Marriage equality
opponents eye 2012 Massachusetts election

After failing to get a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on the 2008 Massachusetts ballot, gay rights foes are launching another campaign--fighting to remove same-sex marriage supporters from office.

Kris Mineau, spokesman for Vote on Marriage, said his group's loss last month has mobilized conservatives toward repealing the state's same-sex marriage laws.

"We acknowledge that our support in the current legislature is weak, but our support among the people is tremendous," Mineau said to The Boston Globe Tuesday. "This campaign is far from over, believe me. Some of these legislators will go away, but we will not."

Vote on Marriage and other marriage-equality opponents collected nearly 170,000 signatures in their effort to urge the legislature to allow voters to decide whether marriage should be defined as a union between a man and a woman. June's legislative measure required a minimum of 50 lawmakers' approval, but the push garnered only 45.

MassEquality executive director Marc Solomon and supporters were proactive in their efforts to persuade eight undecided lawmakers from voting to put the proposition on the ballot.

"Most of [these legislators] were from conservative communities where there isn't a big gay and lesbian population," he told The Advocate in June. "For some of them, they were concerned about how they would reflect in the next election."

What worked for MassEquality, Solomon said, was reaching out to these legislators and increasing their interaction with gay and lesbian constituents. In a costly move that ended up being invaluable, the organization assigned a dozen paid workers to each of the eight legislators on the fence about their vote. From these informative meetings came more supporters--right-leaning lawmakers who voted to keep the constitutional measure banning same-sex marriage off the ballot will have guaranteed support of MassEquality come reelection time.

"We are committed to doing everything we can to ensure that everyone who voted our way is reelected, and we continue to fill open seats with pro-equality legislators," Solomon said. "We're at about 70% pro-equality, and we want our numbers to go up."

Time is on MassEquality's side. Vote on Marriage is looking for a new crop of conservative lawmakers to be installed in the state legislature in 2009, meaning such a measure couldn't even reach a ballot until 2012. "As time moves on," Solomon said, "we'll see that gay marriage will be more difficult to oppose." (Michelle Garcia, The Advocate)