A Look Behind The Startling Defeat For Wisconsin Marriage Equality

Marriage Amendment Passes 59-41%

A Look Behind The Startling Defeat For Wisconsin Marriage Equality
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Madison - It had all the earmarks of success: $5 million in its war chest, thousands of volunteers, hundreds of prestigious supporting groups, 72 county coordinators, dozens of supportive broadcast and print media endorsements, a half-dozen attention-getting TV spots, nearly three years of preparation, the unprecedented coalition of the state’s two most powerful gay activist groups and one of the most politically savvy campaign managers available in the country: Mike Tate.
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Yet only two hours after the polls closed November 7, it was painfully clear Fair Wisconsin’s campaign to defeat the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and civil unions had not only lost, it had lost big. 59% to 41% big, a spread that was greater than even the most conservative political pundits in the state had predicted.
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One state - Republican-leaning Arizona - had defeated a similar ban, using a strategy that mirrored Fair Wisconsin’s nearly note for note (see story in the national news section). Six other states joined Wisconsin in adopting similar anti-gay marriage measures, though several by much narrower margins than here in the original “Gay Rights” state. Nearly a quarter century after Wisconsin had led the nation in its acceptance of its gay and lesbian citizens as equally deserving of jobs, housing and public accommodation, its voters had stamped “second class” on every long-term committed gay relationship, not to mention the nearly 50% of straight couples living together in the state without the benefit of a marriage license.
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For ban opponents who looked beyond the amendment question, there was plenty to be cheerful about. The state’s Republicans who had engineered this year’s ban ballot to serve as a sickening sequel to the successful 2004 national GOP strategy were breath-takingly bitch slapped at the voting booth. The State Senate switched to Democratic Party control and the Republican majority in the Assembly shrank from fourteen to five. Most importantly, openly gay-supportive Governor Jim Doyle, who had passionately called for the amendment’s defeat at every public opportunity, handily won re-election, the first Democrat to win a second term in over 30 years.
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Particularly pleasing to long-time activists were the defeats to some of the primogenitors of the Right’s more than decade-long DOMA march. Mark Green, who as Assembly Speaker in the mid-1990’s successfully shepherded Lorraine Seratti’s AB-104 to a win in the lower body, was roundly defeated in his bid for governor. His successor John Gard, who over a year ago openly strategized with the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin’s Julaine Appling on the timing on the amendment vote, lost to political neophyte Dr. Steve Kagen in his race to replace Green as Eighth Congressional District Representative.
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In the State Senate, Tom Reynolds, a staunch amendment supporter best known for his attendance at Ralph Ovadal’s infamous 2003 “International Conference on Homofascism” (when he wasn’t reproducing Rantin’ Ralph’s “anti-sodomite” screed at his Waukesha print shop), was defeated. Also down-for-the-count:Eau Claire amendment supporter Dave Zien, who two years ago threatened to shut down a hearing on the amendment after then Action Wisconsin president Tim O’Brien publicly asked which of his three marriages he was trying to protect; and fellow Eau Claire area senator Ron Brown who chose politics over paternity when he voted to pass the amendment bill a second time after revealing to opponents his own son was gay.
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Fair Wisconsin’s involvement in turning out the student vote clearly had an impact on many of the upsets the Republicans suffered. In counties where Fair Wisconsin had organized significant “get out the vote”(GOTV) efforts, voters turned out a a rate 6% higher than had been expected. Counties where Fair Wisconsin did not have a GOTV campaign saw only a 4.8% higher than average turnout. (Statewide 51% of eligible voters turned out, 5.5% higher than had been projected.)
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Voting districts with heavy student populations saw a double digit explosions in voter turnout. In Madison student turnout was 43.1% higher than in 2004. Even more dramatic was the 232% increase in student voting at UW-Whitewater, where Democrat challenger Kim Hixon appears to have defeated incumbent Republican Debi Towns by just 11 votes to represent the 43rd Assembly District.
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As had been predicted throughout the Fall, the marriage amendment issue had energized Democrats of all stripes. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel political columnists Cary Spivak and Dan Bice summed up Fair Wisconsin’s pyrrhic victory in their November 8 column: “If you can win by losing, score one for Fair Wisconsin, the well-funded grass-roots group that led the unsuccessful fight against the amendment,” Spivak and Bice wrote. “In his victory speech, Gov. Jim Doyle, who scored his own impressive seven-point victory over U. S. Rep. Mark Green, also put a spotlight on the group, thanking it for its efforts.”
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“Even Republican honchos begrudgingly credited Fair Wisconsin (November 8) for a strong get-out-the-vote effort that helped Democrats up and down the ticket,” the column continued, quoting the GOP’s executive director Rick Wiley saying “Fair Wisconsin did a good job of turning out the college vote. They ended up being Doyle's turnout vehicle.”
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Though Fair Wisconsin’s Tate wouldn’t take credit for Doyle’s win, he did seek kudos for the Democrats’ legislative wins, according to Spivak and Bice. “‘We have, running away, the highest young voter turnout in the nation,’ boasted Tate, who saw Democratic victories as the silver lining to his group's decisive loss on the amendment,” the pair wrote.
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With bipartisan control of the legislative process and Doyle in the governor’s mansion, the Republican Right’s “God, Guns and Gays” agenda likely will be a non-starter for the next two years according to most pundits and political strategists. Unfortunately that probably doesn’t sufficiently salve the wounds inflicted by the amendment’s passage for many in the gay community.
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While most have lauded the Fair Wisconsin effort to defeat the ban, a few brickbats have been tossed as well. Some of those peripherally involved with the the effort - most notably a coalition of Dane County progressives who organized a November 17 protest against the ban’s passage - have complained about the lack of focus on arguments for gay marriage in the opposition’s strategic plan.
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“We shouldn't be too surprised by the success of the ban,” an email announcement from protest organizers read. “The majority of Wisconsin has never heard an argument in defense of gay marriage. Let's begin to change that!”
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Others in the LGBT community questioned what appeared to be the change in message in the final television spots run in the campaign. Early spots brought significant attention to the second sentence of the amendment and appeared to many to be changing a lot of undecided voters’ minds. However, the “nothing’s going to change” message of the final TV spots, referencing far right “special rights” and “no gay marriage” rhetoric, may have confused some voters as to which way to vote.
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News reports about significant voter confusion on the amendment question surfaced the weekend before the election. A week earlier amendment co-sponsor Mark Gundrum (R-Berlin) made similar complaints about the spots’ “deceptive message” on right-wing talk shows. Vocal amendment opponent State Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) cornered me at the Democratic victory party the night of the election, reporting the dozens of calls he got personally from other amendment opponents asking how they should vote.
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Some also questioned Fair Wisconsin’s decision to use canvassing to identify voters statewide. Though the technique is a very effective means to identify potential voters, it is also very labor intensive, requiring thousands of volunteer hours to be successful. Historically voter ID canvassing has been used in targeted, urban districts. Where Fair Wisconsin had the volunteers to conduct significant voter canvass efforts, such as in Dane, Milwaukee and LaCrosse counties or on college campuses where dorm outreach could yield hundreds of likely “no” voters in a few hours, the group’s efforts were successful.
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However, unofficial election results in rural counties where Fair Wisconsin had only token efforts showed the amendment consistently passing by 2-1 - and in several cases even 3-1 margins - far outweighing the “no” margins in urban areas. Dane County was the only county of 72 to veto the ban and LaCrosse County came close, with the measure losing by 300 votes.
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Also, successful canvassing involves peer-to-peer interaction. Fair Wisconsin has proudly pointed to the campus efforts with statistical proof of their success. Missing in the mix outside of urban areas, however, were sufficient numbers of canvass volunteers who were in long-term, same-sex relationships.
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Factors beyond Fair Wisconsin’s control also played into momentum for and against the amendment. Though neither pro nor anti-amendment reportedly did internal polling (polls not released to the general public) on the issue because of its prohibitive costs, that did not mean other, even better funded campaigns didn’t add amendment questions to their private research. And the one factor that clearly hurt the amendment’s chances of defeat was the Mark Foley scandal.
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According to insider reports obtained by Quest from both the Doyle and Green campaigns, support for the amendment rose dramatically in the weeks following the revelations of Foley’s emails and instant messages with underage pages. Though Foley impacted Republicans in ways outside the focus of this piece, the reinforced images of the stereotypical homosexual predator “recruiting” innocent young men into the “lifestyle,” combined with the “evil walks openly among us” aspect of Foley’s semi-closeted public persona cruising page dormitories after hours even as he chaired a committees to protect minors from online and other sexual predators during the day served to shore up the amendment among values voters. Particularly impacted were Catholic voters, for whom Foley only served as a reminder of their own church’s still-festering priestly sexual scandals, consistently blamed on the “disordered” nature of same sex attraction according to church leaders.
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However, the Foley scandal faded to allow some rebound in opposition to the Wisconsin amendment. Then came Ted Haggard.
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There was no time to assess the damage caused by the Ted Haggard gay sex scandal, which erupted just days prior to the vote. However, the image of a married father of five, leading a double life of meth-fueled sexual encounters with a gay male prostitute who admitted he brought out the liasons to influence the marriage ban vote in his own state of Colorado had to have energized some of the “yes” voters.
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Another factor that likely helped sink opposition to the amendment: the New Jersey Supreme Court decision. Despite public proclamations that “nothing changes here” by both Fair Wisconsin’s Tate and FRI-WI’s Julaine Appling, the late-breaking decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court on legal recognition for gay couples in that state certainly reinforced amendment supporters’ long-standing and oft-repeated claims about “activist judges.” Though it got little play nationally, exit polling in states with marriage ban questions on the ballot suggested a heightened awareness of the New Jersey court decision among gay marriage opponents.

While outside factors certainly did not help opposition to Wisconsin’s marriage and civil union ban, and additional question ultimately needs to be asked: was the ban ever defeatable? Though like Oz’s Cowardly Lion I could publicly repeat “I do believe, I do, I do I do!” deeper reflection suggests the odds were always stacked against us - and probably stacked a lot higher than we’d like to admit. Here’s several reasons why ban opponents may never have had a chance this time around (and why the future may be brighter than we realize).
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1. 2006 is not 1982. Fair Wisconsin rhetoric indirectly but consistently referenced Wisconsin’s ground-breaking inclusion of sexual orientation in equal rights legislation as part of the progressive past that would reassert itself in the defeat of the amendment. They even got the GOP governor who signed the bill - Lee Sherman Dreyfuss - to publicly condemn the proposed constitutional ban. But 24 years ago, movement conservatism had just begun to find its voice in the Teflon presidency of Ronald Reagan, HIV/AIDS was a two sentence filler story popped in to balance newspaper columns, the state’s Religious Right was at best only a nascent political force, Democrats were in control of both houses of the state legislature, and Assembly Minority Leader Tommy Thompson was tickling fellow GOPers with Tomah stories. Gay marriage wasn’t even on the radar here.
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Fast forward through four terms of Governor Tommy, the Republican takeover of both Congress and the Wisconsin Legislature, the rise of right-wing radio and Fox News, gay marriage decisions from Hawaii to Massachusetts, ten years of DOMA debate in the Wisconsin legislature and much much more. Twelve full election cycles have taken place - politically that’s not just epic, its epoch.
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2. It’s A Concept, Not a Candidate. Selling Wisconsin on the idea that the ban was bad was going to be a tough sell from the start. Mike Tate knew it and wasn’t afraid to say it out loud to anyone who’d listen. It’s one of the reasons why canvassing was seen as so important. There was a lot of story to tell to get people to grasp the complexities of the issue. The only way to win was to get the straight majority to agree with our position: not only would the ban really hurt us and our kids but it also went so far that it might even hurt them in the process as well.
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Our sound bites were complicated even convoluted. Theirs weren’t. Marriage, family, kids, tradition fits a lot easier into six seconds than did our talking points - advanced directives, visitation rights, health insurance benefits, etc.
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3. It’s Hard To Mess With Holy Mother Church. No matter how you talk around it, the gay marriage ban battle was also a stalking horse for deeper issues about the validity of gay life.
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Fundamentalists don’t believe in gay people. National Association For Research & Therapy Of Homosexuality (NARTH) founder Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D says it best when he claims “there are no homosexuals, only heterosexuals with a homosexual problem.” NARTH spends most of its time trying to find holes in scientific research that suggests the possibility of a genetic component to homosexuality.
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Roman Catholics - the dominant denomination of Wisconsin voters - are only a little less intolerant. For them homosexuality is merely “disordered,” but not inherently sinful.
Additionally Roman Catholics have a stricter sense of marriage than their evangelical counterparts. No church sanctioned divorce, only the always expensive and often slow-moving annulment process is available to Catholics who want to separate but stay in the good graces of the church.
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Most importantly, religion is organized. Imagine if Fair Wisconsin could have held weekly rallies rousing the spirits of ban opponents in every city, village, town, nook and cranny of the state. The other side did: they’re called church services.
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4. Evolution takes time. The exit polling on the Wisconsin marriage ban vote was telling. The older you were, the more like you were to vote “yes.” Straight line, no bell curve. Baby boomers were pretty evenly split on the issue and turned out in droves. However, older voters far outnumbered younger voters statewide. Therein lay the margin of defeat. Ironically, the final solution to the gay marriage question many not be political but biological.
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Despite nearly three years of preparation, there still wasn’t enough time to make the case for “no” on the marriage ban. In his eloquent “concession” speech November 7, Tate pointed out that “this debate was forced on us at a time and a place not of our choosing.”
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It seems also somewhat ironic that on the day of Fair Wisconsin’s “defeat” at the ballot box another 60-40 poll was released on the gay marriage issue nationally by Fox News. The poll showed a full 60% of Americans supported either gay marriage or civil unions, while 40% opposed both. Legal recognition of some sort for same-sex couples is becoming a winning bet politically. Less than a week after the ban’s passage Senator Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) announced his plan to amend the amendment to essentially take out the second sentence. Another four year struggle in the works? Perhaps.
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More importantly for the state’s gay community will be how to protect the progress - and there has been genuine progress - that has been made on the marriage equality issue. Fair Wisconsin sits on a huge database of political and financial support. Financially the organization appears from public filings to have been fiscally conservative. No devastating deficit looms to be paid off. When the campaign closes the door for the last time at the end of the year, the gay community in Wisconsin could actually be more empowered than at any time in its history to date.
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But loss can be divisive as well. Wisconsin activists should look with caution to the decimated ranks of marriage equality supporters in states that voted overwhelmingly to enact bans in 2004. Just as the state’s Republicans learned the hard lesson that sequels don’t always guarantee success, hopefully our community will find the means to heal without inflicting additional hurt. Both the parent organizations of Fair Wisconsin - Action Wisconsin and Center Advocates - need to seek ways to maintain the ties that currently bind. That is truly one gay marriage that needs to be blessed by your support.
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But even as you support them, share your ideas for where they should focus next. Short-term and long-term goals will have be set to minimize and eventually reverse the effect of the marriage amendment’s passage.
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Finally, for most gay and lesbian couples in long-term committed relationships, little has changed in the realities of their everyday lives. They continue to live their lives with grace and dignity, proving to all who care or dare to see that true marriage is not about the private parts of its participants, but the core values of fidelity and commitment. Those are the true family values.

This analysis appears in the current issue of Quest, now on the streets.

AP: Marriage Ban Passes In Wisconsin

Final numbers are not in... but the Associated Press is calling it on exit polling...

Ballot Watch: Wisconsin's Civil Union & Marriage Ban

It has been more than 12 years since Wisconsin Republicans introduced the first "Defense of Marriage" legislation here. Today is their day: the so-called "Marriage Protection Amendment" finally goes to a general vote.

Let's see how the "Yes" forces are making sure the playing field is even so they can "let the people decide":

In northeast Wisconsin so far this morning...

Word from the Green Bay city clerk's office that as many as 10% of all ballots cast in today's election may be absentee... I know that there was a line when I voted mid-afternoon on October 28...

Reports of some "hanky panky" in Green Bay and Menasha earlier today... Matters are reportedly being monitored by "no" supporters...

In Madison, I heard about "hour long lines" at the polls at 8 AM this morning... Story just showed up online...

The Capital Times reported polling yesterday that 65% of likely Dane county voters surveyed were voting "no"... And those numbers do not include two classes of newly registered student voters... Cap Times

In Milwaukee, TV stations are reporting that the marriage ballot is diving higher turnout at the polls...

Statewide, some problems with registered voter databases: people with hyphenated or dual last names are not being found... Computers are putting those voters out of order at the tops of lists, forcing some to re-register... County and city clerks are being alerted to the problem...

Also, clerks' offices are being inundated with questions about the ballot issue statewide...

This afternoon saw a significant number of volunteers fail to show for the final "Get Out The Vote" push in the northeast region... However Fair Wisconsin staffers told me they had met their GOTV goals...

Polls are less than an hour away from closing... More shortly......