A colourful crowd gathered in the car park of a Catholic church in south Los Angeles on October 24th. There were suburban white evangelicals, blacks, Asians and Hispanics. Many pushed prams. People ate tacos and listened to Marvin Perkins, a black Mormon, invoke the memory of Martin Luther King. The aim of this rainbow coalition? To remove a basic right from another minority group.rnThe hardest-fought political race in California is not the presidential one, which will surely be a big win for Barack Obama. It is over a ballot initiative, Proposition 8, which would rewrite California's constitution so as to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Supporters and opponents see California, where gay marriage has been legal since a court ruling came into effect in June, rather as the second world war allies saw Berlin. Money is pouring into the race. At least $70m has been raised so far-more than for all other campaigns to ban same-sex marriage put together.
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