Ask someone what "gay marriage" or "marriage equality" means, and you'll get pretty high name recognition. It's been around long enough as an issue.
Ask someone what "Defense of Marriage Act" or "DOMA" is, and you get blank stares. I got them when I went home to Western New York after the New York State government legalized same-sex marriage, and people said isn't it great, and I said yes it is, but now these couples get to feel the sting of DOMA. And people had no idea what I was talking about.
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to repeal DOMA. As usual, Beltway folks -- even friends and colleagues of mine -- dismissed the move as symbolic. Who cares, they said, it won't go anywhere!
It's an argument that overvalues the short-term and shortchanges the long-term. In the short-term, we get this:
This is a screenshot of the search result for "Defense of Marriage Act" in Google News at 2:59 PM EST on 11/11/11. In fact, Google News says there are 441 related articles on that topic in the news today. The combined reach of these news pieces is more than any one TV ad or web video or most other tools in our toolbox because they reach people all over the country in places to which they turn and trust for news.
Yesterday's vote even spawned opinion pieces like this one from a 17-year-old high school student writing about how DOMA affects teens, or this one from Alan Shayne, former president of Warner Bros., who tells his story of how DOMA affects him and the man he married in Massachusetts in 2008, or this one from Rev. Ed Bacon, rector at All Saints Church in Pasadena, explaining why passing the Respect for Marriage Act will lend his church a hand when it comes to marriage. People share these stories on social media and e-mail. And further it spreads.
To the point at the top of this piece, one of the most important parts is that the articles actually explain what the Defense of Marriage Act is. Like this piece from ABC News' The Note:
“So we begin with a single step on a march to equality,” committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said at a news conference following the vote. “Marriage is a matter for the states to determine — whether it’s my state or any other state. And those Americans who are lawfully married should have the same protection under federal laws that my wife and I enjoy.”
While noting disappointment at not having a single Republican vote in the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., hailed the procedural step.
“DOMA is discriminatory,” Feinstein said. “DOMA prevents people legally married in a state to get the same rights and benefits — federal rights and benefits that a heterosexual couple would get. So it treats one class differently from another class.”
Most of the traditional media ones have a compulsory quote from Tony Perkins or some right-wing Senator, of course, but they also have a corresponding quote from Sen. Feinstein or Courage Campaign's Rick Jacobs or another advocate on the issue, explaining why repealing DOMA is so important. And so the poll numbers on name recognition move a fair amount, and because we know we win when we tell stories of LGBT oppression, perhaps the support for repealing DOMA ticked up too, even if just a bit.
So it's not symbolic. All this stuff matters. As I wrote in yesterday's op-ed in The Advocate,we need to move our numbers up to figures like 77%, which is the percentage of Americans who supported repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in December 2010 and one big reason we got that done. We need to get more Senators off the fence and on our side. We need to do all this now, so when we do have a shot at moving the bill to the President's desk, we can move quickly -- and you can help by joining our campaign.
Success is not measured by what we can do now, but by progress we've made to achieve a goal. And every time we can educate the public and change some hearts and minds, it's not symbolic at all. It's real.
I'm proud to serve as Director of Online Programs at Courage Campaign.
Cross-posted at Courage Campaign Institute's Prop8TrialTracker.com