A Theil Fellowship for Gay Rights

This week investor Peter Theil announced a revolutionary idea: paying 20 of the brightest youngsters in America $100,000 to drop out of college and pursue their ideas.  While I may not fully understand what ideas these Theil Fellows are pursuing, I wholly understand the high concept behind Theil's model and believe we should use it as a model to empower a new generation of gay rights activists.

Following the 2008 election, Equality California, the self-declared unbrella gay rights organization for our State took alot of heat for losing the right to marry when Prop 8 passed at the ballot box.  Everyone knew how to do their job better than those who were doing it, or so it seemed.

As a result, a number of groups emerged--AFTER the election--to fight for the right to marry.  Some have been successful and established themselves, like the American Foundation for Equal Rights.  Others, like NOH8, persist despite controversey, and some have fallen by the wayside.

Our community is as diverse in its skills as it is in its ideas for how we can advance our rights.  Umbrella groups like EQCA, and HRC at the national level, often fail to understand that our community can do more than raise money and make phone calls.

So whether it is Theil who funds it--or someone else--why not establish a fund to underwrite projects to change hearts and minds on the freedom to marry?  Offer to give people enough so they won't waste resources raising money.  Ask folks the frame their ideas around testably hypotheses so we can measure their success.  Solicit the best ideas from across the State--or country--and pick the ten or twenty "best" and let them show us what works and what doesn't.

Our community has many ideas and many needs.  We must change hearts and minds in places as diverse as South Los Angeles, Fresno and Northern San Diego County if we are going to succeed at repealing Prop 8 at the ballot box.  But a message that might play in Fresno, will not necessarily succeed in South Los Angeles, and a messenger who will resonate in North County San Diego could be a virtual unknown in San Leandro.

Some ideas will fail, and some will succeed--and for a small investment, our community will be able to build on the best of our successes to develop a strategy to win in 2012 or whenever Prop 8 returns to the ballot box.