Attorney: Prop. 8 'rework' could spell defeat

Jeff Johnson - OneNewsNow - 7/29/2008 8:50:00 AM

The California attorney general has handed a major blow to pro-family activists promoting a marriage protection amendment in that state.

The ballot title originally approved for Proposition 8 described the proposal as an amendment "to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."  But after homosexual activists failed to get the initiative removed from the ballot, Attorney General Jerry Brown changed the title to describe the proposal as amending the state constitution to "eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry."  The description also claims, with no supporting evidence, that the state will lose "several tens of millions of dollars" if the measure is passed.

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Attorney Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, has been working to support the proposed marriage protection amendment. He believes that most people entering the voting booth will have only thing on their mind -- and it will not be Prop. 8.

"We have to remember that many [people] who are going to be voting in this election are going there to vote for president-- and this is just a, sort of an off-hand, 'Oh, by the way, take a look at this.'  So, many of them will be influenced by this, without question," Dacus laments. "This language is a blow to the pro-marriage side and it will inevitably, without question, cost some votes. How much? We don't know -- but it will definitely have an impact."
 
The attorney explains that although the change can be appealed, there is little chance such an appeal against the obviously biased language of the new ballot title and description would be successful. "The secretary of state has great discretion in this regard -- and as long as it's defensible, I don't think that any kind of challenge is going to be successful," he says. "And this will probably be the language that we're going to end up having on the ballot in November."
 
Consequently, says Dacus, pro-family forces have their work cut out for them in educating the voters. "We're just going to have to work twice as hard to get the information out so that people aren't confused and [so] they understand that marriage -- as it has been defined for centuries, including as it has been defined throughout California history -- has always been between one man and one woman," he states. "This alleged 'right' recognizing homosexual 'marriage' is something that was just newly created by a few activist judges...a few months ago and is not to be treated as something that is long and established in the State of California."
 
Dacus says the language change could be the deciding factor that causes the marriage protection amendment to lose in November, if those education efforts fail.
 
The PJI attorney may be correct in his prediction. The Advocate, a pro-homosexual publication, quotes a spokesman for a homosexual website as stating the language change -- which effectively denotes Prop. 8 as a "removal of rights" issue -- could add up to ten percentage points to the "No" votes. Recent polls indicate that could be enough to defeat the measure.

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