Good news from the Golden State:

The sponsors of a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage in California said Monday they have gathered enough signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

A coalition of religious groups called Protect Marriage collected more than 1.1 million signatures in support of the amendment, said Brian Brown, executive director of the California office of the National Organization for Marriage.

The initiative needs 694,354 signatures, or 8 percent of the votes cast in the last governor's race, to make it onto the ballot.

"We have gone against tremendous odds to do this, and now the voters in California will have the chance to protect marriage," Brown said.

Supporters of the Limit on Marriage initiative plan to deliver their signed petitions to county registrars this week, ahead of the April 28 submission deadline set by the California Secretary of State's Office. The signatures must be verified before the amendment can be approved for the election.

Get so many more signatures than required is a great win for those folks...and the list presents a ready made list of potential volunteers and contributors for the campaign.  Just as important, having this issue on the ballot in California this fall might actually help put California in play in a presidential race for the first time in a long time.  Maybe.  Or at least maybe enough to worry the Dems into spending more money and time there than they otherwise would.

The folks in Florida working to get a marriage amendment on the ballot there this November are about 20,000 signatures short of what they need, with 2 weeks to go.

If you live in Florida, visit their site and download a petition and help out.  We NEED this on the ballot down there this fall.  Do what you can.  And pass it on.

This Election Day, voters in eight states will go to the polls and decide whether or not to give the traditional definition of marriage, the union of one man and one woman, the protection of an amendment to their state constitutions.  Amendments that are designed to protect traditional marriage from being redefined by radical state and federal judges, and to make sure that voters have a chance to be heard on this fundamental issue.

How has it come to this?  Why do voters have to vote on amendments to state constitutions to maintain the definition of something that has been settled in western civilization for thousands of years – long before our constitutions and laws were written.  Simply put, the answer is judges.

Activist judges in several states have taken it upon themselves to redefine – or demand that democratically elected legislators redefine – the historical and commonly understood meaning of marriage.  All without any input from voters.

A few years ago, four out of seven judges on Massachusetts’ Supreme Court redefined marriage in that state and then ordered their state’s legislature to comply.  Just last week the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered that state’s legislature to pass legislation that would either allow gay marriage outright or give all the rights and benefits of marriage under a name other than “marriage”.

For decades, liberal activists have used the judiciary to redefine basic cultural institutions because they know they are unlikely to achieve their goals if voters have a say in the matter.  By gaining the legalization of gay marriages in one state, they will seek to use the federal judiciary to force other states to officially recognize such unions, whether those states allows gay marriage under their own laws or not.

The risk is very real.  Due to a quirk in the Massachusetts state constitution, gays from outside that state are not allowed to marry there if their home states don’t allow such marriages as well.  Currently none do.  But thanks to New Jersey, this will change in 2007.  Will the rest of the country allow itself to be dictated to by judges from other states?

The oldest and most fundamental institution of society is the family, and the basis of the family is marriage.  Over the last several decades, failed marriages, no-fault divorce laws and out of wedlock births have wrecked enough damage on the family, and by extension, society in general.  It hardly seems logical that we should sit by and watch judges inflict further, more fundamental damage.

To suggest that we can suddenly change the definition of marriage and ignore thousands of years of human history without the possibility of negative consequences is to deny reality.  The ripple effect across our legal system involving such issues as insurance, inheritance, child custody, property, etc. would be incredible.  It would hit our court system like a tsunami and please no one but the trial lawyers.

Despite some of the rhetoric you may have heard, this amendment is not a restriction on anyone’s rights.  It is simply a way to codify in our state constitutions the marriage laws we already have on our books, thereby giving them more protection from activist judges and making them more difficult to change without voter approval.

While a constitution should only be amended for the most important of reasons, the protection of the definition of marriage is such a reason.  If we allow the judiciary to rewrite our laws, redefine our families and restructure our society without so much as a vote of the people, then we no longer have a democratic form of government.  Approving such an amendment takes the issue away from the courts and puts it squarely where it belongs – with the people.

Over the past several years, voters in states all across our country have weighed in on the definition of marriage, and the result has been a unanimous and resounding verdict.  In each case, voters approved state amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and put the issue beyond the reach of activist judges.

This Election Day, voters in eight states will be faced with the same question.  They should be mindful that if they don’t settle the issue, they risk having judges do it for them.

How long does it take to get to the bottom of a slippery slope?  While the answer to that question depends on the issue and your definition of the “bottom”, the Netherlands is conducting tests to help answer that question where it concerns the sanctity of life and marriage.

Within the past month we’ve seen news out of Europe’s most progressive state demonstrating their acceptance of polygamous homosexual civil-unions and the euthanasia of new-born children with disabilities.  How did they get to this point?

The Dutch journey towards the destruction of marriage began when they legalized homosexual civil unions in 1998.  This was then followed in a mere three years time by the legalization of homosexual marriage and adoption of children.  Now, just four years later, they passed another threshold when they certified the civil union of one man and two women.  Currently, their marriage laws, (such as they are), don’t allow polygamy, but the civil union laws do – and now they have their first gay polygamous union to show for it.

The “husband” in this arrangement explained that a fourth person would not be allowed into the relationship, as they wanted to take their union “seriously”.

Now that polygamous civil unions have been accepted can anyone doubt that polygamous marriage will be far behind?  They have gone from the top of the slope with traditional marriage to their current position in just seven years.   And given what they’ve allowed thus far, and the logic they have used to rationalize it, how could they justify slowing the wheels of “progress”?

And in such cases, who do the children belong to?  The goal (or direction) would seem to be to eliminate marriage altogether, along with any notions of parentage or parental rights.  Why not just pass a law saying that everyone is married to everyone and be done with it?  Then everyone would be free from condemnation and we cold have the purely amoral socialist utopia these folks have been dreaming of.  And only the fit will be allowed to be born and to live in this perfect world – so long as everyone wants them to.

So where are we on the slope?  ____ states have already legalized civil unions, and last year Massachusetts’ state Supreme Court forced gay marriage on that state without so much as a vote of the people.  And now many of those couples are returning home to sue other states to recognize their arrangements.  The US Supreme Court will take the case up soon no doubt.

Currently even one of our own US Supreme Court members has suggested such arrangements should be legal.  Her former employer, the ACLU, has even suggested that polygamy is a “fundamental right” and has defended pedophelia (?).

According to Justice Scalia, the 2004 Lawrence vs. Texas decision, which struck down that state’s anti-sodomy law, opened the door for gay marriage and polygamy.

On the issue of the sanctity of life, the Dutch has done no better.  In 2001 they began with purely voluntary euthanasia for people that were terminally ill, but moved rapidly to expanding the franchise to those who were disabled.  By 2004 they had moved to the euthanasia of disabled and terminally ill newborn babies and granted twelve-year olds the right to assisted suicide without parental consent.  In addition, they began allowing the euthanasia of the terminally ill who were mentally incapable of deciding for themselves whether they wanted to live or die.

Hospitals have also petitioned the government to allow the killing of terminal infants and  young children, as well as the severely mentally retarded.  They have also pushed ahead with establishing guidelines to euthanize newborns that are determined to be in paid associated with incurable diseases or severe physical deformities.  So now you could say we’ve reached the point of “fourth trimester” abortions, or even “post-birth” abortion.

Given the rapid progress science is making in the field of genetics, how long until perfectly healthy children are subject to abortion or “mercy killing” due to detected genetic proclivity towards some specific illness?

Once you accept the arbitrary justification that it’s OK to kill a child when it’s on one side of the birth canal, it becomes merely a matter of time before progressive logic rationalizes doing so on the other side.

Life has become so cheap under this new regime that millions of Dutch citizens have taken to wearing bracelets indicating their desire NOT to be euthanized.  Kind of like a perverted version of the Medic-Alert bracelet.

The infection of disrespect for life has spread to other countries.  Lawmakers in Belgium have even considered a measure to expand euthanasia to allow for the killing of children against the wishes of the parents.  Just this year in Great Britain, we have the case of a court ordered “mercy killing” were the parents of a brain damaged child lost an appeal to have their daughter resuscitated if she were to stop breathing.

This from countries that claim the death penalty for murderers is inhumane.

Within our own country, we first had Roe in 1973 which supposedly on legalized abortion up to the second trimester, but it routinely takes place beyond that point.  And now, in recent years, we’ve been faced with the partial-birth abortion procedure; a procedure which the Congress and President moved to eradicate, but the courts have again intervened.

Even today, prospective parents of children with disabilities here in America are getting subtle (and sometimes more direct) pressure from doctors to have an abortion.  In a recent study, mothers-to-be of children with Downs Syndrome reported that their physicians were overwhelmingly negative during their pregnancy, often advising abortion.

Giving the rising cost associated with health care, soon the arguments will no longer even pretend to revolve around the “choice” of the patients, or the parents in the case of children, but rather will be about who is fit or even worthy to live.  Hard to imagine?  Twenty years ago, I’m sure it would have been hard to imagine, much less convince someone we would be were we are today; sliding faster and farther down the slippery slope.

Once society starts down such slopes, how does it stop?  And where?  And what rationale do we use to defend stopping at any certain point against those who demand we go farther?

Like the cheap ‘70’s sci-fi flick “Logan’s Run”, we’ll all be genetically engineered (or selected) to be healthy and pretty, live in a marriagless, parentless, society with guiltless pleasure; but when we turn thirty, it will be our duty to society to allow ourselves to be snuffed out to avoid being a burden.  Ah, brave new world.

The most recent election has left us with one indisputable fact.  An overwhelming majority of Americans oppose gay marriage.  For all the fulminations and (to borrow a phrase from Karl Rove) bloviations of the left, we are left with a clear and convincing – and at least on a state by state basis, unanimous – verdict.

Now that the election is over and the returns are in, (and having lost overwhelmingly), liberals are returning to what they consider more friendly terrain – the courtroom.  In state after state they are now appealing to judges to overturn, throw out and/or otherwise find “unconstitutional” these duly passed, citizen approved constitutional amendments.  This from pretty much the same crowd that is heard shouting “every vote should count”, (even in cases where they are legally suspect).

This makes perfect sense however, as liberalisms victories rarely come at the ballot box, but rather through the hyper-activism of the judiciary.  No thinking person can reasonably suggest that the individuals who wrote our Constitution, much less those in the various states who approved and ratified it, in any way felt that they were putting into place something that could be construed as allowing such a fundamental societal institution as marriage to be arbitrarily changed without so much as a vote of the people.

Traditional marriage (involving one husband and one wife) has, throughout the course of the last several thousand years, proved itself to be the most effective institution ever devised to promote the stability and continuity of civilized society.  Not to mention the most stable environment for the raising and nurturing of the next generation of our citizenry, (no small item).  In light of that successful history, to suggest that you can suddenly change its definition and not expect, or at least admit to the possibility of, negative consequences on society is naïve at best and disingenuous at worst.

The arguments put forward by the left for changing the definition of marriage simply ignore and attempt to divert attention away from the sheer mass of unintended consequences that are likely to develop with any such change.  They say these are loving couples who simply want to share their lives together.  (Fine, but don’t ask the state to sanction it.)  They offer stories about lack of hospital visitation rights for their “partners”.  (You don’t need a marriage license for that.)

Probably the biggest doozy of a straw-man in this argument has been in comparing the debate over traditional marriage with what blacks went through in the civil rights struggle.  To say the least, this would seem insulting to blacks.  The civil rights struggle was about equal rights for all individuals, regardless of race – not regardless of personal behavior.

Even if one sets aside the moral arguments and implications, (which is setting aside a great deal), we are no closer to resolution.  The ripple effect on our legal structure involving such issues as insurance, inheritance, child custody, property and so on would be incredible.  It would hit our court system like a tsunami, and please no one but the trial lawyers I’m sure. 

If these issues weren’t so important, if they didn’t have such overwhelming implications on society, governments wouldn’t require that you obtain a license in order to marry in the first place. 

It is established and accepted throughout history that governments have an express interest in promoting the health and wellbeing of their societies via encouraging and/or discouraging certain actions or forms of behavior.  In the case of our Constitution, it is known as “promoting the general welfare”.  It is one thing not to have laws disallowing people from entering into various personal relationships.  It is another entirely to require that the state officially sanction such relationships. 

Liberals maintain that voting on such an issue is too divisive, (which means they know they’ll lose).  What they seek is a judicial fiat.  One, like the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision, that would re-define marriage without the approval of the public, (much less a vote).  They seek to use such a remedy in one state to force all other states to then recognize that marriage – thus changing every other state’s marriage laws by default.

In the case of our country, we are blessed with self-government and self-government depends on just that.  It depends on the capacity of free citizens to make reasoned judgments.  To be able to look at a set of circumstances and say that they think they’re important.  In fact, in many ways, the survival of self-governance depends on the willingness of citizens to make those judgments.  On November 2^nd, the voters did just that.  And that’s where it should end.