Why California's initiative to ban same sex marriage will probably pass
Now, there's an initiative that has emerged since the court decision to allow same sex marriages. As expected, a bunch of people who don't want gay marriage to exist in their paradigm of the world have emerged and reacted in a politically expedient way to curtail activity with which they disagree.
Last time around, they were successful. This time, however, we keep hearing chatter from the pro same sex marriage crowd that Californians are now on their side. I have bad news for them. That's not going to be the case when it comes to the election.
You see, California is one of those weird states where the people who are issue savvy on the pro side tend to erroneously believe that the rest of the state follows in their footsteps. What they don't realize, or just don't ever want to face up to, is that a large segment of California is very much conservative in nature. They might actually vote moderately democrat, but in reality the core of the state is a conservative state. Yes, I know people don't like to hear this, and some will vehemently deny this, because it doesn't fit their personal perspective of what makes their world happy, but that's pretty much the way this state is. It comes from having a lot of wealthy people in this state. They may not register as Republicans, but they do think as conservatives, and until this grass roots population of people realizes this, THAT is the base of people with whom they must identify and convince of anything.
It's not hard to convince a bunch of people who already agree with you about something you want to see happen. But when it comes to elections, the persuasive element requires knowing the target audience, and if you only target the people who are already on your side, you have to make sure you're going to have more of your people show up than their people. I don't perceive that happening because those who are advocates for same sex marriage have already made a massive blunder by reporting that Californians ALREADY support same sex marriage, meaning that the incentive for anti-same sex marriage voters to turn out his higher than those who already think the election is going to be won in their favor. It's Mancur Olson's free rider problem all over again, and it's amazing how people never seem to figure this thing out.
So, what can the pro same sex marriage crowd do to make sure they win this time around? Something they won't. They need to appeal to those who disagree with them and do so with the respect that causes opponents to respond favorably. Instead of trying to play the "you're a bad person for thinking this" card, which way too often happens in this issue, the same sex marriage crowd needs to convince their opponents that their beliefs are respected, and that somehow (how exactly is up to them, as I am not their spokesperson) a same sex marriage paradigm is beneficial to all. If you try to convince people something like "it shouldn't affect you, so vote this way", they're going to default to specific Biblical readings that their particular Church leader has projected as anti-homosexual rhetoric.
Unfortunately, I've seen the grass roots crowd and their rhetoric in this area. For some bizarre reason, they actually think they'll succeed by shaming their opponents. That never works. It just charges the counter base, and you end up with yet another lost election initiative where people wonder why things didn't work out as they were expected.
Stumble It!


