From the Family Research Council:
Consequently, we are asking all pastors and church leaders from across the state to bring as many people as possible to Raleigh, NC on May 17, 2011 at 10:30 AM. The Marriage Rally will be held at Halifax Mall located directly behind the Legislative Building.
More info at ReturnAmerica.
Senator Limmer released the following statement today after the MN Marriage Amendment passed the Senate 38-27:
“I’m proud that my colleagues in the Senate joined me in support of this constitutional amendment that gives Minnesotans the opportunity to define marriage as solely those unions between one man and one woman. There are a variety of perspectives on this issue. That’s why I think allowing a small number of politicians, or activist judges in St. Paul to decide is not acceptable. It is time to empower Minnesota with a choice to define marriage,” said Senator Limmer. “Our intent is to take a proactive approach, giving the public time to get information and discuss the issue in their communities well in advance [of] the 2012 Election.”
[Note: there is a great deal of exciting marriage news today, please scroll down for the latest updates!]
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I'm asking you to join me in the Bronx this Sunday as together we stand to protect marriage in New York. This is a critical moment for the future of marriage in New York, and if you can arrange your other commitments this weekend, I hope you'll come out and join us.
Governor Cuomo and powerful special interests are doing all they can to push same-sex marriage on New Yorkers, including a million dollar celebrity ad campaign, statehouse rallies, and behind-the-scenes lobbying. But still they are at least 6 votes short in the state senate by the latest published counts.
Help hold the line! Show New York legislators that their constituents care about marriage.
Sponsored by Senator and Reverend Ruben Diaz—a true hero in the fight to protect marriage in New York—the rally will bring together marriage supporters from across the state as we join together across racial, ethnic and religious lines to affirm the truth of marriage. I am excited to be there, and to have the opportunity to share a few thoughts about the importance of this moment in the fight to protect marriage. Be sure to stop and say hello if you can!
And would you please help spread the word by forwarding this email to your family and friends? Bring the whole family, and invite friends from church to come along!
And don't forget to keep in contact with your own state senator and representative. Your voice matters! One legislator has gone so far as to say that he will vote however his constituents tell him to vote—and he's keeping notes on each phone call and email that comes into his office! Help keep up the pressure by sending an email to your state senator and representative today. Click here to send your message now!
I hope to see you on Sunday!
The Minnesota Senate, with all Republicans and one member of the DFL party, just approved allowing the people to vote on marriage by a margin of 38-27!!
Please continue to contact your representatives in the MN House!
And THANK YOU for everyone who has already done so.
More from us soon...
The Star Tribune has set up a live feed showing the floor debate on the bill (SF 1308) which can be viewed here.
If you haven't already, please tell your legislators to support the MN Marriage Amendment!
This is a touching and inspiring story relayed to us by the New York Times:
Some couples spend retirement playing the nation’s best golf courses or hopping cruise ships. Not Marteen and Wiley Blankenship. They collect disasters the way other retirees collect passport stamps.
The minute they got the call from Southern Baptist Convention disaster relief leaders that tornadoes had ripped through the South, the Blankenships grabbed their sleeping bags and sturdy shoes and headed out from their home in Decatur, Ala.
Together, they have cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina, mucked out flooded homes in Atlanta and built houses in Sri Lanka. And for the past week they were camped out here in a rural part of northeastern Alabama where 48 lives were lost and thousands more disrupted in the storms.Mr. Blankenship, 70, and Mrs. Blankenship, 69, heated up chili and Salisbury steak, handing it out to people who drove through a church parking lot and packing it into Red Cross vans that carry meals into the remote countryside.
And they did it all for God
You can support the charity of Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief here.
From the NYT's Cityroom blog:
With only weeks to go before the end of the legislative session in June, a senior Democratic lawmaker in the New York State Assembly introduced legislation on Tuesday to legalize same-sex marriages, signaling that Assembly lawmakers were unwilling to wait for efforts by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and gay rights groups to pull together enough votes to move the measure through the Republican-controlled State Senate.
The move came as a national group opposing same-sex marriage, the National Organization for Marriage, pledged to spend $500,000 on an advertising and lobbying campaign to defeat same-sex marriage legislation and $1 million to defeat state lawmakers who vote for the bill.
This is not a done deal - which means we have to be all the more active in opposing their efforts to redefine marriage (emphasis ours):
... at a time when no Senate Republican has yet voiced support for a same-sex marriage bill — and prospects for victory seem uncertain at best — Mr. Cuomo has held off, with the apparent support of advocates and Senate Democrats who support the bill.
Related: NOM Launches $500,000 Ad Campaign in New York (Includes Video); Pledges $1 Million in 2012 Elections
A press release from NY Senator Ruben Diaz on how his opponents speak about him and his family (we've obviously bleeped the profanities):
The Office of New York State Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) has been made aware of vicious threats that appear today on Twitter by opponents of Senator Diaz’s upcoming May 15th Rally to Protect Marriage in New York State.
VITALisBROOKLYN: Is it wrong that I wanna track down Ruben Diaz Daughter and **** the **** out of her on tape. Then show it to him?
Anti_Cupyd: Nope RT @ViTALisBROOKLYN: Is it wrong that I wanna track down Ruben Diaz Daughter and **** the **** out of her on tape. Then show it to him?
Senator Reverend Diaz stated: “I sickens me that a mentality filled with vicious hatred for me and my family continues to flourish in the hearts and minds of people who are trying to change New York’s marriage laws to include homosexual marriage. There is nothing peaceful or caring about the people who make these threats nor the death threats that I have previously received and reported. This is NOT how any democracy in the United States should function.”
These threats have been reported to the Albany Police and to the FBI.
All hands on deck!
The AP is reporting that the Minnesota Senate will convene today (at 10:30AM CST) to deliberate and vote on the bill which --if approved by the House-- will allow the people to vote on marriage in 2012! Now is the time to tell your legislators to support the MN Marriage Amendment today!
Thank you!
William Lemire writes to the Star Tribune:
I have heard many opponents of the marriage amendment accusing supporters (like me) of bigotry and mean-spiritedness. These accusations are not true; they are not intellectually honest; they are not just, and they do not productively advance the dialogue on this important debate.
Is it genuine bigotry to believe that a child needs a father and a mother? Is it mean-spirited to believe that the legal institution of marriage is far more about children's and society's ultimate needs than it is about the emotions and desires of the wedded adults?
Whatever our viewpoint, let's commit ourselves to a public debate worthy of honorable men and women nobly participating in a government of the people. To that end, let's allow those same honorable men and women to vote on the marriage amendment in November 2012.
ACTION: Tell Your Legislators to Support the MN Marriage Amendment Today!
From CNN:
The Navy did an abrupt about-face late Tuesday, suspending earlier guidance that could have allowed same-sex marriages on military bases once the Pentagon scraps its present Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
A memorandum from the Chief of Chaplains, Rear Admiral M.L. Tidd, suspended one he issued about a month ago.
"My memorandum of 13 April 2011 is hereby suspended until further notice pending additional legal and policy review and inter-Departmental coordination," Tidd wrote on Tuesday to all Navy chaplains and "religious program specialists."
... Some critics of the Navy's now stalled gay marriage plan have said it would violate federal law under the Defense of Marriage Act.
Jeff Davis, the president of Minnesota Majority, writes in the Star Tribune:
... there's nothing bigoted about preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Marriage is a unique institution that brings men and women together. Only the sexual union of men and women can produce children.
Whatever one thinks about homosexual relationships, none of them can produce children. It is in the state's interest to channel the unique sexual energy of men and women into marriage so that any children produced by those sexual relationships have the best opportunity to be raised by a married mother and father.
... Bishop Bob Battle, a veteran of the civil-rights movement, recently testified at a hearing on the Minnesota marriage amendment bill that "gay marriage advocates have attempted to hijack the civil-rights movement and make same-sex marriage into a civil right. I know what civil rights are, and this is not one of them."
The [Star Tribune's] editorial blithely claims that homosexual marriage will have no impact on anyone in Minnesota outside of the same-sex couples involved. Yet legal experts on both sides of the divide agree that the issue has profound impacts on society.
... To the extent that civil rights are at all involved in the marriage debate, it is because the right to vote is our most important civil right, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once famously observed.
It's time to have a vigorous debate about same-sex marriage. It's time to let the people vote.
ACTION: Tell Your Legislators to Support the MN Marriage Amendment Today!
Phil Araoz is a Rochester physician who writes a monthly column for the Minnesota Post-Bulletin. He writes in a "both sides" exchange about why he thinks the people of Minnesota deserve to have their say:
Until now, the societal subsidy that is “marriage” existed mainly to promote stability for creating and raising children. You can see why that’s important when looking at areas with low rates of marriage. You find high rates of single motherhood and poverty, especially child poverty. The idea that marriage’s societal good is procreation is also behind most of the existing restrictions on marriage (Prohibitions on close relatives marrying, for example).
The alternative view is that marriage is mainly for love, specifically sexual love. Sounds sweet. But why should society (you and I) subsidize sexual love for its own sake? What societal good does it support? Remember that most of marriage’s practical benefits (hospital visitation, inheritance) can be obtained through other legal means, so this isn’t about those things. It’s about changing what marriage gives to society. Should it continue to be mainly stability for children? Or it should it be mainly happiness for adults?
Mind you, society has been moving toward happiness for adults for a long time. Look what it’s gotten us: A high divorce rate, dropping birth rate, more and more families whose members all move in different directions. Of course, none of those things have been caused by same-sex marriage, but the world view behind them is the same.
Araoz's conclusion:
In the end, the system best for society will emerge. But in the meantime, understand that severing the link between marriage and procreation is a big shift, one that people understand instinctively. Changes like this should at minimum be decided by voters.
Incidentally, the other side of this "both sides" exchange, Leah Nelson, offers this argument for her view that Minnesotans should not be able to vote on marriage:
"Do we really want to be on the list of small-minded states 30 years down the road?"
Wait, so the majority of American states are "small-minded"?!
ACTION: Tell Your Legislators to Support the MN Marriage Amendment Today!
Reports indicate that the Minnesota Marriage Amendment may be voted on in both the house and senate as early as tomorrow!
If you haven't yet emailed your state senator and representative, please do it right now.
Our opponents are doing everything they can to discredit the amendment effort and to divide the Republican majority. Tell your legislators that you care about marriage and it's time they let the people vote!
The next few days will likely decide whether Minnesota voters finally get to be heard—or whether politicians cave to a small but vocal minority that desperately wants to limit the voice of the people.
We need your help today! Please send an email to your state senator and state representative, urging them to vote yes on the Minnesota Marriage Amendment.
Here's what you can do:
Please – if you haven't yet sent your message, do it right now. And if you have, forward this on to three more friends who can help protect marriage in Minnesota today.
The Associated Press reports on our expanded efforts in New York:
Opponents of gay marriage in New York got national funding Tuesday as lobbyists, clergy, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislators head for a six-week legalization showdown with global implications.
The $1.5 million pledged by the Washington-based National Organization for Marriage comes with the organization's expertise after recent success against same-sex marriage bills in Maryland, Rhode Island and in a New York congressional primary...
"It's become quite clear in recent days in New York that Gov. Cuomo and same-sex marriage advocates are targeting a select number of Democrat state senators, as well as some Republicans, in their desperate attempt to coerce legislators to support their agenda," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage.
Brown said "those courageous" legislators will have a stronger supporter.
The group takes credit for derailing a gay marriage bill in Maryland, which was sent back to committee in March, and blocking a bill in Rhode Island this year.
"We expect the same to happen in New York," Brown said...
The National Organization for Marriage pledged to spend $500,000 for advertising and lobbying in Albany. It also plans to spend $1 million to fund and oppose candidates in the 2012 legislative elections.
