No Gay Marriage For You in 2010, California

Maybe it'll be a tastier 2012...

​Restore Equality 2010 announced today that it fell short in its effort to gather the 695,000 signatures needed by today to place a same-sex marriage measure on this year's ballot. The organization's chairman, Sean Bohac, attributed the failure to the lack of support from more mainstream gay rights groups, according to the Associated Press.

Bohac is, of course, referring to Equality California, the state's behemoth LGBT advocacy organization that headed up the doomed anti-Proposition 8 effort. The organization announced last August it would wait until 2012 to go back to the ballot box in order to build support and resources for its same-sex marriage campaign redux.
 
While some would say the signature-gathering effort made Restore Equality 2010 the Leeroy Jenkins of ballot measure proposals, California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said he wouldn't hate on them for trying:
"God know they were sincere," Ammiano told SF Weekly. "The fire in their belly came from really feeling slighted by the narrowness of that victory" for Prop. 8 in 2008. "It was grassroots, so it's hard to want to rain on their parade. I respected their commitment."

Ammiano said the failure hopefully can provide some guidance for a successful endeavor in 2012. "There might be some way to make this a win-win to get some analysis of why it failed: person power or money so we can gird our loins -- as long as it wasn't same sex loin girding -- for 2012."

At least his sense of humor is still intact.