SALEM, Ore. (AP)
Nov 3 2009, 1:54 PM |
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Gay rights backers kicked off a voter education campaign Monday
aimed at eventually overturning Oregon's ban on same-sex marriage.
Evan
Wolfson of the national gay rights group Freedom to Marry said Monday
he thinks "hearts and minds are changing" and that Oregon voters will
at some point be willing to reverse their 2004 vote banning same-sex
unions.
With states such as Massachusetts and Iowa now
allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, he said, people around the
country "are realizing there is no good reason to exclude them from
marriage."
"They are seeing with their own eyes families
helped and no one hurt," said Wolfson, who traveled from New York to
address rallies in Portland and Eugene.
The announcement of
the Oregon campaign comes as voters in neighboring Washington state are
deciding Tuesday whether to uphold that state's domestic partnership
law. Also Tuesday, voters in Maine are deciding whether to uphold a law
legalizing gay marriage.
In 2004, Oregon voters passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.
The state's largest gay rights organization, Basic Rights Oregon,
thinks next year's election would likely be too soon to take the issue
back to Oregon voters.
Basic Rights officials said Monday they
want to launch a statewide "conversation" with voters on the issue well
in advance of placing something on the ballot, in 2012 or beyond.
"The
heat of a campaign is no time to have a calm, heartfelt conversation
about why civil marriage is so important" to gays and lesbians, said
group's executive director, Jeana Frazzini.
Gay rights
advocates have been encouraged by the legalization of same-sex marriage
in six states: Massachusetts, Iowa, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and New
Hampshire. They believe Oregon voters eventually will be ready to move
in that direction.
The only way for that to happen in Oregon,
though, would be to persuade voters to reverse themselves by repealing
the state's existing constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Tim
Nashif, a conservative political consultant who led the 2004 campaign
to pass Oregon's gay marriage ban, said he's seen nothing to indicate
that the state's voters have had a change of heart on the subject.
In
the states where same-sex marriage has been legalized, he said, it's
been the courts or the legislature that have enacted those laws, not
the voters.
"In California, one of the most socially liberal
states, voters last year overturned a court ruling" legalizing same-sex
unions, Nashif said.
He also said the same coalition of groups
that worked to put Oregon's ban on the 2004 ballot will make a major
effort to defeat any effort to repeal it.
Oregon became one of
the first places to allow gay marriage in 2004 when Multnomah County
moved to legalize it. That lasted about six weeks until a judge ruled
that there was no right to gay marriage under state law, thus
invalidating 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay and lesbian couples.
Then voters approved the statewide constitutional amendment.,
Since
then, the 2007 Legislature approved a domestic partners law giving
same-sex couples some, but not all, of the rights and responsibilities
afforded to married couples.
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