Election Day in Maryland Might Show A Gay Rights Shift
In Maryland, gay rights advocates hope minorities will turn out to support the ballot measure -—known as question 6.
Nearly 30% of voters in Maryland are black and 8.4% are Latino. Both communities have shown a surge of support since May, when President Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage.
Washington Post-ABC polls taken before and after Obama's announcement showed an 18-point jump in the number of African-Americans who support same-sex marriage. Also, 52% in a recent Pew Research Center national poll of Latinos said they support same-sex marriage, a significant increase from 2006 when 52% said they opposed it.
Wolfson, of Freedom to Marry, says that gay rights groups reacted by reaching out more aggressively to minority communities and encouraging gays and lesbians who are minorities to talk to their own friends and families about gay rights.
Partnerships with racial and ethnic minorities became more important to the gay and lesbian community after 2008, when California voters approved a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriages. Voter exit polls showed strong support for the measure by blacks and Latinos.
"I think it will be huge if the African-Americans of this state do what I think they're going to do, which is to recognize that everybody is entitled to equal protection under the law," says Murphy, who is black.
Also supporting allowing gays and lesbians to marry in Maryland is the NAACP, which has put the civil rights group at loggerheads with clergy such as Reid.
Reid accuses gay groups of forging convenient ties with black and Latino communities, while doing little to champion other minority causes. "Where is this money for education to pour out to Latino and African-American communities," Reid asks.
Kevin Nix, a spokesman for Marylanders for Marriage Equality, says the group is focused only on Question 6 right now and not other minority ballot issues like a local version of the Dream Act, which aims to protect undocumented young immigrants from deportation.
Derek McCoy, a married father of three from Prince Georges County, has turned his opposition to Question 6 into a full-time job. He sees the ballot measure as a threat to his own personal freedoms. "We are making a fundamental shift in what society sees as marriage," he says. "When we look at it, people are asking to change our religious and civil liberties."
Big money
Question 6 has attracted big money from supporters and opponents around the country.
A recent Washington Post poll showed the gay community winning the issue by a 9-point margin just days after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $250,000 to Marylanders for Marriage Equality.
Hedge fund manager Paul Singer donated the same amount. Former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue lives in the District of Columbia, but he and his family have donated $100,000 to Marylanders for Marriage Equality.
In past campaigns to expand marriage rights, little connection was made between dollars spent and outcome, and gay rights organizations were not always leading the way on collecting money from out of state. This time, if gay rights groups aren't outpacing opponents in raising out-of-state funds, they're close. Tagliabue, Bloomberg and Singer's combined donation of $600,000 is nearly as much as the entire budget of their opponents. The National Organization for Marriage, which opposes allowing same-sex marriage, has a $2 million matching grant challenge on its website targeting the November initiatives. The Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic organization that opposes same-sex marriage, acknowledged last week that it has spent at least $6 million since 2005 on a variety of initiatives opposing the expansion of marriage rights.
In the Maryland race, gay rights groups appear to be leading in fund raising, with $3.2 million to $835,000 for their opponents.
According to the Washington Public Disclosure Commission, gay civil rights activists in that state are ahead $10.5 million to $1.8 million. Maine gay rights supporters have $3.35 million to their opponents' $430,000, according to the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Practices.
"The top goal for the second half of 2012 is to win one of these ballot measures," Wolfson says. "We've shown that we can win the freedom to marry in public opinion. We've shown that we can win the freedom to marry in courts. We've shown that we can win the freedom to marry in legislatures. ... We've shown we can win the freedom to marry with the support of both Republican and Democratic legislatures. The last barrier we have to overcome is to show we can win the freedom to marry in an up-or-down vote on the ballot."
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