Protect Marriage has produced their first television ad. According to the Protect Marriage Campaign:
For the past two months, California voters have been presented with twisted, inaccurate and false information about the same-sex marriage issue. Wealthy gay activists and Hollywood liberals like Brad Pitt have spent $5 million on an 8 week media buy airing an issue advertisement designed to create public support for gay marriage. They even got Attorney General Jerry Brown to rewrite the official description of Proposition 8 in order to bias voters against the measure. And last week our opponents began spending millions on their official campaign ads. It’s no wonder that some polls have reported a drop in support for Prop. 8.
Tomorrow, voters will begin to hear the rest of the story.
Which is where the television ad comes in. It appears that the purposes of the ad are threefold:
- To educate voters that redefining marriage has broad consequences for all Californians.
- To remind voters that gay marriage has been imposed on California, against the express will of over 4 million voters.
- To let voters see the arrogance of our opponents who expect voters to accept gay marriage, “whether we like it or not.”
I watched the video (no longer available) to see if the three purposes were communicated. It was easy to see “the arrogance” of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom right at the start of the video — you can’t really miss it.
The second purpose is communicated well in the scene with the judges. One point that I will make here is that 4 million does not sound like a lot of people when one considers the total number of voting age Californians. Perhaps it would be better to express the number as a percentage. That would make it clear that it is a majority of the people that voted.
Having law professor Richard Peterson with the backdrop of newspaper articles is a nice touch. It accomplishes the first purpose to educate voters. This is the strongest argument of the three because it informs, however briefly, that there are consequences involved.
Overall I liked the ad. I wouldn’t have put Mr. Newsom in the video. I would have slipped in a family with children in that time slot. With a message similar to, “Children deserve to be raised by a father and a mother.” I am assuming that there are still traditional families in California. Still, very well done for the short time span.
