Your Help is Critical to Protect Marriage in Pennsylvania from a Court Challenge

Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act is facing a constitutional challenge in Federal Court in Philadelphia. Your help is urgently needed to help keep marriage the union of one man and one woman in the state.

Attorneys for a lesbian woman who was "married" to her partner in Canada have petitioned the court to declare Pennsylvania's marriage law to be unconstitutional. That means a single judge could, by his decision, rewrite the definition of marriage in the state to allow same-sex marriage. It was a case not unlike this one that led the high court in Iowa to legalize same-sex marriage there in 2009.

The only way to protect marriage for generations to come in Pennsylvania is a Marriage Protection Amendment, and we need your help today to make it happen.

Pennsylvania legislators are considering a bill which would pave the way for you, the citizens, to vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Voters in 30 other states have already enacted such constitutional amendments.

But until your state passes an amendment enshrining this definition in the state's Constitution, you are open to the same type of judicial activism that we saw in Iowa.

In order for a marriage amendment to be added to the Constitution, it must pass the state legislature twice before it can go to voters in 2014 for passage.

For the past five years, the state has considered legislation giving you the chance to vote on a marriage protection amendment, but each year the legislation has been prevented from moving forward. With this past year's election, however, conservatives won a majority in both the state House and Senate, paving the way for the passage of marriage protection legislation in 2011. But so far, the marriage protection amendment has not moved.

This court case is a real and present danger to marriage in Pennsylvania. It's time our legislature act on a constitutional amendment to allow the people a voice on this important issue.

Take Action

We need you to contact your State Senator and State Representative and tell them,
"Please support a Pennsylvania Marriage Protection Amendment."

To find contact information for your State Senator and Representative and to send them a message, click here.