Aug 13, 2004  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

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 ...