How to Win Back Same-Sex Marriage In California - Voter Registration

I spent three decades as a public affairs and political consultant. I spent a couple of hours at Los Angeles Gay Pride last Sunday.

Being heavily involved right now in our LGBT civil rights movement, it is important to observe what is going on out there. Several hundred thousand people attended the Sunday morning parade and the annual weekend festival. June is Gay Pride month, and there are literally dozens of cities in California that hold Pride weekends throughout June and all summer long.

Last year's Pride was particularity interesting, because much to our surprise, gay marriage had been made legal just weeks earlier, and it was going to take affect days later. What an exciting and historic time that was. What a difference a year makes.

I remember last year that there was no one registering voters the entire weekend of LA Pride. Odd I thought, since one year ago we knew in advance that Proposition 8 was very likely going to be on the November 4th ballot.

Voter registration is an essential element in all major political campaigns. Practically every campaign and every political party has conducted voter registration drives almost going back as far as George Washington. It's basic, nothing really new or innovative. The idea is, to register new voters who will vote with you in order to help your side get more votes than your opponents. Like I said, pretty basic.

This year I went into the Pride Festival to do a little test. I wanted to see what all was going on with voter registration.

I had assumed that our wonderful LGBT organizations (and they are incredible organizations) would have hundreds of people out registering LGBT voters and all our friends at LA Pride this year. I figured that they would be taking advantage of this mostly younger crowd, and get everyone at Gay Pride registered to vote. After all we very likely will be back on the ballot to repeal Prop 8 in less than 17 months.

As I went to my first LGBT political booth, I asked gently if there was a way to register to vote? A young bewildered volunteer said, "not really sure." I visited the over 20 more LGBT political booths, out of over several hundred at the festival. Sadly, I could not find one voter registration card! Not even one!!!

During my wanderings, I finally met a very nice girl who had heard that the Stonewall Democrats booth had some voter registration forms. She marched me right over there, and I was thinking bingo, but alas, after some searching around they first said "we ran out," then said, "sorry, we don't have any." Then the cute volunteer added, "good idea though."

200,000 to 300,000 LGBT individuals and so many of our friends were in one place, who all agree that marriage equality should return to California. You do the math. Talk about a missed opportunity!!!

I'm pretty certain that at least half of the mostly younger crowd at Pride is not registered to vote yet. Once they do register, they will be voting for let's say 70 more years on many more LGBT issues and for candidates who support us. That's a lot of Novembers and Junes. In California, all new voters have the option of checking a box to have an absentee ballot mailed to their home forever. Vote at home = very high turnout.

It's simple. Elections are won by who gets the most votes. We narrowly lost last year. Let's put on the biggest, most successful most fun voter registration program in California history. Let's give it a catchy name like "Milk the Vote" or "Register for Equality." Then brand it, use our massive volunteer force that has been and continues to be organized, and let's go get 600,000 new LGBT voters and our friends registered now. This new army should be everywhere the next 17 months where there is a gay event, rally, march, college campus and any place that there are more than 25 gay people assembled.

It's a lot of work, but if all our organizations and volunteers get behind "Milk the Vote," or whatever the name is, we can make up the 599,602 votes that we lost by and win next year's election to repeal Prop 8. Let's make sure that California once again leads the way on equality.

I appeal to all our very effective LGBT organizations to work together and make voter registration the number one activity between now and next October 18th (last day to register for the November 2, 2010 election).

Hell, people can even register on line: http://www.sos.ca.gov/nvrc/fedform/ and then just print out the form and mail it in.

We lost by only 4% of the vote last year -- 599,602 votes out of the over 13.4 million cast on Prop 8. What a change from just 8 years earlier when we lost by 23%!

Please, make this the last Pride in California, or anywhere in the country for that matter, where we are not registering voters.

It is the smartest thing that we can be doing now and for our future.

Comments

[NikLA]

Stonewall, Stonewall Young Dems, HRC, EQCA and Log Cabin all were registering voters at their respective booths, along with volunteers floating around. Next year and in the meantime, I encourage you to join these groups and volunteer to do the same.

[RegisteredPride09]

I moved to CA the week before Pride, and was registered by a stonewall vol within 20 min of getting there. I spent the day there are and saw lots of folks doing voter reg all over the place. Don't know where you were Fred, perhaps look a little harder before trashing the good work being done. REPEAL PROP 8!!!

[ez duz it]

Fred - great article! Sometimes the obvious goes unnoticed.

Along the same line, I have a question you or another poster might be able to help me answer: During the summer, I escape from my St. Louis home where I teach and spend my time in a smallish university town with my partner of ten years. There is one local watering hole that is just not our cup of tea, there is no active LGBT life or even a student union. The Lesbian and gay friends we have here developed out of chance meetings at the grogery store, mall or walking the dog. Heck, most of our friends are straight, and are very supportive of us and sincerely wish we could marry.

How might we connect with other people and solicit thier help in supporting marriage equality?
Thanks, again for a timely article.

[jakesinger]

Awesome posting! I'm gonna find a way to register voters here in San Francisco. There must be a few pro-gay potential voters here...

[Jaidit]

This is so true. Pride without voter registration should be unthinkable.

If you're a gay Californian and you didn't vote in the November election, just look in the mirror if you want to blame someone for Prop 8.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

***At what point does the government step in and place a limit on the number of legal spouses you can have?

3?
12?
47?
1,000?***

At no point, since I don't believe in such slippery slope scenarios.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

***Mormons have been arrested and jailed for polygamy and yet it's a tenet of their religion. It strains logic to argue that gays have a right to marriage, but Mormons don't***

Polygamy/polyandry should be legalised too.

Any marriage between consenting adults should be legal and equally recognised as a marriage under the law.

[gaydm]

Take your case to court like we are. If you win then fine I will support it. I do not see how it would effect my gay marriage in the least. And it darn sure would not destroy my marriage.

[gaydm]

The only problem I see with your argument winning is, that government has a problem counting above 2, unless of course you add trilion to the end of that number.

[NoOneSpecial]

At what point does the government step in and place a limit on the number of legal spouses you can have?

3?
12?
47?
1,000?

And if the government is allowed to set a limit -- in direct opposition to how much "personal liberty" you expect to gain out of this -- why can't it say only one spouse, at a time?

Also, may I point out that the question of same-sex marriage in no way invokes a legal argument saying liberty = "quantity.­"

[Michael Shanley]

I think we can all agree the minimum people required to get marriage rights and benefits is two. Any more than two doesn''t gain any additional rights or benefits than two. For this reason there is no logic behind having a marriage defined as three or more because no adfditional benefit is gained. Thus if you want to live with three or more wives so be it, but why would the governemt saction it when no additional benefit is gained?

[fern501]

Whether it is a choice or not to me is irrelevant, marriage has been maintained by a civil society since the French revolution and has nothing to do with religion. If gay people want to get married it shows they love each others enough to do this but it also shows their desire to be a complete part of this civil society.
When you're in cities, Paris, London, N.Y. Chicago, L.A., all cities I've been in and you see a Muslim woman wearing a qitab (a bag over her head) to me this woman rejects our civil society yet we'll all accept that on basis of equality and equal rights or freedom of religion. I wonder what kind of society we live in today when we can't accept people who want to join our society and have the same rights.

[CornetMustich]

It's time for marriage equality and fairness in CA and America.

Are you listening Mr Obama..?

This summer I will be officiating for many couples who are coming to CT to wed from CA, VA, LA, NY and DC because they aren't allowed to wed in their own home states just yet.

Kudos to New England and Iowa.

Cheers, Joe Mustich, Justice of the Peace
Washington CT USA

[gaydm]

I have some questions for you if I may? Where in the Civil Marriage contract is sexual activity required, or demanded, or is it expected? Do you have to prove that you will have sex in order to obtain a license? If a married couple decides to never have sex with one another, does the State have the right to end the marriage against the wishes of the couple?
If Sex is not an issue for obtaining or maintaining a Civil Marriage license, then why is the genders pf the consenting parties a state issue?

[fern501]

One of the reason of prop 8's success is that most people thought that of course California would have same sex marriage, till the numbers came in.

[ChampLessFuzzy]

Yes, complacency true enough. And some confusion of the ballot wording I've heard. Neighbors of mine, for instance, got it in their minds that "Yes" on 8 meant yes on same-sex marriage. Their son is gay. Better education and clarification of the issue was needed, but you're correct, most thought it would never pass in California so let up their guard. A big learning.

[shadow man]

Homosexuality is not a choice. Just like you don't choose the color of your skin, you cannot choose whom you are sexually attracted to. If you can, sorry, but you are not heterosexual, you are bi-sexual. Virtually all major psychological and medical experts agree that sexual orientation is NOT a choice. Most gay people will tell you its not a choice. Common sense will tell you its not a choice. While science is relatively new to studying homosexuality, studies tend to indicate that its biological.

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/03/differential-brain-activation.pdf
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/dn14146-gay-brains-structured-like-those-of-the-opposite-sex.html
Gay, Straight Men's Brain Responses Differ
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,155990,00.html
http://www.livescience.com/health/060224_gay_genes.html
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w27453600k586276/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/06/16/172/

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that homosexuality is not a choice. Sexual orientation is generally a biological trait that is determined pre-natally, although there is no one certain thing that explains all of the cases. "Nurture" may have some effect, but for the most part it is biological.

[superstition]

It would also help to have a party that actually represents us, instead of one that wants our money and then compares our marriages to incest and pedophilia.

[Tannim]

Too bad this guy never checked the Libertarian booth, because when we're there, we ALWAYS have voter registration cards on hand, as we were and did at LA Pride this past weekend.

[truth at bugmenot]

Mormons have been arrested and jailed for polygamy and yet it's a tenet of their religion. It strains logic to argue that gays have a right to marriage, but Mormons don't.

If we remove religion from the state's involvement with marriage, which I think is a good idea, how you can say polygamy voluntarily entered into by consenting adults is a problem? Many cultures observe polygamous relations today under foreign laws and such people who move to the United States must give up their religion, culture and relationships.

If we're say that disallowing gay marriage is unconstitutional as an equal protection violation and perhaps also as an improper imposition of religious values on people who are citizens and do not subscribe to those values, I cannot imagine how anyone can argue that polygamy shouldn't also be legal and observed by the state when it is voluntarily entered into by consenting adults.

You can't say gay marriage should be legal and polygamy shouldn't. It's supporting gay marriage, but only between two men and not allowing it between two women. If you remove religious rules from state sanctioned marriage laws, you can't very well impose some other discriminatory provision just because it "feels right."

We may as well deal with this all at once for intellectual consistency. If we allow gay marriage, we have to allow polygamy too. I can just imagine gay Catholics protesting against polygamy because it constitutes discrimination against some other group (Mormons).

[Tannim]

Unfortunately, polygamy was ruled as a limit in 1878 as part of the Reynolds case that established the separation of church and state as the interpretation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.

From the religious standpoint, I see nothing wrong with polygamy, assuming a guy wants more wives to nag him.

OTOH, polygamy from a legal standpoint creates a property mess unless proper prenups are created and followed.

Considering that Obama just threw the GLBT community under the bus Friday, and the Stonewalls were oblivious to it, I'm surprised they had any takers at all. One of these days the GLBT community will realize that their only real political friends are the Libertarians.

(BTW, I worked the LP Booth at Pride, so I know we had registration cards, because I was retrieving them from the breeze blowing them off the table myself! Mr.Karger wasn't looking very hard.)

[superstition]

Marriage is pair bonding. It's scientifically known that the strongest form of human intimate relationship is the pair bond.

There are two sexual orientations (bisexuality is debatable and irrelevant to the point I'm making). Because there are two sexual orientations, there are same-sex and opposite-sex pair bonds.

There is no sexual orientation for multiple partners. This is why polygamy and incest are irrelevant to the question of legal recognition for same-sex unions.

[fern501]

Are you sure you can sexually satisfy just one woman? I think you're full of it.

[shadow man]

Who the two people getting married are, is a completely different question in law than how many people can marry. The states have all agreed to prohibit polygamous marriage. They have given numerous public policy reasons and the prohibition stands.

Equal protect applies so long as a rational public policy reason exists to prohibit certain marriages.­What is the rational public policy reason for prohibiting a gay couple from marrying? Six states and seven jurisdictions have said there isn't one.

No court or legislature has made a finding that letting two people of the same-sex marry will somehow permit more than two people of any gender to marry. Allowing prisoners to marry and allowing inter-racial couples to marry didn't make polygamy acceptable and it didn't make all married couples criminals or bi-racial. You have no point, you are relying on assumptions and "what ifs" that have been proven to be myths and false. There is no evidence showing gay marriage having a higher chance of leading to polygamy than heterosexual marriage.

All 50 states and the federal government have said there is a public policy reason to prohibit polygamous marriages. With 5 years of gay marriage in Massachusetts, no one has asked to marry more than one other person in Massachusetts, let alone say the 14th amendment of the US Constitution gives them that right.

The slippery slope is a myth meant as a scare tactic that's quickly becoming obsolete.

[ez duz it]

The issue at hand is two people, regardless of sexual orientation, being able to enter a marriage contract with all the responsibilities required of, as well as the rights and privileges conferred by, Federal law.

Because two same-sex people wish to have the freedom to marry in a legal manner equal to two opposite-sex people, the introduction of more than two partners in a marriage is logically outside the scope of this particular discussion.

[TryToBeFlexible]

You are so right. I tried to get an LGBT friend of mine at work to register to vote here in Florida for years. I even got the forms, filled them out, addressed and stamped the envelope so he would only have to sign it. He was afraid this would make him eligible for jury duty! (I believe in Florida you get on the rolls when you get a driver's license).

Later, he told me that he was participating in gay activism because he attended gay pride every year.

????? That's just a street party!