Kate Kendell's contributions to the queer civil rights movement have been enormous. Nonetheless, we must take strong issue with her comments in last week's Bay Area Reporter. In her interview with the B.A.R., Kate argued that 2010 would be too soon to take same-sex marriage back to the ballot, stating that if marriage equality proponents returned to the ballot in 2010 and lost, the damage to our community would be "devastating."
Kate, right about so many things, is dead wrong about this. Assuming the California Supreme Court upholds Proposition 8, a sufficient number of signatories may well put marriage equality before voters again in 2010 – whether or not our community's leaders approve. Should an insufficient number of Californians vote for it, the measure will fail. Disappointing? Of course. But, devastating? Absolutely not.
Quite the contrary, going forward in 2010, win or lose, offers us a tremendous opportunity to channel the significant energies of so many groups and individuals who have been mobilized since Prop 8's passage. It is an opportunity we should not miss.
Implicit in the argument against 2010 is the wrong-headed notion that the full scope of our civil equality will be defined by a single ballot measure. History shows us that is simply not the case.
In 1989, Supervisor Harry Britt put domestic partners on the ballot. The initiative failed. But from Yes on S emerged a group of activists who could not be stopped. With leadership from Harry Britt and Carole Migden, we gathered the signatures to put "Yes on K" on the 1990 ballot. And we won. We had finally secured the simple right to visit our partners in the hospital, to live together without fear of eviction.
In 1991, the Traditional Values Coalition took us back to the ballot box. And we won again (the second Prop K). But of course the struggle had only begun.
San Francisco is a good model for how political adversity presents opportunities – not devastation – in building a successful LGBT movement. Beginning as far back as the late 1970s, activists in San Francisco were at the forefront of political fights for gay rights, employment protections, domestic partnerships, AIDS funding, the groundbreaking equal benefits ordinance and more. Not all of those battles initially succeeded. But the net effect of wins and losses – including at the ballot box – was a politically sophisticated movement that has elevated LGBT leaders to unprecedented heights in elective and appointed office and has brought our community for the first time in history within sight of full legal equality. The fight for marriage equality offers us the opportunity to build and project our political power statewide. We owe it to all the queer kids growing up across this state today to seize each and every such opportunity we are presented.
If the San Francisco experience tells us anything, it is that we should not approach the vindication of our civil rights as though it is something that can be won in a single shot. Surely, our oppressors could wish for nothing better than a chance to "devastate" the cause of hated homosexuals in a single election. But the truth is, our fight for equality is bigger than a single election (or even a single issue) and we will not be deterred if voters hand us one defeat, or two, or even 20.
Moreover, each election in which queer issues are on the ballot offers us opportunities to change not just politics and law but culture as well, to project images of queer life and queer hope deep into our California heartland, into Fresno and Bakersfield and all the other cities and towns where coming out, not to say organizing politically, is an act of massive courage.
Of course, prudence dictates that we be realistic about our prospects for near-term success on the issue of marriage equality. Irrespective of whether the marriage issue is next presented to voters in 2010, 2012 or later, we will have already lost the inherent advantage of the status quo. Instead of the strategically easier "No" votes we sought against Prop 8, we will carry the affirmative burden of winning "Yes" votes next time.
Ultimately, however, we will win. And each time we use a ballot initiative to organize our community, to re-introduce ourselves to our straight neighbors, to come out of the closet on a massive scale, we get closer to that win. Here in California, the movement for LGBT equality is more energized and determined than ever before in its history, and that is a direct result of Proposition 8 and its aftermath. Retreat is off the table; delay should be, too. Because a movement that doesn't move is no movement at all.
Rafael Mandelman is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. Carol Stuart was volunteer coordinator on San Francisco's first two domestic partner propositions, Yes on S and Yes on K; and a co-author of the Equal Benefits Ordinance.