Dark of Knight.

A defeat on gay marriage in California raises questions about how to handle the issue

The battle was always an uphill one, but when the votes were counted, just how tough the fight was became clear. On March 7, 61% of voters in California approved Proposition 22, a measure limiting recognition of marriage to unions between a man and a woman. The measure, known as the Knight initiative (after its sponsor, state senator Pete Knight), could pave the way for a new rash of antigay ballot measures and raises hard questions about the visibility of gays and lesbians in electoral battles over gay issues.

"Certainly it's fair to say that we're extremely disappointed at the significant margin of victory for Proposition 22," says Kate Kendell, codirector of the No on Knight campaign, the group formed to oppose the initiative. "Viewed in the worst light, it seems clear that a significant majority of California voters do not believe that lesbians and gay men are entitled to equality and legal recognition of our relationships."

The magnitude of the loss in California was comparable to the results for 1998 electoral referenda on gay marriage in Hawaii and Alaska. In all three cases the public rejected gay marriage by wide margins. Indeed, in California, support for the Knight initiative cut across almost all demographic lines, including race, income, and gender.

"We had expected to do better among women and Democrats, and that just didn't happen," says Kendell. In one of the few positive signs to come out of the landslide, voters under the age of 30 decisively rejected the initiative. "When the under-30 voters are in a position of power in 20 years, this isn't going to be an issue anymore," says Kendell, who is also executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a legal group. "If we can just hang on long enough, the right to marry is achievable." In addition, several San Francisco Bay area counties were the only ones in the state to reject the measure outright.

The margin of loss seemed the result of a confluence of events, some of which were outside the control of the No on Knight campaign. Campaign organizers had been counting on a tight race between Democratic presidential candidates Bill Bradley and Al Gore to lure Democrats to the polls, Democrats being more likely to oppose the measure. Instead, as Bradley's campaign waned, the Republican match between Sen. John McCain and Texas governor George W. Bush heated up. Exit polls showed that Republicans supported the Knight initiative by a margin of 6-1.

Moreover, the week before the election, McCain attacked the "evil" influence of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in the Republican Party. Although McCain later backed down from his remarks, religious conservatives turned out in force to vote against him.

"That singular fit of pique by McCain did more to secure the margin of victory for Proposition 22 than anything else," says Kendell. "After he did that, the radical Christian right decided to drop 3 million voter guides the Sunday before the election."

However, some activists complainedthat the campaign failed to capitalize on opportunities to portray supporters of the measure as extremists. Among those bankrolling the Knight initiative was Howard Ahmanson, who has been a major force in California right-wing politics. He once served on the board of a religious-right group whose founder advocates the death penalty for homosexuality.

"I suggested that they need to bring out the fact that not only does Ahmanson not want to see homosexuals marry, but he wants to kill them," says Jerry Sloan, head of Project Tocsin, a group in Sacramento that monitors the religious right. "The No on Knight people didn't want to talk about it."

Sloan and other activists also argue that the campaign against the measure largely avoided gay relationships in particular and gay issues in general, focusing instead on the argument that the measure was divisive and unnecessary. In fact, some ads emphasized that since gay marriage is not legal anywhere, voters had nothing to worry about--a message that some activists felt reinforced the idea that gay marriage is a threat. As a result, the public did not get to see gay couples talking about their relationships, which could have helped educate the public in the long run.

Kendell acknowledges that campaign strategists debated just what tack to take in their efforts. "Certainly that was part of our internal dialogue for those of us on the board," she says. "It's important for us to remember that when we made the decisions around the approval of the message, polls showed we were within striking distance. All I can say, from the bottom of my heart, is [that] those of us making these decisions did the very best we could, based on the information we had."

The fight over Proposition 22 is likely to lead to future skirmishes. Conservatives in California are talking about another ballot measure this fall to repeal domestic-partnership legislation for state workers, signed into law last year by Gov. Gray Davis. In neighboring Nevada the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage is pushing a measure similar to Proposition 22. Meanwhile, the debate over gay marriage continues in Vermont, where the state supreme court ruled in December that the state legislature must grant gay couples the same rights as married couples. On Town Meeting Day, held the same day as the California election, voters in more than 50 towns were asked their opinion on gay marriage. In not a single town did a majority approve of it.

As for Kendell, the loss in California proves just how tough it will be to change the public's mind on gay marriage. Yet she sees good signs in the midst of the defeat.

"I think it's a fair question to ask, Was this battle worth it, given the outcome?" she says. "I think the answer lies more in what the Yes on 22 people did than what our campaign did. There were no ads equating gays with pedophilia, no making a mockery of our relationships. I think we should take great comfort in the fact that they had to run a `kinder, gentler' campaign in order to win. That speaks volumes about how far we've come in terms of public understanding and consciousness about who we are in our lives."

RELATED ARTICLE: LESBIAN LEGISLATORS

Four women promise change in California come November

Despite the crushing approval of an anti-gay-marriage ballot measure, the California primary was a watershed for lesbian candidates for the state legislature,

Assembly woman Sheila James Kuehl is poised to become the state's first lesbian state senator, After having won the nomination in her heavily Democratic Los Angeles-area district, she is expected to sail to an easy victory in November, Assembly woman Carole Migden of San Francisco also is expected to win reelection easily in her San Francisco district, In addition, Los Angeles city councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who is unopposed for the November race, has all but secured a slot in the state assembly, San Diego city councilwoman Christine Kehoe is well positioned to win an assembly seat as well,

If they are all victorious in November, it will double the number of lesbians in the legislature, bringing the total to four,

"It's important for people to see that Carole and I were not a fluke," says Kuehl, who in 1994 was the first openly gay person elected to the legislature, "It's also important for people to see the variety of the lesbian candidates, We all have totally different styles,"

Brian Bond, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, says that if elected, the lesbian legislators will provide a strong "firewall" against attacks on gays and lesbians both in California and nationally,

"These triumphs are historic in their own right--but they are all the more important in light of the passage of [the] divisive ballot measure," Bond says, "The gay and lesbian community will now have more open representation in California to stand as a bulwark against the discrimination surrounding Proposition 22,"--Lee Condon