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Defend Marriage Newsletter
February, 2006

In this issue:


Senate Likely to Vote on Marriage Amendment

Dear Friend of the Family,

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist recently announced that the United States Senate will take up the Protect Marriage Amendment to the Constitution in early June, with the vote scheduled June 6th.

This vote will be another critical showdown in the fight to defend marriage. It is a rare gift to have so much advance notice of such an important vote. Yet, considering how difficult it will be to convince the necessary two-thirds of the Senate to support this amendment and send it on to the House of Representatives, it is not really that much time at all. We urgently need your help if we are going to be successful!

Amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage in the United States as only the union of a man and a woman is the only way we can be certain that activist judges and liberal state legislatures will not continue to undermine this essential social institution. Adopting a federal marriage amendment will overturn the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision forcing same-sex “marriage” on that state as well as trumping any other state courts that might try to impose it. It will also prevent any liberal state legislatures from trying to legalize same-sex “marriage,” as the California legislature tried to do last year.

Almost two years ago, we also had an opportunity to pass a marriage amendment. However, marriage supporters in the U.S. Senate were not able to break a procedural filibuster against consideration of the amendment, gaining just 48 of the necessary 60 votes. You can see how your senator voted on breaking the filibuster.

The House did pass the marriage amendment in 2004 by a comfortable margin, but it was still considerably short of the two-thirds vote required to send it on to the Senate.

While members of the House were put on record for the defense of marriage, that is not the case in the Senate because that body has never directly considered the constitutional amendment. As a result, many senators have been able to hide behind this procedural vote and their constituents do not know where they truly stand on marriage. We must make certain that this time the Senate at least also goes on record on the amendment.

Prospects for success are much better this time. The current Senate is more marriage-friendly following the 2004 election, but passing this amendment will still be a tough and uphill fight.

Please help us in this effort by doing several things now.

  • If you have not already signed the United States Petition to Defend Marriage, please do so. We will provide copies of this petition to key undecided senators before the vote.
     
  • Urge others on your email list to also sign the petition. We make it easy for you to do this through a special feature we have created on our Web site. We provide a suggested email message which you can also modify as you wish.
     
  • Make a generous financial contribution to support our efforts. Lobbying campaigns such as this are very expensive and we will make a maximum effort to generate strong grassroots support as well as having constituents, UFI volunteers and professional staff making personal contact with senators and their staff members. The extended head start we now have means we can do a much more effective job in generating this support, but it also means it will be more expensive to take advantage of it. You can easily and securely contribute online or print out a form to mail in your contribution. Because Defend Marriage is a project of United Families International, your contribution is tax-deductible.

In the weeks ahead, we will also suggest other specific things you can do to help in this effort.

As a subscriber to this newsletter, I know that you understand full well that our future as a nation is directly tied to the future of families in this country. Throughout human history, strong families have always been the essential foundation of successful societies. Marriage between a man and a woman, in turn, has always been essential to creating and maintaining strong families.

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of this vote to families and to our future. It will be, without a doubt, one of the most critical pro-family votes this year and for years to come.

Please do everything you can to help us in passing the protect marriage amendment.

Sincerely,


Sharon Slater
President

P.S. You can help defend marriage even more by forwarding this on to others who might be interested so they are alerted to this critical upcoming Senate vote!

Your Generous Financial Contribution Urgently Needed to Support the Protect Marriage Amendment!

We are in a critical time in planning our campaign to generate support in the Senate for the Protect Marriage Amendment and we urgently need your financial support. Our Defend Marriage Project is beginning to organize grassroots efforts in key states to be sure that senators hear loud and clear from their constituents that they want them to defeat any filibuster against the marriage amendment and go on record supporting marriage by voting for it. We will be fielding teams of UFI professional staff and volunteers to contact Senators and their staffs directly and provide solid, factual information on why it is so critical that we protect marriage by defining it once and for all in our Constitution

All of this takes resources, and adding this effort to the many other critical issues affecting the family will stretch those resources far beyond what we now have available. Please help us take the fullest advantage of this gift of advanced notice Sen. Frist has given us by making the most generous contribution you can afford. The anti-marriage forces will once again pull out all the stops to defeat this amendment, generating massive pressure on vulnerable senators. It is essential that we have the resources to counter their efforts.

You can easily and securely make a contribution online or print out a form to mail in a contribution.

Your contribution will be made to United Families International (UFI), a 501 (c )(3) organization, so it is tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. Defend Marriage is a project of UFI.

To specifically designate your contribution to the Defend Marriage Project, simply make a contribution that ends with 4 cents, i.e. $25.04, $173.04, $1,000,000.04, and so on. That will automatically flag it to be applied entirely to Defend Marriage and to our efforts to pass the constitutional amendment.

Thank you in advance for your generous support!

Review

An Invaluable Tool in the Defense of Marriage Now Available

Monte Stewart, President of the Marriage Law Foundation, is a brilliant and internationally recognized expert in marriage law who has done important work to defend marriage in the United States, Canada and South Africa. Fortunately, he also is an excellent writer. These talents make his most recent article, “Genderless Marriage, Institutional Realities and Judicial Elision,” just published in the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy an invaluable tool for anyone seriously determined to defend marriage in the policy arena.

“Elision” means omission. Mr. Stewart’s article is a comprehensive review and insightful analysis of how and why activist judges who have handed down rulings requiring the legalization of genderless marriage in the U.S., Canada and South Africa have had to completely ignore the indisputable social science and historical evidence of the “social goods” that traditional marriage provides to society.

While this will be a valuable and important article for the legal community, his analysis and refutation of the arguments used by judges and others advocating the legalization of “same-sex marriage” (a term he explains he does not use because it can be misleading and further cloud the debate over what is actually at stake) also make it invaluable for any defender of marriage. Anyone who follows the growing debate over this issue will recognize these arguments. They are not limited to the courtroom but are the same ones commonly made by homosexual activists everywhere and widely reported by the media. Simply applying his analysis and rebuttals to these lines of reasoning, supported by the documentation he also includes will better prepare anyone to defend marriage.

The article is available on line here. We also have a very limited number of reprints available at the new UFI online bookstore here.

--Reviewed by Sheldon Kinsel, Director, Defend Marriage Project

News Items of Interest

National News
  • Senator Frist Announces Marriage Amendment Vote Will Be June 6th

    Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has announced that the Senate will take up the Marriage Protection Amendment to the Constitution in early June and vote on it on June 6th. He made the announcement at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference in Washington, D.C. on February 10th. Article here.
     
  • Idaho Senate Endorses Amendment to the Idaho Constitution to Ban Same-sex “Marriage”

    • After a three-year effort by pro-marriage advocates, the Idaho Senate voted to endorse a proposal which will place on the November ballot an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. Five Republican Senators who voted against the measure last year voted in favor of it this year. A two-thirds majority of the Senate was required in order for the measure to pass. Same-sex “marriage” already is against the law in Idaho. This proposal would change the constitution, which supporters say is needed in case a court ever rules against Idaho’s law. Article here.

  • Maryland Judge Strikes Down Same-Sex “Marriage” Ban

    A Baltimore Circuit Court Judge on January 20 struck down Maryland’s law prohibiting same-sex “marriage,” claiming that it “cannot withstand constitutional challenge.” She immediately stayed her ruling pending appeal, which the Maryland Attorney General filed within hours. The state is asking for an expedited procedure to get it to the high court as quickly as possible. Pro-marriage groups stepped up their support for a state constitutional amendment. Article here.
     
  • Marriage Amendment Going to Virginia Voters

    By a 28-11 vote on January 25th, the Virginia Senate passed a state constitutional marriage amendment. The Senate action sends the amendment to the voters in November, where it is expected to pass. Article here.
     
  • Florida Marriage Defenders to Try Again

    After failing to gain enough votes to put a state constitutional marriage amendment on the 2006 ballot, defenders of marriage in Florida are reorganizing to put the amendment on the 2008 ballot. On a related front, the Florida Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the proposed language of the amendment violated Florida’s law requiring that constitutional amendments deal with just one subject. These challenges are commonly mounted by anti-marriage groups in any state with such a law and have never been successful. Article here.
     
  • Maryland Constitutional Amendment Effort Likely Dead

    An effort to put a marriage constitutional amendment on the ballot in Maryland this November is probably dead following action in the House of Delegates which upheld a committee vote defeating the amendment. Members of both parties were continuing to try to resurrect it, but the prospects appear slim. The effort to put an amendment on the ballot took on particular urgency this year after a Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled the states ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Article here.
     
  • Colorado Group Kicks Off Marriage Amendment Drive

    A Colorado pro-marriage coalition, Coloradans for Marriage, has kicked off a campaign to put a state marriage amendment on the November ballot. The group needs to gather only 68,000 signatures and is expected to qualify the amendment easily. Article here.
     
  • Study Follows the Money in State Marriage Amendment Campaigns

    The Institute on Money in State Politics has released an analysis of the funding by both sides in the 13 marriage amendment campaigns in 2004. They found that about $13 million was spent by proponents and opponents with each side spending about equally. Not surprisingly, homosexual advocacy groups provided most of the funding to oppose these amendments. Most of the funding to support these amendments came from religious based groups. Article here. Full report here.

International News

  • New Canadian Prime Minister Wants to Reconsider Legalizing Same-sex “Marriage”

    Newly sworn in Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he would like to have Parliament vote “sooner rather than later but not immediately” on whether to reconsider the law passed last summer to legalize same-sex “marriage” across Canada. If the House passes such a resolution, the government would then introduce legislation that would repeal last summer’s bill, C-38 on a true free vote. Polls show that even in the new Canadian Parliament such a vote would be close. Harper is hampered in carrying out his campaign pledge to revisit the law because he heads a minority government. Article here.
     
  • European Union Parliament Promotes Same-Sex “Marriage”

    By a vote of 468 to 149 and 41 the European Union Parliament passed a non-binding resolution condemning as “homophobic” any nation that does not legalize same-sex “marriage.” The resolution also refers to “religious freedom” as a source of discrimination. The EU Parliament has previously condemned some European countries, specifically Poland and the Baltic states, for not granting homosexuals’ “rights” including legalizing same-sex unions. Article here.

How Your Senators Voted on Whether to Consider the Protect Marriage Amendment

When the Senate tried to consider the Protect Marriage Amendment in July, 2004, anti-amendment senators blocked action through a filibuster. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster and amendment supporters were able to line up only 48 senators, far short of achieving that number. Since the Senate never considered the actual amendment itself, many senators have been able to avoid going firmly on record on how they stand on protecting marriage by amending the Constitution.

A “yea” vote was a vote to break the filibuster and actually consider the amendment.

NAYS

DANIEL AKAKA — D-Hawaii
MAX BAUCUS — D-Mont.
EVAN BAYH — D-Ind.
JOSEPH BIDEN — D-Del.
JEFF BINGAMAN — D-N.M.
BARBARA BOXER — D-Calif.
JOHN BREAUX — D-La
BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL — R-Colo.
MARIA CANTWELL — D-Wash.
THOMAS CARPER — D-Del.
LINCOLN CHAFEE — R-R.I.
HILLARY CLINTON — D-N.Y.
SUSAN COLLINS — R-Maine
KENT CONRAD — D-N.D.
JOHN CORZINE — D-N.J.
TOM DASCHLE — D-S.D.
MARK DAYTON — D-Minn. 		CHRISTOPHER DODD — D-Conn.
BYRON DORGAN — D-N.D.
RICHARD DURBIN — D-Ill.
RUSS FEINGOLD — D-Wis.
DIANNE FEINSTEIN — D-Calif.
BOB GRAHAM — D-Fla.
TOM HARKIN — D-Iowa
ERNEST HOLLINGS — D-S.C.
DANIEL INOUYE — D-Hawaii
JAMES JEFFORDS — I-Vt.
TIM JOHNSON — D-S.D.
EDWARD KENNEDY — D-Mass.
HERB KOHL — D-Wis.
MARY LANDRIEU — D-La.
FRANK LAUTENBERG — D-N.J.
PATRICK LEAHY — D-Vt.
CARL LEVIN — D-Mich. 		JOE LIEBERMAN — D-Conn.
BLANCHE LINCOLN — D-Ark.
JOHN MC CAIN — R-Ariz.
BARBARA MIKULSKI — D-Md.
PATTY MURRAY — D-Wash.
BILL NELSON — D-Fla.
MARK PRYOR — D-Ark.
JACK REED — D-R.I.
HARRY REID — D-Nev.
JOHN ROCKEFELLER — D-W. Va.
PAUL SARBANES — D-Md.
CHARLES SCHUMER — D-N.Y.
OLYMPIA SNOWE — R-Maine
JOHN SUNUNU — R-N.H.
DEBBIE STABENOW — D-Mich.
RON WYDEN — D-Ore.

YEAS

LAMAR ALEXANDER — R-Tenn.
WAYNE ALLARD — R-Colo.
GEORGE ALLEN — R-Va.
ROBERT BENNETT — R-Utah
KIT BOND — R-Mo.
SAM BROWNBACK — R-Kan.
JIM BUNNING — R-Ky.
CONRAD BURNS — R-Mont.
ROBERT BYRD — D-W. Va.
SAXBY CHAMBLISS — R-Ga.
THAD COCHRAN — R-Miss.
NORM COLEMAN — R-Minn.
JOHN CORNYN — R-Texas
LARRY CRAIG — R-Idaho
MIKE CRAPO — R-Idaho
MIKE DEWINE — R-Ohio 		ELIZABETH DOLE — R, N.C.
PETE DOMENICI — R-N.M.
JOHN ENSIGN — R-Nev.
MICHAEL ENZI — R-Wyo.
PETER FITZGERALD — R-Ill.
BILL FRIST — R-Tenn.
LINDSAY GRAHAM — R-S.C.
CHUCK GRASSLEY — R-Iowa
JUDD GREGG — R-N.H.
CHUCK HAGEL — R-Neb.
ORRIN HATCH — R-Utah
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON — R-Texas
JAMES INHOFE — R-Okla.
JON KYL — R-Ariz.
TRENT LOTT — R-Miss.
RICHARD LUGAR — R-Ind. 		MITCH MCCONNELL — R-Ky.
ZELL MILLER — D-Ga.
LISA MURKOWSKI — R-Alaska
BEN NELSON — D-Neb.
DON NICKLES — R-Okla.
PAT ROBERTS — R-Kan.
RICK SANTORUM — R-Pa.
JEFF SESSIONS — R-Ala.
RICHARD SHELBY — R-Ala.
GORDON SMITH — R-Ore.
ARLEN SPECTER — R-Pa.
TED STEVENS — R-Alaska
JAMES TALENT — R-Mo
CRAIG THOMAS — R-Wyom.
GEORGE VOINOVICH — R-Ohio
JOHN WARNER — R-Va.

NOT VOTING

JOHN EDWARDS — D-N.C. JOHN KERRY — D-Mass.

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