The issue of legalizing same-sex marriage, bill AB 849, is likely to come up again in the Assembly during the week of August 29th or the week following. (Additional background on this issue is provided below)

We defeated legalizing same-sex marriage twice before but we need your help to stop it this time!

We are asking you to do 2 things:

Action Item 1. Please call or e-mail the key Assembly members listed below and urge them to vote “NO” on AB 849 or abstain from voting at all.

We make it easy to e-mail the 9 Assembly Members with e-mail addresses (Barbara Matthews does not have one) with just the click of your mouse. We provide a suggested message that you can edit as you wish. Simply follow these simple steps.

Step 1

Fill in the information in the boxes below. This will be automatically included in your e-mails so they will know you are a California resident.

Action Item 2. Please contact others and urge them to also call or send e-mails to these Assembly members. One way is to send the link to this page to others. Another easy way you can spread the word is to fill in the information below. Those whose e-mail addresses you provide will get the message in the box from you along with a link to this site. (NOTE: the e-mail addresses you fill in will be used for this one contact only and are not retained in our database so the privacy of those you list is protected.)
 

 
Contact information for Key Assembly members. Please call them and urge them to vote “NO” on AB 849 or abstain from voting. (After hours you can leave a message.)

Brief background on this issue

Currently, a group of anti-marriage state legislators has used a parliamentary maneuver to resurrect AB-19 to legalize same-sex marriage in California that we killed twice in the Assembly in June. The bill to do this, now designated AB-849, has been reported out of committee and will likely be passed by the state Senate on Tuesday, August 29th or Wednesday, August 30th.

If it passes (which is expected because the Senate is even more liberal than the Assembly) it will then go immediately to the Assembly for a vote, perhaps as soon as the next day. We defeated the bill twice in the Assembly in June by only 4 votes and the marriage opponents have been putting intense pressure on a small group of pro-marriage Assembly members to switch their vote to support legalizing same-sex marriage.

As we have outlined in previous alerts, AB-19, which would have legalized same-sex marriage in California, was defeated on several votes in the Assembly in early June. This legislation, if passed, would have directly defied the will of the majority of Californians who voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 22 in 2000 to keep marriage in our state only between a man and a woman.

Because AB-19 did not pass by the June 3rd deadline for bills to be considered this year, it should have been dead for the remainder of this legislative session. However, proponents of same-sex marriage have used a parliamentary maneuver called “gut and amend” to resurrect AB-19. This tactic involves taking an unrelated bill that has already passed the Assembly, in this case AB-849 a marine research bill, and gutting the original language and replacing it with the text of AB-19.

This resurrected bill will be considered by the Senate and if it passes as expected, it will go back to the Assembly even though the original bill was defeated there previously. This maneuver is not uncommon but it is hardly ever used to resurrect a bill that has already been defeated by the Assembly.

THIS PARLIAMENTARY MANEUVER HAS CREATED A SEROUS THREAT TO MARRIAGE IN CALIFORNIA!

All of this action will happen very quickly. It may be no more than a day between the time the bill passes the Senate and it is considered by the Assembly. As it did last time when we defeated AB 19, the fate of marriage in California will rest in the hands of a few members of the Assembly who stopped AB 19 last time. These members have been under intense pressure to change their votes and support same-sex marriage