"That 55 percent looks pretty strong," Baldassare [the President of the Public Policy Institute] said. "Now the supporters not only have to convince the undecided voters, but they also have to convince people who already have decided to vote no."

A majority of likely voters, 54 percent, oppose ending gay marriage, compared with 40 percent who support it, the poll said. The result is similar to the findings of a Field Poll in July, which found that 51 percent of likely California voters opposed ending gay marriage, while 42 percent said they supported it.

...

The new poll indicates that those opposed to gay marriage will have to mobilize voters if they are to be successful in November, Baldassare said.

"The burden is always on the yes side to convince people there is good reason to vote for the measure," he said.

We fervently hope that voters, whatever their personal or religious convictions, will shudder at such a step and vote no on Proposition 8.

...

To be sure, the court overturned Proposition 22, a vote of the people. That is the court's duty when a law is unconstitutional, even if it is exceedingly popular. Civil rights are commonly hard-won, and not the result of widespread consensus. Whites in the South vehemently rejected the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools. For that matter, Californians have accused the state Supreme Court of obstructing the people's will on marriage before -- in 1948, when it struck down a ban on interracial marriages.

Fundamental rights are exactly that. They should neither wait for popular acceptance, nor be revoked because it is lacking.

Supporters of the effort to ban same-sex marriage already have taken in more than $1.2 million from out-of-state contributors for the fall campaign. And even before Bastian, a co-founder of the WordPerfect software company, opened his checkbook, gay and lesbian rights groups and their supporters from around the country had put more than $1.3 million into the fight against the ballot initiative.

will spearhead the formation of a business advisory council that will seek to get other businesses around California to to defeat the ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

Republicans have been tripped up by mishaps and errors that have kept measures off the ballot.
[ ]
Partly for that reason, even hot-button measures to ban gay marriage -- on the ballot in California, Arizona and Florida -- might not do much for the conservative cause in November. California is considered a sure-win for Obama, regardless of any state measure on the ballot . . . .