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Momentum Toward Marriage Equality Across Country, Still Awaiting Final Results in California

National Gains Celebrated, While Votes are Still Counted in California

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: November 5, 2008
MEDIA CONTACT:
Evan Wolfson, Executive Director
212-851-8418
evan@freedomtomarry.org
Mobile: 646-263-5552

New York, November 5, 2008 —While we still await results on California’s Prop 8 with several million ballots still uncounted, disappointment and pain over the anti-gay attacks in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida, as well as California are balanced by so much good news from around the country, including the dawn of a new era in Washington, D.C.  Pro-equality candidates for state office and Congressional seats won elections across the country and soon will take office, joining activists’ renewed efforts to continue the fight for equality in each state and our great nation. 

Celebration also follows the defeat of the attempt by anti-gay groups in Connecticut to try and call a constitutional convention so they could write marriage discrimination into the state constitution.  Sixty-percent of Connecticut voters cast ballots to support their high court’s decision to uphold the freedom to marry and now, marriage equality is preserved in Connecticut.  Same-sex couples can begin applying for marriage licenses on November 12th.

“Californians were bombarded by a massive $40 million anti-equality campaign of deceptive scare-tactics and lies. No matter the final vote on Prop 8, the campaign will not be the last word,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry and author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality and Gay People's Right to Marry.  “Public opinion moves in favor of fairness, we have truth on our side, and 2009 will see advances toward marriage equality.”

Legal groups in California today filed a challenge to Proposition 8, in case it passes, telling the State Supreme Court that the state’s “initiative procedure cannot be used to undermine the constitution's core commitment to equality for everyone.”

“The effort to defeat Prop 8 and attacks on gay families in other states inspired an unprecedented and tremendous outpouring of volunteers, donors, and supporters, gay and non-gay, from across California and around the country,” said Wolfson.  “With the dawn of a new political era in America, this diverse and engaged movement for justice will seize opportunities to redouble the conversations that move people to fairness, win victories in 2009, and soon restore the freedom to marry in California as we advance toward marriage equality for all.”

 

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Freedom to Marry is the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Launched in 2003, Freedom to Marry is headed by Evan Wolfson, nationally recognized as a central "architect of the marriage equality movement." Freedom to Marry guides and focuses this social justice movement on a nationwide level, serving as a strategy and support center for national, state, and local partners, a catalyst that drives and shapes the national debate on marriage equality, and an alliance-builder fostering support from non-gay allies.