While I'm not optimistic about this passing, it will galvanize younger voters and get them to vote, which is a good thing. While it will also galvanize lots of conservatives, they're already worked up and ready to go to the polls over their hatred of Obama. Ultimately, this will probably inspire more liberal voters who were not already inspired than conservatives.

This probably fail, but money and time spent on this will be money and time spent on firing up left-leaning voters and making sure Oregon goes blue in the presidential election, so it's a good idea. Also, I don't know whether that lest sentence is worthy of groans or high-fives.

"The problem is, the most recent polling shows a slim majority of Oregonians oppose gay marriage..."

So what?

Franky, i do NOT see how this is any sort of problem at all! And why are we even soliciting people's opinions on this issue (noone ever polled ME about what i thought - so who are they even talking to?)?!

Ask a wide margin of Oregonians how they felt about Blacks living in the state - say around the 1930's - and what do you think the outcome would have been? Ask Oregonians whether THEY thought it would be just fine to pass Civil Rights laws that mandated the states' Black residents be treated the EXACT SAME WAY as it's White residents, and see what answer you'd have gotten.

This is soo goddamned silly. Kitzhaber should just PASS this law and make marriage b/t gays LEGAL in OR! And there's NO reason why it can't be effective come Jan. 2012. And if any hateful CHRISTIANS have anything to say about it - well they can all just go n' fuck themselves, already!

It's going to happen, sooner or later, anyways. I don't understand why we're dragging this out for years until "majority public approval" is achieved.

"noone ever polled ME about what i thought - so who are they even talking to?"

It's called representative sampling and it's much more efficient than interviewing every single fucking person with an opinion about something.

"Kitzhaber should just PASS this law and make marriage b/t gays LEGAL in OR! And there's NO reason why it can't be effective come Jan. 2012. "

Um... there's an amendment in the state's constitution prohibiting it. The governor can't just pass a law overturning it. The governor can't just pass a law, period.


Not sure if serious....

I think we also need to consider the national political environment, and the possibility that conservatives will be at least as motivated as young metro liberals.
If marriage equality goes to the ballot in 2012 and doesn't pass, it will set back the total movement greatly, and cost us resources, not to mention emotionally. I desperately want to be able to legally marry my longterm partner, but thinking about the devastating effect of a lost movement for my family, and the thousands of other gay families in the state, gives me considerable pause.

I'm curious about this: "It's called representative sampling and it's much more efficient than interviewing every single fucking person with an opinion about something" (terminizer).

I see about two dozen polls in the news every day, and yet I nor hardly anyone I've ever spoken with about this has ever been polled for anything except marketing studies. So how representative can these samples be? I guess Gallup is still just calling up folks who have land lines and time to sit around answering questions about the gays.

People are making this way more complicated than it really is. This isn't figuring out the economy. This is one of those easy things. Just LEGALIZE it and be done with it - that's all.

The people (christians) who are going to get mad about it can get mad, so what? Lot's of racist White people got mad when inter-racial marriage was made legal decades ago. And there wasn't a damned thing they could've done about THAT, either!

Please remember to also fix the Oregon Divorce Law. It says divorce is between one man and one woman the last time I read it.

This article seems to fall victim to the same assumptions about "Eastern Or v. Western Or" that sunk the No on 36 campaign a while back. The reality is that it was assumed by many gay marriage proponents that african-American voters would safely and predictably vote the standard liberal party line. That turned out to not be the case. Many religious african-Americans voted in favor of 36.
I'm all in favor of repealing Measure 36 and allowing gay marriage. But if that's really gonna happen you'll need to get past blaming it on eastern Oregon.