Your Help Needed to Protect Marriage in California
By Christine King

If you live in California and believe in protecting children and families, your help is needed right now. We are looking for people in different regions of the state to step forward and volunteer for a job that can make a difference in the future for families in California.

Marriage is on the line in California, and Family Leader is working with Protect Marriage to gather enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on November’s ballot. We need volunteers to pass petitions, and we also need people who can represent their own area to help motivate and coordinate the petition drive with their friends. Our goal is to build a network all across the state. This is not a big job, but is a critical one.

We have been told as Latter-day Saints to stand a little taller and let our voices be heard. Protecting marriage with a constitutional amendment on the state and federal levels is so important that the First Presidency issued an official statement about it saying:

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The golden state in 2008 is shaping up to be the here and now of protecting marriage for Californians. Family Leader is lending its support to the Protect Marriage Amendment.

ProtectMarriage.com is a coalition of national, state, and local pro-family organizations, churches and individuals united to amend the California Constitution to protect the institution of marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman. If passed, the Protect Marriage Amendment would add new language to the state constitution:

"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Several separate constitutional amendments to protect marriage have been submitted to the Attorney General's office, although it is unknown which will actually go before voters. Protect Marriage asserts that statewide professional polling shows that their proposed language has the only chance to win at the ballot box. Its language is simple, and it does not roll back domestic partnership rights.

"We are moving forward with a signature-gathering campaign to qualify a constitutional amendment to protect marriage for the ballot in November 2008," said Ron Prentice, chairman of the ProtectMarriage.com executive committee and California Family Council CEO. Supporters have until late April to get more than 700,000 hard signatures, with a goal of 1.2 million signatures.

Why Must We Have a Constitution Amendment When We Passed Proposition 22?

A constitutional amendment cannot be challenged.

Proposition 22 was passed by more than 61 percent of California voters in 2000. It added a regular statute to the California Family Code to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Regular statutes are a "lower" law than the state constitution. As a result, it can and is being challenged in the court system. The consolidated California marriage cases are now before the state Supreme Court. We are currently awaiting a decision by the California Supreme Court whether to uphold Proposition 22.

By adding the ProtectMarriage Amendment to the state constitution, which is the highest source of law in the state, the California courts would be required to uphold marriage because there is no other source of "higher" state law than the California Constitution.

The marriage amendment would also stop further efforts by the state legislature to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2005, and again in 2007, a same-sex marriage bill passed out of both houses. Because of Proposition 22, the governor was obligated to veto them, which he did. Should the courts declare Proposition 22 invalid, and we fail to obtain a constitutional amendment, this or any future governor could sign a same-sex marriage law into place, should he or she be so inclined. "A Supreme Court decision supporting the overturn of Prop 22 would be his green light," affirmed Mark A. Jansson, co-author of the amendment.

Another reason we need to secure an amendment now is that the margin of voter support for preserving heterosexual marriage is shrinking, and waiting is not an advantage. Twenty-seven states have marriage amendments and six, including California, are working on them.

We Can Be of Substantial Help

We cannot emphasize enough how vital it is that this amendment succeeds. We don't have to be legal eagles to weigh in with an opinion. We cannot assume that young people intrinsically understand how many lives will be dramatically weakened and altered as secure family life, with a committed father and mother, is driven step by step from the law.

We are up against an international campaign to portray support of man-woman marriage as being discriminatory and hateful. We sadly confront the perception that it is unfair to prevent any type of sexual behavior or union from being mainstreamed and legal. But it is utterly unfair to rob future generations of the time tested standard of home and family, especially given the vast evidence of the advantages it provides for youth, women, men, and society in general. Now is the time to step forward and present our case with confidence.

Take Action

Sign and Circulate the Petition