APRIL 1, 2011
• community’
ASSISTING OUR
COMMUNITY
WITH PROBATE
AND OTHER
END-OF-LIFE ISSUES
Shelly (left) and Kristin
Casteel were married in
Victoria, B.C., in 2004. The
Oregon couple was featured
in a Basic Rights Oregon
ad in support of marriage
equality.
www.bethallenlaw.com
IWth Allen I aw
other organizations. Local groups such as
CAUSA and businesses including Nike have
offered financial or in-kind donations. A re
cord 500 people are expected at BRO’s annual
Oregonians Against Discrimination Business
Leaders Luncheon later this month. National
gay rights groups are helping, too; last month,
a representative from GLAAD came to Port
land to handle media inquiries to BRO.
The support is welcomed—and, if anything,
BRO needs more of it. The group has already
spent nearly $1 million on the education
campaign, Frazzini says. A full-fledged ballot
push could cost upwards of $3 million, which
was the cost to fight Measure 36 in 2004, the
measure that amended the Oregon Constitu
tion to ban same-sex marriage.
And the Oregon Family Council has al
ready promised to fight marriage equality.
“We’re not looking forward to it. We don’t
want to do it,” says Tim Nashif, Oregon Fam
ily Council board member. “But we will fight
just as hard for marriage if not harder today or
in 2012 as we did in 2004.”
W ith the risks in mind, BRO is approach
ing the 2012 date very cautiously. If the orga
nization were to decide by August not to
pursue the ballot measure next year, Frazzini
says, it would not try again until 2014 or pos
sibly 2016.
“It’s a huge responsibility to make the call
to go to ballot in 2012,” Frazzini says. “And
it’s the reason why, as an organization, we ap
proach this very much as a partnership with
the community.’ i t ]
Beth A. Allen, founding partner: winner of the Oregon
Gay & Lesbian Law Association (0GALLA) Silver
Jubilee Award: 0GALLA Award of Merit; and the Basic
Rights Oregon Superhero Award. Selected as a 2010
Oregon Super Lawyer. Founding member of the
BRO Legal Group; author of Same-Sex Marriage: a
' Conflicts of Law Analysis for Oregon; frequent local,
state and national speaker on marriage equality.
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Shelly.
The picture fades to a straight couple, iden
tified on the screen as Roger and Jeanie.
“I would just say love is love,” Jeanie says.
“You know, it belongs to everybody.”
The ad produced for BRO is part of a
three-week campaign and is playing on net
work and cable channels, including during
primetime, all over Oregon. It is the biggest
investment in an education campaign that
any LGBTQ_group has ever undertaken out
side of an election year, says Thomas W heat-
ley, organizing director at BRO.
BRO has run similar ads before, but not in
a campaign of this magnitude. Last summer,
two ads ran in eight Oregon communities on
cable. Freedom to M arry picked up one of
the ads and aired it on C N N on Valentine’s
Day this year.
“I think it’s good to talk to people and let
people see that, I don’t know, there’s nothing
to be afraid of,” Kristin says o f her experi
ence shooting the ad. “Relationships are
relationships.”
Shelly and Kristin are poster children of
sorts for the marriage campaign, but they also
are examples of what BRO wants to see from
the community: conversation about why mar
riage matters.
The ad campaign is just one part of this ef
fort. BRO volunteers have knocked on 30,000
doors in two years. More than 900 personal
videos on marriage have been recorded and
shared online. BRO has also coordinated
more than 50 house parties as venues for
people to have the marriage conversation.
As the work on the education campaign
comes to a head, BRO is getting help from
Workshop
13
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