SACRAMENTO - Backers of Proposition 8, a November ballot initiative that would amend California's constitution to ban same-sex marriage, had, as of last week, raised nearly $2.3 million while foes had raised about $1.3 million.
Fund-raising for the campaigns is only now beginning in earnest, and consultants predict that by the time voters go to the polls, each side will have raised as much as $15 million.
"In many people's minds, it is the civil rights issue of the day, if not the decade," said Steve Smith, the main consultant seeking to kill the initiative and keep same-sex marriage legal in California. "People are very focused on it across the country."
Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for gay rights from its base in Washington, D.C., has contributed $242,600 to defeat the initiative so far.
The California arm of the National Organization for Marriage, based in New Jersey, has bundled $1.1 million from 80 individual donors to promote the November initiative.
The California initiative would amend the state constitution to define marriage as being between a man and woman. Voters approved similar wording in a 2000 ballot initiative, but the measure did not amend the state's constitution. In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that denying gays the right to marry violated the state constitution.
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Money pours into Calif. gay marriage campaigns
Boston Globe, United States
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