Washington D.C., Jul 18, 2007 / 08:55 am
The Attorney General’s Office yesterday approved the California Marriage Amendment for circulation as a citizen petition.
Pro-marriage supporters will now move forward with the campaign to gather 694,354 valid signatures to qualify the amendment for the ballot. California is seen by many in the pro-marriage movement to be crucial for the national defense of marriage.
One of the major players in the pro-marriage campaign is the Alliance for Marriage Foundation, a non-partisan, multicultural coalition, which recently launched the California Latino Steering Committee to Protect Marriage.
The foundation’s president, Matt Daniels, warned that “radical activists have worked through the courts and legislature to void the democratic will of the people, and to strike down the commonsense definition of marriage” since the referendum on Proposition 22.
On March 7, 2000, 61.4 percent of California voters cast their ballots in support of Proposition 22, the California Defense of Marriage Act. While short of a state constitutional amendment, this referendum vote protects marriage in California as the union of a man and a woman.