Churches called key to getting gay-marriage ban on Oregon ballot

By Brad Cain
The Associated Press

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SALEM, Ore. — The drive to place a gay-marriage ban on the fall ballot got off to a low-key start this past weekend, with sponsors estimating they collected 5,000 signatures at a dozen Portland churches.

But organizers say the campaign will quickly expand to a statewide effort in which 1,500 churches and several thousand volunteer petition gatherers will join forces to help qualify the measure for the ballot.

They will need to gather at least 100,840 valid signatures by the July 2 deadline.

"Collecting that many signatures in this short amount of time is something that's never been done before," said Tim Nashif of the Defense of Marriage Coalition. "But we are pretty confident and hopeful."

It wasn't until Thursday that sponsors got the final go-ahead from the courts to begin their signature-gathering campaign for the proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Nashif said that left backers with only enough time to deliver petitions to about a dozen churches in the Portland area that had agreed to ask churchgoers to sign the petitions.

Starting this Sunday, and on every Sunday between now and the July 2 deadline, churchgoers across the state can expect to see petitions being circulated for the same-sex marriage ban, Nashif said.

Furthermore, he said, the coalition has heard from 4,000 people who have volunteered to circulate the petitions among their friends, neighbors and co-workers to get the measure on the November ballot.

"It's not all church-related," Nashif said. "We get a lot of phone calls from people who are not church attenders who are very concerned about this issue."
 
The head of Basic Rights Oregon, the state's leading gay-rights group, said the anti-gay-rights campaign is mainly a religion-based effort.

"I hope voters recognize that this is a group of churches using religious institutions to write discrimination into the constitution," said Roey Thorpe, the group's executive director.

Thorpe also said gay-rights supporters are assuming that Nashif's group will be able to collect enough signatures, and that both sides will raise millions of dollars for the fall campaign.

"It's going to be a costly campaign, both in terms of the amount of money spent and the fact that it will be a nasty and divisive issue at a time when Oregonians need to come together," she said.

But Nashif said Multnomah County's decision to begin issuing marriage licenses to gays and lesbians — a decision that's being challenged in the courts — helped bring the issue to the forefront.

"All we are doing is defending the traditional meaning of marriage," he said.