Loganotron

Read the entire FAQ here. Questions that are answered include:

What was the final vote on Prop 8?
How does this compare to the final vote on Prop 22?
How did various counties vote on Prop 8?
What do we know about who voted to pass Prop 8 and repeal the right to marry?
What is happening with the lawsuits?
What was the structure of the No on 8 campaign?
Who were the No on 8 campaign professionals?
How did the campaign decide what kind of ads to run?
Why didn’t you use any LGBT people in your ads until the last week?
Why did the Yes side run so many more ads than the No side?
What did the campaign’s internal polling show?
Why have some post-election protests and/or rallies focused on the Mormons?
Did the Mormon Church violate IRS rules by getting involved with the Yes on 8 campaign?
What lessons have been learned?
What should our next steps be?

Kos has a great post on how the backlash and protests over the passage of Prop 8 have made a difference:

Of the those adults who tell SurveyUSA they voted FOR Prop 8, 90% of them told us recent rallies held by “No on Prop 8″ Protesters have not changed their minds about the issue. 8% say protesters have changed their minds.

“Turning eight percent of marriage equality opponents around in a few short weeks is remarkable, and likely stems people realizing what exactly they had voted for.

Remember, the proposition lost by only three points. If eight percent of the 52.1 percent who voted for it have changed their minds, that’s a 4.2 percent swing in favor of equality. Or, put another way, you’re looking at a 52-48 vote in favor of gay marriage.

I would say that thus far, the backlash against Proposition 8 has been wildly successful.”

More over at NoMilkForCinemark.com:

For more info visit Day Without A Gay.

Americablog has evidence that Cinemark’s CEO AlanStock gave $9,999 to Yes on Prop 8. I solemnly vow to never patronize another Cinemark, Century, or CineArts theater. If their CEO is willing to spend the money he’s made off of my ticket sales to strip my rights away, then I will no longer contribute to his company’s profits. I encourage all of you to do the same.

For a list of CineArts locations, click here. For a list of Cinemark-owned theaters, click here.

For those of us in San Francisco, the Century Centre 9 Theater in the Westfield is owned by Cinemark. I personally will no longer watch a movie at that theater ever again. Who else is with me?

Idiots. I wonder how their employees feel about being laid off after FotF dumped so much money into Prop 8? Perhaps they feel this is God’s will. I see it as bad business.

Thanks to Dangermarc for the link.

Ashton Kutcher rants about Prop 8 on Bill Maher’s show. Perhaps even more heartening than knowing that hottie Ashton is on our side, is listening to John Meachem, an Episcopalian, who speaks about gay marriage just before Ashton’s rant.

At a rally against Prop 8 this weekend, Wanda Sykes publicly came out as a lesbian. She also said she recently married her partner of many years. Wanda also made a bold proclamation that we need to fight for gay marriage as a national right. Our fight began in California, but gays and lesbians should not be restricted to living certain states with full rights.

Towleroad has a great gallery of the protests against Prop 8 from across the US this weekend. I’ll post my pics from the SF rally later tonight.

Cleve Jones was a friend of Harvey Milk’s and is a long-time gay activist. Dustin Lance Black is the young hottie who wrote the screenplay for MILK. Together, they have penned a fantastic and moving letter regarding gay rights.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR EQUALITY FOR ALL AMERICANS

By CLEVE JONES and DUSTIN LANCE BLACK

On Nov. 27, 1978, gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk was assassinated in San Francisco City Hall. Thirty years later, his struggle continues.

On Nov. 4, 2008, millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans of all races proudly cast their ballots for Barack Obama, helping to elect the first African American president of the United States. On that same day, voters in Arizona, Arkansas, California and Florida approved initiatives denying basic civil rights to GLBT citizens.

Like other Americans who voted for Obama, gay people supported our president-elect because we share his vision of a united America, and want to move forward to address the critical challenges facing our country and our planet.

We have always been willing to serve our country: in our armed forces, even as we were threatened with courts-martial and dishonor; as teachers, even as we were slandered and libeled; as parents and foster parents struggling to support our children; as doctors and nurses caring for patients in a broken health-care system; as artists, writers and musicians; as workers in factories and hotels, on farms and in office buildings; we have always served and loved our country.

We have loved our country even as we have been subjected to discrimination, harassment and violence at the hands of our countrymen. We have loved God, even as we were rejected and abandoned by religious leaders, our churches, synagogues and mosques. We have loved democracy, even as we witnessed the ballot box used to deny us our rights.

Like Obama, we never abandoned hope in the American dream of equality and freedom. We never stopped believing that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights included us.

We have always kept faith with the American people, our neighbors, co-workers, friends and families. But today that faith is tested and we find ourselves at a crossroad in history.

Will we move forward together? Will we affirm that the American dream is alive and real? Will we finally guarantee full equality under the law for all Americans? Or will we surrender to the worst, most divisive appeals to bigotry, ignorance and fear?

It has been 30 years since Milk gave his life in our struggle for equality. We will not wait 30 years more. We demand that the federal government act immediately, decisively and unequivocally to ensure equal protection under law throughout the United States of America.

We call on President-elect Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to draft and submit to the Congress comprehensive legislation protecting the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens in all areas, including civil marriage, military service, adoption, Social Security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing and access to health care, social services and education.

We call on our country’s leaders to take personal responsibility for involving our nation’s religious leaders and the GLBT community in a national dialogue to encourage understanding and reconciliation.

We call on everyone to carry this message of hope and equality throughout our nation, to every place of worship, to every school and factory and shopping center, every city, suburb and farming town. We call on you to march together, demonstrate together, to pray together and dream together of a future America where, finally, all are free.

There are rare moments in human history when, suddenly and unexpectedly, the opportunity for great change and progress becomes possible. Obama has shown us the power of hope and the urgency of seizing that moment. Milk has shown us the power we possess when we make our voices heard.

We can accept no compromise.

We can wait no longer.

Now is the time.

We are equal.

The LA Times covers the boycotts gays and straight allies are mounting against businesses that financially supported Prop 8.

I say bring on the boycotts. As a gay man and a consumer, I do not have any obligation to support a business whose morals and political positions I do not support. In fact, I have chosen to be an organic vegetarian so that I can affect the food industry with my dollars. I am voting with my purchasing power in the capitalistic system. In the same way, I will use my purchasing power (and the gays have lots of it — no kids means more disposable income) to “vote” against anti-gay businesses.

You may recall my response to Cannick’s recent column. Cannick continues to blather on and make little sense on O’Reilly’s show:

O’Reilly says near the end: “Religious Americans have a right a right to their opinion, and they have a right to express it, and they have a right to vote it. And they exercised that right.”

Yes, Bill: You’re right. Everyone has a right to their opinion and has the right to exercise that right through voting. However, I believe that we do not have a right to express our prejudices through voting on the inalienable rights of others.

Also, Bill: You begin your segment decrying the gay protests across the nation. You ask why there isn’t a cooling off period. If everyone has the right to an opinion and the right to express that opinion, doesn’t that include the gays? Don’t we have a right to express our opinion that the passage of Prop 8 was awful and we are very upset about it? Or, in your opinion, is that another right we gays don’t deserve and should have taken away from us by “the will of the people?”

The Democratic Strategist posted a fantastic analysis by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara on why we lost Prop 8. She identifies the three key areas that must be addressed in a successful analysis:

• An aerial view of the infrastructure, strategies and mindset of the national LGBT movement;
• A “zoom-in” view of the specific field, messaging, and funding strategies used by the No on 8 campaign; and
• A similar “zoom-in” view of the strategies used by two concurrent, successful national campaigns: “Yes on 8″ and the Obama campaign.

Her piece over at The Democratic Strategist specifically looks at the No on 8 field campaign. The two key failings of the No on 8 campaign, according to Beach-Ferrara, were:

First, the “No on 8″ campaign did not become national until October, limiting both the volunteers and donors it could engage.

Second, the campaign’s field strategy failed to effectively reach enough swing voters enough times to turn them out as “no” voters.

I encourage you to read the whole analysis. It’s a great start to picking ourselves up and reorganizing so that we win the next time in California and elsewhere.

Nate Silver has a great post over at FiveThirtyEight debunking some of the racial myths regarding the passage of Prop 8. He points to generational bias having a more pronounced effect than racial biases:

At the end of the day, Prop 8′s passage was more a generational matter than a racial one. If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two. It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.

The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that — and there’s no polite way to put this — the older voters aren’t going to be around for all that much longer, and they’ll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era. Everyone knew going in that Prop 8 was going to be a photo finish — California might be just progressive enough and 2008 might be just soon enough for the voters to affirm marriage equity. Or, it might fall just short, which is what happened. But two or four or six or eight years from now, it will get across the finish line.

This is a must listen. It’s a bit long and frustrating, but well worth it.