Lauren RabainoCommunity members gathered at Congregation Beth David on Sunday to take a look at what they felt may have gone wrong in the No on 8 campaign that was waged last year against Proposition 8, whose passage in November banned same-sex marriage.
Marriage Equality USA chapter leader David Kilburn, whose organization helped with the event, said he wanted attendees to remember their emotions when the proposition passed in order to make change.
“There were some horrifying, devastating stories of the emotional toll that our community and our allied community went through after being singled out to have our rights taken away,” he said. “We have had some time to let things settle, but we need to feel those emotions again.”
Alexis Murrell, a Los Osos resident, attended with her wife, who she married in June.
“I think that it might have been the worst I’ve ever felt in my life,” Murrell said. “I guess I assumed that since we were in California, people would be more open minded.”
She said that it’s important to make people more aware and accepting of same sex marriage, “because it’s not this horrible thing that the ads were all saying it was.”
“We want to get people to see that we’re just normal people, we’re trying to live our lives with every security that they have,” she added.
She was also concerned about the messages the Yes on 8 campaign was relaying to the public.
“That it had anything to do with education, with the religious idea of marriage, with religious leaders being forced to perform ceremonies or that kids would be taught gay marriage in school-it wasn’t about any of that,” she said. “It was about civil marriage for all citizens no matter what gender, race or faith,” she said.
Murrell was not alone in her grief. Much of the conversation dealt with the emotional toll the passage took. However, attendants also discussed how to spread their message more effectively.
Eric Hubbs, a Cal Poly alumnus and member of the event planning committee, said that it was important to look at which groups rallied on behalf of the “no” side, and to organize the campaign to help ensure a different outcome in the future.
“We need to get our equality back,” he said. “This isn’t fair, this isn’t an equal America. We’re seeing how true that is and we are figuring out a way to change that.”
Hubbs said he hopes the meeting will serve as a springboard for future action.
“Our main focus is to be organized and to determine what kind of people we can align ourselves with,” he said. “Marriage equality is relying on us to have meetings like this and compile ideas at the state level.”
“There is going to be a next time,” he added. “We know the best information comes from people who are out there everyday.”
Kilburn said that the community needs to view gay and lesbians as “humans of value,” and he is confident that their enthusiasm has not been thwarted.
“People are saying, ‘what can I do? I didn’t do enough, I have hope.’ We have a lot of our straight allies coming to help us and we have a lot of the faith communities. People are coming out knowing this is a huge issue,” he said. “If a group of people can have their rights taken away, then any group can, so I think people realize how easy it is at this point to change the constitution. It scared people.”
Kilburn’s husband David Perez said that the important thing for people to turn their negative feelings into positive energy.
“We never stay down, we always come back,” he said. “We’re going into a new time now. It may not happen just like that, but I’m going to work,” he said.
Many attendees expressed the same feelings. Amanda Bailey, a Cal Poly alumnus, said that her eight- year- old daughter had a difficult time processing the passage.
“I really didn’t know what to say to her,” Bailey said. “She came out to the booths with us during the election season, she saw what we were doing, so she had a good idea of what Prop 8 meant to her, but she didn’t understand the ramifications of the passage of Prop 8.”
Bailey added that she was concerned with her daughter’s future.
“I don’t have the same rights as other married couples do,” she said. “How are we going to leave the house to her? How about inheritance and taxes? The reality is that we don’t have those rights and that is difficult. I love my family, and I want to keep them together.”
The event was one of many future steps forward in the fight for marriage equality, and Kilburn put the situation in perspective.
“Anyone can imagine if something as unique as your sexuality and the person that you love were taken away,” he said. “If they could put themselves in that position and feel how we feel, it’s devastating.”
Kilburn said he was particularly concerned with young people growing up in what he called a time of “judgment and discrimination.”
“It’s not where we should be going as a country,” he said. “We should be strengthening and valuing everyone equally.”