The effort to repeal last year's
voter-approved gay marriage ban in California that began on November
16 is looking less likely to reach the ballot box in 2010 after the
state's largest grassroots organization withdrew its support on
Monday.
Rick Jacobs, founder of the
70,000-member Courage
Campaign, called for more time to “change hearts and minds
before returning to the ballot to restore marriage for gay and
lesbian couples.”
“We are taking the lessons learned
from last year's Prop. 8 campaign, the campaigns in Maine and other
states to understand the fundamental work that must be done before
moving forward in California,” Jacobs said in a statement.
In August, Equality
California, the group that led the unsuccessful opposition to
Proposition 8 last year and the state's largest gay rights group,
said it planned to wait three years before returning to the polls.
We support “helping the community win
a ballot initiative to restore marriage at the November 2012
election,” Geoff Kors, executive director of the group, said in a
statement.
At the time, Jacobs disagreed with
Kors, telling the Wall Street Journal: “I don't know why we
would say no to the movement we've got now.”
But Jacobs' own polling and other
research his organization commissioned appears to have changed his
mind.
“We also must come together as a
community to create a broad coalition and governance structure, put
in place a strong manager and secure the resources to win. Right
now, the pieces are not all in place to do so confidently,” he
said.
In announcing its decision, Equality
California said it was concerned about returning to big donors so
soon after Proposition 8 had devoured nearly $80 million from both
sides of the debate.
The group Love
Honor Cherish, a coalition of smaller gay rights groups, is
heading the effort to gather the nearly 1 million signatures needed
to qualify a gay marriage question for the November, 2010 ballot.