[Vision2020] Very Sad News: California voters approve constitutional ban on same-sex marriage

[Chasuk]

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10901475?source=most_emailed

After an intense campaign that cost more than $75 million,
California's voters have approved a constitutional ban on same-sex
marriage, dealing a huge blow to the gay rights movement and likely
setting the stage for another round of court battles over the volatile
issue.

While the Yes on 8 campaign claimed victory just before midnight, the
numbers continued to play out in their favor this morning. Still,
advocates of same-sex marriage had clung to hopes that a surge of
support from uncounted votes could still overcome the ban.

But this morning, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, the measure
passed with 52 percent in favor, and 47.9 percent opposed. There are
an untold number of absentee and provisional ballots left to be
counted, according to the Associated Press, but it will be hard to
overcome the 5 percent margin. "I think the story is that a strong
majority of Californians support traditional marriage and they want to
see it protected," said Frank Schubert, manager of the Yes on 8
campaign. "I think the story is we ran a far better campaign than the
other side. I think we had 100,000 people that gave of their resources
and their time."

The measure trims the number of states in which gays and lesbians can
legally marry from three to two. But in striking the most populous and
culturally influential state from that list, social conservatives and
religious leaders have scored a much broader victory, likely limiting
for years the hopes of gay rights leaders to allow same-sex couples to
marry across the United States.

For same-sex marriage supporters, it was a bitter loss, after major
polls had consistently shown the measure losing through the fall.

In San Jose, Ronni Pahl, a member of one of the first two same-sex
couples married in Santa Clara County, watched the returns with her
wife, Hannah, and son Isaiah with a potent mix of emotion.

"It's bittersweet right now because we just watched the first
African-American president elected. We were watching it with our
African-American son, there were tears coming out of our eyes, and we
went to look at what's happening at 8," Pahl said. "We're speechless
right now."

In Santa Clara County, Proposition 8 was soundly defeated, losing by a
10 percent margin. The measure also trailed in Alameda, San Mateo and
Santa Cruz counties, as well as in San Francisco.

But as election evening wore on, that opposition was overwhelmed by
more conservative areas of the state, particularly in the inland
counties. The same-sex marriage ban had attracted more than 60 percent
of the vote in Riverside County, and two-thirds of the vote in San
Joaquin County, with more than half of precincts reporting in those
counties.

And despite the decisive win of Democratic nominee Barack Obama, in
California and the rest of the country, polls were wrong in another
way: They had predicted that the tide of Obama voters would block
Proposition 8 from passing. But even in Santa Clara County, Obama
captured a much higher share of the vote than the proportion who voted
against Proposition 8.

Schubert said the Yes on 8 campaign never trusted the polls.

"We've always felt that if we were tied going into Election Day, or a
few points behind, we were going to win," he said. The decision "is
something that I think will reverberate across the nation and around
the world."

While the new constitutional ban goes into effect immediately, it's
less clear what the effect will be on same-sex couples who married
from June 16 through Tuesday. While Attorney General Jerry Brown has
said he does not believe Proposition 8 is retroactive, that issue is
likely to wind up back in the courts, as well as an anticipated
challenge to whether it is constitutional for California to revive its
ban on same-sex marriage.

The race began to tighten when the Yes on 8 campaign began running ads
that suggested that churches could lose their tax-exempt status if
clergy refused to do gay weddings and that second-graders would be
taught about gay marriage.

The figurehead of those ads: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom,
proclaiming in a speech that gay marriage was now legal in California
"whether you like it or not."

Yes on 8 supporters were feeling confident Tuesday night, even as the
polls began to close.

"The momentum has really been with us," said Chip White, the press
secretary for the Yes on 8 campaign. "The trend has been in our
direction ever since we went with that Gavin Newsom ad on Sept. 29."

David McCuan, a political-science professor at Sonoma State
University, said the move to victory for the Yes on 8 campaign might
have begun here, when a campaign pushing for passage of an initiative
began to behave like a classic "No" campaign — by injecting doubt
about the effect of a proposed "change" into the minds of voters.

Because gay marriage was so new in California, it allowed Yes on 8
campaign manager Frank Schubert to operate as if what was technically
the status quo was actually a proposed change, and trying to inject
doubt into the minds of voters about that "change."

Schubert "essentially ran a No side campaign on the Yes side of this
ballot measure and that has made it more sophisticated and less
faith-based message," McCuan said.

Given Obama's victory, "it's a stunning, stinging defeat," McCuan
said. "This is a Democratic blue wave and standing out in one of the
bluest of the blue states is this huge red result."