Groups urge delaying Prop 8 repeal initiative to 2012

By Chal Pivik
July 17th, 2009 @ 12:35 PM Gay Marriage

2010 seen as “rushed and risky.”

Should marriage equality supporters push for a ballot initiative in next year’s November election that would repeal Proposition 8? Not according to three gay advocacy groups in California that jointly released a statement urging a delay until 2012.

The statement, “Prepare to Prevail,” was released this week by the Jordan/Rustin Coalition, an African American LGBT advocacy group; API Equality-LA, an Asian and Pacific Islander LGBT advocacy group; and HONOR PAC, which advocates for empowering Latina/o LGBTs.

The groups implore supporters of same-sex marriage “to forego a rush to the 2010 ballot box to repeal Proposition 8″ and “start now in building the campaign infrastructure and robust public education efforts needed to win back marriage equality.”

Going back to the ballot to remove the voter-imposed ban on same-sex marriage from the state constitution in 2010 would be rushed and risky. We should proceed with a costly, demanding, and high-stakes electoral campaign of this sort only when we are confident we can win.

Popular support for marriage equality for same-sex couples has not changed since the last election. Today, California voters’ opinions on a constitutional amendment to overturn the voter-imposed elimination of marriage equality remain evenly split, according to all recent polls.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, based in Washington, DC,  has signed on to the statement by the California groups:

Build solid majority support for the freedom to marry before returning to the ballot.  Multiple polls have shown that support for marriage equality has remained flat since November 2008. The LGBT community will be in a stronger position to win if we’re defending, and not attempting to create in the midst of a campaign, majority support at the ballot box for the freedom to marry.

Related posts:

  1. CA Gay group will wait until 2012 for Prop 8 repeal effort
  2. Date for campaign to repeal Prop 8 still up in the air
  3. All that is solid melts into air
  4. LGBT Action Fair Highlights Why Prop 8 Passed
  5. New LA Times poll on same-sex marriage

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5 Comments so far

  1. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (lotle) on July 17th, 2009 @ 3:12 pm

    I’d put it this way (or quote it, anyway), at least by analogy:

    We find the same logic of the error as an internal condition of truth with Rosa Luxemburg, with her description of the dialectics of the revolutionary process. We are alluding here to her argument against Eduard Bernstein, against his revisionist fear of seizing power ‘too soon’, ‘prematurely’, before the so-called ‘objective conditions’ had ripened [...] they are too impatient, they want to hasten, to outrun the objective logic of historical developement. Rosa Luxemburg’s answer is that the first seizures of power are necessarily ‘premature’: the only way for the working class to reach its ‘maturity’, to await the arrival of the ‘appropriate moment’ for the seizure of power, is to form itself, to educate itself for this act of seizure, the only possible way of achieving this education is precisely the ‘premature’ attempts. –Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology

    Isn’t it funny how every new idea was old in 1915?


  2. All that is solid melts into air | Los Angeles Metblogs (pingback) on July 17th, 2009 @ 11:25 pm

    [...] estimable friend and blog author, Chal Pivik posted a description of the statement “Prepare to Prevail,” written by three LGBT advocacy groups.  These groups urged advocates of marriage equality to [...]


  3. All that is solid melts into air « Daily News (pingback) on July 23rd, 2009 @ 5:32 am

    [...] estimable friend and blog author, Chal Pivik posted a description of the statement “Prepare to Prevail,” written by three LGBT advocacy groups.  These groups urged advocates of marriage equality to [...]


  4. Date for campaign to repeal Prop 8 still up in the air | Los Angeles Metblogs (pingback) on July 28th, 2009 @ 12:58 pm

    [...] Last week I posted about three gay rights groups in California that joined together, with the endorsement of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in DC, to release a statement calling a 2010 initiative “rushed and risky.” Called “Prepare to Prevail,” its approach calls for a lengthy grass roots movement that engages minority communities that overall supported Prop 8; and waiting for statewide poll numbers to show a 60% approval rating for same-sex marriage before an initiative appears on the ballot. [...]


  5. CA Gay group will wait until 2012 for Prop 8 repeal effort | Los Angeles Metblogs (pingback) on August 12th, 2009 @ 12:18 pm

    [...] I initially wrote about it here last month, when three gay rights organizations successfully got the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in DC on board  to wait until 2012, which at the time I suspected was the writing on the big gay wall. [...]



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