California schemin’

Marriage | In the fight to legalize same-sex unions, a swing vote emerges: Hispanic evangelicals | Lynn Vincent

SAN DIEGO— Two weeks ago, the San Diego City Council deadlocked 4-4 on a resolution to sign onto a Supreme Court brief aimed at overturning the state's ban on gay marriage. On Sept. 18, the chamber voted again. This time, gay marriage won, 5-3. And after the vote San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, who once pledged to veto the resolution, reversed his position Sept. 19 in an emotional statement announcing that his daughter is a lesbian.

A vote in favor of gay marriage in California's most conservative city may signal the tick-tick-tocking of time left for traditional marriage in California.

Since Golden State voters in 2000 passed Proposition 22, an initiative that added the traditional definition of marriage to state law, gay litigators and liberal legislators have twice tried to upend the will of the people. A veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stymied Democratic lawmakers who in 2005 passed a bill that legalized same-sex marriage. Now a similar bill, AB 43, is sitting on the governor's desk.