Gay rights critics drop effort for repeal

SALEM – Social conservatives and church groups are admitting defeat in their efforts to qualify initiatives for this November’s ballot that would repeal two Oregon gay rights laws.

The campaigns were aimed at derailing a domestic partnership law and another new law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Both were enacted by the 2007 Legislature and took effect Jan. 1.

Opponents said they are dropping their bid to place the repeal initiatives on this fall’s ballot because neither has received a state-approved ballot title and the deadline for turning in signatures is only a few weeks away – July 3.

“We were left with zero time to do anything,” said state Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, who co-sponsored the proposed initiative to do away with the gay discrimination law.

Former state Sen. Marylin Shannon, a Brooks Republican who co-sponsored the measure to repeal the domestic partnership law, said opponents aren’t going to give up and will work to bring the issues to the ballot two years from now.

“There should be a vote of the people on this,” Shannon said Monday.

The one remaining chance opponents have to force a statewide vote on the domestic partnerships law this fall rests with a legal case to be heard July 8 by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In February, a federal judge in Portland allowed the law to go into effect after a petition drive to refer the law to the voters fell just shy of the needed signatures. The judge upheld the procedures that led to some signatures being rejected, and that ruling now is being appealed by a group that advocates for Christian legal issues.

The state’s leading gay rights group, Basic Rights Oregon, said the latest failure by opponents to force a statewide vote on the issue shows that a growing number of Oregonians support giving same-sex couple rights and protections similar to marriage.

“It’s a further indication that there is a sea of change in Oregon on this issue,” said Jeana Frazzini, the group’s executive director.