Well, as one of those "older gays", I can only respond to you Rick by asking if you ever took the time to ask any of us? Did you read anything I wrote? Or the many many others who have been writing, preaching, marching and otherwise putting our lives on the line for several decades now?
Your anger is welcomed, but I think your target is much closer, such as the person sitting in your chair reading this post. Did you contribute money to the no on 8 campaign? Did you man the phone banks? What did you do -- and I am not suggesting you did too little, just asking.
Prop 6 came at a time when there was no notion of "gay" much less "gay rights" in the larger public conversation. Take a look at the contemporary articles at the time and what you will see is that we were primarily described as sick pedophiles who couldn't be trusted not to rape their children.
That was not present to anywhere near the same extent in this campaign and to the extent it was I do not think it made a difference. The vote for 8 seems from what I have read aqnd from the people I talk to not on those kind of fears but rather on religious grounds. That requires a very different kind of campaign.
I told EQ california all along their ads were off base but it is hard to convince people that they are wrong without evidence. To some extent I thought it was also necessary to allow younger leaders to go the direction they thought best.
After all, being gay at 30 years of age today is much different than it was for me, so I have to give my thoughts and then stand back and let people work with their own mindset. It is, after all, an issue much more for you and your age cohorts than for me.
So mistakes were made, but I think it would have been an even bigger mistake to pin 8 as a "gay rights" issue. That would have always relegated us to some kind of "exception", some "other" category and lead to claims we ask for "special rights." That claim is the one that the past 20 years of political activity has sought to deny.
Haven't you argued here Rick that we claim nothing more than what everyone else enjoys? That is a claim based on human, not gay rights.
