Rick Jacobs to No on 8 Leaders: 'Do Not Try to Run This Again. Ever.'

Rick Jacobs isn't your average run-of-the-mill critic of the No on 8 campaign. As founder of the Courage Campaign, a progressive netroots organization with over 300,000 members that partners with labor, religious and netroots groups, Jacobs is in a unique position to look at what went wrong with the No on 8.

Like many groups, the Courage Campaign offered its support and services to the No on 8 Campaign, but felt largely rebuffed. When the Jacobs saw that the Mormon Church was donating unprecedented sums of money through its members to Prop 8, the Courage Campaign created a television ad featuring two Mormon missionaries invading a lesbian's home and taking their marriage certificate and rings from them. It would be the only large-scale criticism of the Mormon Church before the election.

Queerty spoke with Jacobs about No on 8, why the leaders of the campaign owe us an apology and what the gay community needs to do next.

What was the Courage Campaign's involvement with Prop. 8 both before and after the election?

In August of this year, we made a very clear choice. We have considerable online organizing expertise and relationships in progressive communities and groups across the state and nation. We work closely with MoveOn.org, SEIU/United Healthcare Workers-West, California Nurses Association, SCLC of Greater LA and many others. We could have offered a great deal to the No on 8 campaign, but having tried to “break in,” I decided not to push any more.

I feel bad about that. Had we all broken down the doors, things might have been different. We worked with the campaign, but were never allowed into the inner sanctum.

As we saw the situation deteriorate, Courage decided to take on the leadership of the Mormon Church very directly. The Church leadership had pushed its members to donate as much as $22 million and to make calls and knock on doors. The official campaign would not take the church on, so we did.

We worked closely with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of LA. We got 17,000 people to sign a letter calling on the president of the church to stop breaking the ninth commandment, not condone blackmail and stop using the church to take rights away from a minority. We were not allowed to deliver the letters at the temple in L.A. so we found two wonderful ex-Mormons who had been excommunicated for being gay. They delivered the letters in SLC in front of five TV cameras.