GayPatriot

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Why I Support Delaying Measure to Repeal Prop 8

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For once, I agree with the leaders of “Equality California.”  In an e-mail today its Executive Director, Geoff Kors, after conducting outreach among various communities and listening to their members and supporters, wrote in an e-mail to its listserv that his group has decided to push off a ballot initiative to repeal Prop 8 until 2012.

After reviewing all the information, research and feedback from our coalition partners and the community-at-large and in view of our aggressive determination and dedication to win marriage back as soon as possible, we support committing our energy, resources and leadership to helping the community win a ballot initiative to restore marriage at the November 2012 election.

I think they’re very smart to wait for many of the reasons Kors outlines in his e-mail, including the time needed to organize, the expected demographics of the 2010 turnout.

Still, the one thing he doesn’t address (because if it did, it would require him to resign) is the needed leadership change of the various California groups which worked last fall to defeat Proposition 8 and would likely be spearheading the efforts to pass an initiative designed to repeal that Proposition.

While they’ve “met with the leadership of LGBT organizations that work in communities of color to find out what they think it will take to carry out a strategic effort to move voters in their communities,” there is no evidence from Kors’s letter (or my own research and observation) to indicate that hs group-or any other working to repeal Prop 8-has reached out to Republicans.  Indeed, when I called Vaishalee Raja, their Communications Director, she did not know what percentage of the newly-hired “18 field organizers that reflect the diversity of California” included any Republicans.

Given that 34.3% of Golden State voters are registered Republicans, 18 field organizers reflecting the diversity of the state would include six Republicans.

Raja did, however, promise to look into that matter.  And when she gets back to me, I will either update this post –or add a new one as the information requires.

If the folks at Equality California really want to repeal Proposition 8, then they need reach out to Republicans as well as people of color.  And to rid their ranks of those who harbor deep prejudices against the party of Ronald Reagan, the man whom the author of the Briggs’ Initiative credited for its defeat.  In other words, they need deliver walking papers to the man who signed the letter I quoted above.

They need enlist leadership who would not be averse to cutting commercials with leading conservatives, like say, Ward Connerly, making the case for gay marriage.

Equality California is smart to wait on this one.   They’s that in the additional time they take to organize their efforts, they should reach out Republicans, alter their rhetoric and fire their prejudiced leaders.

Comments

  1. What if you don’t define yourself as either L, G, B, or T, but as a person with homosexual feelings? What if you don’t want to join the Gay Borg?

    The reason this whole Prop 8 thing is going south (so to speak) is because it is rooted in a Stonewall/Pride movement which is about sexual liberation, not equal rights. The whole urban gay scene is about freeing all people from the shackles of the purely human and patriarchal construct of marriage and letting our all our sexual desires free to roam the streets.

    The idea that people with homosexual feelings might want to participate in the patriarchal, oppressive social structures of marriage, church, military, etc., is inimical to the Stonewall sexual liberation movement. Hence, any protest which is using the same signs and buttons as the Pride parades is going to be working against itself, and, thus, fall apart.

  6. I thoroughly disagree. Prop 8 barely passed in 2008. Four more states have made gay marriage legal since then, and a half-dozen more could in the next 14 months till November 2010. California has been roundly ridiculed on a national level for its backward vote in comparison to such middle-of-the-road states as Iowa. The momentum is against the opponents of Prop 8. What’s the worst that could happen if it were on the ballot in 2010–that it would pass by only 1 or 2 points this time around? What would that say about the likelihood of its being passed in perpetuity? If that happens, just put it on again in 2012–nothing lost.

  7. California has been roundly ridiculed on a national level for its backward vote in comparison to such middle-of-the-road states as Iowa.

    Iowa didn’t vote on gay marriage, Scott. The Supreme Court of Iowa dictated that they must have it. I would bet, although I havent read anything of it because frankly I am sick to death of gay marriage, but I would nonetheless bet the majority of Iowans would easily reject gay marriage, and are probably busily working to amend the Iowa state constitution.

  8. I agree with Bruce AND Dan. 2012 will be a bad year demographically AND 2010 will be a bad year demographically.

    Conservatives and independents will be out in force in 2010. Libs will not. Gay marriage goes down in flames.

    2012, the black vote will cancel out the white effete urban lib vote and conservatives will be out in droves…gay marriage goes down in flames.

    I think 2008 was the best chance gays will have for a majority vote for a long time coming. Conservatives were staying home, dems and other libs were highy motivated, the proposal was to “take rights away” which one would think people would be reluctant to do…and gay marriage went down in flames.

    Gay marriage is now further away from reality in California than it would be had gay activists done nothing. Congrats!

  10. Hey, W.C., I thought you were a right-wing blogger, you know part of that astroturfing mob that drowns up supporters of a brave, new health care system. And you want us homos to help repeal Prop. 8?!?!?! The gay left has told me there were no such folk.

    Better alert Equality California, cause they don’t think right-wingers like you are part of California’s diversity.

    🙂

  13. Why a gay person would call himself conservative is beyond me. I guess they love being shit on by republicans.

    Because anyone, particularly any minority, who trusts in government is a self loathing idiot.

    How did trusting government work out for Jews and gays in Germany? Gays in the middle east? American Indians?

    You think that’s all changed? You think Democrats have got your back because they care about minorities? Just try disagreeing with them! They will not only call you an uncle tom, a house nigger, etc, they will seek to destroy you (see Miguel Estrada, Alberto Gonzolez, Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, etc).

    And do you know what you are when Democrats will support you ONLY when you do their will? A slave.

    I am a conservative because I know that the safest place for power is in my own hands. I know that EVERY tyranny in the world from Naziism, to Communism, Fascism, etc has one thing in common: big government. I know that free people no matter WHAT they think of me, and corporations have no power over me whatsoever, but only government has the power to force me to do things or prohibit me from doing them.

    And I know gay libs are the real self loathing idiots, so insecure that they are desperate to use that power of government to FORCE others to “approve” of them.

  14. #7. “Iowa didn’t vote on gay marriage, Scott. The Supreme Court of Iowa dictated that they must have it.”

    Doesn’t matter how they got it: Iowa has it and California doesn’t. If the means to getting it matters, then why didn’t California’s Supreme Court rule in favor of it (i.e., overturn Prop 8)?