Equality California said Aug. 12 that it does not support returning to the ballot to try to repeal Proposition 8 until 2012.
Other groups are preparing for a 2010 ballot fight. They include the Courage Campaign, Love Honor Cherish, Los Angeles' Stonewall Democratic Club and at least 40 other organizations.
"Donors want to make sure their investments to win back marriage are wisely invested," EQCA Marriage Director Marc Solomon said in an Aug. 12 conference call with reporters. "Monolithically, they are not supportive of returning to the ballot ( in 2010 ) ."
"There's no question that the community is, you know, not unified behind one position and we really feel that we ... owe the LGBT community and our allies our best analysis," Solomon said. "We'd be leading people down a path that I don't feel comfortable leading them down ( if we supported 2010 ) . It's our job to say, 'We think this 38-month path is the right path.'"
Solomon said the next ballot fight will cost "$40 million to $60 million."
"Californians have been static on the issue of marriage equality over the last four years," he added. "We've been stuck and we need to figure out how to get unstuck. ... There are a small number of undecided voters on this issue."
EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors said that "if ( other ) people want to move forward with 2010, they're welcome to it."
"It's a democracy and a free country," Kors said. "If something qualifies, we will support it ( but ) we think we have one shot over these next elections. ... We've come to a different conclusion than other organizations. ... We're going to do this right and smart and strategically."
Meanwhile, the Courage Campaign announced Aug. 12, an hour before EQCA's announcement, that it is moving forward with plans for a 2010 ballot battle.
In recent months, the Courage Campaign arguably has become as important a player in statewide GLBT politics as EQCA, though EQCA is a traditional lobby group while Courage Campaign is more of a netroots and grassroots operation.
In an Aug. 12 mailing to its 700,000 supporters, the Courage Campaign sent a "special message" from Steve Hildebrand, who was Barack Obama's deputy campaign manager.
In the message, Hildebrand, who is openly gay, said: "I feel strongly that 2010 is the right time to courageously win back marriage rights in California—as strongly as I felt when I decided to devote two years of my life to help Barack Obama run for President despite warnings from the pundits and pollsters that he would never occupy the Oval Office."
In an Aug. 10 interview with Los Angeles journalist Karen Ocamb, Hildebrand elaborated: "I believe it's winnable in 2010 and that the community should not be afraid to take this to the ballot in 2010. ... In a perfect world, you want everybody on the same page but we don't live in a perfect world and different people have different ideas. I do believe that if groups move forward and start a petition drive, that most all groups will feel compelled to join because they don't want to see a loss. But they might come kicking and screaming."
Hildebrand said the California "gay community ... needs to have confidence that it can win this" and should not "let political prognosticators who suggest they can't win it in 2010 scare them away."
Some California gay groups expressed dismay with EQCA's announcement and vowed to carry on without the organization.
"We are extremely disappointed, but not surprised, by Equality California's decision today to wait until 2012 ... especially since every poll we conducted shows majority support within the LGBT community ( including 70 percent of EQCA's own membership ) to put a marriage-equality initiative on the ballot next year," said Yes! on Equality.
Newly prominent California blogger Phillip Minton ( unitethefight.org ) said the Aug. 12 developments kicked off a battle between Equality California and Courage Campaign over "who's going to win the right to win rights."
"The California LGBT population is experiencing whiplash and fears that these announcements will drive the wedge of division that already exists deeper into the heart of the community," Minton said.
Proposition 8, passed last Nov. 4 by 52 percent of California voters, amended the state constitution to re-ban same-sex marriage, which had been legal since June 16, 2008, following a state Supreme Court ruling that banning gay couples from marrying was unconstitutional. In May of this year, the state Supreme Court ruled that Prop 8 was a valid exercise of the voters' power to amend the constitution.
Bill Clinton regrets
DOMA and DADT
by REX WOCKNER
Former President Bill Clinton said Aug. 13 that he regrets the way his Don't Ask, Don't Tell military gay ban was implemented, and that he doesn't "like" the Defense of Marriage Act he signed into law.
Speaking at the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh, Clinton said: "When Gen. Colin Powell came up with this Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it was defined while he was chairman much differently than it was implemented. ( Powell ) said: 'If you will accept this, here's what we'll do. We will not pursue anyone. Any military members out of uniform will be free to march in gay rights parades, go to gay bars, go to political meetings. Whatever mailings they get, whatever they do in their private lives, none of this will be a basis for dismissal.' It all turned out to be a fraud because of the enormous reaction against it among the middle-level officers and down after it was promulgated and Colin was gone. So nobody regrets how this was implemented any more than I do."
"Look, I think it's ridiculous," Clinton continued. "Can you believe they spent—whatever they spent—$150,000 to get rid of a valued Arabic speaker recently? And, you know, the thing that changed me forever on Don't Ask, Don't Tell was when I learned that 130 gay service people were allowed to serve and risk their lives in the first Gulf War, and all their commanders knew they were gay; they let them go out there and risk their lives because they needed them, and then as soon as the first Gulf War was over, they kicked them out. That's all I needed to know, that's all anybody needs to know, to know that this policy should be changed."
As for DOMA, Clinton said he doesn't like it but that it was the lesser of two evils.
"The reason I signed DOMA was—and I said when I signed it—that I thought the question of whether gays should marry should be left up to states and to religious organizations, and if any church or other religious body wanted to recognize gay marriage, they ought to," he said. "We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states. And if you look at the 11 referenda much later—in 2004, in the election—which the Republicans put on the ballot to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it's obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican Congress from presenting that. The president doesn't even get to veto that. The Congress can refer constitutional amendments to the states. I didn't like signing DOMA and I certainly didn't like the constraints that were put on benefits, and I've done everything I could—and I am proud to say that the State Department was the first federal department to restore benefits to gay partners in the Obama administration, and I think we are going forward in the right direction now for federal employees."
Clinton addressed the two issues after being interrupted by a heckler yelling from the audience.
Blogger Lane Hudson shouted: "Mr. President, will you call for a repeal of DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell right now? Please."
DOMA prevents the federal government from recognizing married gay couples as married and allows states to refuse to recognize other states' same-sex marriages.
President Barack Obama repeatedly has vowed to see that DOMA is repealed, but has taken no steps to launch the process.
Six states—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine—have legalized same-sex marriage, while 30 states have amended their constitutions to ban it. In addition, New York and Washington, D.C., recognize the marriages of gay couples who have married elsewhere. The new same-sex marriage laws in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have not yet come into force.
Same-sex marriage also is legal in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain and Sweden.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
