For Gays, New Math
Rethinking tactics after a series of setbacks nationwide
By Scott Michels
Sunday, August 6, 2006

After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage in 2003, and gay and lesbian couples began to wed in San Francisco and Portland, Ore., soon after, it seemed to Lisa Stone that a new era was sweeping the country. In 2004, Stone, a Seattle gay-rights advocate, sued to overturn Washington's 1998 gay-marriage ban. "There was a youthful optimism about what was ahead of us," she says.

Now, though, "nobody's swept up anymore," says Stone. For advocates of same-sex marriage, the outlook is dark, that early enthusiasm tempered by a wave of anti-gay-marriage voter initiatives and a string of courtroom losses. And more court decisions and initiatives expected this year could result in devastating setbacks. "We may face a reality by the end of this year that is so radically different ... that we may have to completely rethink and rework how we're going to move forward," says Ed Murray, a gay Washington State representative. Jordan Lorence of the conservative Alliance Defense Fund is more blunt: "One side is clearly prevailing, and one is losing." the rest