when we already knew that Obama was the candidate. We knew Prop 8 was on the ballot, and we knew that turnout among the 6% of CA voters who are black and reliably Democratic was going to be extremely high.
We have several large problems as a community, and one is that we're ignorant of the history of our country's most successful civil rights movement.
I'll even go further: As a white person I have had the cringe-inducing experience of listening to white gay men compare themselves to Freedom Riders more than once. They never respond well to a mild mention of how ignorant and disrespectful that is, which is indicative of how far we have yet to travel as a community.
While there are parallels in the moral dimension between the two movements, I think we're in desperate need of further education. Until then, no one is allowed to speak for gay people who doesn't understand that in the practical dimension it's simply rude to compare our situation with that of sharecroppers who couldn't vote.
Before we can move votes among black women, we need a vocabulary to describe our problems that doesn't rely on inaccurate metaphor. If we hope to ever again face a referendum with better results, that's job 1.
3) The GLBT movement has played itself out. This was all predictable and therefore preventable. For 28 goddam million US dollars, this performance was pitiful. At that budget level, you don't use Wisconsin data that's two years old to determine message and tactics. You run an A, a B and a C test mailing on postcards and let the responses TELL YOU what the message is; then you let that successful message drive your tactics. So from my perch as a successful marketer of every damn intangible in the world, who has been thrown out of the GBLT community's treehouse so many times I've got grass stains on my scalp, I've had it.
My position is: What I want is legal equality for my family. If that's what you want we can work together. If what you want is 'something' for the community to feel better about how we're treated, or the right to a health care power of attorney, you can't lead me because we're not going to the same place. That was what I wanted in 1993, 'something'. Today I want citizenship and I don't plan to settle for less.
If you want to time travel backward to a point where hospital visitation rights and adoption (may not be valid in all states) are the goals, lead on--but don't expect to be followed.
I refuse to be led by people who will settle for any old thing as long as their own places at the feet of the Democratic Party are secure. This is just embarrassing. 'Equality organizations', you're fired.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Well, hell, maybe we CAN.
If you didn't listen to Obama talk to Americans about race as if we were grownups for 45 short minutes--as Jon Stewart put it last night--it's an experience.
http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom
So, yes, we can.
I can't prove we can't, anyhow.
I had such a good time reading that speech that I watched it with my second-grader. Who was rapt. For 38 minutes. It's a special occasion to watch adult TV, and an even more special one to get to listen to adult ideas addressing the concerns that are on her mind.
During February, and around MLK Day, she learned about the civil rights movement at school and had to come home and reality check: Mama, Ms. Teacher said that back when Gramma was little, people with different color skin couldn't ride on the same part of the bus. That can't be true. Can it? She said that this lady Rosa Parks went to jail for sitting in the wrong part of the bus. That didn't really happen, did it?
My 8 year old lives in a reality in which legal segregation, and therefore the violence and struggle surrounding its end, are literally senseless. And that's good.
But I have never, in my adult life, heard a politician who had a shot at winning the race for dog-catcher make the claim: Economic desperation and habit, rather than malice, are driving the train around the loop of racism, racial thinking and acts of prejudice that keep us all in our own cars on that train, with our own kind.
And to stop that train we need to stop fueling it, and discuss the hell out of why the tracks seem to keep us going in circles.
I was amazed by the speech. I assumed that Pam Spaulding shared writers' credit with Tim Wise, because everyone knows that professional politicians can't think this stuff through let alone speak it aloud.
It was a relief and a triumph. Long overdue.
http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom
So, yes, we can.
I can't prove we can't, anyhow.
I had such a good time reading that speech that I watched it with my second-grader. Who was rapt. For 38 minutes. It's a special occasion to watch adult TV, and an even more special one to get to listen to adult ideas addressing the concerns that are on her mind.
During February, and around MLK Day, she learned about the civil rights movement at school and had to come home and reality check: Mama, Ms. Teacher said that back when Gramma was little, people with different color skin couldn't ride on the same part of the bus. That can't be true. Can it? She said that this lady Rosa Parks went to jail for sitting in the wrong part of the bus. That didn't really happen, did it?
My 8 year old lives in a reality in which legal segregation, and therefore the violence and struggle surrounding its end, are literally senseless. And that's good.
But I have never, in my adult life, heard a politician who had a shot at winning the race for dog-catcher make the claim: Economic desperation and habit, rather than malice, are driving the train around the loop of racism, racial thinking and acts of prejudice that keep us all in our own cars on that train, with our own kind.
And to stop that train we need to stop fueling it, and discuss the hell out of why the tracks seem to keep us going in circles.
I was amazed by the speech. I assumed that Pam Spaulding shared writers' credit with Tim Wise, because everyone knows that professional politicians can't think this stuff through let alone speak it aloud.
It was a relief and a triumph. Long overdue.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A long, long time ago...
...when I was but a lil' phoenix, I learned something from my big sister's first boyfriend that seems to apply to our national malaise.
I refer here to the trend toward homeowners who have no equity and a painful house payment choosing to walk away from the house. Sending 'jingle mail' (an envelope with the keys) instead of a check.
This came to me in the form of a joke I heard about the mindset of borrowers whose houses have lost value, told by a mortgage broker:
Bank: Mr. Borrower, we're calling because we haven't received your last mortgage payment.
(Soon to be Former) Homeowner: Oh yes you have!
I was also fascinated by an interview with the CEO of Wachovia, whose bank holds or sold about 7% of 'the housing bubble' in form of various types of lending. He was shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that his bank had lent money to the sort of people that would pay a car payment or a credit card bill while allowing their homes to be foreclosed.
This reminded me of Adrian, the first boyfriend. He was big, tough, motorcycle-riding and (as we said back in the day) black. I recall a conversation we had when I was about twelve, sitting on my parents' front porch. He was spinning a tale about his cousin's new ride, which was a gold (gold!) Lincoln, dropped, on 17 inch rims. He referred to this cousin as 'East Side trash' and laughed at how nice the car was considering that the young man's mama was living in squalor.
I asked him what he was talking about and he leaned over and said very quietly: Well, you gotta understand that my people know how to be broke. You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house.
I love this country, but it scares me that we've become a nation living by the values of a 17 year old being raised by his grandparents in the worst neighborhood in town.
We can live in our cars, but as it turns out, we can't drive our McMansions.
I refer here to the trend toward homeowners who have no equity and a painful house payment choosing to walk away from the house. Sending 'jingle mail' (an envelope with the keys) instead of a check.
This came to me in the form of a joke I heard about the mindset of borrowers whose houses have lost value, told by a mortgage broker:
Bank: Mr. Borrower, we're calling because we haven't received your last mortgage payment.
(Soon to be Former) Homeowner: Oh yes you have!
I was also fascinated by an interview with the CEO of Wachovia, whose bank holds or sold about 7% of 'the housing bubble' in form of various types of lending. He was shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that his bank had lent money to the sort of people that would pay a car payment or a credit card bill while allowing their homes to be foreclosed.
This reminded me of Adrian, the first boyfriend. He was big, tough, motorcycle-riding and (as we said back in the day) black. I recall a conversation we had when I was about twelve, sitting on my parents' front porch. He was spinning a tale about his cousin's new ride, which was a gold (gold!) Lincoln, dropped, on 17 inch rims. He referred to this cousin as 'East Side trash' and laughed at how nice the car was considering that the young man's mama was living in squalor.
I asked him what he was talking about and he leaned over and said very quietly: Well, you gotta understand that my people know how to be broke. You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house.
I love this country, but it scares me that we've become a nation living by the values of a 17 year old being raised by his grandparents in the worst neighborhood in town.
We can live in our cars, but as it turns out, we can't drive our McMansions.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Satellite shot down successfully
Here's the conversation with Mrs. Phoenix:
Her: So, what's with this headline, US military shoots down satellite? Is there something to it beyond the fact that the Navy wants to play with the big missiles?
Me: Well, hard to know. I read that there are four steps to the life cycle of a satellite, and that this one failed after the first stage. So it launched, but can't steer itself down to a harmless landing, and that's why it needs to be shot down. (long pause) But now that you ask, I wonder what motive the US military might have to take delivery on a spy satellite which had not been tested on all its critical systems?
And they launched it without checking it adequately. And now they get to show off their spy-satellite-assault capabilities.
Which I think may have been sold to them by the same company that built the failed satellite.
Nah, nothing to see here.
Her: So, what's with this headline, US military shoots down satellite? Is there something to it beyond the fact that the Navy wants to play with the big missiles?
Me: Well, hard to know. I read that there are four steps to the life cycle of a satellite, and that this one failed after the first stage. So it launched, but can't steer itself down to a harmless landing, and that's why it needs to be shot down. (long pause) But now that you ask, I wonder what motive the US military might have to take delivery on a spy satellite which had not been tested on all its critical systems?
And they launched it without checking it adequately. And now they get to show off their spy-satellite-assault capabilities.
Which I think may have been sold to them by the same company that built the failed satellite.
Nah, nothing to see here.
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