CA Marriage Protection Act

Dear Friends,

Here is a link to the official website of the CA Marriage Protection Act.

There are lots of resources at the site, including where to pick up petition forms for gathering signatures.

Our campaign to place a California marriage amendment on the November 2008 ballot is well underway. If you have not already requested a petition, please click here and do so TODAY! Your involvement in collecting signatures NOW is critical to our success in qualifying this measure for the ballot.

Our goal is to acquire the necessary 694,354 valid signatures by April 1st to qualify the initiative. That’s fewer than 60 days!!

Many of you requesting petitions have asked, “Can I copy the petition?” The simple answer is “NO.” While this has been done in previous campaigns, the state laws have tightened to a point where copied petitions are invariably discounted. We want your efforts to count, so there are 2 ways to get petitions:

1. Use the order form on this Web site by simply clicking the Request Petitions button at the top right on this page and fill out the necessary information. Petitions will be mailed to you. Along with your petition, you will also receive a page of instructions on how to circulate a petition. Please feel free to download the instructions page by clicking here. You can make as many copies of the instructions page as you’d like!

2. Distribution Centers are located around the state for you to conveniently pick up petitions. Please click here to find out if there is a Distribution Center near you! Check this list often, as we are daily adding Distribution Centers.

If you, your church, business, or organization would like to be a Distribution Center, contact us at Gina@protectmarriage.com.

This Web site has many important and useful features for you:

· Check out the Resources page for numerous tools and articles.

· There is also the FAQ page, which will answer many of your questions about the marriage amendment. The Why It’s Needed page provides a chronology of what has taken place over the past several years to get us to this point!

Together we can do this! Don’t delay! We need your help and the help of your friends and family. So get involved TODAY!

Here is the Resources page.

Among the various items available, I found this flyer to be one of the best:


Help Put KIDS FIRST!

10 Reasons to Protect California's Marriage Law with a Constitutional Amendment

Reason #1 Children Need Fathers: Same-sex marriage deliberately creates motherless or fatherless families. If same-sex marriage becomes common, social scientists predict the majority of same-sex couples with children would probably be lesbians. This means there would be more children growing up apart from fathers. Studies are conclusive that fatherless households increase crime. Boys whose parents divorced or never married are two to three times more likely to end up in jail as adults. Although there are many single parents heroically raising wonderful children who do not fall into these statistics, they are likely to be the first to say their situation is not ideal.

Reason #2 Children Pay a High Price if Marriage is Not Protected: In 1993 Norway legalized domestic partnerships. Now the average out of wedlock birthrate in Norway is a staggering 60 percent and in some areas it is as high as 80 percent. Here in the United States, one-third of children are born out of wedlock. Decades of social science and government data are absolutely conclusive that overall children have the best physical, cognitive and social outcomes when raised in a home by a married mother and father in a low conflict marriage.

Reason #3 To Protect Parental Rights for School Children: In a Massachusetts school a second grade teacher read a fairy tale to her students called "King & King." In this fairy tale a prince chooses NOT to marry a princess but rather another prince. The story ends with the two princes kissing. When parents complained that they were not notified ahead of time so they could opt their child out, school officials were unresponsive. In fact the superintendent insisted on "teaching children about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal."

Reason #4 Marriage Leads to Prosperity: Nearly 80 percent of children suffering long-term poverty come from broken or never-married families. Because married couples share the responsibilities of domestic work and market work, they produce more together than either one could alone. In fact, labor economists have tracked that married men earn 10 to 40 percent more than single men even after controlling for other factors. Economists have named this phenomena the "marriage premium."

Reason #5 Marriage is a Social Institution: Same-sex marriage does NOT broaden the social institution of marriage; it leads to dissolving man/woman marriage and the terms "Mother" and "Father." For example, in Massachusetts same-sex couples are challenging the state's birth certificates. They want the terms "Mother" and "Father" replaced with "Parent A" and "Parent B."


Reason #6 To Uphold Federal Marriage Law: In 1996 under President Bill Clinton Congress declared, "Marriage is the foundation of a successful society" and overwhelmingly passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman for purposes of all federal laws, and provides that states need not recognize a marriage from another state if it is between persons of the same sex. That same year Congress established the Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI). The HMI grants $150 million a year for healthy marriage promotion and fatherhood.

Reason #7 To Protect Democracy from activist judges seeking to redefine marriage. Never in the history of the world has the institution of man/woman marriage been under such aggressive legal assault. An astounding 28 lawsuits challenging marriage laws have been filed in state or federal courts. Sadly some states have not been able to escape these legal assaults. Activist judges have thrust legal recognition of same-sex unions on its citizens in Massachusetts (same-sex marriage) and New Jersey (civil unions). In response to the attacks on marriage laws, legislators and citizens in 27 states have passed constitutional marriage amendments.

Reason #8 To Preserve Religious Freedom: "...because marriage affects just about every area of the law, gay marriage is going to create a point of conflict at every point around the perimeter," says Anthony Picarello, president and general counsel of the world renowned Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

In December of 2005, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty hosted a conference of noted First Amendment scholarsfrom across the political spectrum to assess the religious freedom implications of legalized same-sex marriage.

Although some of the scholars wholeheartedly support same-sex marriage and others oppose it, they all share one conclusion--legalized same-sex marriage will create an unprecedented level of legal confusion and invite a tidal wave of lawsuits in public accommodation law, employment law, and over government funding with the only certainty being that they will challenge the workings of religious institutions like never before.

Legal experts predict the most expensive point of conflict between religious freedom and same-sex marriage will be tax exemption. "Can a group--a church or religious charity--that opposes gay marriage keep its tax exemption if gay marriage becomes the law?" Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, says "that is the 18 trillion dollar question."

Reason #9 To Sustain the Population: All of us need the rising generation to sustain the government, the military, the economy and other systems and institutions for which all of society depends. To sustain the population we need a birth rate of 2.1 percent children per woman. Countries that have legalized same-sex marriage have some of the
lowest fertility rates in the world. The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada all have birthrates around 1.6 children per woman.

Reason #10 If Marriage is Everything, Then Marriage is Nothing: Laws set standards of behavior. Laws greatly influence culture and attitudes. What the law protects is generally valued by society. If the law is indifferent to marriage, what social norm are we leaving the rising generation? Defenders of man/woman marriage warn that if marriage is redefined to include simply two adults then we lose the legal logic for redefining it further. Where does the confusion stop? Some advocates have an agenda far beyond same-sex marriage. They seek government and legal recognition for any combination of relationships involving two, three or more people regardless of gender or children.

Read "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage" at Beyond Marriage.org to see the truth about the opposite sides' intentions to seek government and legal recognition for any combination of relationships involving two, three, or more people regardless of gender or children. It is proof positive that these intentions are bent on destroying marriage.


To Help Put KIDS FIRST
Please go to Protect Marriage.com

Family Leader.net