Statewide LGBT group Basic Rights Oregon just announced that, after a two year campaign, they will not be putting gay marriage on Oregon’s ballot in 2012. Instead, they’ll aim toward getting the measure on the ballot in 2014.
From their statement:
After careful consideration and extensive community input, Basic Rights Oregon’s Board of Directors voted unanimously to extend our public education campaign and continue to build public support. We will not pursue a ballot measure on marriage in 2012.
I blogged last week about the politics behind the gay marriage decision. Basically, despite active campaigning, the numbers are still against gay marriage in Oregon. Sadly, after two years of knocking on doors, running heartfelt TV ads, and gathering steam from national wins, the numbers still don’t show gay marriage could safely win in Oregon.
More than 100 people packed into the Q Center on North Mississippi last Sunday, November 6, for one of BRO’s town halls on the issue. The news wasn’t good. Though the conversational campaign has upped voter support in Oregon nine percent in 18 months (whoa), polling still shows only about 48 percent of Oregonians back gay marriage.
“All the political campaigners are really clear with us,” Thomas Wheatley, BRO’s organizing director told the crowd. “We’ve got to have a big buffer of support, something that can withstand their negative ads.”
As a case in point, in California in 2008, the anti-gay marriage measure Proposition 8 was trailing by three percentage points eight weeks before election day. But the measure surged to victory thanks to a full-court press of ads from gay-marriage opponents.
That’s one thing BRO can count on anytime they decide to push for gay marriage: a big, expensive, ugly battle. Asked about a ballot measure back in September, Teresa Lucas of the conservative Oregon Family Council said, “If we have to fight, we’re going to fight hard.” In 2004, anti-gay-marriage groups won a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage with 57 percent of the vote, using ads that warned “gay and lesbian sex will be taught in public schools.”
BRO estimates a 2012 campaign will cost $10 million—which they’d need to raise this winter (in this recession). Getting on the presidential ballot in the fall means getting a boost from young voters and Democrats, but BRO also fears a wave of conservative backlash.
“In these poor economic times, without the hope of 2008, we think young people and people who are our core supporters will not have the same turnout,” said Wheatley.
Looks like Oregon’s 14,979 same-sex couples really have to wait another two years to get the rights of full citizens.
2014? A non-presidential-election year? I hate to say it, but 2016 would be a better bet.
You may be right Todd. They are going to be relying on the youth vote certainly.
Of course, they don’t like to vote too much.
I’m sorry for those who have waited so long to only have to wait longer.
What does it cost to put a measure on the ballot? Why not put it on and make the other side spend their money defeating it? Like Bill Sizemore used to do to the labor unions…What am I missing?
Until something’s done about DOMA, Oregon same-sex couples already have as many rights as they can.
How is Gay Marriage being packaged? If Oregon is still peddling Equality as the basis for Gay marriage rather than Liberty, then they are wise to not put it to the voters.
Other than offending the Black Community, the biggest error which California Gays made ws to push the Equality Agenda. Equality loses voters. Brown v Bd of Education in 1954 based itself on Equality and did a great disservice to the Black community. The decision should have been based on Liberty. “Treating a Black man and a White man differently deprives both men of the constitutional right to Liberty. Thus, segregation is unconstitutional.”
Instead the court talked about equality of outcomes, and we are still living with the vestiges of that folly. Voters are correct to reject Equality arguments for any individual.
Gay Marriage like ending DADT is a liberty issue. Each individual person has the inalienable and constitutional right to Liberty. The Constitution was written to secure the Blessings of Liberty. An individual may not be forced into some group, like Gay, Jewish or Black, and then have his individual rights taken away because of that group classification.
Unless Gays adopt the Liberty banner, we will head in the wrong direction once again. My rights as a Gay person are based on my individual right to Liberty, and they do not depend on my belonging to some group. The same is true for all human beings; the individual right to inalienable right to Liberty is at stake.
When I tried to explain this fact to the proponents of Gay Marriage in California, they shut me out — as if I were Satan at a Revival Meeting.
I urge the gay Leadership to read Lawrence vs. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) and realize that the right is Liberty and not Equality. If people want to know more about Equality v Liberty, I suggest the re-acquaint themselves with de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
There is no need for Oregon to repeat California’s mistake.
How is Gay Marriage being packaged? If Oregon is still peddling Equality as the basis for Gay marriage rather than Liberty, then they are wise to not put it to the voters.
Other than offending the Black Community, the biggest error which California Gays made ws to push the Equality Agenda. Equality loses voters. Brown v Bd of Education in 1954 based itself on Equality and did a great disservice to the Black community. The decision should have been based on Liberty. “Treating a Black man and a White man differently deprives both men of the constitutional right to Liberty. Thus, segregation is unconstitutional.”
Instead the court talked about equality of outcomes, and we are still living with the vestiges of that folly. Voters are correct to reject Equality arguments for any individual.
Gay Marriage like ending DADT is a liberty issue. Each individual person has the inalienable and constitutional right to Liberty. The Constitution was written to secure the Blessings of Liberty. An individual may not be forced into some group, like Gay, Jewish or Black, and then have his individual rights taken away because of that group classification.
Unless Gays adopt the Liberty banner, we will head in the wrong direction once again. My rights as a Gay person are based on my individual right to Liberty, and they do not depend on my belonging to some group. The same is true for all human beings; the individual right to inalienable right to Liberty is at stake.
When I tried to explain this fact to the proponents of Gay Marriage in California, they shut me out — as if I were Satan at a Revival Meeting.
I urge the gay Leadership to read Lawrence vs. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) and realize that the right is Liberty and not Equality. If people want to know more about Equality v Liberty, I suggest the re-acquaint themselves with de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
There is no need for Oregon to repeat California’s mistake.
@BGJ – BRO thinks this campaign for the ballot measure will cost them $10 million.
It usually costs about $400,000+ to put a measure on the ballot (depending on the measure).
And as the current measure apparently only has 48% support, the opponents of equality don’t need to spend anything to win.
The Sizemore measures start with higher support than 48%, and thus opponents need to spend money to educate the public so the measures go down.