Attending a small Courage Campaign fundraiser in San Francisco on August 17, 2009, I had the pleasure of talking with Cleve Jones. I'd had the true pleasure and honor of meeting him at the kick off for the first ever Camp Courage in LA in January 2009. On this foggy, cold San Francisco summer night, I spoke at length with Cleve, sharing with him how his story had so inspired me. Then Cleve got up to address the crowd and I snared much of what he said on my Kodak Zi-6 ... until I ran out of space (that's what I get for not clearing out the memory first... sigh). Thankfully, I always travel with a back up (in this case my Nokia N97), and snared these last points.. The No on 8 campaign was a colossal failure for many reasons. Many missteps. But no matter what way you slice it, it all leads back to one truly fundamental flaw. We, and by that I mean the LGBT community, didn't get on the ground and do the work. The kind of work that for decades and decades has served pretty much every major social and/or political movement. And that is community building.

And then Cleve introduced Dan Choi ...