Gay Marriage Ban on California Ballot

Posted by Alex Blaze, The Bilerico Project at 7:04 AM on June 3, 2008.

California voters will have a chance to overturn the recent state Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage just five months from now, as the secretary of state certified a measure to define marriage as "between a man and a woman" for the November ballot.

Proponents of the measure submitted more than 1.1 million signatures to qualify for the general election ballot. A random sampling by the secretary of state's office determined they had collected more than the 694,354 valid signatures needed.

The new measure would insert the sentence, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," into the state constitution, thereby overruling the court's decision.

Well, we knew that was coming. And at least the language wouldn't go and get rid of the state's DP's.

California has one of the best state apparatuses out there when it comes to LGBT activism. And the state has moved significantly towards accepting the idea that two dudes or two ladies can marry in their state. Take that with Democrats being overall much more enthused about this race than Republicans (months after becoming the presumptive nominee, McCain is still losing a quarter of the primary vote to people who just show up to show how much they hate him) and Obama registering and exciting a whole bunch of young and progressive voters, and we might see the second marriage ban rejected at the polls in the history of the country, with this being the first that focused exclusively on marriage (in Arizona, the strategy focused on the fact that their ballot initiative went beyond just banning marriage).

Also, there will be marriages in the interim, even with ten other states writing a letter to California to have their decision stayed until November:

10 state attorneys general wrote a letter to the California Supreme Court asking them to delay their decision until the November election. And [CA attorney general] Jerry Brown's all "no thanks!"

So there we go.

Tagged as: gay marriage, california, lgbt