Down The Road, A Do Over

Last November, gay marriage advocates were just a little too complacent, a little too willing to believe that the important hurdles had already been overcome. Hopefully a new campaign will be better-focused, better-funded, and reach more voters:

While no final decision has been made, gay marriage groups said their members overwhelmingly want to put the question before voters again in 2010.

"The burden is back on us to reach out to the voters of California and trust they will be fair-minded," said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco.

"It is absolutely their right to try that," said Frank Schubert, Proposition 8 campaign manager.

But he said the 2008 presidential election may have been gay marriage supporters' best chance of attracting an unusually large turnout of young and more-sympathetic voters.

The court's 6-1 ruling upheld Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that changed the California Constitution to declare that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

At the same time, the justices unanimously chose to preserve more than 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California during the five months it was legal last year.

The marriages took place before the initiative passed and after the high court ruled 4-3 in May 2008 that it was unconstitutional to prevent gays from marrying.