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(108,903 posts) Tue Jul 9, 2013, 08:16 AM Jul 2013

Gay-Marriage Campaigners Reveal Their Next Steps

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/gay-marriage-campaigners-reveal-their-next-steps/277557/

Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case, get married in Los Angeles on June 28. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

For advocates of gay marriage, the Supreme Court's two recent decisions on the subject were a watershed moment. Now the question is: What next?

With jurisprudence, public opinion, and state laws all seeming to be moving in their direction, the future looks bright for their cause. But the campaigners at Freedom to Marry, the only national group solely devoted to gay-marriage advocacy, believe it is time not to rest on laurels but to fight harder than ever. And they have a plan to do just that.

The group's new strategic plan, revealed exclusively to The Atlantic and scheduled to be formally announced Tuesday, sets ambitious targets for the near term: By 2016, it says, the majority of Americans should live in states where gay marriage is legal, and national public approval should top 60 percent. (Currently, 30 percent live in such states, and the issue generally polls between 50 and 58 percent.) The group also hopes to see passage of federal legislation fully repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, only part of which was invalidated by the recent Supreme Court challenge.

The group, which was instrumental in funding and directing four winning gay-marriage ballot campaigns in 2012, has set its sights on four states where it will push for legal same-sex marriage in 2013-14, whether through state legislation or ballot initiative: Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Oregon. This year alone, it will devote $2 million to these efforts. In 2015-16, Freedom to Marry plans to work in as many as six additional states, and it has hired a respected operative with experience in both ballot and legislative campaigns to oversee all its state-level efforts.