CARNAL NATION

The one thing you can say about California's official LGBT groups these days is that they don't seem to know what they want. Except marriage. They all want the right to marry, but they can't seem to come up with a coherent strategy for when or how. First, when the American Foundation for Equal Rights filed a suit in federal court to overturn Prop 8, nine other organizations issued a statement condemning the strategy. Then, they said they wanted to join the lawsuit and help. The alternative to the federal lawsuit, of course, is getting an initiative on the ballot to undo the damage that Prop 8 did in the first place. The problem is, though, that those who favor the ballot approach to marriage rights can't agree on when a proposition should be put on the ballot. The Los Angeles Times reports that a coalition of LGBT groups has released a statement called Prepare to Prevail: Why We Must Wait In Order to Win that calls putting a pro-marriage measure on the 2010 ballot "rushed and risky."

The statement was released by API-Equality L.A., Honor PAC, and the Jordan / Rustin Coalition. It emphasizes that the struggle to pass any such pro-measure legislation via the ballot will be expensive and difficult and that activists need time to build up broad electoral support and resources. "We should proceed with a costly, demanding, and high-stakes electoral campaign of this sort only when we are confident we can win," the statement says. Twenty-two other organizations also signed onto the statement, including the San Diego, Northern California, and Southern California chapters of the ACLU.

 John Henning, the executive director of Love Honor Cherish, told the Times that he strongly disagreed with the idea of waiting until the 2012 election. "There is a majority of the community . . . that favors going forward in 2010," he said, "The fact that some favor waiting should mean only one thing: They can wait, if they need to wait, but we are going to go ahead." Henning's group, along with others, is already working on language for a pro-marriage proposition that can be submitted to the California Secretary of State's office by the fall.