The more we learn about the "No on Prop 8" campaign the clearer the picture gets: The people running "No on 8" were almost criminally negligent—utterly clueless, thoroughly useless, and a full purge is in order. We need to hold them responsible for what they did and did not do; at the very least none of these people should never work in positions of authority in queer politics ever again—they're barely fit to work phone banks.
We'll never know if the outcome would have been different if campaign had bothered to do real outreach to the African American community—to both gay and straight African Americans—but this vote was ours to lose going in, according to polls, and we lost it in part because, as Harris-Lacewell called it just days after the vote, the "No on 8" campaign "didn’t do enough work in the communities of color." But as Harris-Lacewell also said, communities of color—and other communities—demonstrated an awfully bigoted vote. Yes, the "No on 8" campaign blew goats. But voters who stripped same-sex couples of their right to wed were motivated by bigotry, plain and simple, and there has to be some responsibility there too. African American voters were ignored by the leadership of the "No on 8" campaign; gays and lesbians of all colors were failed by a criminally inept "No on 8" campaign. But it has to be said that it's gays and lesbians who were victimized in California—by the voters, not by the "No on 8" campaign.
When a minority group is targeted for discrimination, when their rights are under assault at the ballot box, the ineptness of the political campaign waged to defend that minority does not excuse the actions of voters who back discrimination. White people ultimately have a responsibility not to be racist; men have a responsibility not to be sexist; Gentiles have a responsibility not to be anti-Semitic.
And straight people—of whatever race, or whatever religion—have a responsibility not to be homophobic.
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