CA Anti-Marriage Initiative Support Weak

California's latest Field Poll found 51% of respondents would vote for the "Limit on Marriage" initiative on the March 7, 2000 ballot, which would prohibit legal recognition of same-gender marriages another state may someday perform. That's about the level of support found in the October Field Poll, and a decline from the 57% support the same poll found in August. The latest survey of 475 likely voters found that 40% would vote against Proposition 22, known as the Knight Initiative for its proponent state Senator Pete Knight (R-Palmdale), who failed repeatedly to enact similar measures in the state legislature. Nine percent of respondents were undecided, but Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo told the "San Francisco Chronicle" that undecideds tend to vote "no."

Perhaps most significantly, only 27% of respondents had actually heard anything about the initiative; although several million dollars have been raised, major media campaigning is not yet visibly underway. It seems unlikely, though, that campaigning can bring this proposal anything like the landslide victories measures against gay and lesbian marriage won in Hawai'i and Alaska in 1998.

CO Anti-Marriage Initiative Past First Hurdle

A proposed ballot initiative to prohibit legal recognition of same-gender marriages another state may someday perform was approved by Colorado's Secretary of State's title-setting board on December 15. If it survives a 30-day challenge period, its proponents, Coloradans for Traditional Marriage, will have to collect almost 64,000 signatures to qualify it for the ballot. A similar proposal was rejected by the state legislature last year.

The statewide gay and lesbian civil rights advocacy group Equality Colorado is determined to oppose the anti-marriage proposal, remembering all too well the divisive anti-gay sentiment stirred in 1992 when the notorious Amendment 2 was on the ballot. That measure, intended to prohibit and overturn any local ordinances recognizing lesbians, gays or bisexuals as a minority group, succeeded with voters only to be stalled in the courts and ultimately struck down in 1996 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

No DP Registrations in TX

Since 1993, the Travis County, Texas clerk's office has been accepting and filing statements in which domestic partners swear to their commitment to each other, most of them employees of the City of Austin seeking to qualify for its domestic partner benefits. It's been the only Texas county to do so, but earlier this year San Antonio gay activist Michael McGowan asked the Bexar County clerk if the same could be done there. Conscientious clerk Gerry Rickhoff took the question to Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, who wrote to Texas Attorney-General John Cornyn. On December 16, Cornyn publicly released his opinion -- a resounding "no" that will affect all 254 Texas counties.

Cornyn described the "declaration of domestic partnership" as neither "required or permitted by law to be recorded" because they are used by those seeking to "alter their political or juridical relations with others, or to impose legal burdens upon third parties" without legal standing. He also wrote that even if they were filed, they do not "create a marital relation under Texas law," even though the state recognizes common-law as well as civil marriages by heterosexuals. A disappointed McGowan said that Cornyn had missed an opportunity "to show some compassion." Now Travis County District Attorney Ken Oden will have to carefully review its registry process to see if it can continue, but Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby of Texas executive director Diane Hardy-Garcia believes it will.