CA Voters - What you can do to repeal Prop 8 in 2010

[essentialsaltes]

Sign the Petition to get it on the ballot. Even if all you can do is to print out the PDF, sign it yourself, and mail it to their offices, that's a stamp well spent.

Comments

[crboltz.livejournal.com]

Currently 51% of California voters believe that marriage equality should be the law of the land. This specific ballot language also makes freedom of religion clear, which is the second biggest objection the moderates (People who think they can be swayed). Most of the people I personally know who voted against my rights will be easily swayed with this language -- their church won't have to perform the same sex marriage. There aren't that many people to move, and any chance to create more equality is worth it. Every day that it is put off is one more day injustice.

[ian-tiberius.livejournal.com]

I'm only aware of one poll showing 51% of voters in favor of marriage equality. It's a Field Poll from last year, and statistically speaking it's probably an outlier. (There's also a difference between generic support for marriage equality and support for a particular legislative action.) As for the ballot language, how many people who vote actually read the text of the propositions? California voters never had the option of forcing churches to perform gay marriages, because of the First Amendment - so substantively this is no different than before. I just can't believe that making that explicit in the text of the proposition is going to make a noticeable difference in public opinion.

Finally, as dogofthefuture alludes to above, 2010 is a presidential off-year, which means low turnout, which means that the groups that always have high turnout (read: religious fundamentalists) will do better and the groups whose turnout is iffy (large chunks of the Democratic Party) will do worse. And not to read tea leaves a year in advance, but my sense is that the Republicans are going to be more energized in 2010, which is also bad news for repealing Prop. 8. Long story short, we had a lot of factors in our favor in 2008, and Prop. 8 still passed, and those factors won't be in our favor next year.

If you want to put it on the ballot in 2010, you can. I will show up to the polls and vote with you. But we're very likely not going to win, and there are negative consequences to that in financial terms and in terms of demoralized allies and energized opponents. If you lose in 2008 and 2010, how many people are going to want to get behind a third try in 2012? You can talk about injustice, but in the end the numbers are the numbers, and I still think that from a tactical perspective, waiting for 2012 looks a lot better.