NATIONAL

Kerry backs Mo. marriage ban
Activists debate strategy for state amendment fights

RYAN LEE
Friday, August 13, 2004

One day after Missourians overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry made a campaign swing through the state and lauded voters for approving the measure.

“We support nondiscrimination against our fellow Americans, Kerry said in an interview with the NBC affiliate in Kansas City. “We’ve always argued that states will be capable of taking care of this by themselves. [The Missouri vote] I think bears out that we didn’t need a [federal] constitutional amendment in order to do what’s right.”

Kerry also said he would have voted in favor of the measure, according to the interview.

The next day, Aug. 5, Sen. John Edwards said during a stop in the state that the Democratic presidential ticket had no objection to the Missouri vote.

“We’re both opposed to gay marriage and believe that states should be allowed to decide this question,” Edwards told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Kerry and Edwards opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment supported by President Bush. Kerry also backed a state constitutional amendment on marriage in Massachusetts, the only state to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Kerry has said he support civil unions for same-sex couples and equal benefits for them under federal law.

Avoiding the ‘M’ word
Support by Kerry and Edwards for state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage shows how divisive the measures can be, even among Democrats who are more likely to support gay issues. It portends a significant problem for activists on the ground in states facing votes on similar measures this fall.

With four years of hindsight, Kate Kendell says she knows one of the main reasons she and others who worked on the “No on Knight” campaign were unable to defeat the ballot initiative that restated California’s definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman. They avoided discussion of the “M word.”

Kendell, who was co-director of the “No on Knight” campaign in 2000, said polling consistently showed the anti-initiative coalition had to avoid talking about why gay couples should be allowed to marry. Instead they should focus on describing how state law already banned same-sex marriages, making the new law unnecessary.

“We avoided talking about marriage for gay and lesbian couples because polling showed people just could not wrap their heads around that,” said Kendell, now executive director of the California-based National Center for Lesbian Rights.

“Poll numbers showed we might have a chance at success unless we talked about marriage, which for sure we were going to lose,” she added.

So opponents of the amendment argued that the measure is already part of state law and that supporters of the initiative must be trying to do something more, Kendell said.

It was a message with high-profile backing — including from then-President Bill Clinton and California Gov. Gray Davis — and a $5.5 million campaign, but it proved ineffective, as 61 percent of California voters approved the Knight Initiative on March 7, 2000.

Kendell said she isn’t certain anything could have stopped the Knight Initiative, but she said it was a mistake for the anti-initiative coalition to avoid a frank public discussion about why gay couples should have access to marriage.

“While I believe our articulation of the initiative was true, I do think we probably missed some opportunities for getting voters to think about the real issue and come to terms with full marriage rights for lesbians and gay men,” Kendell said. “Had we done that, voters here could be further along on the issue than they are now.”

‘De-gaying’ the campaigns
The nation has changed since the “No on Knight” campaign four years ago. With civil unions in Vermont and gay marriages in Massachusetts, along with gay couples sporadically marrying in various municipalities across the country, coalitions currently fighting ballot initiatives will be hard-pressed to avoid talking about gay marriage, Kendell said.

“I think it’s off the table to not talk about marriage,” Kendell said. “I would avoid the impulse to ‘de-gay’ the campaigns.”

Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, agreed that coalitions in some dozen states fighting proposed constitutional bans on gay marriage can no longer afford to avoid engaging in a direct discussion about why gay couples should be allowed to marry.

“There’s always a temptation that, when the knife is at the throat, you can find some easy, safe, short-term message [to win over voters], and what we’ve found time and time again is that that doesn’t work,” said Wolfson, whose organization advocates marriage equality for same-sex couples.

“We have to give them some context of what’s really at stake so we can counter the emotional power of the other side,” he said.

Gay rights leaders in several states fighting gay marriage ballot measures said they plan to engage in discussions about how the proposed bans discriminate against same-sex couples. But arguing the merits of gay marriage will not be a prominent element of their efforts.

On Nov. 2, up to 11 states — Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah — face votes on constitutional marriage bans. In Louisiana, voters face a similar measure on Sept. 18.

In Georgia, Michigan and Ohio, opponents of the marriage bans will focus on how the proposals could also outlaw other forms of government recognition for same-sex couples, including domestic partner benefits and civil unions.

A proposed amendment failed in the Michigan Legislature, but is set to appear on the Nov. 2 ballot after citizens gathered more than 450,000 signatures supporting a statewide vote on the amendment.

Trouble with Section B
In Georgia, voters will be faced with the question: “Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and woman.”

The coalition formed to fight the amendment, Georgians Against Discrimination, hasn’t settled on its primary message, but will likely focus on how the second sentence in the amendment — which will not appear on the Nov. 2 ballot — could outlaw domestic partnerships and civil unions, said Deepali Gokhale, a coalition steering committee member.

The second sentence, commonly known as Section B, states that “no union between persons of the same sex shall be recognized by this state as entitled to the benefits of marriage.”

Gokhale said the second portion of the proposed amendment helps their efforts, since it “allows us to focus on something other than gay marriage.”

“We are going to focus a little less on marriage and focus more on the discrimination aspect of the amendment, and about how it will affect the lives of individuals and families in Georgia,” Gokhale said. “I think it makes our strategy stronger because in states that didn’t have [a Section B], they had to focus on whether ‘you gay people’ should be able to marry.”

Joshua Lesser, co-chair of the Georgians Against Discrimination steering committee, said most voters aren’t familiar with Section B and are likely to oppose the amendment once they are educated about it.

“What we have found is that whenever anybody gets to part two of the amendment, even if they aren’t for gay marriage, they find themselves not wanting to support discrimination,” Lesser said.

Amendment opponents in Georgia, Michigan and Ohio said results from early polling numbers and focus groups showed it would be a dead-end effort to try to defeat the measures by focusing on gay couples being allowed to marry.

“If you look at any poll here in Michigan, if you start talking about same-sex marriage, that’s something people are opposed to,” said Howell, from the Coalition for a Fair Michigan. “We’re not going to run away from [talking about] gay stuff during the campaign, but it’s our intent to win, and we’ll do whatever it takes to do that.”

‘Message of humanity’
Kendell and Wolfson both said their personal experiences battling gay marriage ballot initiatives lead them to believe that gay groups must alter how they fight such measures.

“I would never presume to tell someone in a state like Utah, Ohio or Missouri how they should message, but I do think people need to see the faces and hear the voices of those couples and families that will be directly impacted by the proposed amendments,” Kendell said. “That can be rather risky because you worry that it would be more off-putting, but I think we’ve seen that voters can and will respond to a message of humanity.”

Before gay men and lesbians can expect sympathy from mainstream voters, they must work to eliminate stereotypes that allow many Americans to view them as “others,” Kendell said.

“If Joe Smith in St. Louis has a hard time putting food on the family table, he’s not likely to be sympathetic to the lesbian and gay community fighting for the right to marry unless he understands our family has the same struggle his does,” Kendell said.

Before coalitions can begin to convince heterosexual voters to oppose the proposed amendments on the grounds that they are discriminatory, Wolfson said they must first deal with charged emotions many people experience when talking about gay people.

“To [deliver] practical and logical messages, they’ve still got to get people to want to be fair,” Wolfson said. “People have to have some real information of the real families and the fact that this is about gay people and about marriage.”

“People know that on some level, this is a vote about gay people,” Wolfson said. “The cat’s out of the bag.”

Wolfson was an attorney involved in the landmark legal case in Hawaii that said banning gays from marriage was unconstitutional. In that effort, he supported a strategy to defeat a gay marriage ballot measure by focusing on protecting the constitution, as opposed to securing marriage for gay couples.

“That [strategy] was an attempt to run away from the words ‘gay’ and ‘marriage’ to find a message that should resonate, but didn’t,” Wolfson said.

Despite spending $1.4 million fighting Hawaii’s proposed marriage ban in 1998, opponents suffered a resounding loss, 69 percent to 31 percent.

The losses in Hawaii and California helped convince Wolfson that gay marriage supporters must engage the general public in a more direct manner by letting them know who they are and the discrimination they face.

“If we help them to understand the discrimination, then summon them to say the discrimination is wrong, then we can move them,” Wolfson said. “The actual discussion about marriage — heated and charged as it is — is moving the center in our direction.”

Seth Kilbourn, national field director of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest gay rights group, said it is counterproductive to extrapolate any messaging strategies from earlier ballot initiative fights in Hawaii and California, and try to apply them in states currently facing marriage bans.

“I don’t think there are any grand lessons that, in sort of a cookie cutter approach, can be applied to all these other states,” Kilbourn said. “Each state is very different, each proposed ballot measure is written differently and no two states are going to run the exact same kind of campaign.”

If states are considered battleground states in the presidential election, amendment opponents need to argue that the measure is a ploy by conservatives to mobilize their base on Election Day. Yet if organizers believe voters can be swayed by an argument in favor of civil unions, that should be part of the strategy, Kilbourn said.

“We need to employ all of these messages to prevail,” Kilbourn said. “These arguments are what may persuade enough voters by November.”

If amendment opponents spend too much energy trying to win support for marriage equality, they may run out of time to defeat the amendments, Kilbourn said.

“The time frame is just too short to educate and persuade enough voters on the merits of marriage for gays and lesbians,” he said.

Wolfson agreed that focusing on marriage equality would make success all the more unlikely in the states considering the amendments, but said the national fight for gay equality extends beyond the next two or three months.

“I think unfortunately many of the states coming under attack this year are vulnerable,” Wolfson said. “But even in states that are up against these odds, and where it may be difficult to pull out a victory in a three-month election cycle, people can use these battles to increase understanding about gay people and our families, and prepare for the inevitable next round.”

But Kilbourn, from HRC, said gays may have the ability to defeat the amendments in several states, and must adopt practical messages that aid that cause.

“I think campaigns should determine what their actual goals are from the get-go, then plan their campaign strategy from there,” Kilbourn said.

HRC puts money in Ore., Mich. only
Kilbourn said HRC has had contact with the coalitions fighting the bans, but the national organization will focus its resources on helping groups with a clear campaign fund-raising plan in place, and can show “evidence in polling that the campaigns have some chance at winning.”

Kilbourn said efforts in Oregon and Michigan meet those guidelines.

Steven Fisher, HRC communications director, was asked to provide figures detailing how much money HRC contributed to each of the ballot initiative campaigns, but did not do so by press time.

HRC was heavily involved in the recent ballot fight in Missouri, where voters approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage 71 to 29 percent on Aug. 3. The national organization sent field workers and $100,000 to assist the Constitution Defense League, which was leading opposition to the amendment.

Jeff Wunrow, deputy campaign manager for the Constitution Defense League, said the campaign’s messaging strategy was to emphasize current Missouri law banning same-sex marriages and paint the amendment as unnecessary and discriminatory.

national | local | world | arts | classifieds | real estate | about us

© 2008 | A Window Media LLC Publication | Privacy Policy