[SoCalCoug]

Hasn't happened <> won't happen

It's going to be on the ballot again in 2010 - I don't think anyone reasonably disputes that - there was a ballot measure we voted on here that was on the ballot for the third consecutive election. The anti-prop 8 people have already said it will be on the ballot again in 2010.

If you're getting caught up in what's happened to date, you're missing the point, and you're betraying a desire to be contradictory for the sake of being contradictory.

The trend in California is in favor of gay marriage. In 2000, Prop. 22 received 62% of the vote. The church supported Prop. 22, but not nearly with the organized effort that they put forth this year. This year, even with the huge effort by the church, the support for the measure was down to 52%.

Older voters were strongly in favor of Prop. 8. Younger voters were strongly against it. As time passes, experts I have heard in the past couple of days expect that the passage of time (as older voters die and more younger voters become old enough to vote) will increase the percentage of voters in favor of gay marriage.

In addition, the existence of a black presidential candidate mobilized black voters, who were by far the greatest supporters, by percentage (70%), of Prop. 8. 70% of black voters voted in favor of Prop. 8; about 58-60% of Hispanic voters voted in favor of it; about 48% of white voters voted in favor of it (52% voted against). So in 2010, chances are, there won't be nearly as many black voters as there were this year.

All of these factors strongly suggest that support for gay marriage will increase even more by 2010, and even if the church pushes as hard then against the ballot measure as it did this year in favor of Prop. 8, I think the chances of "preserving traditional marriage" in California are going to dwindle.

And so the question I have is whether the church is going to request the same efforts in opposing the 2010 ballot measure as it requested this year in supporting Prop. 8. And if they are, how amenable are the California church members going to be? If you don't live in California, you may not appreciate how much Prop. 8 has dominated the scene among LDS member over the last 2 months. Can that effort be duplicated in 2 years? Will it?