Prop 8 Backers Hail Court Ruling
Bay Area Reporter
by Dan Aiello
May 28, 2009

Backers of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban that was upheld by the state Supreme Court Tuesday, May 26, expressed their approval of the decision and vowed to continue educating state residents about what they call traditional marriage.

"It's a victory not only for marriage but for the process itself," Andrew Pugno, general counsel of Protectmarriage.com, said at a news conference Tuesday in Sacramento.

Ron Prentice, CEO of the California Family Council and chairman of Protectmarriage.com said he expected, "There will be dancing in the streets throughout California tonight," as supporters of Prop 8 rejoice over the ruling.

In fact, protests by marriage equality supporters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and elsewhere Tuesday seemed to draw larger crowds.

According to Prentice, the Yes on 8 campaign's "grassroots coalition" of churches "and other organizations" has remained active and cognizant of the activities of their opponents since the November election.

"We're not resting on our laurels," said Pugno. "We're moving forward on an aggressive education and outreach program to the people of California to talk about the benefits of traditional marriage. We will be working in the ethnic communities throughout California, in every media market and geography throughout the state, in the churches, with young people, everybody that we can reach to talk about why this institution is worth preserving. We continue with very substantial organizational activities, and that is all just in preparation for a future campaign, not related to the campaign, per se, but if there is a campaign then we'll re-form a campaign committee and we'll raise the millions of dollars that are necessary to fight and we'll look forward to engaging in that debate."

Gay rights supporters are gearing up for a return to the ballot, possibly as early as November 2010. [See story, page 1.]

While the court upheld Prop 8, it also let the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California last year stand.

Questioned about the court decision to uphold the validity of the estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages, Pugno challenged the figure.

"That number has been put out there without anyone checking its validity," he said, suggesting that the number was potentially much lower.

Brad Sears, a researcher at UCLA's Williams Institute, responded that the 18,000 figure that the institute publicized last year is based on a survey it conducted of California counties in order to estimate the number of same-sex marriages. California marriage licenses do not collect information about the sex of the spouses, he noted.

Yes on 8 officials indicated they probably would not take action to try to have those marriages invalidated.

"Our focus in the campaign was never the few number of couples, whether it was 5,000 or 18,000, that were getting married. We didn't spend a minute of our time in the campaign talking about those couples," said Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Yes on 8. "Our entire campaign was on the future of marriage."

"We're proud of the campaign we ran and very pleased with the outcome," Schubert added.

Schubert was noncommittal when discussing a possible repeal effort by same-sex marriage supporters being launched in 2010 or 2012.

"The hardest election to win was 2008," he said. "The other side had everything going for them, from a political perspective. They had this tremendous cry for change. They had an exceptionally unpopular conservative Republican president. They had a very popular Democratic presidential candidate attracting unprecedented numbers of young people to the polls. They had the advantage of a no vote – which is worth 5 to 10 points – so they really had everything going for them in 2008. So, I'm confident we will win any future election. I won't pretend to say it won't be a hard fought campaign, it will be a difficult campaign, but the dynamics, the overall atmospherics, of the race will be easier in 2010 certainly then it was in 2008 and in 2012 we're not going to have this huge turnout of voters."

One reporter asked Schubert what he thought of the opposition's argument that time is on their side.

"Well, that's there talking point and they're sticking to it," Schubert said. "What the evidence shows is there's less support today for gay marriage then there was last November. A PPIC poll that came out a couple of months ago showed support for gay marriage had dropped by about 6 points."

"We actually had won about 45 percent of the young vote," Schubert added, indicating that young voters were not as solidly in the opponents' camp as commonly believed.