2010 Prop 8 Repeal Effort Up in the Air

Time is running out to get a repeal of Proposition 8 on the California ballot for 2010--and GLBT leaders are not yet certain whether that’s something they want to do, or whether they would rather wait for 2012.

As Joe Garofoli explained in his political blog at the San Francisco Chronicle, which was carried July 25 at SFGate.com. a majority of GLBT equality advocates convened at a San Bernardino meeting that same day voted for a non-binding resolution to move forward for a 2010 ballot initiative.

But that is not the last word on the question. Now the heads of the various organizations represented at the meeting will need to present the question to their groups; organizational structure will need to be developed and implemented; funding strategies will need to be developed, and plans laid for training volunteers to help move the process along.

All of that has to happen starting now, even if the initiative doesn’t get onto the ballot until 2012; the ballot initiative that rescinded marriage rights for gay and lesbian families in California last year involved a bruising campaign battle and about $80 million dollars, half of which was raised by anti-gay activists.

The organizational challenges of mounting a push to repeal the resulting constitutional amendment, which targets gay and lesbian families for exclusion from legal family parity, will be enormous, and the re-match likely to be just as heated, not more, than the campaign to pass Proposition 8.