Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Same-Sex Vote Unlikely in California

It was three years ago this month that thousands of gay couples began to wed in California after the state’s highest court legalized same-sex marriage, setting off a joyous — if short-lived — period for supporters.

That matrimonial bliss was quickly snuffed out in November 2008, when California voters passed Proposition 8, which limited marriage to unions between a man and a woman.

It was a crushing defeat for gay rights groups, many of which swore to take the issue back to voters — in a kind of instant do-over — as soon as possible.

But with a pending federal court case showing promise and major donors reluctant to step forward, it is unlikely that California voters will revisit same-sex marriage anytime soon.

“I’m not aware of a single donor who would support a ballot measure campaign,” said Chad Griffin, the co-founder and board president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. “A ballot would be unwise, foolish and, in fact, dangerous.”

That danger, according to several leaders in the gay community, comes from the potential impact that a failed effort in 2012 could have on the federal case, which was brought in 2009 by Mr. Griffin’s group. Mr. Griffin, an experienced fund-raiser, hired the high-powered legal team of David Boies and Theodore B. Olson to pursue a constitutional challenge to the law, and last August, a federal judge — Vaughn R. Walker of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California — sided with opponents of Proposition 8, finding that the voter-approved law violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.

From The New York Times.

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