The Yes on Proposition 3 campaign is confident California voters will decide November 5 to remove language prohibiting same-sex marriage from the state constitution. While the campaign lacks the big bucks and involvement of religious leaders that the Proposition 8 fight had 16 years ago, attitudes among voters seem to have shifted toward LGBTQ equality.
"Obviously, the polls show a strong majority supporting enshrining freedom to marry in California's constitution," Tony Hoang, a gay man who is the executive director of statewide LGBTQ rights group Equality California, told the Bay Area Reporter in an October 15 phone interview.
Indeed, a PPIC statewide survey conducted August 29-September 9 shows 68% of likely voters voting yes on the measure — including 84% of Democrats, 69% of independents, and 37% of Republicans.
Hoang said that the campaign — for which EQCA has raised $2.5 million thus far — has been largely an informative one. (Nathan Click, a gay man who is the spokesperson for Yes on 3, said the goal is to spend $3 million.)
Click stated that California Governor Gavin Newsom will be in digital ads for Prop 3 next week. Newsom had told the B.A.R. earlier this year he'd do "whatever I can do" for the measure. Ads on Instagram featuring happy couples have already started airing.
Prop 3 would excise from the state's governing document the "zombie" anti-same-sex-marriage language that 2008's Proposition 8 embedded in it. Prop 8, passed by voters 16 years ago, was ultimately found unconstitutional — same-sex marriage became legal in the Golden State in 2013 — but the ballot language remains.
The Legislature by a bipartisan vote last year passed the constitutional amendment that became Prop 3, the Freedom to Marry initiative, on this year's fall ballot.
"It's our job [as voters] to know why it's on the ballot and what Prop 3 actually does," Hoang said. "As folks read the ballot language, a strong majority of Californians across the state support enshrining freedom to marry in the state constitution."
A 2013 United States Supreme Court decision ended the enforcement of Prop 8. However, concerns the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges — which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide — have renewed the need for removing the Prop 8 language from the state constitution to protect same-sex marriage in California.
LGBTQ leaders in California became alarmed following U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' words in a concurrence to the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.
Thomas, appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the high court, wrote that it "should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." Griswold v. Connecticut was a 1965 ruling that people have a constitutional right to access contraceptives; Lawrence v. Texas was a 2003 ruling that overturned laws prohibiting sexual relations between people of the same sex, as well some laws against oral or rectal intercourse between members of the opposite sex; Obergefell is the same-sex marriage case.
In response to Thomas' warnings at the federal level in 2022, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats shepherded the Respect for Marriage Act into law later that year with bipartisan support.
The new law repealed the discriminatory so-called Defense of Marriage Act that was passed in 1996 but had key provisions struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 (Section 3, U.S. v. Windsor) and 2015 (Section 2, Obergefell v. Hodges). The law requires the federal government and all states and territories to recognize the validity of same-sex and interracial civil marriages performed anywhere in the U.S. Interracial marriage has been legal nationwide since a 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia.
Prop 3 campaign
Prop 3 proponents say the amendment will also protect interracial marriage.
The Prop 3 campaign has had its stumbles. The campaign had featured an opposite-sex, interracial couple as the lead image on its website earlier this year, bringing to mind the unsuccessful Prop 8 campaign that didn't showcase gay or lesbian couples in its ads. (Subsequent to the B.A.R.'s reporting on the matter, it became one of several images featured on the website alongside same-sex couples.)
Click said that the campaign is working on learning from the mistakes of the No on Prop 8 campaign 16 years ago.
"The Prop 8 campaign wasn't reaching communities of color and wasn't showing different communities," Click said in a phone interview. "Our campaign has been really intentional about showcasing the diversity of California."
EQCA has taken the lead at connecting with those diverse communities, Hoang said.
"We've been working with the [Yes on 3] campaign team to plan and implement a strategy for the campaign," he said, adding that the strategy has been to inform voters about why Prop 3 is on the ballot through advertising in LGBTQ media and messaging from the over 50 members of the Yes on 3 steering committee, which is seeking to get the word out to the Asian American, Jewish, Latino, and Black communities.
For example, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area is one of the organizations on the steering committee. Tyler "Tye" Gregory, a gay man who is executive director of the council, spoke on the matter at Sha'ar Zahav, San Francisco's LGBTQ synagogue in the Mission Dolores neighborhood. Gregory said, "This is an issue of religious freedom to vote for Prop 3."
"We're educating Jewish voters across the state about why this is so important, and we are making sure California voters know there are religious communities like ours that are supporting same-sex marriage," he said in a phone interview. "There are a lot of lessons to learn from the Prop 8 fight — that many of the detractors were on the other side of that fight. When we talk about religious freedom there are many religious communities, like the Jewish community, that support same-sex marriage."
Another group on the steering committee is Courage California. Executive Director Irene Kao, who is queer and based in Oakland, said that it is "helping gather stories and storytellers of people who have of course gotten married since Prop 8 was overturned to help give a human face to this campaign, and we're making sure a lot of partners and voters know this is on the ballot."
Kao said that Courage California is sending its members to virtual text banking that the Yes on 3 campaign has set up.
Click explained that text banking is the most "cost effective" way to reach voters.
"That's been the case in elections for the past 10 years in California," he said. "Texting is actually the easiest way to get folks together."
Gregory said the JCRC is also involved in phone and text banking.
"We're doing a couple phone and text banking weekends, and we've been encouraging congregations across the state to talk about the importance of Prop 3 in their local communities," he said.
Kao said that she hasn't "heard of any misinformation."
"There seems to be less visible opposition" to same-sex marriage than in 2008, she said. Still, "I think a lot of people are unaware Prop 8 is still on the books, and people are unaware there is a ballot measure about marriage equality this year. ... It's a pretty straightforward campaign, and I'm pretty hopeful it's going to pass and pass with a wide majority."
The ballot statement against Prop 3 was written by the California Family Council, whose website states its mission is "advancing God's design for life, family and liberty through California's church, capitol and culture."
The statement reads: "Proposition 3 removes all rules for marriage, opening the door to child marriages, incest, and polygamy. It changes California's constitution even though same-sex marriage is already legal. By making moms and dads optional, it puts children at risk. This careless measure harms families and society. Vote No on Proposition 3."
That's not true, according to Click.
"These are desperate lies from the same groups who have been working for decades to deny marriage rights to LGBTQ+ Californians," he stated. "Californians won't be fooled."
The California Family Council didn't return a request for comment.
Salvatore Cordileone, San Francisco's Roman Catholic archbishop, was a leading voice in the campaign to ban same-sex marriage 16 years ago, when he was a prelate in San Diego. Reached for comment October 15, a spokesperson for Cordileone stated, "Rather than offering a counterpoint to a proposition, the bishops in California are pointing people to the comprehensive understanding of marriage and family as articulated in the Radiate Love initiative that is underway across dioceses in California for the next year."
The initiative is meant to celebrate heterosexual marriage, stating that "the love of husbands and wives images the love between Jesus and his Church, as both spouses are called to lay down their lives for the other and their children."
People interested in virtual text banking can sign up on the Yes on 3 website.
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