Yesterday, the California Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which denies same-sex couples the right to marry. Reaction in San Francisco was swift and severe, if not strategic.

I'm not one of those guys who is totally supportive of a cause until its activists block my commute with their protest, although that did happen yesterday. On my way to discuss strategy with a non-profit client, I crossed paths with a bunch of people getting arrested in front of San Francisco City Hall. Despite their witty t-shirts, the scene struck me as especially tragic. Both Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Superior Court of San Francisco (and virtually the whole city of SF) have been solidly against Prop 8 at every opportunity. Perhaps someone involved can explain the action logic to me, since I'm sincerely interested, but the scene smacked to me as a lack of either critical thinking (who are the decision-makers and how will they be influenced?) or leadership (is anyone leveraging the predictable groundswell toward an organized campaign?).

Here are three ideas I think would've been more effective.

No one goes home single

If you've already decided that nothing short of being arrested will do, make it mean something more than just "we're willing to get arrested for our beliefs." That's wonderful—and absolutely necessary to underscore the vitality of this fight—but stops just short of authentic civil disobedience. Instead of having the lockdown party at SF City Hall, move it to Sacramento. Attach demands to the lockdown, like, "We're not leaving without someone marrying us."

Borrowing a historical (and therefore cliché) example: Rosa didn't block traffic, she refused to give up her seat. Her action forced people to choose between a bad law and human decency. The analog here would be to swarm the Clerk's office and demand equal treatment. Don't get out of line, don't take a number, don't move until they agree to marry you. Then, if they forcibly remove you, you'll be arrested for doing the exact same thing as straight couples in the same line, not the illegal-for-everyone sitting in an intersection.

Fake it 'til you make it

The Supreme Court ruling provides a strange and exploitable loophole. If you were a same-sex couple married during the period where same-sex marriage was legal, your marriage still stands. There's an estimated 18 thousand couples who fall into that category. Who's to say you're not one of them? Since there's no way to tell without demanding documentation (and being a dick) that you and your honey aren't legally married but merely everything-but-legally married... Just be married!

Don't get me wrong, I understand that the principle of the thing matters and it's incredibly hurtful to know that the state is—let's not mince words here—against you. The long-term goal of this strategy would be to leverage the logistical nightmare of the state having to constantly prove that every marriage was or wasn't within a certain window, making enforcement of Prop 8 impossible. Considering that everyone in the executive branch from the Mayor to the Governor to the President is against Prop 8, it's unlikely that Federal Marshals will bust down anyone's door and make you return those ramekins you registered for.

Appropriate Valentine's Day

This is the "Nuclear Option" for same-sex marriage.

The historical Saint Valentine was a Roman priest martyred for marrying Christians during the reign of Claudius Gothicus, who had deemed it illegal to do so. He was discovered, imprisoned, and ultimately beheaded because he defied the state and brought couples together out of love. Our modern Valentine's Day celebrates this concept of romantic love, but conveniently forgets the defiance aspect of the tale. It's time to bring it back.

Forget the rainbow. The new iconography of same-sex marriage should be the pretty pink heart, Cupid and his bow-and-arrow, smooching lovebirds, and every symbol, idiom, or typeface that advertising guys now employ to sell greeting cards reinforcing hetero-normative relationships under the guise of showing how much you love someone. Nice idea, it's ours now.

I'm mad, like everyone else. Obviously, I fully acknowledge that the decision hasn't hit me in the same visceral way as it's hit others, but I'm hardly an innocent bystander. While my fianceé and I don't bring them up because we don't want to politicize our relationship, let's just say that we've made non-trivial decisions based on the injustice we see around us. Prop 8 was a defeat for us, just like the rest of humanity.

So let's beat this.