‘The Protect Marriage Amendment’

By ANDREW P. PUGNO

Please join Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, the Proposition 22 Defense Fund, California Family Council, Capitol Resource Institute, Eagle Forum of California, Pacific Justice Institute, Alliance Defense Fund, Mrs. Gail Knight (Senator Knight’s widow) and thousands of pro-family organizations, leaders and volunteers — working together as the ProtectMarriage.com Coalition — to protect traditional marriage once and for all with the “Protect Marriage Amendment.”

GUEST COMMENTARY

You may think, “Didn’t we already vote on this a few years ago?” Yes, we did. Five years ago, Californians voted overwhelmingly (61.4%) to pass Proposition 22, authored by the late Senator Pete Knight. It stated: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Thanks to Proposition 22, when homosexual “marriages” later became legal in Massachusetts and Canada, Proposition 22 protected us from having to recognize them. When San Francisco’s mayor issued marriage licenses to homosexual couples in defiance of Proposition 22, those “marriages” were struck down as invalid. And when the Legislature passed AB 849 to legalize homosexual “marriage,” Governor Schwarzenegger announced he will veto it because of Proposition 22.

But we still need the “Protect Marriage Amendment” to finish the job, for two reasons.

First, an activist judge in San Francisco recently ruled that Proposition 22 (which enacted a regular statute) violates California’s State Constitution (a higher law), because traditional marriage serves “no rational purpose.” The ruling is being appealed. Yet, by adding the “Protect Marriage Amendment” to the State Constitution, we can “overrule” the courts, once and for all.

Second, the “Protect Marriage Amendment” will close a loophole that liberal lawmakers have used to give homosexual couples the same status as spouses. The text of Proposition 22 was written and qualified in 1998, before any other type of legal union existed. However, we had to wait until March 2000 to vote on it. In 1999, California enacted the nation’s first statewide registry for “domestic partners.” After Proposition 22 passed, Vermont legalized “civil unions” to give homosexual couples the same rights as marriage. In 2003, Gray Davis signed a similar law for California, giving “domestic partners” the full legal status of married spouses.

As you can see, this “loophole” (creating other legal unions) appeared after Proposition 22’s text became final in 1998. We tried to challenge the loophole in court. Although we lost, the court gave us useful guidance about how to close the loophole with an amendment. The court said that an amendment can either prevent rights from being given to legal unions other than marriage, or state that other legal unions “will not be recognized or fostered in any fashion.”

ProtectMarriage.com has chosen the second option. Our amendment would add the following to the State Constitution: “A marriage between a man and a woman is the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”

This amendment would prohibit California from recognizing, or giving rights on the basis of, other personal relationships that attempt to imitate marriage. This determination of its legal effect has been independently verified in legal opinions by the California Legislative Counsel, the Alliance Defense Fund, the former Chief Counsel to the Secretary of State, and many other experts.

The phrase “legal union” in the amendment is a well-established legal term that refers to a government-recognized personal domestic relationship. It is used in both the California Domestic Partners Act (Section 299.2) and the federal definition of marriage (DOMA). It is repeatedly used by California Courts. Moreover, the state’s official Title and Summary of the amendment confirms that it applies only to personal relationships, not other types of “unions” such as credit unions.

The debate over legal language should not overshadow an equally important question: Will a majority of Californian’s vote for it? The best legal language in the world is useless if it is not passed into law. It must be crafted to win a majority vote. ProtectMarriage.com has hired professional research firms to conduct statistical studies on voter attitudes, including focus groups and statewide, scientifically-sampled opinion polls. This extensive research has pinpointed the “Protect Marriage Amendment” as a measure that the majority of voters will pass.

It can win, and it will protect marriage. That is why the “Protect Marriage Amendment” is unanimously endorsed by every Republican State Senator, and nearly every Republican Assemblymember.

Please visit our website today at ProtectMarriage.com for more information, and to print and sign your own Official Petition. Thank you for your support.

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Andrew Pugno serves as legal advisor to ProtectMarriage.com. He is also chief counsel for the Proposition 22 Legal Defense & Education Fund, and was formerly chief of staff for Senator Pete Knight, the author of Proposition 22.