Rick Jacobs (left) in conversation with Brave New Films' Robert Greenwald (Photo credit: Brave New Films)

If you're a Proposition 8 opponent who reacted in complete horror to the majority of California voters getting behind a ban on same-sex marriage in the state constitution, well, then, you're no Rick Jacobs. That's not to say the head of California's Courage Campaign wasn't thoroughly upset by the victory. It's just that, in its triumph, he sees a crumbling of a dated, obsolete way of doing gay politics -- an end to the top-down approach dictated by "gay white people" who make up the LGBTQ political establishment.

And its place, predicts Jacobs, the former director of Howard Dean's 2004 California operation, will be a vibrant political movement centered on grassroots, distributed power. "That was missing in the No on 8 campaign," told me by phone while he was on the road in Houston.

"Home Invasion"

The Courage Campaign made what was perhaps its greatest impact in the No on 8 campaign through an edgy web video called "Home Invasion." In it, a pair of cackling and condescending Mormon missionaries infiltrate the home of a preppy lesbian couple to destroy their marriage license.

Jacobs and the Courage Campaign indeed scrambled to come up with the cash needed to air the video on CNN, MSNBC, and Comedy Central in L.A. and San Francisco on election day. But the commercial was actually the work of two twenty-something bloggers, consultants, and brothers: David Atkins, a.k.a "thereisnospoon" on Daily Kos and Calitics, and Dante Atkins, a.k.a. "hekebolos," who, with a few friends, produced the ad on a shoestring budget.

The California Catholic Conference, a close ally to the Mormon Church in the Yes on 8 effort, was apoplectic over the commercial. Jacobs, however, was unmoved.

"The point of doing it was that it was controversial, it was strong, and it was also," he says, "exactly what the leadership of the [Mormon] church was telling members to do. Any regrets?, I ask. "No, no, no," Jacobs says. "None at all."

It was one of the few moments in the campaign, he says, where voters were presented with images of a gay couple who would be affected by the ban -- even if they happened to be acting the part.

A People-Less Campaign

A week after the election, the L.A. Times admonished the ballot measure's opponents for making "little effort to reach out to the African American community, whose large turnout and overwhelming support of Proposition 8," they opined, "were enough to put it over the top." (Though the significance of black voters on Prop 8 has gone from conventional wisdom to a matter of debate.)

The lack of, well, people involved in the campaign -- beyond the leadership of established gay groups like the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center and Equality California -- was a major failing, says Jacobs, turning it into a battle between giants.

L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center CEO Lorri Jacobs (Photo credit: mtoz)

He points to the post-vote protest of L.A's Mormon temple led by Lorri Jean, CEO of the massive and posh Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center. The coalition, with Jean in a leadership role, put out an official statement of the coalition on November 6th assigning blame. "[M]illions of voters went to the polls yesterday and said YES to bigotry, YES to discrimination, YES to second-class status for same-sex couples," it read.

"What that led to was a sense of rage at being victims. And that led to some racist stuff," says Jacobs. Some advocates, he explains, entertained the thought about African-American that, "'we voted for their person for president," that is, Barack Obama, "and they didn't vote for us.'"

"I mean," says Jacobs, with a great deal of annoyance evident in his otherwise calm voice, "what a disaster."

For her part, though, Jean has attempted to make the campaign transparent, at least in retrospect. She's authored a campaign post-mortem in which she defends the coalition for not using a singled gay couple in its campaign advertising. Instead, the campaign launched with a dry talking-heads style commercial featuring two straight people: Julia and Sam Thoron, who spoke against the marriage ban behalf of an unnamed lesbian daughter. (At 96,000 YouTube views, it has picked up fewer than a quarter of the views of the "Home Invasion.")

The No on 8 forces, says Jean, had planned to get around to producing an ad featuring a gay woman in a long-term relationship. But, she writes, once the Yes on 8 started running spots focused on teaching school children about same-sex marriage, "it became critical to use the available advertising slots for an ad responding to that attack rather than the lesbian ad."

Jean has since launched a web campaign to raise cash to fuel legal challenges to Prop 8's constitutionality. Its target: Mormon Church president Thomas Monson, who will, for for every $5 donation, receive a postcard courtesy of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.

Trusting the Wisdom of People

"We think there are a lot of smart, smart people in California, and our job is to build a movement," says Jacobs. To that end, the Courage Campaign has brought on some prominent blogospheric organizers, including MyDD's Todd Beeton, Crooks and Liars regular Julia Rosen, and Calitics' Lucas O'Connor, who make up a big chunk of a staff that can be counted on two hands.

Theirs is now an approach with a proven track record, he argues. "If the Obama campaign did not believe in the wisdom of people," he suggests, "Barack Obama would not be president."

Just after passage of Prop 8, an online effort under the banner of Join the Impact sprung up nearly overnight. The web-based movement in turn prompted rallies in hundreds of U.S. cities -- all started by a 27 year-old from Seattle named Amy Balliett who threw up a quickie website. The next phase, Jacobs says, "is about Amy. It's about people not knowing what they shouldn't be doing."

With a laugh, he says, "I encourage them not to learn."

Starting Conversations "We Should Have Had for Years"

What Proposition 8's triumph creates, as Jacobs sees it, is the perfect chance to jumpstart conversations -- even between committed progressives -- about what's truly important to them, personally and politically. The goal isn't necessarily persuasion, but communication.

"If we want to win on this issues, we have to understand how communities work," he tells me. "This is a brilliant opportunity for us to talk to gay people in communities of color and straight people in communities of color and find out what is important to these communities."

While Prop 8 seems headed to the courts, the Courage Campaign's aim now is to repeal Prop 8 in 2010 the very same way it was passed: via the electorate. Using tools created by Blue State Digital, the firm behind Obama's web operations, "we're going to get a million people to sign a pledge to repeal Prop 8," says Jacobs. "And then we're going to make sure that a million people will be able to sign a real petition" to overturn the ban.

"We are going to be having the conversations we should have had for years," says Jacobs. "And they'll be coming from the bottom up."