The Engagement by Sasha Issenberg

Author:Sasha Issenberg [Issenberg, Sasha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

59

Let California Ring

The ambitious 10-10-10-20 strategy demanded a motley set of tasks: both political and legal work, offense and defense, aiming for equal rights for gay couples without foreclosing incremental gains that fell short of marriage, beginning in the states but eventually requiring the federal government to play a role, too.

None of the established gay-rights organizations that sent emissaries to Jersey City were built for that work. The largest of them, the Human Rights Campaign, had just backed off its commitment to marriage in the wake of dispiriting losses in 2004, and it seemed unlikely that any group not uniquely devoted to marriage would make a sustained priority of a cause that likely had more heartbreak in its future.

When the ACLU’s Matt Coles circulated a draft communiqué that proposed creating a new central organ to centralize implementation of the strategy, the idea was met with dissension. Such a proposal was rejected by state-level organizations, which already had a contentious relationship with the Human Rights Campaign over its sporadic efforts to participate in politics beyond Washington. It was also rebuffed by the Human Rights Campaign itself, which was unwilling to help charter a rival for talent, donations, and influence over how the gay-rights movement practiced politics. “Some thought existing organizations would be unwilling to work with an independent campaign organization, some thought our community would be deeply resistant to anything that highly organized,” Coles summarized in a July 2005 email to Jersey City attendees. In it, he explained why the final concept paper reflected a preference for “a staffed, structured, enhanced collaboration between existing state and national groups, gay and non-gay, working on marriage.”

That new structure, called the National Collaborative, was chartered in 2007 for a three-year trial period. Upon its creation, the National Collaborative identified seven discrete state-level objectives, prioritizing those where there was a “high potential to advance marriage goals” over the next three years. Participants would be expected to review grant proposals from local organizations and supply staff to coach recipients. The circle of emergent donors cultivated by Tim Gill would drive money to support their work.

California was among those states designated for special attention by the National Collaborative. At the Jersey City summit, it had been among the first to be inscribed on the list of ten states expected to deliver full marriage rights by 2025. But the “Winning Marriage” plan went further in its aims for the country’s largest state, identifying it as a short-term priority for the movement, one where gay-marriage advocates stood to notch an imminent win without any help from the courts. “California is a state where marriage through the legislature, or even at the ballot, is a real prospect,” the plan declared.

To date, gay-rights strategists in California had stuck to an incrementalist track. The legislature had first established a domestic-partnership registry in 1999, and each year added new benefits until it was so comprehensive that Freedom to Marry’s Evan Wolfson described it as “all but marriage.” By early 2004, a California

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