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If you were hoping to cast your vote next year in regards to gay marriage in our state, it looks like you'll have to wait: Equality California has announced that they won't pursue a ballot measure to repeal Prop 8 in 2012.
Instead, the group is launching an education and messaging campaign that will seek to "overcome the psychological, cultural and emotional triggers around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and kids that continue to impede securing full equality, including the freedom to marry," they said in a statement released today.
"For decades, opponents of equality have used prejudicial and dehumanizing myths about LGBT people being a harm to kids and families as a weapon against us in the legislature, in the courts and at the ballot," said Equality California Executive Director Roland Palencia. "We have to address this wrong to effectively have this 'Breakthrough Conversation' in the public sphere and confront major societal barriers that prevent us from securing full and lasting equality, including marriage."
The group cited the fact that while there's more popular support for same-sex marriage in California than there was when Prop 8 passed, it still hovers somewhere around 50 percent. That means that a very expensive, very time-consuming ballot campaign could potentially be a huge waste of resources; a waste that was clear from the get-go.
So the organization, which was at the forefront of opposing Prop 8 in 2008, will bide its time and work to make sure that victory is more certain.
In other words, it's a smart, well thought-out, patient political move. Imagine that.
