Lavender Law: Beat Prop 8, Tip the Domino

If Californians reject a ballot measure on Nov. 4 that would ban same-sex marriage, Matthew Coles believes dominoes would begin to fall all around the country.

Speaking at a gay legal conference in San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, Coles, who heads the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the New York-based American Civil Liberties Union, predicted the battle for gay marriage would move from the courts to state legislatures coast to coast.

“Nothing in the world would make a stronger statement,” he said, “than if the populace of the nation’s largest state — and the eighth largest economy in the world — would say the California Supreme Court was right.”

Of course, Coles is talking about the Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling that overturned a same-sex marriage ban approved by voters eight years ago.

Coles, who used to work in the ACLU’s San Francisco office, said he could envision the New Jersey Legislature OK’ing gay marriages next year, followed in quick succession by New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Maine. Down the line, he added, Illinois, New Mexico and Washington will likely enact civil unions.

However, Coles said, if Prop 8 passes on Nov. 4, gays and lesbians would “lose the single best opinion we’ve ever got from any court,” adding that it “won’t be worth a damn” at that point.

He urged those attending the Lavender Law Conference, which was sponsored by the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association, to donate to the No on 8 campaign and to get friends out to vote. Coles noted that polls show that opponents and proponents of the measure are equally split, with 20 percent of the voters undecided.

Kathryn Kendell, executive director of San Francisco’s National Center for Lesbian Rights, told the crowd that opponents of gay marriage are making the “illegitimate argument” that the courts have “no role to play” in ensuring equal rights for gays.

She argued that gays, lesbians and their straight allies need to educate their friends and neighbors about the importance of voting. There are heterosexuals out there who might love their gay next-door neighbors, she said, but not bat an eye at voting for Prop 8.

“You have to engage them in the harm,” Kendell said, adding that if the issue isn’t personalized, “it’s easy for them to think the harm doesn’t exist.”

She said she’ll be working hard against the measure until midnight on Nov. 4. “It’s tequila shots from then on,” she added.

Kendell and Coles were among six participants on a panel titled, “Legal Issues Facing Our Community in 2008-2012 — Where We’re Going and How We Will Keep Winning!” Joining them were Shannon Minter, NCLR’s legal director and one of the attorneys who won the Supreme Court ruling in May; Kathi Westcott, deputy director for law of the Washington, D.C.-based Servicemembers Legal Defense Network; Victoria Neilson, legal director of New York’s Immigration Equality; and Kenneth Upton, the supervising senior staff attorney in Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Dallas office.

—  Mike McKee