This is the first official Book Club entry. We’ll devote ourselves to creating genuinely persuasive messaging, based on research about how the brain actually works. The book is The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. This entry deals exclusively with the book’s introduction. Conveniently, you can read that in its entirety here. Just click on the image of the book, select “Table of Contents,” and scroll down to the Introduction.
Shortly before the 2004 election, researchers gathered 15 committed Republicans and 15 committed Democrats. They showed each person a pair of contradictory quotes from Bush and also from Kerry, contradictions strong enough to threaten the subjects’ perception of the candidate they liked.
What happened?
Democrats easily identified Bush’s contradictions, but seemed to be in denial about Kerry’s. Republicans did the opposite. Somehow the subjects managed to excuse, ignore, or blind themselves to data that cast their preferred candidate in a bad light.
The researchers were neuroscientists. They used MRIs to evaluate what was happening in the subjects’ brains, and they found this:
- Information that threatened the subjects’ beliefs tended to activate neural circuits associated with unpleasant emotion (even if the subject didn’t acknowledge the information as threatening).
- Circuits associated with monitoring and resolving conflicts were also activated.
- Circuits associated with reason were not strongly activated, but those associated with regulating emotion were.
The researchers interpreted this to mean that the subjects didn’t resolve the conflict intellectually, but emotionally. The subjects felt distress, and the brain worked to turn off that distress. It made the contradiction disappear, and it did so without activating the parts of the brain we associate with reason.
That’s freaky enough, but here’s the kicker:
But the political brain also did something we didn’t predict. Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn’t seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased reasoning. These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their “fix,” giving new meaning to the term political junkie.
In a nutshell: Arguing the facts with people who staunchly oppose you will tighten their grip on their on what they think, not loosen it. Giving them information — information that refutes their beliefs — will actually make them even more convinced they’re correct.
And the scary thing is that this isn’t just true of “them.” It’s true of us, as well. Everybody thinks with their guts. Here’s the author’s strategic conclusion.
If you’re running a campaign, you shouldn’t worry about offending the 30 percent of the population whose brains can’t process information from your side of the aisle unless their lives depend on it (e.g., after an attack on the U.S. mainland). If you’re a Republican, your focus should be on moving the 10 to 20 percent of the population with changeable minds to the right and bringing your unbending 30 percent to the polls. Republican strategists in fact have had no trouble branding Northern Californians and Northeasterners “latte-drinking liberals.” They know their own party’s kitchen doesn’t have room for a latte maker, and that scalding the other side can bring a little froth to the mouths of their own voters.
The implications for Democrats should be equally clear: Stop worrying about offending those who consider Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell moral leaders because their minds won’t bend to the left. Indeed, the failure of the Democratic Party for much of the last decade to define itself in opposition to anyone or anything has created a Maxwell House Majority convinced that the only coffee the Democrats are capable of brewing is lukewarm and tepid—tested by pollsters to insure that it’s not too hot or too strong—and served up with stale rhetoric. And they’re right…
We can’t change the structure of the political brain,which reflects millions of years evolution. But we can change the way we appeal to it.
That’s a tough steak for me to chew. I have a certain skill (reinforced by my job) of analyzing facts and communicating them to others. Yet here’s research indicating that such a path is useless when it comes to those dead-set against us, and only middling effective with people who are undecided. On the other hand, part of me already knows this. I can pour hours into a video refuting the links between pedophilia and homosexuality, only to find some people interpreting it as evidence that I’m trying to get kids into the hands of predatory gays.
Even so — even with all that research I’ve just summarized — I don’t see those efforts as wasted. First, I know for a fact that gay kids in the hinterlands see those videos and get a view of gays far different from what their parents and pastors teach. That’s reason enough to soldier on. There’s more, though. I also know that in these videos I come across as really freakin’ calm and emphatic. Will and I joke that if I were a superhero my name would be Emphatic Man. I see an intellectual and emotional benefit to that. A gay kid could show that to his parents or friends or co-workers, and they might not remember a single fact I say, but they’d still be left with the image of someone confidently and clearly disputing the lies our opponents tell about us. They might not remember the details, but they might think, No, that shit’s not true, I remember some guy explaining it’s a lie.
But enough of me trying to justify myself. Frankly, that might just be the bullshit I think to keep on going. Either way, though, one thing is clear. What I’ve been doing isn’t enough. The next step — the step I want to explore with everyone who reads this blog — is figuring how to move beyond the facts. How to create a compelling argument that appeals to the way our brains actually work.
One caveat. Unlike so many of our opponents, I’m not willing to leave the facts behind. The only way I can create something that’s emotionally convincing is to stick with what I know to be true. And given the general wonkiness of this blog, I bet that describes a lot of you out there, too. So what we’re going to explore in the coming weeks is this: How do we create emotionally compelling, truly persuasive arguments that appeal to the gut-level brain without betraying our intellectual integrity?
I don’t know whether this book will give us the answer. But at least it’ll be a starting point for discussion.
Let the comments begin.
This makes sense to me. I work with data along these lines in my job, and it’s clear that logic and reason are only going to influence a limited subset of the population. That doesn’t necessarily mean other people are fully irrational, but they are committed to a way of seeing the world and are not likely to be swayed, at least by facts.
When it comes to gay-rights issues, there tend to be four groups (plus a small group of truly disaffecteds who just don’t care).
The first group is hard core opposition. Opposing gay rights is part of their identity, part of a larger religious and/or ideological world view. You are not going to change these people’s minds. This is actually the majority of the opposition, unfortunately. Fortunately, they tend to be old, so demographic turnover will thin their ranks.
There is a substantial minority of the opposition that is weak in their opposition to gay rights. This may be the result of residual training at home or in school or just a squicked-out factor that keeps them in this camp. They are persuadable, some by factual appeals, some by emotional/personal-connection appeals. Personally, I think this group should be the second-highest priority in changing opinion/fending off bad initiatives.
The majority of supporters are weak supporters, and in my opinion, the TOP PRIORITY of efforts to change opinion and/or fend off bad initiatives should be to firm up their support so that they are more attentive and active on their (tentative) beliefs. They have the right ideas, but they are not especially invested in them. It might not even occur to them to think about a candidate’s stance on gay issues before voting.
Lastly, there is a small, hardcore, group of supporters who don’t need convincing. They probably need some attaboys now and then, but that’s about it.
“Don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind is already made up.” Sounds as if the researchers have confirmed that there is physiological truth behind that saying.
What did the research find happens with those not-so committed to one side or the other? And what about Independents? What mix of logic and fact or emotion or other input had an impact?
They claim that so late in the campaign they couldn’t find people with “intact brains” who hadn’t committed to one side or the other. How facetious they were being, I do not know.
I don’t know about intact brains, but it is true that as elections near, the percentage of people claiming to be undecided and/or independent drops. They really do pick a side.
Generally speaking, independents come in a few flavors. One group is “independent” not so much because they are divorced from both sides but because they don’t care about politics/civic life. They are more disaffected than truly independent. These people are not typically likely voters, as you can imagine.
Many independents are really Democrats or Republicans in terms of their voting behavior and beliefs, but they stop short of the label in self-identifying. If you ask them questions about their ideology, political stands and candidate preferences, it becomes clear what they “really” are. They answer just like people who claim to be one or the other type of partisan.
The last group really are independent. They may have some views in common with Democrats and some with Republicans (e.g. socially liberal, fiscally conservative), or else they are more extreme in their views than either major party.
SNC, I think that’s a great point. It’s easy to spot committed Republicans and Democrats. It’s much harder to know whether someone truly has no preference.
Rob– This is what I said 30 years aog, fighting against Briggs: We are nevr going to reach ANYBODY whose minds are irretrievably poisoned by hate. The only thing that ever reaches them is a major kick upside the head.
Now i would add this: We are unlikely to reach people whose minds are poisoned by an innate sense of superiority unless we can work around that.
This is my conclusion: there is only ONE way to combat anti-gay bigots. And that is to come out to evryone you know, without exception, unless you are in actual physical danger by doing so. The enemy is not now and never has been the Religious Reich. The enemy is and always has been the closet.
This is the one thing that the RR does not understand, and their very mindset preventsd them from doing so. They keep talking about it. they won’t shut up about it. They make other people talk about it. they make people with actual principles talk aobut it and take a side. (I’m reading John Danforth’s Faith and Politics right now– what a MAJOR surprise!) .
I repeatedly told Equality California that they needed to direct a part of their message against prop. 8
towards gay people, encouraging them to come out. That would have swayed far more people than amorphous mnessages aobut fairness.
This is something I wrote a few months ago:
I was sitting in the tenderloin in an Indian restaurant last night, after having had a nice long toke from some of northern Cal’s finest. It was too crowded and the table was to small to read and eat some rather remarkable Tandoor. So I began to cogitate a bit on Timothy’s column and the various responses to it.
And then it hit me. We’re not thinking about this the right way. Even I, who think this way all of the time, wasn’t thinking about it the right way, even though the right way was implicit in everything I have written. I have said repeatedly, in these pages and in others, that the religious right is not the problem. The wanna-be-straight-but-ain’ts ain’t the problem either.
The problem is the closet. End the closet, and most homophobia ends as well, sooner or later. Take the profit out of it, and the moralizing busybodies will fade as well.
Quoting myself: “The closet is about living a lie. It IS a lie, it is based on lies, and it engenders lies. It distorts, perverts, and debases everything it touches, as the sorry life of Ted Haggard will attest. And like all lies, the bigger it is, the longer it is told, the more damage it ultimately causes…As far as I am concerned, if we are willing only to be silent about it, we are consenting to it. We can be polite, but we have to start being truthful. The closet depends on both lies and silence for its power over gay people and its support from heterosexuals. ”
The closet, like lying of any sort, is not respectable, so why respect it? Here is the solution to the problem. EVERYONE comes out. EVERYBODY is outed, friend, foe, and indifferent. Instead of National Coming Out Day, it’s going to be National YOU’RE Coming Out Day… like it or not.
Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell is the embodiment of the closet. The opposite of DADT is not repeal. The opposite of DADT is TELL EVERYONE RIGHT NOW and screw waiting for a few more crumbs to fall from the hetero-imperialist table. (Sorry, my ’60’s roots are showing). Can you imagine the power of 500 soldiers in front of the White House saying, “We’re here! We’re queer! Either process our discharges or repeal this assholery NOW!” Do you think the Holy Maverick would get anywhere with his filibuster? Do you really think senators would say would be able to say that “We don’t need you.” They can say that because there is only Dan Choi standing up to them, and he is only one person. Which is worse: confronting the Taliban, or confronting your fears? Show the right wingers who really has balls, what our military is really made of? Because right now, with a few visible, notable and noble exceptions, most of you look like pussies. You won’t even stand up for your own code of honor, your own integrity, your own sense of self worth. Where is the bravery and the honor in lying, in covering your ass while Dan Choi puts his on the line?
You’re one of a group certain southern senators, long rumored to be big ol’ ‘mo’s, but antipathetic to any gains for gay people? You swore to uphold out Constitution, to stand for the things that allegedly made this country great, but you’re only standing for your own benefit, not the country’s. You don’t REALLY care about the country, because for the sake of the closet, you continue to allow, nay encourage, our distraction from our very real issues while you roll over for the anti-gay lobby. YOU’RE COMING OUT. What, you’ve been so discreet that no one really knows for sure, and what business is it of anyone else’s? Honey, you don’t really believe that, since you are quite willing to make MY SEX LIFE someone else’s business. Just not yours. Sorry for that, but I guess you’ll just have to deal with it. You’re a politician like our boy Kirk, more or less supportive, but still hiding? Sorry, you’ll actually have to be a leader instead of playing one on CNN. YOU’RE COMING OUT!
You’re a famous single actor, long supportive of gay and liberal causes, but always dating some girl or another who doesn’t seem to stick around very long? You shared a house for some years with another very famous, handsome actor, who does the same? Sorry, I don’t believe that you just haven’t met the right girl yet. You’re 50 years old. You’re not going to. Instead, YOU’RE COMING OUT!
You’re my cousin who is too afraid to tell your parents that you’re gay? As my wonderful and witty late partner once said to a friend of his, “You’re 40 years old. don’t you think it’s time to stop lying to your parents about who you really are?” YOU’RE COMING OUT!
You’re the married guy with whom my friend has been having an affair for the last 10 years or so. Unbeknownst to you, he knows your REAL name and what you do for a living. Sorry that this will upset your wife, but you’re the one that’s been lying to her. She’s only been lying to herself. Of course she already knows, she just would prefer not to. YOU’RE COMING OUT!
You’re a gay priest of the RC brotherhood, and you know dozens, if not hundreds of priests similarly situated. You’ve kept your vows of celibacy, you’re not a boy banger or a girl grabber, and have attempted to make the world a better place through your vocation. You’re saddened by the unrelenting homophobia of your church, propagated as you know by wanna-be-straight-but-ain’t bishops who are projecting their own self loathing on to the masses in order to keep their own dark desires in check? Yup, you’re saddened, you’re sur-, op-, and de-pressed, you’re offended, you’re everything but courageous enough to say “ENOUGH!” How about you all speak for the truth, for your very own Fount of Truth, and call those bad boys out? How about 500 of you take the chance of losing your jobs and your special place in the community– like all the rest of us how have to suffer through what your church has been dishing out for the last 1700 years– and assemble on the steps of St. Mary’s with this statement. We’re here! We’re queer! Now let’s start having a dialogue about the proper place of gay people in our society. Maybe we can even get a Methodist or two who hasn’t retired to speak up.
Let’s take our cue from The Fount Itself. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” John 8:32 does not say let’s hide the truth and hope no one notices, or hide the truth and put off the consequences, which are only as inevitable as we give them the power to be.
and on and on and on. No one is excepted. Everyone is coming out. Either you tell or I tell. Then we don’t have any more of these pointless debates that Mr. Kirk was not bad enough to be outed, but Mr. Ashburn was, but nobody did. No more fears of people finding out, because they already have, or have long suspected, and don’t care. Or if they freak out, they’ll recover.
I can already hear people chastising me, telling me that people have to come out when they are ready, that this is a personal decision, that there are consequences that people will have to bear, in a perfect world blah job blah family blah church blah blah und blah…
Bullshit. bullshit, and more bullshit. It is just the fear and loathing of the closet. It has the power it has because we give it that power. The whole campaign against Prop. 8 was conducted from the closet, and that is why we lost, as far as I can tell. Can’t show gay people– they’re scary. Can’t show gay families– the Reich co-opted the issues of OUR children. They are ours, not theirs. where did they get that power? Can’t talk about religion. Can’t talk about prejudice. Can’t show our lives. And what did we get for that reticence, the obsequiousness to the soul-destroying power of the closet? $45 million dollars worth of more of the same.
Romanovsky and Phillips used to have a song about “Straightening Up the House” when the parents arrive. Let’s hide the Advocate, the his-n-his towels, and the rainbow chotchkes. In the end they conclude that maybe it is just better to clean the house, instead of straightening it. What I’m proposing is a major housecleaning. Nobody’s closet is exempt.
end of rant.
I agree that coming out is a crucial part, but the most recent analysis of Prop 8′s results indicated that the anti-equality side finally scored when they aired the ads that implied their children would turn gay if marriage equality passed, or it would be taught in schools, or it confused kids, etc. The study showed those messages about children pushed just enough fence-sitters over the edge into the anti-camp. Fear (emotion) triumphed over logic and information, so that seems to bear out these researchers’ findings.
So how do we effectively counter that kind of messaging in a :30 second ad? We need a message that breaks down that emotional response to parents’ (unfounded) concerns about their children.
Remember, in California, we only lost this by 2%. We don’t have to convince the entire state, just a handful of people who were frightened by a lie.
“…Remember, in California, we only lost this by 2%. We don’t have to convince the entire state, just a handful of people who were frightened by a lie.”
And I also meant to point out, we were ahead for weeks going into this. It was the “scare them on account of the children” talk that made the needle swing against us at the last moment.
How do we reassure them that nothing bad is going to happen to their kids in 30 seconds or less? We did not have an answer to that and we need one.
We did have an answer, but EQCA refused to acknowledge it. I wrote about it extensively after the campaign– and before it, for that matter.
Show us. show our kids. Have US talk aobut why m,arriage isi mportant to us.
They kept our kids and our fmailies in the closet along with everything else.
This is what I wrote on that subject:
Finally, there is the matter of children and family, or as I like to call it, The Children (TM). Because, despite all of that pro-family, love-the-children rhetoric of the religious right, The Children (TM) are just one more commodity in their never-ending battle against ending this prejudice and our full inclusion in society– and arguably, in their whole socio-political agenda, which I believe is ultimately the control of our society and the rule of their “theology”. I can think of all kinds of children they don’t care about: the estimated 70,000 children in California with gay parents, the 3%-4% of the children that will grow up to be gay, but meanwhile have to grow up in the closet and suffer every last indignity that it can bestow, from shame and self-hatred to the ultimate: a Ted Haggard life of furtiveness, or a Bobby Griffith suicide of despair. And how many children world-wide could have been fed, clothed, educated and immunized for the 85 million spent on this campaign? How many children in Darfur died of starvation while Yes on 8 was attacking my marriage? How many social programs in Utah have gone begging while the Mormon Church was getting all moralistic on our asses?
When I attended the above mentioned speaker’s training, which turned out not to be much of a training at all, my intellectual hackles were raised when we were told there was a list of words we weren’t supposed to use and were to try to avoid (at worst) or to euphemize (at best). It reminded of the first time I ever heard the words “politically incorrect”, when I was working against the Briggs Initiative 30 years ago; I thought then that speaker was joking, and was shocked to find that she was serious. This time, when I saw that list of words, my spirits fell, because I received yet another confirmation that this campaign was going to be conducted from the dark recesses of the closet, as has every other failed campaign for the last ten years.
But the final blow, what told me that we were very likely to lose this battle, and what decided for me that I would put little energy towards the official campaign– though I did personally donate $500 to it, and raised about $1000 more– was the exclusion of one word: children. I asked the presenter why we could not talk about that. Her first response was that the Yes people had appropriated it. I couldn’t swear to it, but she may even have used the word “co-opted”, a word I haven’t heard used since I first learned it from the admitted socialists (and I don’t mean that as a put-down, just a context) running the anti-Briggs campaign.
I asked the trainer why we couldn’t talk about gay families, or gay people with children. Her response: focus groups had shown that any association of gay people and children activated the worst animosities of the anti-gay crowd and, more importantly, the worst fears of the crucial undecided voters in the middle who would actually decide the contest. What a concept! Let’s ask straight people who are afraid of gay people about how to win gay rights, instead of asking gay people what has worked in their lives.
You can see the result of focus group viewpoints. We have been focused over big-time.
So many lethal absurdities here. Yes on 8 had co-opted the issue, so we can’t talk about it. Let’s pretend that gay people don’t have children instead. Let’s tell a lie, even one of omission. From my point of view, it is all the more reason that we should be talking about it, and loudly. People who don’t know gay people, who know nothing about us, who don’t know that we have children, that many of us love children, that some of us have adopted the unwanted, cast off children of irresponsible heterosexual reproduction, cannot be informed that their beliefs and perceptions are wrong, lest we…what? Scare them? Challenge them? Educate them? If they are so locked into their fears and their hatred that the simple act of showing our humanity, our families, and our children will cause them to vote against us, then they would not be voting for us anyway.
But Foreman’s column said we SHOULD be avoiding this topic. However out-of-the-closet Mr. Foreman and these political consultants may be, this sentiment makes me wonder if they might have their own issues around fear and shame. I have seen very little in popular culture that supports the idea that lies, either of commission or omission, about important matters are superior and preferable to the truth. I say we should trust the basic decency and fairness of our fellow Americans. I say we should reach hearts and minds with real people and real families. I would rather lose the campaign because we have told the truth, than because we have been complicit in a lie. There was a very telling scene in the movie “Milk”, where the politicos were going to hide gay people, and Harvey Milk said NO. He understood the closet, and in fact, personally gave me my understanding of its pernicious nature long before many of these political consultants were even aware that they were gay, or in some cases, even born.
I have a friend who adopted a child with her partner– an unwanted child who would have been raised in poverty and disease, another piece of third world refuse heading towards an early death because his heterosexual parents neither wanted him nor were prepared to care for him. M. has been given a chance at a different life with her, and is now healthy, bright, charming, well behaved, and a joy to be around. Marriage provides a certain set of rights and responsibilities upon people who are married, and a certain set of protections for their children. Preventing my friend from marrying another woman, which would give M a set of married parents and all of the benefits that the law and society allow, is advocating is to keep him, and the children of all gay couples, in as legally, financially and socially precarious a position as possible. Domestic partnership goes only so far in protecting the children of gay people, and stops exactly at the state line.
The legal and social status of the children of gay people is an issue that must be addressed, and if we don’t do so, you can be sure that we will see another anti-gay, Arkansas-style initiative that will. By conducting our campaign and our lawsuit from the fear and loathing of the closet, we are avoiding it. We are doing nothing to counter the the-gays-are-gonna-get-your-children fear mongering stereotypes and outright falsehoods that are the anti-gay industry’s stock-in-trade, and their most potent and vicious ammunition. And in so doing, we are failing our families and children just as surely as our opponents are. What’s good for the children of heterosexuals is good for the children of homosexuals. Opposing marriage equality is tantamount to punishing those children. What have they ever done to deserve that? What about their equality before the law, their freedom of religion, their rights? We are also failing the children who will grow up to be gay. If we are going to say that children are our most precious resource, then we must stand up for them now, just as we surely should have done throughout this whole, sorry campaign.
We should have won and we could have won. We cannot allow our opponents to own those three words– religion, prejudice, and children– any more than we can allow them to own the word “marriage”. Keeping our lawsuit and our campaigns in the closet is the same as keeping gay people in the closet, and will have the same results. We will remain invisible and powerless as a community.
By the way, they improved htings lsightly in the Maine campaign ads, but made many of the same mistakes.
They did show a family of tow men and their children. but they had one of the men’s father talking aobut his son and his partner, not the son talking himself, showing his children, and talking about why marriage is important to them.
I tried repeatedly to get the Maine campaign to do it differently, and could not even get an acknowledgement from them that they had received my material.
I’m not patting myself on the back for my fabulous ability to frame the issues, though such pats would be welcome. It’s aobut seeing the obvious. To me, it’s always about the closet, and the way we use it against our own interests.
Lots of good points here. Let me see if I can pull them together.
Campaign managers on our side say to stay away from any talk of children because that’s what their focus groups tell them. That, of course, just makes me think of Westen’s quote:
I think there’s a conflict between short-term and long-term strategy here. If you want to win a particular campaign in the next few months, then focus groups suggest it’s perilous to mention kids.
HOWEVER.
As Ben points out, the more gay issues get talked about, the more voters start to think it’s just no big deal. It’s easy to demonize gays when people only talk about us in whispers. It’s much harder when people hear about us every day to the point where the subject simply no longer shocks them. In essence, then:
In the short-term, mentioning “the gay” is counterproductive, and it’s better to focus on issues like discrimination and fairness.
In the long-term, mentioning “the gay” is the only way to make real progress.
The thing is, campaign managers are hired to win campaigns. They can’t make a living by saying, “We’re going to flood the airwaves with images of gay people. It’ll lose us this election but set us up for success in future years. Now where’s my fee?”
Which means, I think, that as long as focus groups are uncomfortable with gays, it’s up to us nonprofessionals to get the gay out there.
I’m inclined to both agree and disagree with some of Ben and Rob’s points.
First off, Ben is 100% right about the closet being THE problem. The top predictor of people’s attitudes about gay rights is whether or not they have a close friend or family member who is gay. Proximity and familiarity remove fear and wear down faulty assumptions and prejudices. There is simply no replacement for this. I have heard about some research that suggests that the impact of knowing gay people and hearing about their lives is actually MORE effective (i.e. persuasive) when there is NOT a campaign of some sort going on. It’s probably easier for people to take in new information and adjust their views when they’re not being bombarded with ads and canvassers, after all. In other words, this should be an ongoing focus everywhere.
I also agree that it is important to have actual gay people and their lives at the center of much of the push during a campaign. Showing real people and their real lives and how they are affected by proposals and legislation matters. It directly counters the scare tactics of the other side.
However, I also think it is important to feature straight allies, and often. Ads with gays and lesbians and their families may work to help nudge or firm up opinions, but let’s be honest: For straight people, gay people are still at least a little bit “other.” I don’t mean that in as negative a way as it sounds, it’s just that we don’t live your lives. Even if we’re sympathetic, we’re still not affected the way you are. Hence, we need an invitation to not just have an opinion on these issues, but to act on it.
I think of this as creating “feasibility.” You need straight allies to make it “OK” for other straight allies to be engaged in this kind of fight, to make it feasible/acceptable/comprehensible. They need to know that they fit in somewhere, that it’s OK–more than OK–to be vocally on the pro-equality side. That kind of permission and guidance, if you will, is going to have to come from other straight folk.
Straight allies also need tools and resources, as in help starting/having discussions about these topics with their friends, who may be more wary and more removed from actual gay people.
To win a campaign, you need to firm up the support you have and grab from the weak opposition. Coming out, showing real gay lives and empowering straight allies to do their part seems, to me, to be the best recipe to grab those vital voters.
One more thing about focus groups: They aren’t the be all and end all. They are very valuable for getting insight into how people think about and talk about an issue, but they are hardly perfect. It’s obviously an artificial environment, and people are getting together with others they don’t know, and they may not be all that representative of the larger population (or even a subgroup). After all, what kind of people want to do focus groups, and how do they differ from those who won’t?
If a focus group shows you that talking about kids is a hot-button issue, that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to AVOID talking about kids–and if the opposition does nothing but, you’d better be able to respond. What it means is that you’ll have to be VERY careful and VERY calculated in what you say about kids. And you message test the hell out of it.
Don’t you think that part of the problem in elections is, that straight folks don’t have anything to GAIN from supporting queer positions, while those at least faintly homophobic always fear they have a lot to lose (like their kids). Making their own kid queer scares them, even if it is only a remote possibility. But there is nothing to counterbalance that on their personal balance sheet, nothing to convince them to take the “risk”. Only abstract talk of civil rights. If that is enough to win majorities – I have my doubts? How do you make them personally invested in changing the status quo?
Martin, blacks faced the same problem in the 50s and 60s (and not just in the south). Lots of people were scared of race mixing, of having their pure white daughters set upon by scary black folk. Every fear that conservative straights have for their children now was mirrored by the fears conservative whites had for theirs then.
So the obvious question (to which I have no answer) is: How did civil rights activists get people beyond those fears back then?
You raise interesting points, Martin. Any time one is asking a majority to support a minority, there will need to be some element of morality/decency to it. You do this because it’s right or just, period. There’s nothing inherently wrong in appealing to that, but it’s a pretty dry pitch.
That said, straight people with gay kids, gay friends, gay siblings, etc. have a vested interest in the outcome of legislation and initiatives related to gays to the extent that they don’t want to see people who are important to them be hurt. This goes back to Ben’s point about the impact of the closet: People who know gay people know better than to worry that rights for gays will imperil their kids or those kids’ presumed heterosexuality. People who don’t know gay people (at least well) can persist in that kind of mildly seated homophobia, the kind that is rooted more in ignorance, discomfort and unfamiliarity than in hate.
At the end of the day, no, straight people do not have much to gain for themselves in these fights. But it should be pretty easy to show them that they and their kids don’t have anything to lose, either.
Rob,
I’m not sure how far the Civil Rights Movement comparison will get you. Racial history in this country is so different than the history around sexual orientation. Also, there is no closet equivalent for blacks. There also was no controversy about what made a person black (aside from definitions of who was black) or whether that was subject to change, etc. There was, of course, disagreement about the meaning of color and its import.
There is also a starkness to what was happening to blacks in this country as a group–denied access to schools, denied access to jobs, kept out of housing by deed restrictions. They were legally constrained in so many ways. And then they started marching, which got some attention. You can only see so much footage of nicely dressed people having dogs or fire hoses turned on them or needing the National Guard to escort a young girl into school before, as a human being, you have to pick a side. I don’t think there has been anything comparable to that kind of institutional brutality on a grand scale against gay people that would motivate straight people to HAVE to take a side. There have certainly been episodic horrors (the lady in Florida who couldn’t see her dying partner in the hospital, deportations, etc.), but they come across as one-offs. You could certainly argue that Reagan’s refusal to do enough about AIDS should suffice, but acts of omission aren’t as photogenic or motivating as acts of commission.
On a separate note, there is a recurring theme I hear from our side that I worry helps their side, and it is this sort of blanket statement, one size fits all, denunciation of Christianity (or religion in general). I wish we could convince our side to stop doing that. It is as flawed and prejudicial as those who condemn all Muslims for the evil acts of a few terrorists. It does not help our cause to make such generalizations, whatever our personal beliefs about religion might be.
While it is true that the fundamental Christians are often at the forefront fighting against our equality, it is also true that there are Christian denominations that are supportive, that recognize and perform SSM, and that do their part to help our cause. We should support and encourage those.
The religious folks on the anti-side get along well with each other for the most part, they cooperate and support each others’ efforts. I wish the denominations that do support us were as cross-organized as those on the other side. I’d love to see unified and oft-repeated statements from them to the effect that anti-equality laws violate *their* freedom of religion, the same way the other side often brings up that argument.
Friends, let’s take a moment to reflect on the point of the above-quoted book before we declare that coming out will make a difference to our homophobic family and neighbors. Yes, it very well might–it might make them more homophobic.
My mother is even more devoted to screwing gay folk out of their rights now that she has to show everybody she’s not to blame for having a queer kid. Each year, she gets nastier. She’s not going to mellow; she’s not going to change. You can’t reach everyone.
Coming out has many, many benefits, and it’s healthier to come out than to live in the closet. But it’s not a cure-all, and we shouldn’t pin our hopes on homophobes coming around if we come out.
As my late partner said to a woman who announced she owuld never accept her gay son. “Your attitude is never oging to make your sone sorry that he’s gay. It’s just oging ot make ihm osrry that your his mother.”
Aconite,
No, you cannot reach everyone.
You are correct that knowing gay people will not have the same effect on everyone. Some people will dig in their heels and become (more) homophobic–sometimes for a short time, sometimes forever. But on the whole, people who know gay people are much more supportive of their rights. And in a game of numbers (which is really all elections are), that matters.
Again, though, it seems better if people get to know gay people outside the context of an election/campaign, when the interactions are less burdened with the baggage of that campaign. Knowing gay people probably has the most effect on people who are neutral to mildly homophobic; it won’t likely do much for the hard-core opposition. This kind of comes right back to the book’s point, if I’m not mistaken.
And Aconite, I’m sorry about your mother. I do hope that, despite the odds, she comes around.
Aconite,
I agree with your point that coming out to friends, family or neighbors may well make them more homophobic.
Much like your own situation, when I came out to my family, they were mean, horrible and hateful toward me. My father finally kicked me out at 16 years of age (40+ years ago), stating that he ‘would not tolerate that kind of filth’ in his house. He attempted reconciliation ten years later on the condition that I renounce my sexual orientation and marry a woman. He died without that reconciliation and left my mother a multi-millionaire.
She, my five brothers and sister, and all of their children routinely donate large amounts of money to Focus on the Family; they routinely get Christmas cards from Jim and Judy Dobson; Billy Graham and his wife were frequently dinner guests at my parents home. As they are all Californians, they most definitely voted against my interests with regard to Prop 8. I firmly believe every one of them would rather I were dead.
Your statements here would also be true for me: “My mother is even more devoted to screwing gay folk out of their rights now that she has to show everybody she’s not to blame for having a queer kid. Each year, she gets nastier. She’s not going to mellow; she’s not going to change. You can’t reach everyone.”
Having said all of the above, I didn’t come out for my family or for my relatives. I came out for me. While it has been extremely difficult at times not to have the love and support of ‘family,’ I survived… actually, I thrived. And the amazing thing is that because I was already out to those who were once the most important people in my life, it was that much easier to be out to people who were not, initially, that important to me; co-workers, neighbors and friends.
While my family all still live in California, I live in Washington where we recently defeated Referendum 71, the voter initiative to repeal WA SB 5688, the ‘everything but marriage’ domestic partnership law passed by our State Legislature. I believe that having lived openly, out of the closet here on my little dead-end street, caring about my little neighborhood, speaking to my neighbors about how it feels to be alienated from one’s family, misconceptions about homosexuality and pedophilia, and simply being a ‘good neighbor,’ may very well have helped to swing the vote to help defeat Ref. 71.
You are, in my opinion, also correct to state “Coming out has many, many benefits, and it’s healthier to come out than to live in the closet. But it’s not a cure-all, and we shouldn’t pin our hopes on homophobes coming around if we come out.” And though I agree with you that this is not something we should pin our hopes on, I also know I have more voting neighbors than I do voting family members.
If my being out of the closet helps to swing votes in our favor, even though they may not be the votes of my own family, it is worth doing and it does give me something on which to pin hope.
I am in complete agreement with Ben in Oakland — out them all; out every last one and see what kind of power that would generate. The potential there is something on which I would gladly pin an extraordinary amount of hope.
Ben in oakland, SNC, WildwoodGuy, thanks for the discussion.
SNC, I know that it’s stated over and over that straights who know gays are more likely to support gay rights, but I wonder if it’s more that people who are inclined to support other people’s rights in general get a boost from having faces to put to the issues. After all, most of the hard-core homophobes know gay people, too, and it sure doesn’t make them more likely to support gay rights.
Please don’t think I’m arguing against coming out, because I’m not. Living in the closet is deeply damaging, and you only have a healthy life when you can live openly. But it’s a whopping big mistake to come out thinking your reward will be people changing their minds for the better about gayness, because some will, some won’t, and it’s all beyond your control. Come out for yourself, and anything more is a nice bonus.
WildwoodGuy, thanks for sharing your story, and for the thoughtful comments. I don’t regret losing anyone who dumped me for being gay, and I hope you don’t, either. I distinctly remember the moment I realized how very, very messed up my birth family is and how healthy and joyous my new family is, and how my birth family is incapable of seeing it’s utterly insane and so will never get better. It’s a relief to be out of that, and if losing batsh*t crazy relatives to have wonderful friends and lovers is the trade we have to make, then hey, give me lots more of that.
I think coming out is the most positive change any LGBT peson can make, and that’s also why I’m strongly opposed to forcibly outing private people (as opposed to those who’ve made the choice to live in the public spotlight, such as politicians). Coming out isn’t just what goes on outside–that people find out you’re gay–it’s also, more importantly, what you experience internally. Being outed before you’re ready to deal with it yourself is traumatizing; we’d see a boom in “ex-gay” ministry attendance if we forced people out.
I don’t want to be responsible for causing any more pain to LGBT people, even if I’m exasperated when they choose to switch pronouns and lie about how they spent the weekend. The excuses people find for not coming out make me want to shake them until their hair falls out–but I will not take the choice from them and force them out. When all this is over in another generation, I want to know that we won not by adopting our opponants’ tactics of intimidation, but by taking the higher route, even though it was hard to do. So I’ll persuade and badger and nag people to come out until I’m blue in the face, but I will not out someone. Hurting someone for their own good–how many of us have been on the wrong side of that?
It seems to me this study is a bit limited. It only examines the subjects’ reactions over the course of a single day, if I’m reading the excerpt right. The study doesn’t rule out the possibility that holders of strong beliefs can bend to facts over a longer period of time. Perhaps, out of every hundred confrontations with unwanted facts, the reasoning parts of the brain ARE activated, and if this happens enough, it will erode the tenacious misconceptions.
I think of the stories I’ve heard of parents taking years or even decades to accept their homosexual children. I know I personally took several years to change my position on gun control. Perhaps the lesson to take from this is that we can’t win fights over moral debates over the course of a single election cycle, but rather must maintain a barrage of facts over the course of years.
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