When was the last time
you changed your mind
about anything really important?
Was it because somebody told you
it was time to change your mind?
[Narrator] In 2015, the
Supreme Court legalized
same-sex marriage, but
for decades before that,
at a state and national level,
activists on both sides
fought heated battles.
This is the story of
one of those activists.
[Narrator] Dave is gay.
I knew I was gay when
I was six years old.
[Narrator] And that motivated him.
You bet.
I'd been interested in how to reduce
and eliminate prejudice my entire life.
[Narrator] He became an
activist and ended up working
at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
Then, something really
surprising happened.
In 2008, we had this
terrible loss on gay marriage.
[Narrator] California
voters approved a measure
that would make gay marriage
illegal in the state.
All the polls showed that the pro
LGBT side would win easily.
[Narrator] But they lost.
This was a huge blow
to the LGBT community.
Most people weren't sure what to do.
[Narrator] So Dave and
team made a decision.
So, we decided to
stop making assumptions
about the people who voted against us
and instead to go meet them.
[Narrator] They went to
the heart of the counties
where they lost the worst
and had 15,000 one-on-one conversations.
And Dave's team discovered
that the single thing
that had the biggest
impact was when the voter--
Told a story of theirs that
had emotional weight for them
and seemed relevant to them
to what we were talking about.
[Narrator] Dave and
team call their approach
deep canvassing, and now they
do it all over the country.
But to watch it unfold is fascinating.
Here's a voter and a canvasser, Virginia.
They're talking about
whether transgender people
should be allowed in
the bathroom of the sex
that they identify with.
The voter is not into that.
So, Virginia asks him about that.
And now, Virginia reveals
something personal.
The number one way to persuade someone
is to help them consider and reflect
on their own real, lived experiences.
What the voter realizes
as he's thinking about
his relationship with
his wife is that the way
that he loves her is awfully similar
to the way Virginia cares for Lourdes.
It's not us changing their mind.
It's really us having a
conversation that allows
the voter to change their
own mind for themselves.
The reason these conversations
work is that voters
have an appetite for reflection,
and when they realize it
is what we're offering,
they're excited to talk.
Because of examples like this,
Dave and his team, they're optimistic.
What would happen if
all of us stopped spending
so much of our time with
people who are just like us
and we spent more of our time reaching out
to people who aren't like us?
Think about how that
would change who we are,
our understanding of the world.
Think about how it would
change this country
and how it would change our politics.
