Campaign For Southern Equality

December 29, 2012 1:45 PM

The Campaign For Southern Equality announces Game On! [2m28s] in its latest push to make marriage equality an issue across the South, beginning January 2nd.

Campaign For Southern Equality's WE DO campaign is entering its fourth stage:

Between January 2nd and 14th, LGBT couples will request and be denied marriage licenses in their hometowns across the South. On January 17, the final day of Stage 4, couples will be denied licenses in Arlington and we will begin a 4.5 mile march into Washington, DC. We will end at the Jefferson Memorial in an action that includes a blessing honoring the legal marriage under D.C. law of one couple from North Carolina, Mark and Tim. The final day of action is an expression of resistance to current laws and celebration of our community. The actions on January 17 are intended to highlight the lives and stories of LGBT people from across the South; the powerful reality that in our nation’s capital LGBT people have the right to marry; and the injustice that legal marriages between same-sex couples are not recognized in the South.

posted by hippybear (19 comments total)

This is great and profoundly moving; however, Washington, D.C. does have marriage equality. The licenses won't be denied there!
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:57 PM on December 29, 2012

As a straight Yankee it's not really for me to comment, but I was hoping that in their list of "we are clergy, teacher, your neighbors ...", I was hoping they would say "we are Aggies and Sooners, we are Gators and Tigers".
posted by benito.strauss at 2:05 PM on December 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

God love 'em. Shared it now.

I find it important that this involved a drum line and a marching band. At least two of the folks I grew up with in the band in MS have since burst out of the closet.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:06 PM on December 29, 2012

They're not looking for them to be denied in DC, roomthreeseventeen -- part of the issue under protest is DOMA's trampling of the "full faith and credit" clause (which allows a man and a woman to marry in DC and have it be recognized in Alabama).
posted by Etrigan at 2:08 PM on December 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love that their events calendar is titled "The Gay Agenda"
posted by crayz at 2:32 PM on December 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

roll pride
posted by orme at 2:33 PM on December 29, 2012 [19 favorites]

I am seriously disappointed that of all the DOMA challenges, the Supreme Court only selected one challenging the federal marriage definition, and not one that challenged the clearly-unconstitutional anti-full-faith-and-credit provision. What that means is that neither of the cases to be decided will yield the sweeping changes our community needs and is hoping for.
posted by jph at 2:37 PM on December 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Geaux HeauxMeauxSexuals.
posted by ColdChef at 2:38 PM on December 29, 2012 [5 favorites]

It turns out that my family in MS is more accepting of homosexuality than of being black... for whatever the hell that's worth.
posted by Huck500 at 2:46 PM on December 29, 2012

I am seriously disappointed that of all the DOMA challenges, the Supreme Court only selected one challenging the federal marriage definition, and not one that challenged the clearly-unconstitutional anti-full-faith-and-credit provision. What that means is that neither of the cases to be decided will yield the sweeping changes our community needs and is hoping for.

How could you be disappointed, at least from a historical perspective of the current Court? This is exactly how a SCOTUS with a severely conservative majority where at least one member believes that homosexuality is roughly equivalent to bestiality and murder wants to deal with teh gayz. They chose those specific cases precisely because it gives them a chance to allow as little progress towards gay marriage as they can.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:01 PM on December 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wishing them well, in every state.
posted by mermayd at 3:34 PM on December 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Concurrently I believe Maine just started issusing licenses for same sex couples, yesterday (I think)
posted by edgeways at 4:03 PM on December 29, 2012

Maine starting issuing at 12:01 am today.
posted by bzbb at 5:57 PM on December 29, 2012

I've been to a couple of these, as have my wife and several friends (and my minister). Even though it's all known what's going to happen ahead of time, it's surprisingly powerful emotionally to go through. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara is an amazing presence, and I think the fact that this battle is not just being fought in the courts and the ballots, but on the ground really affects public perception. Asheville meetup at WeDo on January 11?
posted by rikschell at 6:00 PM on December 29, 2012

Two bits, four bits, six bits, a buck
All for gay marriage, we wish you good luck
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 7:11 PM on December 29, 2012

Two bits, four bits, six bits, a buck
All for gay marriage, we wish you good luck

That ended so much more tastefully than I anticipated.
posted by robstercraw at 9:23 PM on December 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Arrg. I totally support what they're doing but their messaging is all mired in 2008.

If you want to win, you introduce it as "the freedom to marry," not "marriage equality." ("Freedom" tests much better). You don't talk about "LGBT people", you talk about "lesbians and gays" ("LGBT" is seen as inside baseball; people dither when you have to explain trans; "lesbian" tests significantly better than "gay"). You don't talk about "rights," you talk about love and commitment.

We learned a shit-ton from 8 and subsequent testing, then we used it on the ballot just a couple months ago. This shit is known, and as a coalition of state Equality organizations, they all have fucking access to it. There was a lot of pushback within the LGBT community over the focus on the moveable middle, using ambassadors rather than LGBT people, and moving away from fairness/civil rights/legal arguments into the emotional triggers of anti-LGBT feelings, but it fucking works.

I want these folks to win so bad, but there's a pretty clear way to win and they're fucking it up. Whoever is their communications director should go talk with the people who just won in four states rather than dicking around with messaging that we know fails.
posted by klangklangston at 5:39 PM on December 30, 2012 [3 favorites]

Klang, I think it points to the difference in the movement between people coming from a civil rights perspective (MLK didn't need focus groups) and people who say, screw the philosophy, let's just win. And while you can't argue with results, I think here in the Southeast (AKA the South), the tools that work in the rest of the country aren't quite the same here. And hearkening back to the Civil Rights Movement resonates differently here than anywhere else.

The good folks running the We Do campaign are well aware of what else is going on in the country, and they think there's room for more than one approach. They're also not expecting a lot of success any time soon.
posted by rikschell at 1:25 PM on January 4

"And hearkening back to the Civil Rights Movement resonates differently here than anywhere else."

Kinda. But messenger matters so much there, and there's a real resentment of co-option of black culture by white culture. There's also the initial reaction against that analogy in a lot of people — not just African-Americans — of having that rhetoric trigger an impulse to carp away the analogy by thinking about all of the ways that the Civil Rights movement is different from the "gay rights" movement (and "gay rights" is a losing frame too).

The We Do campaign may work fine in the most immediate concern of many non-profits — exciting the donor base — but it's also setting up an aggressive frame in a sloppy way, and aggressive frames beget aggressive responses on both sides.

"The good folks running the We Do campaign are well aware of what else is going on in the country, and they think there's room for more than one approach. They're also not expecting a lot of success any time soon."

There is room for more than one approach, but this one is pretty explicitly geared toward liberal arguments and reasoning, and counting on liberals to outvote conservatives in the South — especially while alienating some of their African-American support by making "Civil Rights" arguments from outside — is exactly why they shouldn't expect success any time soon.

If you're going up against a gun, and you can bring a knife or a spoon, you still choose the knife.

Maryland was a great example of outreach to African Americans; Maine is a good example of what can be done with a relatively small, rural population; Mississippi's defeat of the personhood amendment shows some good ideas on how to blunt religious attacks and how to organize Southern turnout.

Again, I agreed with everything they said. It just made me cringe to hear so many things that have been tested and failed in every contest because of pretty specific, known reasons, and with pretty robust crosstabs.

I think it might be more jarring, too, because the production values are so good on the video, so it makes the missed messaging feel like a long bomb dropping through the fingers of the wideout.
posted by klangklangston at 10:02 PM on January 4