Our position on California’s No on 8 campaign
9/26/2008 03:23:00 PM
As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions — Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay — we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.

However, while there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

Posted by Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology

Equal rights should never be a matter of mob majority rule and so equal marriage rights should never have been up for a referendum.

New York, NY (PRWEB) January 31, 2007 — Towleroad premium gay news for gay men (http://www.towleroad.com) attracted more than 3.5 million unique visitors in 2006, will hit 500,000 unique visitors for January, and served more than 20 million pageviews last year to its site “with homosexual tendencies.” Founder Andy Towle thanked the growing Towleroad community and invited their participation in further growth.

Towleroad grew organically through daily coverage of news, political, cultural and entertainment stories mixed up with photos of attractive guys in the news. Again in 2006 a few of the year’s biggest stories were initially reported by gay bloggers, and went on to on to become major straight-focused media events. Among the highlights, Brokeback, the church and state sex scandals around the election, Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris’s graceful landing with David Burtka after stumbling over a publicist and all the other tales of the celebrity closet, the scariest of course being the hostile homophobic set of Grey’s Anatomy.

Earns Place as a Savvy Must Read :

Towleroad is now part of the daily “must read” for groups of DC politicos, NY media types, Hollywood execs, gay gadget lovers, and others looking for, as blogger PopMuse put it, “the gay news you need.” By year end, many groups recognized Towleroad’s unique role:

–Peer bloggers gave the site a sweep of the Gay Bloggies, 2006 including Weblog of the Year
–The gay press included Towle in both the Out 100 and Advocate year-end issues
–Straight-focused news organizations have made Towleroad one of the relatively few daily contributors to Google News and Topix. Pieces are regularly also featured by by Reuters and internationally.

A Great Word-of-mouth Audience for Entertainment Launches

Somewhere between the comprehensive Brokeback Mountain guide and publishing the first review of Dreamgirls anywhere, the entertainment industry began to recognize Towleroad’s growing audience as well suited to word-of-mouth launches and movie openings. The Dreamgirls distributor followed up Towleroad’s review with a significant ad campaign focused on “opening” the movie, targeting Towleroad’s brand aware, media savvy guys who care about and what to know what’s new and what’s opening across the board.

Attractive Demographic. Extraordinary Cross Readership

New numbers from Quantcast.com** put Towleroad in the top 2-3,000 sites globally ranked by on unique visitors and show attractive demographics for marketers across the board. (http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.com). The site shows higher than average participation in the 25-34 range and significantly higher in the primo advertiser target 18-24 year old males; Presumably, it’s the slightly older respondents that index Towleroad very high for post-graduate education and household incomes greater than $100,000+. The site has significant readership overlap with Wonkette (100-times as likely to read), Daily Kos (70 times), (New Yorker 45 times), as well as rollingstone.com, ew.com, style.com, and pinkisthenewblog.com (300 times as likely).

High Profile Ads

Working with key partners Blogads and FeedBurner among others, Towleroad has recently carried ads from AOL, Discovery Card, Nikon, Best Buy, EMI music, New York Times, RIM Blackberry, Bahamas Tourism, and Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage among others. Good results and the research numbers make significant campaigns more likely.

Partnership to Expand

“I am humbled by the positive response and great feedback Towleroad has received this year and am thrilled to announce a partnership with Michael Goff that will facilitate Towleroad’s growth into new areas. As OUT magazine founder and former general manager of Microsoft’s MSN, Michael has been an editor and an entrepreneur many times over and brings a wealth of experience in both gay media and Internet properties.”

Goff said of the just announced partnership, “I couldn’t feel more privileged to be working with Andy. Andy has single-handedly taken Towleroad to incredible heights, maintaining a quality aesthetic and robust content with frequent surprises. Most importantly he’s kept focused on his readers needs by tapping his past experience as a professional photographer, national magazine editor and published poet. He’s set a high bar for us and we’re taking that seriously as we combine our efforts and reach out to other bloggers, journalists, and business people to collaborate.”

The two have know each other for a number of years, and began collaborating mid-year on new projects while expanding business components of Towleroad and broadening the site’s offerings with the already popular TowleTech and Guide to the Tube regular features.

More on Towleroad founder Andy Towle.

More on entrepreneur Michael Goff.

The two with their small team will launch their first new project in the coming weeks.

**NOTE: Because Towleroad is (proudly) hosted at TypePad, it is reachable at towleroad.typepad.com as well, If using Quantcast.com (or Alexa or others) be sure to combine the two results. On Quantcast, combine numbers from the core site at http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.com with numbers from http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.typepad.com

“I think gay marriage should be allowed if there’s a ceremony kind of thing if you want to call it that. I don’t have any problem with that…I think private ceremonies are fine. I do not think gay marriage should be legal.” –John McCain (via: Towleroad)

This double speak from McCain is what could lose him the election.

It had the power to bring down Kerry in the last election. Hillary’s lack of authenticity as pointed out regularly by Arianna Huffington(a May Huffington Post piece which also notes that McCain’s authenticity was “getting paler by the minute” even then.) and her coyness on gay issues is a big negative, not only in terms of not standing with us, but in terms of her ability to win if she’s given the chance to run and hasn’t gotten less coy by then.**

That said, McCain’s comments provide an opening for us to change this political discussion. I’ve been meaning to finish a post i started on this sometime back. Watch for it soon. Perhaps today. This might be just the news peg for me. We give the oppostion the edge by agreeing to discuss “gay marriage”. Gay marriage is allowed. We can get married with the blessing of many religions, communities, and most importantly by our own free will.

**ASIDE: And i remain wary of Ms. Clinton’s well-known and long-held position that democrats must not openly and unequivocably support gay and lesbian issues if they want to win, going so far as to blame her shortsighted, unpolitic attempt to change healthcare on her husband’s gays in the military issue and staying away from support ever since.)

Photos by Buck82 and Hot Rod (both Flickr cc)

After two warm up issues, the new editor, Aaron Hicklin, is breathing life into the old guy. Though it’s stayed the most read gay magazine for 13 years, it’s had a tough time staying “must read.”***

Hicklin started nicely and from a tough position. I’ll reserve real judgment until i see the whole issue. The Planet out gay industrial complex PR team pumped out something more than standard launch hyperbole promising the redesign will bring a new day for all gays. Also,

“Out is repositioning itself in the hierarchy of sophisticated fashion magazines.”

…which is as unparseable as the non-sequitorial, sartorial equating of “more fashion”

with maturity in the quotable release quote, “gay grows up.”First media notices were generous and open. Not so the blog commenters, real readers outside the media game. Punches were not pulled and they trashed the magazine from concept to logo kerning.Towleroad’s were super snarky, lashing out with a frustration that clearly went beyond not liking the cover design and to the intense desire to see themselves as they are (or perhaps as they would like to be).

I never had to deal with that kind of immediacy in print…before the issue hit subscribers…but i have dealt with flames since. Hinklin did good. He posted a note through Andy, “We invite readers of Towleroad to put their brains where their mouths are, and spend time with the magazine over the next six months.” and offered a bunch of free 6 month subscriptions.

Nice. Not a page from the more traditional, unwritten, old-school editor’s book, WWAD (“What Would Anna Do“) Much more Cluetrain Manifesto. They got 50 addresses in less than 15 minutes. And comments–at least about the editor–got a lot nicer.

In addition, accept my congrats on the launch with my best wishes for success in forging the right magazine for this moment and having a good time doing it.

(But, since you’re asking for insights…and i don’t have a magazine…First, those commenters are not agitating for more fashion, and can make your mag work if they like it. Second, retool your press released vision of making the mag “more reflective of modern gay culture: more celebratory and less political.” Never before have so many people had such a good time talking about gay marriage, being out at work, living where they want, openly celebrating their relationships, and not taking shit for living their lives as they see fit. They may call it other things, but every bit of it is political in its impact. It’s all good material.

An anything goes, political, fashionable, and self-ridiculing mag is a whole lot more fun to make and read.
**Disclosures: I’m helping Andy with Towleroad.com, and I was the founder and editor-in-chief of Out magazine way back when I could register out.com. Funny to check in and see the “Hunk of the day” and the early-morning-rewrite of the gay items from gossip columns we launched with, using Mosaic (later Netscape). The technology has come a long way, and there are ads on the net now, but some base editorial things just work for the audience. Wish I’d registered more domains, and wish i didn’t sound like some really old guy talking about the 60s or something. ….just let me tell you about ACTUP…
**ASIDE: Others without certain post-engagement contractual clauses might put it differently.

Though i’m pretty familiar with the homo timeline, current events put it in my head to expect insight into the early days of our current fight for civil recognition of our relationships. That turned out to be a bit of an anachronism. In 1963–six years before Stonewall, 43-years before now, ten years before i was born (uh, ok three years)–it was so impossible to contemplate the

state recognizing our relationships, that it’s not even mentioned in passing, flippantly, or with sarcasm in the course of this long piece.
What was the priority? Convincing themselves and others of the generation that some facsimile of hetero marriage was a viable option for some portion of the community that wanted it.

And it was a particularly hard sell. Nascent homo activists, experimenting with feeling good about themselsves found these discussions to be critical of their lives, and of the furtive, one-time, sexual hook ups that defined the homo culture. The prevailing heterosexual attitude was disdain for the promiscuity with which “they drive us underground and force us to live 95% of our lives “passing” as heteros with so little time left to socialize with other homosexuals ….To find a marriage partner, one must meet many prospects on a social basis, not on a furtive and desperate wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am basis.”

Lloyd has the zeal of the recently converted, (which he is, not always having been the marrying type.) and keeps plugging and encourages those who might find it interesting to go forth, meet as many men as possible, but “don’t fritter away your sexual energy while you shop around. A play gets its notices, reviews, reputation and advance sale from opening night.” Among his other guiding rules for a successful homophile marriage:

• “If you don’t cook, look for somebody who can.”
• “Don’t expect to be continually amused.”
• “Don’t be afraid to go into communal debt.”
• “Keep the gut down.”
• “Don’t worry in advance aabout what your heterosexual mother, father, sisters, brothers, or neighbors “will say” about your homophile marriage….The chances are they will never “say” anything. And you will probably be so happy that you will be the one who wants to speak up. But keep your big mouth shut.”
• “Go to a private M.D. and tell him you want a Wasserman cause you had a few too many…in a hotel bar…picked up this girl…Phoebe…VD.”
• “Keep clean. All over.”

I came away feeling that the the ambivalence many of us are so uncomfortable feeling at this exciting time is nothing new and in fact connects us to those who came before. Whether it’s the messed up result of the trauma and damage growing up gay or the beginnings of an evolutionary track toward higher-order structures for humans to live by, we won’t know for a while.

And, critiques and ambivalences aside, it’s pretty clear that most of our own people have come to agree that as flawed or wonderful as it may be, we should have just the same rights as anyone else to make the choices about how we want to organize and structure our lives for ourselves. We’ve spent probably a decade each working throgh issues on by being raised in a heterosexual family, of being forced to lie about who we were, and worse.

We’ve all done the work, as a shrink once told me.