2010 or 2012
Pretty much since Proposition 8 passed here in California back in November, there’s been a drive to get a repeal motion in front of California’s voters. The various voices of the LGBT community is the state (and beyond) have, over the last nine months, been tying themselves in knots setting up discussions/meetings/polls to try and formulate a coherent platform on which to base a campaign, and potentially as important, when the ballot measure that campaign would drive to should be tabled.
Assuming you don’t want to push it too far out, the two contenders are 2010 and 2012.
The former would put it on the ballot at the same time as the next Gubernatorial election. The latter would line it up with the next Presidential vote.
The voices in favour of each option have been loud and determined, and, you can’t help but feel, passionately convinced of the rightness of their own argument.
Arguments for 2010 tend to be a little more emotional; why should we wait a single minute longer than we have to for equality? Don’t those people who were married in the state before Proposition 8 came along deserve to have their currently odd status clarified sooner rather than later? etc
2012 advocates, while no less emotionally committed, seem to me to be a little more pragmatic. People spent a *lot* of money on supporting the No On 8 campaign and going back to that well so soon may be unreasonable; three years from now there will have been more chance to work at the grassroots level to show the people who bought into the scare stuff last time round to see that same-sex marriage isn’t really going to destroy society; there’ll be a greater demographic change in that period, with more young people becoming voters; those new voters are more likely to turn out for a Presidential election than one for the Governor.
Over the last few months various of the organisations involved in these discussions have declared for ‘10 or ‘12, and potentially the most influential, Equality California, has today made its decision public. For all sorts of reasons, detailed here on their blog, EQCA is going for 2012.
I confess that even though it’s long after I’m due to be back in the UK, and I’d love to be around for the scrap, I think 2012 seems sensible.
Though as I do every time I talk about this stuff, or read about the upcoming ballot on same-sex marriage in Maine (attempting to overturn the law already passed there), or the despicable campaign to undermine Washington State’s domestic partnership protections by pretending they’re something to do with same-sex marriage, I cannot, wrack my brains though I will, understand what possible damage to the institution widening the pool of people with access to it can possibly do.