Tag Archives: The Prop 8 Report

UPDATE: Love Honor and Cherish Challanges David Fleischer’s "The Prop 8 Report" – Cites Study As Being "Flawed" And Calls Fleischer’s Ties To The L.A. Gay and Lesbian Community Center Into Question

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PDATEEarlier this morning I posted about avid Fleischer’s “Masive 513 page The Prop 8 Report” and reported that in the past and present Fliesher has ties to both The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center and it’s Executive Director Lorri Jean who were major parts of the massive FAIL of the “No on 8” campaign and exactly just how onjective David Fleisher could be because of this.

This afternoon Love Honor Cherish  a Los Angeles-based grassroots organization committed to repealing Prop 8 and to developing a new generation of leadership on the issue of gay amrriage released the following press release:

*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***

NEW REPORT ON PROPOSITION 8 IS SEVERELY FLAWED

Report by Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Centerʼs Dave Fleischer Likely To Be Misused To Try To Stall Efforts To Persuade Voters To Support Marriage Equality And To Repeal Prop 8 in 2012

(LOS ANGELES – August 3, 2010)

The new report on Proposition 8 by Dave Fleischer of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center released today is severely flawed. Although many aspects of the report are helpful and constructive, the report makes the assertion that “If all voters had correctly understood how to vote to express their opinion on same-sex marriage, Prop 8 would have passed 54% to 46%,by a 1,000,000 vote margin. To reverse the result, we start out 1,000,000 votes behind.” 

This assertion is wrong and unsupportable,” stated Love Honor Cherish Board Chair Tom Watson. “As set out in the briefing by renowned political polling firm David Binder Research,which was also released today, ʻwrong-way votingʼ had no effect ʻon the outcome of the Proposition 8 ballot initiative.ʼ” “It is also misleading since repeated polls since the 2008 election have demonstrated increased support for same-sex marriage in California. In the PPICʼs March 2010 survey of Californians, 50% support same-sex marriage and only 45% oppose.”

The report further asserts, based on its wrong-way voting analysis, that “it is possible that it will take longer to return to the ballot and win than some believed when 2010 and 2012 were the only options given serious consideration.”  “We are left to wonder why Fleischer, who is not an expert in statistics or polling, would put forth such an analysis,” said Watson. “We can only surmise that the report is designed to benefit those who favor waiting before going to the ballot to repeal Prop 8.”

Indeed, although the report claims to be independent, its findings are likely affected by the fact that Fleischer is an employee of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, which is not on the record as favoring going to the ballot in 2012 and which is headed by Executive Director Lorri Jean, the former co-leader of the No on Prop 8 Campaign.

Love Honor Cherish Board Member Lester Aponte called on all Californians to ignore the naysaying in the report and take affirmative action to repeal Prop 8. “The tide has been with us since November 2008. Poll after poll demonstrates that support for same-sex marriage has risen dramatically and continues to rise. The lesson of Prop 8 is that all Californians who support same-sex marriage must get out there and talk to their family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to explain why marriage equality is important.”

We cannot let those who would concoct 400,000 additional votes in favor of Prop 8 demoralize us or stall our efforts to repeal Prop 8 in 2012,” said Aponte. “We must fight for whatʼs right now, not later. And, rather than focus on flawed, two-year-old polling data, we should look to recent polls, each of which show that we can win in 2012.”

I can guarentee you  that in the future we are going to hear much more about Fleisher, his ties to Lori Jean and the L.A. Center in the future.

Mark my words.

Dave Fleischer Releases Massive 513 Page "The Prop 8 Report" On What Went Wrong With Prop 8 In California – Does It Matter That He Has Ties To Lori Jean and the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Community Center?

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Dave Fleischer and the LGBT Mentoring Project has released a whopping 511-page report on Proposition 8 with he goal of the report to learn abou what went wrong and what to do to win future ballot measures on same-sex marriage.

Fleischer writes  in the L.A. Times:

The lesson: It’s not enough to make the case for same-sex marriage. It’s also important to arm voters — particularly parents — against an inevitable propaganda attack. And it’s crucial to rebut lies so parents don’t panic.
Another misconception was that those who voted for Proposition 8 were motivated by hate. This does not describe most of the 687,000 who changed their minds in the closing weeks. After all, they supported same-sex marriage before the opposition peeled them away. Yes, they turned out to be susceptible to an appeal based on anti-gay prejudice. But they were frightened by misinformation. No on 8’s one TV ad that directly responded to the fear-mongering helped assuage some of the fear, but it was too little, too late.
One final false assumption by same-sex marriage supporters was that the election was so close that it will be easy to pass same-sex marriage the next time out.
It’s true that the official election results — 52% to 48% — appeared quite close. But the truth is more complicated. The data we analyzed show that the No on 8 campaign benefitted from voter confusion.
Polling suggests that half a million people who opposed same-sex marriage mistakenly voted against the proposition. They were confused by the idea that a “no” vote was actually a vote for gay marriage. This “wrong-way voting” affected both sides, but overwhelmingly it helped the “no” side. Our analysis suggests that the division among California voters on same-sex marriage at the time of Proposition 8 was actually 54% to 46% — not so close. We are actually 1 million votes away from being able to reverse Proposition 8.

Now after watching Dave Fleischer’s video introduction I actually find some of the way he presents various points as such as the “we went into it not winning the African American vote so should not be surprised that in the end we didn’t get it” section kind of flippant and actually most of his other points other than hard number data and graphs,  things that we already knew.

But it’s his priase points at the end of “Equality California” and “No on 8” that really gets me……….

Watch Dave Flieshers Video, and learn about Flieshers Connection to The Lorri Jean and the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Community Center and MORE after the jump below.

  Praising Equality California and “No on 8” for raising so much money and getting so many volunteers while still managing to lose is very circumspect.  In full disclosure Fleischer.for many years was Director of Organizing and Training for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and prior to the release of his report is advising the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center’s Vote for Equality canvass project.  If you remember Lorri Jean is the Executive Director of L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center (who also served as executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force)  who along with Geoff Kors were the leaders of “No On 8” who screwed up so badly.   And for some bizarre reason are still leaders and involved with the movement.
 
Data is nice.  Data which is gathered and estrapilated from sources close to the original problems.  I donm;t know about. And I am not saying that it is skewed.  But I am saying that data can be read in different ways by differnt people. and with it being presented by someone so close to someone who was so involved with the mishandeling is it possible that there might be some delection from other reasons?

Thats for us all to read and figure out.
 
Please by all means go read the report.  It’s all here — readable as sections here.
 
But many things we do know went wrong without the 525 page report telling us and have since right after our defeat so much of the report is not that much of new information.
 
*  No on 8 Leaders were ineffective.
*  There was very little outreach to other LGBT and LGBT friendly groups.
*  There was very little outreach to the African American Communites (Even if we would have lost it as a whole anyway a vote is a vote.)
*  And the P.R, and Media Campaign was a disaster. And when our opponenets fought nasty with commercials using children we did nothing.
 
Prasing money raised and volunteers gathered does not make the loss any better or the reasons for the loss any less disturbing in the end.