Equality Boycott

After a professional campaign failed to defeat the measure, a Web-based opposition is making itself heard. – LA Times

“…We need to show we can win in the court of public opinion.”

Whether the current protests will help or hinder that effort remains unclear, said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at UC Berkeley.

“It can backfire,” he said. But, he added, a well-done protest is “an important signal.”

The key, he said, is that the protesters not irritate or alienate the people they are trying to persuade by appearing too out of the mainstream or by tying up traffic for hours.

Many of those organizing the protests this week say they are voicing a sense of outrage and disappointment that California voters approved a measure that took away the right, granted by the California Supreme Court last spring, of same-sex couples to marry. More than 18,000 couples got married between June and Nov. 4, when the proposition disallowed the weddings…