Post by ADH7901 on Oct 18, 2003 0:33:57 GMT -5
An analysis of Marriage Protection Week, which ends on Sunday, shows that the campaign focused more on preventing gay civil marriage than on nurturing wedded couples, a gay think tank reported on Thursday.
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (news - web sites) (NGLTF) Policy Institute reached its conclusion by studying the Oct. 3 proclamation from President Bush that endorsed the weeklong campaign and its goals, and by reviewing online content from the week's organizers.
A coalition of 29 conservative political and religious organizations created the campaign as a way to promote marriage between a man and a woman as "the God-ordained building block of the family and bedrock of a civil society."
When President Bush (news - web sites) signed on, he said the week "provides an opportunity to focus our efforts on preserving the sanctity of marriage and on building strong and healthy marriages."
But NGLTF noted in its analysis of the week that all of the official activities focused exclusively on a perceived threat to marriage by gay families; there were no activities for building strong and healthy marriages.
The group also found that nine of the sponsors' Web sites (those that had search engines) had more documents containing the word "homosexual" (2,369) than documents containing marriage-threatening concepts like "divorce" (1,423) "poverty" (823) or "domestic violence" (190).
"The hypocrisy of the organizations sponsoring this so-called Marriage Protection Week is stunning," said Mark Foreman, NGLTF executive director, in a statement. "In reality, they are fixated on attacking gay and lesbian people while largely ignoring the real problems facing married couples and American families."
One of the main efforts of the week was to rally people to urge their elected representatives to support the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban same-sex marriage in the Constitution. During the week, however, only Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., signed on as a co-sponsor of the amendment. (There are 97 co-sponsors for the measure, which was introduced in the House by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo.)
"Marriage Protection Week roared in like a lion, but whimpered out in the end," said Dave Noble, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats. "Most people saw it for what it was -- a thinly disguised anti-family political ploy."
Many gay rights groups denounced the week as an attack on GLBT people and their families, and they criticized the president for legitimizing it. Several groups organized their own "marriage protection" activities, including an online forum called "Queer Eye for the Straight Couple" in which longtime gay couples give relationship advice to married people.
"Marriage doesn't need protecting," Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry, told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network. "When we win the freedom to marry, gay people will not use up all the marriage licenses. There is enough marriage to share."
