Dudes and Chicks for 36

Voting to stop gay marriage just got totally awesome.

Last week, the Defense of Marriage Coalition debuted "I Won't Be Redefined," a new website--and a $40,000 gambit--intended to energize youngsters to fight for hetero-only unions.

Neon graphics pop off of the page. A heterosexual cartoon couple sits atop an MTV-style logo. Good-looking young people in good-looking-young-people outfits pout in a photo, apparently upset that somebody's trying to ruin traditional marriage for them. The message: Kids, or at least 18- to 29-year-olds, should be hella-psyched about Constitutional Amendment 36, which would ban gay marriage forever.

I Won't Be Redefined is the brainchild of local youth pastors alarmed to find gay-marriage advocates dominating the youth demographic. In fact, a March Oregonian poll showed that while only a third of Oregon voters between ages 35 and 54 favor same-sex marriage rights, 53 percent of those younger than 35 do so.

"We had a number of youth leaders ask us what we were doing to reach younger voters," says the DOMC's Tim Nashif. "They produced the materials, and we're just helping get it funded."

I Won't Be Redefined is basically a youth-ified version of the DOMC's site, designed to look like a blog. In parts, sentences are translated verbatim, except for brief injections of youth-speak. (For example, "a guy and a girl" replaces "one man and one woman.")

The website also sports an eight-minute video of staged "man on the street" interviews with attractive young Christians. The camera zooms in and out, text flying hither and thither, while the screen changes color--in true MTV short-attention-span style.

As with most political campaign materials, the video offers a few bizarre claims. One guy claims, "The idea of a gay gene has been totally rejected by the medical community, so you can't be born gay." Maybe the faculty of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University believes this. But just here in Portland, Oregon Health & Science University scientists have found convincing evidence to the contrary. Jury: still out.

Then there's this left-fielder: "We haven't done the greatest job of serving the homosexual community at the church," a girl in a jean jacket says. "Voting 'no' is not the way to show that we care."

So voting to ban gays from marrying is actually a way to express caring for them?

"It depends on where you're coming from spiritually," Nashif explains. "If you're a churchgoing person, it makes perfect sense."

WWeek 2015