Why New York Won't Pass Civil Marriage Equality

by: dereau

Mon May 18, 2009 at 20:35:44 PM EDT

Because I have no idea who the swing votes are and nobody is helping me pressure those State Senators.

For many nay votes, the outright bigotry is being allowed to happen anonymously.

Where are my orgs?

It took hours of digging for me to find this blog post from 538.com:

The bill, S.4401, has 19 sponsors, all Democrats. A 20th Democrat, Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, is also committed to supporting the measure.

Beyond that, however, things get a bit dicey for the Democrats. Based on recent public statements and press accounts, we count 5 Democrats -- Shirley Huntley of Queens and George Onorato of Queens, Ruben Diaz of the Bronx, Darrel Aubertine of Cape Vincent, and William Stachowski of Buffalo -- as definitively being opposed to the measure. We also count 7 Democrats as undecided, one of whom -- David Valesky of Oneida -- we characterize as leaning toward a no vote.

On the other hand, while no Republican has publicly come out in favor of the bill, we have 9 Republicans who we characterize as undecided (although several are thought to be leaning no). A majority of these Republicans are from Long Island, a swing region in New York state politics

If there was ever a time for an issue advocacy organization to own the fight online -- buy some catchy domains, spread some blogads to target people like me,  - this would be it.  But instead, there's silence.

What kinds of fighting styles work online? What's missing in the New York State marriage equality fight?

While it certainly varies, a few best practices that should be used in this case are to make the voice and thrust of this campaign a catchy, occasionally aggressive needling that mocks the tone-deaf and rewards the late comers parallel to the early champions.

We need to make the choice easy for the idiots, make life difficult for the bigots, publicize the holdouts and celebrate each Aye vote.

Lobbying in this manner becomes a funny collaborative effort that engenders feelings of community. I would give money to take part in such a fight. That's the spirit with which advocacy organizations should raise money.

From the looks of the Empire State Pride Agenda website, they want me to give them money and watch an ad. Ah, TV ads. Worked so well for John McCain and John Kerry, right?  To be fair, buried deep down inside the ESPA site is a email I can send to my Senator. Ugh!

This is pathetic. There are other rights advocacy groups out there but none really 'own' this fight online nor are they doing it right.

It's not that hard.  Somebody somewhere has an updated list of who is a swing vote who should be targeted. From that list we should know which New Yorkers need to get mobilized.

The "somebody somewhere" I am begging for should be one of the gay rights advocacy groups that constantly ask me for money. If they're not up for the challenge, then why do those groups exist?

Somebody please! Give New Yorkers the advocacy tools to flood those Senators' telephones, make them infamous on YouTube, facebook, Twitter -- give us the means and direction to mock them until they're no longer in the way.

Not just an email - email is too private, too easily ignored. I'm also not going to sign a petition made of dust. Really, dust? Yes. Remember all those petitions we signed to prevent the Iraq War? The Bush Administration ground online petition advocacy into dust.

Please, somebody, build a real, muscular website with a section for each targeted Senator. *

Somebody, please! Buy a bunch of domains for those undecided Senators and point the domains to the different Senator's sections.

Buy blogads, facebook ads, all based on the target Senators' district zipcodes.  

Make the ads direct constituents to:
www.JohnSampsonDoTheRightThing.com or www.BrianFoleyDiscriminates.com or www.HiramMonserrateHatesPeople.com or www.RuthHassell-ThompsonMarryMe.com or www.CarlKrugerAboveTheLaw.com

Take more than the 2 minutes I did to think of more names.  If we were smart, we'd already be lining up the targets for Senator John J. Flanagan's forthcoming amendment (which we should write for him) that will add the "Affirmation of Religious Freedom" to the bill's name.

Then Malcolm can do what the Governor of Maine did and praise the amendment saying, "This new law does not force any religion to recognize a marriage that falls outside of its beliefs. It does not require any church to perform any ceremony with which it disagrees. It simply guarantees that New Yorkers will be treated equally under New York's civil marriage laws, and that is the responsibility of our government."

The religious freedom rider has no legal effect, since no one was ever suggesting forcing religions to marry same-sex couples, but it seems like a "compromise" and takes away a talking point.

PREEMPTIVE UPDATE
* why not me?
Because I don't send fundraising mailers around to my friends promising that in return for their money, they can trust me to fight for this issue on their behalf. I have a different job.