VERMONT, IOWA, MASSACHUSETTS, Connecticut, and now, Maine. So
when is Oregon going to join the increasingly lengthy list of states to
legalize gay marriage? Well, not so fast.
Right now Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) Executive Director Jeana
Frazzini is focused on defending recent victories like Oregon’s new
statewide non-discrimination law covering sexual orientation and gender
identity, and domestic partnership for same-sex couples, she says.
Sure, Frazzini is cautiously optimistic about putting marriage equality
on the statewide ballot as early as 2012. There’s just the small matter
of first building support for the idea across racial and religious
lines.
“This is a dialogue that takes time,” she says. “And you have to
give people the opportunity to change their views.”
The last time gay marriage was on the ballot in Oregon was in 2004,
when voters approved a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to
one man and one woman, by a 57 to 43 percent margin, under Measure
36.
“The issue was a political football,” says Frazzini. “We need to
strike a balance between realizing that 2012 is right around the
corner, but also that there’s time for the dialogue to move outside the
context of being a big political fight.”
Frazzini wants to build a “multi-racial and cultural alliance that
moves through communities of faith and of color.” But is that going to
be possible by 2012?
The November 2008 passage of California’s Proposition 8, which
overturned an earlier California Supreme Court decision to legalize gay
marriage, has hardly made BRO’s effort to broaden the marriage debate
any easier. A CNN exit poll conducted at the time suggested 70 percent
of African American voters supported Proposition 8 in California,
prompting huge divisions nationwide. The poll was later found to be
misleading—subsequent research by progressive-leaning San
Francisco-based David Binder Research shows religion, age, and party
affiliation were the three dominant factors in deciding which way
voters leaned on Proposition 8. But perceptions count, and the CNN
damage is real. Now, it needs undoing.
“I’m a black man, I’m a gay man, and I have family members who would
be in favor of me getting married if I want to,” says Craig Tyson with
the Unity Project of Oregon, an embattled nonprofit organization
struggling to continue to provide services to the African American LGBT
community (see pg. 3). “So I find it difficult to believe that the
whole black community is against gay marriage.”
Tyson and other groups organized a community forum at the Jupiter
Hotel shortly after Proposition 8 passed, hoping to address and prevent
community divisions. David Martinez, co-founder of Portland Latino
Pride, says “the forum helped people to get some facts.”
The forum attracted 50 people, and organizers promised it would be
the first in a series.
“We had hoped to schedule more, but things just got busy,” says
Martinez.
Tyson acknowledges that the LGBT community’s outreach to African
Americans still faces challenges.
“I don’t think the engagement is going on enough,” he concedes. “I
just think that the whole social network for the African American
community can be challenging to get to. You have to engage us on our
turf.”
“I haven’t seen as big an outreach in the faith community lately,
but it could come in waves,” says Pastor Lynne Smouse López,
whose Ainsworth United Church of Christ in North Portland became
“open and affirming” to LGBT members in 1996.
“When we got the domestic partnerships I think [BRO] took a breather
and decided to re-group, but certainly the struggles aren’t over,”
López says.
As for 2012, Frazzini says, “We’ll know the time is right [to put
marriage equality on the ballot] when the community is engaged in the
conversation.” To kick-start that conversation, BRO recently launched a
public relations campaign, “Get Engaged,” designed to get people
talking about marriage equality again in Oregon.
When asked whether 2012 might be too early to overcome some
divisions, Frazzini says she thinks “speculation about dates is sort of
a futile exercise at this point,” and declines to name a date for the
ballot decision. “To go to the ballot with something that affects our
community and our families,” she says, “is not something we take
lightly.”