"Too many of us . . . gay and not gay, didn't get engaged enough in the conversations . . . about the real harm that discrimination inflicts," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of the nonprofit group Freedom to Marry.
Michael Weinstein, president of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, called for a thorough analysis of the failures of the No on 8 campaign.
"The protests are an important vehicle for expressing a community's feelings, and I applaud that," he said. Still, he added, "ultimately we will have to decide what our strategy is going forward. . . . We need to show we can win in the court of public opinion."
Whether the current protests will help or hinder that effort remains unclear, said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at UC Berkeley.
"It can backfire," he said. But, he added, a well-done protest is "an important signal."
The key, he said, is that the protesters not irritate or alienate the people they are trying to persuade by appearing too out of the mainstream or by tying up traffic for hours.
Many of those organizing the protests this week say they are voicing a sense of outrage and disappointment that California voters approved a measure that took away the right, granted by the California Supreme Court last spring, of same-sex couples to marry. More than 18,000 couples got married between June and Nov. 4, when the proposition disallowed the weddings.
Living in urban areas such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, in environments that are relatively tolerant of gay people, some of those activists say they experience little discrimination in their daily lives because of their sexual orientation.
The passage of Proposition 8 woke them up.
"There is an incredible outpouring of energy, of people wanting to do something," said Trent Thornley, a San Francisco lawyer who created his Facebook site, Californians Ready to Repeal Prop. 8, the day after the election. Thornley said his roommate told him to expect a few hundred people to join. Instead, a week later, the group has more than 200,000 members.
Another Facebook group, Repeal the California Ban on Marriage Equality 2010, also has attracted more than 200,000 members.
But many say the protests also mark the rise of a new generation of gay activists.
