Nate Silver Says Go Negative, Kind Of

Good framing is often the pathway to political victory. Nate Silver of 538.com has some interesting advice for the LGBT movement: we should frame our argument for gay marriage in terms of negative versus positive rights. He argues that this approach is more resonant with the American public's sense of privacy and fairness, basing this analysis on his reading of a recent USA Today poll. Toward the end of the article, he walks the reader through what this new approach to framing would sound like, using a case study of Equality California's messaging on Prop 8:

"But even though gay marriage had already become -- however briefly -- the law of the land in California, that wasn't how the debate unfolded on Proposition 8. Instead, look at what Equality California said on its website at the time:

Every Californian should have the choice to marry the person they love. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom guaranteed by the California Constitution.

Emphasis mine. True, Equality California mentioned that gay marriage had already been established under the state's constitution. The problem is that Proposition 8 wasn't an argument over how to interpret the state constitution -- it was an argument about whether or not to amend the constitution to render interpretation unnecessary.

What if Equality California had instead said this:

California's government should not have the right to interfere with the decision of two loving adults to get married. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom protected by the California Constitution.

You see the distinction? Equality California was still stuck in the positive rights paradigm. Gay marriage was something given to California by the state Supreme Court in its benevolent wisdom, not an intrinsic (negative) right for which the government had a duty of noninterference."