A measure to repeal
California's now-upheld Prop. 8 is "highly likely" to
appear on the state ballot during the 2010 midterm election,
Equality California marriage director Marc Solomon said
Tuesday.
A measure to repeal
California's now-upheld Prop. 8 is "highly likely" to
appear on the state ballot during the 2010 midterm election,
Equality California marriage director Marc Solomon said
Tuesday.
In an interview with
The Advocate,
Solomon said any decision to propose a ballot measure for next
year rests with a coalition of LGBT organizations
-- including those that have emerged in the outcry
over Prop. 8's passage and the failure of established groups to
defeat it. The California secretary of state's office
recommends that the language for a ballot measure be created by
late September.
"[2010] is the right
time," said Solomon, the former executive director of
MassEquality who joined Equality California in April. "For
four years I headed up the marriage efforts in Massachusetts,
and I've never seen the level of grassroots energy that I've
seen in California. We'll never be able to recapture this
moment 2012 is just too far off on the horizon."
Solomon said his
organization has already begun laying the campaign groundwork
for what will likely be another contentious battle with
anti-gay-marriage supporters.
Equality California
plans to hire 25 field organizers to conduct door-to-door
canvassing and outreach with local organized labor in the
Inland Empire, the Central Valley, and other regions of the
state where voters approved Proposition 8 by large margins.
"It's so simple to
introduce ballot language," Solomon said. "But can we as a
community rally around one cohesive structure, and one that can
raise 20-plus million dollars? We'd look foolish if we created
the ballot language and collected signatures without a road map
for victory."
Organizations that have
emerged amid the Prop. 8 fallout "will be playing leadership
roles in the next campaign," he added, along with leaders
from the American Civil Liberties Union, Marriage Equality USA,
Love Honor Cherish, and other groups.
Said Evan Wolfson,
founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry: "There's
a ton of work that needs to be done before we ever think of
2010, and there needs to be a way to hold these organizations
accountable, to identify what the metrics should be. How many
voters have they reached? How much money have they raised? How
much ad time do they have? These questions all need to be
asked."
In an implicit rebuttal
to past criticism that local anti-Prop. 8 activism failed to
transcend the boundaries of affluent gay enclaves like West
Hollywood, Solomon and other LGBT activists and religious
leaders spoke out against the California supreme court's 6-1
ruling at a press conference in South Los Angeles's Leimert
Park, a predominantly African-American neighborhood.
"It's an
acknowledgement of the strong, broad-based coalition that will
continue to bring a diversity of people to the table," said
the Reverend Susan Russell, a priest at All Saints Episcopal
Church in Pasadena, Calif.
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