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.