'As Goes California, So Goes the Nation'

By Mike Swift


Mercury News

Article Launched: 10/29/2008 06:25:35 PM PDT


"As goes California," San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a jubilant speech after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, "so goes the rest of the nation."

Both supporters and opponents of the intense, $60 million-plus battle over Proposition 8 are using those exact words to argue that the same-sex marriage ballot measure is a cultural watershed that will resonate far beyond California for years to come.

Gay marriage hasn't been nearly the force in the presidential race this year it was in 2004, when voters in 13 states approved bans on same-sex marriage. But with the issue on the ballot in California, Florida and Arizona in 2008, more Americans could vote on same-sex marriage next week at any time ever, if projections for a very heavy presidential turnout are realized.

As the most populous state, and arguably the most culturally influential, both sides in the Prop. 8 campaign say what ever California decides will affect gay rights across the nation for years, regardless of what happens in Florida and Arizona. California will be the first state where voters get to weigh-in on full marriage rights that have already been bestowed by judges. In that sense, Prop. 8 will be the first time Americans vote on whether to eliminate an existing right.

"I think this is the most important fight of at least a generation," said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

For Prop. 8 supporters who feel the ballot measure is a line in the sand defending "traditional marriage" as being only between a man and a woman, the stakes are just as high.

"This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon," Charles Colson, the former Nixon administration official turned evangelical leader, said in a video that is being quoted by pastors around the state. On Saturday some of the nation's best known evangelical leaders are hoping to fill Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego for a rally on behalf of the proposed ban.

Lou Engle is the charismatic founder of TheCall, an evangelical 12-hour gathering of prayer and fasting with a strong following among young people, will be one of the evangelical leaders at the rally , along with James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

That combination of leaders "is extraordinary. It just tells about the significance of the moment and the real need to pray," Engle, whose ministry is based in Kansas City, said in an interview Wednesday. "I spoke recently with a man from a Muslim country, who said to me, 'Lou, we're praying for you all over the world, for what you're doing, because if same-sex marriage stands in California, it will sweep all over the world.' "

Despite the votes in Arizona and Florida, "California is the focus, because everybody knows that California is the influential one," Engle said.

The global reach of Silicon Valley is another means California has to spread its influence on gay marriage, a senior leader of one prominent Christian group said.

By publicly opposing Prop. 8, companies like Google and Apple have "irritated" people across the country who buy their products, said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based group that has donated more than $350,000 to back Prop. 8. Apple last week said it would contribute $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign, and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have made large individual donations.

The issue "has become national in part because those corporations have made it so," Earll said. "People may think twice about buying that iPod."

And Newsom, the politician who began the battle that turned into Prop. 8 when he began doing same-sex weddings in city hall in 2004, chose Google Wednesday as a place to campaign against the ballot measure during the crucial last days of the campaign.

Standing in shirt-sleeves before a standing-room-only crowd of 300 notable for its diversity except for that almost everyone was under 35, and had an open laptop in front of them, Newsom delivered an old-fashioned stump speech against Prop. 8. The ballot measure, he told the enthusiastic Googlers, could be the first time in the nation's history where a constitution was amended to take existing rights away from people instead of adding to them.

"California is a bellwether state," Newsom said in an interview after a short meeting with Brin and Page. "California was the first state in the United States to overturn the laws against interracial marriage. It took 19 years for the rest of the country to come around to that point of view."

Newsom's speech will be on YouTube, and the mayor said he said he decided to speak at Google partly because of its "viral" reach, far beyond Silicon Valley.

"You saw everyone there with their computers; everyone there with blogs, everyone there that's able to distribute, to an extraordinarily large network, their views," he said.

One measure of the importance of Prop. 8 is the amount of money donated to the ballot measure — an amount certain to top $60 million — which Newsom said could be the nation's most expensive this year outside the presidential campaign.

But the state's influence goes far beyond money.

"California has enormous influence because so many of the millions of people who live here came from somewhere else," Kendell said. "The influence of California is not just its size, it's the depth and breadth of the human relationships that California residents have with so many people who live in every other corner of the nation."