Dear Editor:

It both saddens and disgusts me that I agree with your choice of the Yes on 8 campaign’s leaders, donors, and supporters being named the GLT “Person(s) of the Year.” I am saddened because we lost. I am disgusted because out of all the months of money, effort, and passion that our community poured out to the No on 8 campaign, not one single leader emerged to be named “Person of the Year.” I am not surprised.

What happened? I have dealt with this question since November 8 and think I have at least an answer, if not the answer.

Let’s just start telling the truth. We simply wimped out. Over the course of the campaign I participated as a volunteer both for the No campaign directly and as a steering committee member for the Human Rights Campaign. During that time, we were told repeatedly that we “didn’t want to turn voters off” by using a face-to-face, door-to-door approach and that we didn’t want to “appear like angry queers.” The problem? We ARE in fact gay, angry queers (with real neighbors and real co-workers), and trying to be something you’re not, never works.

Harvey Milk knew this all too well. He won a much less predictable, much harder battle 30 years ago against Prop 6. Why? Because when the “strategists” tried to tell him that they shouldn’t appear like “angry queers” and they should minimize their gay presence in the campaign, he called it “bullshit,” threw the proposed campaign flyer in the fire place; and immediately called on GLBT folks to get out of their own neighborhoods, go door-to-door, and to “come out, come out, wherever you are!” Our leadership should have been as bold as Harvey Milk. Did we not learn from essentially the same fight 30 years ago?

I consider myself one of the leaders about which I am writing. Therefore, I must – along with this letter – acknowledge the fact that on several occasions during the campaign, I actually had the thought “But…we ARE angry queers, aren’t we? Why are we being such wimps?” And I said nothing. That being said, I am just as responsible as the next leader in the community for this tragic loss.

Today, I am calling for other leaders – the ones who had even more accountability than I did in the No on 8 fight – to step up and take responsibility for this loss. Let’s hear some more responsible rhetoric besides “California just wasn’t ready” and “Isn’t it so great that we were able to move the Yes vote from 61% in 2000 to only 52% of the vote? We’ve made progress!” Given that we won Prop 6 in 1978, these irresponsible, defensive excuses reek of “bullshit,” to use Harvey Milk’s words.

The truth is the leadership (myself included) didn’t get our job done. We didn’t speak up when we knew to do so. We didn’t stand up for ourselves, and we didn’t stand up for our community – not really. We wimped out and we let our community down. Now we’re left with not only the Yes on 8 campaign being named the Person(s) of the Year by our own newspaper, but with potentially 30 more years of hard work, money, and effort added to the fight for marriage equality.

We’ll do it, but not until our leaders grow up, take responsibility, and stop making excuses. Let me be the first.

Arlon Jay Staggs