A number of folks attending the upcoming Comic-Con International in San Diego are planning on boycotting one of the main hotels and gathering spots, the Manchester Grand Hyatt. There's a gentleman named Doug Manchester who (it is said) "built" the hotel — and presumably they mean in a financial sense, not by sawing lumber. Mr. Manchester is an occasionally-outspoken voice against gay rights and recently donated $125,000 to the cause of Proposition 8, a November ballot initiative in California that seeks to reverse the recent court decisions permitting same-sex marriages.
I happen to think full and total gay rights, wedlock included, are long overdue in this world. I also happen to think they're inevitable and that the folks opposing them are like the George Wallace contingent of the late sixties that thought there was still a chance to return racial minorities to the rear of the bus and separate but equal water fountains. (The analogy to racial minority rights is not exact in all aspects but the wrongheadedness of those who stubbornly refuse to grow up and accept reality is the same. Twenty years from now, if you suggest gays shouldn't marry, the reaction of most decent people will be like if you say today that interracial marriage is wrong.)
I've decided not to boycott. If it makes you feel better, fine. I think the impact on Mr. Manchester will be microscopic and it might even have the opposite effect. The Hyatt is not going to have a single vacant room during the con no matter what any of us do, and the bars will be pouring as much liquor as they ever have. As a general rule of thumb, I don't think boycotts are a good idea unless there's a decent chance of them yielding a headline, "Business suffers mightily from boycott." If you can't achieve that, you just reinforce the reverse: It seems to prove that the world doesn't oppose the position you're protesting, and that there's no economic downside to advocating it. After the con, Mr. Manchester will not be sorry he gave that $125,000 and there might even be press reports that will suggest it's because the anti-Proposition 8 movement isn't as strong as some think.
In truth, I think there's an ever-increasing chance he will be sorry, but not until November. The latest polls suggest Proposition 8 losing…and a loss in California could well mean the beginning of the end for the move to deny gays the right to marry in this country. There will surely be some states that will resist for decades — in Utah, they'll probably say you can only marry several people of the same sex but not one — but the momentum will all be towards acceptance. Gay Marriage opponents won't even be able to say that it's all a plot of immoral judges who legislate from the bench; not after the voters of the nation's most populated state have endorsed the practice and rendered it democratic. If gays are free to wed in California, they'll eventually be free to marry anywhere. Recent polls also suggest that Americans across a wide swath of age, politics and geography don't see what the big deal is about gays serving openly in the military.
Proposition 8 is not necessarily doomed to defeat. There are polls that show a closer race. But if it does lose, we who think it's antiquated bigotry will be quite happy it was put to a vote. We may even want to thank Mr. Manchester for throwing his support behind a bad initiative at a time when it was likely to get voted down. If I see him at the Hyatt, I may mention that.