In any race, the first ad is believed to be significant because commercials can start defining the issues for voters.
The anti-Proposition 8 spot could become particularly prominent because it is airing in a week when many new television shows are premiering. It also will air later this week around the time of the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, said campaign strategist Maggie Linden.
The ad features a gray-haired heterosexual couple who are making an appeal to fairness. Sam and Julia Thoron say in the ad that they've been married 46 years and have three adult children, one of whom is a lesbian. Soft music plays and a Thoron family picture appears.
"My wife and I never treated our children different, we never loved them any differently and the law shouldn't treat them differently either," Mr. Thoron, 69, says.
"If Proposition 8 passes, our gay daughter and thousands of our fellow Californians will lose the right to marry," Mrs. Thoron, 68, says.
Steve Smith, campaign manager for the No-on-8 campaign said the spot is designed to "frame the central issue in the campaign . . . [whether] Californians want to eliminate the fundamental right of marriage for same-sex couples." He called the Thorons "the perfect couple to talk to California voters" about it.
Frank Schubert, managing the Yes-on-8 campaign, called the ad "a blatant appeal to sympathy and emotion."
"I'm not surprised that they're using a heterosexual couple," Schubert said. "I don't think they want to show gay couples. I think they want to make gay marriage as, quote, normal, as possible. They want people to think gay marriage is completely normal, when it was created out of whole cloth by four judges."
Linden said future No-on-8 ads "most probably" will feature same-sex couples.
Proposition 8 would create a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and woman. It seeks to reverse a California Supreme Court decision issued earlier this year that overturned a 2000 initiative that had created a statute banning gay marriage.
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dan.morain@latimes.com
jessica.garrison@latimes.com
Times staff writer Tina Daunt contributed to this report.
