A Parallel Campaign

I would again like to thank Dana DiMattia for letting me talk to her and work out my views on this. The views expressed are my own, but feel free to give her credit if this is good and blame me if it isn’t.

1.

Let’s talk about Maryland, specifically Health Not Harm (which I’ll call HNH), the campaign against Question 1, a voter referendum which would enshrine a right to “reproductive freedom” including abortion in the state constitution. Maryland is close to my heart because I used to live there, still stay there from time to time and get the emails on this ballot issue.

I recently presented an idea for an anti-abortion campaign, and HNH is doing something different. In fact, they’re not even doing a campaign against abortion.

And I’m sympathetic in a way to HNH. I suspect they looked at public opinion, whether formally or informally, and decided that “they’re going to trans your kid without your permission” is a bigger worry with the voting public than “maybe we shouldn’t be killing our children”. If I look at polling data, I agree. And on the object issue, I suspect HNH is right: if Question 1 passes, it will be interpreted to require provision of “gender affirming” care without parental consent. On balance, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with HNH’s approach – it meets the public where they are and tries to find a way to win. It just can’t be the only approach.

Without a parallel campaign against abortion, public opinion will only get worse. The vast majority of the public has little to no opinion on most political issues and gets their cues from what others are arguing for or against. If pro-life views are quiet, especially when abortion is at stake, but pro-abortion views are not, the pro-life view will only become more unpopular. Whether you agree with gay marriage or not, consider its example. Even after repeated defeats of initiatives to legalize gay marriage including in blue state California, its proponents did not back down and within a decade or two, public opinion completely changed.

2.

In the essay that I linked, I propose a campaign targeting people with messed up lives. Bluntly, Maryland has Baltimore, a large city that has (1) people with messed up lives and (2) the not messed up people those people learned right and wrong from. Both of these groups are prime targets, especially because they are likely to follow a standard slate of “what the left wants” unless someone draws attention to their disagreement. Is it possible that we can “flip” the bad neighborhoods? Intuitively, I’d give it about a 1 in 4 chance if we try, which is enough to be worth it. Unfortunately, I think it’s highly unlikely that we will try.

I guess this essay is an attempt to change that by someone who does not have the means to make that try by himself.