Opinion :: Editorial
Gay marriage has to stop being about us by Sue O’Connell
co-publisherWednesday Nov 4, 2009 Maine was not California. There is little Monday-morning quarterbacking going on about the strategy employed to defend our marriage rights. The anti-gay marriage folk were out-spent, out-planned, and out-executed, but prevailed anyway. In the coming days and weeks we’ll have time to look more closely at our efforts, but I’m pretty sure we’ll find that all things being equal, we’d do it the same way again. After all, Maine is a state of fair-minded Americans who can look to Massachusetts for comfort-we should have won.
But we didn’t, and there’s a simple reason. Our message to protect our civil rights is about us, not about all of America. We’ve failed to make our cause a universal battle for civil rights. A message about us also defines the battle as one being waged against them.
Maine voted not to decrease auto taxes and approved the Maine marijuana act. Yes to taxes, yes to pot, no to marriage. Why?
Because Mainers understand that they-personally or via a close family member-may need medical marijuana someday to ease the pain of cancer. They also understand that voting for (or against) taxes will impact them. We have not made the case that gay marriage impacts the general public in a positive way.
We have to tell our fellow citizens that supporting gay marriage is more about their children than ours. Sure, my ability to marry would protect my daughter, but odds are she’s going to grow up heterosexual. Plus, even if we all married and had 2.5 children, our numbers would be small. The fact is that the protections same-sex marriage offer are far more important to straight families than our families. They have more offspring and, statistically, are far more likely to have gay or lesbian children.
We can, and should, make the argument that our rights are about basic fairness. But that can get us only so far. Any marketer will tell you that people listen and act when they can identify a personal benefit. In sales, we call it WIIFM (What’s In It For Me.) Every sales call must include a WIIFM message for the client if there is any hope to close the sale.
In order for us to close the sale and get a WIIFM to America, let’s stop showing our gay- or lesbian-headed families and show straight families with gay members. What’s in it for them is the guarantee of a future of equality for their children, their brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles.
The AIDS/HIV crisis changed once America understood that HIV could happen to them, too. Ryan White, Magic Johnson, and Rock Hudson made it not about just the gays, but about everyone.
We did everything right in Maine, and we made valuable steps toward including more heterosexuals in the fight (like Jesse Connolly, No On 1’s straight campaign manager). This civil rights battle is ultimately a fight heterosexuals need to join, if not lead, to protect their children’s future. Let’s let them tell their stories.
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