Is Mass. Family Institute Helping or Hurting with Its New Amendment about Marriage?

4th and Last In Series:
Is Mass. Family Institute Helping or Hurting with Its New Amendment about Marriage?

Sidebars:
Family Organizations on National Level Are Not Unified
Pawlick Files Libel Suit Against New York Times Company
Bay Windows Says Extreme Liberals, Not Homosexuals, Responsible for Illegal Vote

Previous Stories in Series And Other Related Stories

We must realize that we WON the Marriage Amendment in 2002.

You can't do any better than that! The opponents were forced into breaking the law in full view of the entire world. The main violator, Senate President Tom Birmingham, agrees that he lost the nomination for Governor because of his unlawful action.

But our family leaders all ran from the battlefield on July 18, 2002, and never returned. We will never win anything if everyone runs. Only two were left on July 19, my wife and me — and most of the citizens.

One will never win any battle if the leaders run away.

But you can't totally blame MFI. That's what they have been taught by their national mentor, Focus on the Family.

It's happening all across the country.

Five Homosexual Lawyers Work Full-Time in Boston

There are five (5) homosexual lawyers at GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders) in Boston working solely for homosexual causes (including gay marriage), primarily in Massachusetts.

(These are the lawyers who, because of their coziness with Massachusetts judges, pounced on Brian Camenker and Scott Whiteman in 2000, and still have them in a hammerlock today, for being the whistle blowers at Fistgate. They are also responsible for civil unions in Vermont.)

GLAD has a staff of 16 people, including the five lawyers and two paralegals, with an estimated annual budget of $1 million. They are one of several organizations in Boston which do nothing else but work on homosexual issues.

4th in Series: Marriage & 'Gay Marriage'

We Won the "Protection of Marriage Amendment," Who Took It Away?

From the Massachusetts Lawyer with First-Hand Knowledge

We are examining the enormous effort spent by Mass. Citizens for Marriage and MassNews on the 'Protection of Marriage Amendment.'

Has it done any good?

Story #1 - SJC Judges Warned Not to Follow Disastrous Route of Sen. Birmingham and Shannon O'Brien in Imposing Gay Marriage

Story #2 - What's It Like to Tell Six Judges of the Supreme Court that They Are Breaking the Law? Is It Lonely? Where Are the Leaders of the Family Movement?

Story #3 - Special Report for Those Who Want to Lower Taxes, Increase Manufacturing Jobs and Squash Big Government; Was the Marriage Amendment Worth the Tremendous Effort? Did It Affect the 'Real World' and 'Who Cares?'

They are funded by homosexual groups, which give tens of millions of dollars every year, including a lot to our politicians.

MFI does not have any lawyers on its tiny staff of three or four people. Yet it tries to give the impression that it is capable of handling this problem all by itself. Obviously, it can't.

But MFI is not unique across the country. No one on our side has taken this matter seriously.

We stand in stark contrast to the dozens of homosexual organizations on the national scene - like The Gill Foundation, The Human Rights Campaign (which raises $300,000 every year at a banquet in Boston with most of our politicians in attendance) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (organized in 1973 with a staff of 33, offices in New York, Washington and Sue Hyde in Cambridge, Mass., which is credited with training homosexuals to battle the Marriage Amendment here.)

1) Focus on the Family - It's a part-time effort for the huge Focus on the Family, which has done some excellent work in California, its home before it moved to Colorado. But it is not the battling, political organization which will go head-to-head with the opposition.

Founder James Dobson, a psychologist by profession who is accustomed to conciliating, suffered a stroke in 1998 after taking an aggressive political stand in Washington. He appeared stunned and hurt, when he appeared on a radio show later that year, after the New York Times and Boston Globe (at the urging of People for the American Way) manufactured the lie ["The propaganda of Matthew Shepard" May 2000] that he and other Christians were responsible for the tragic and pointless death of Matthew Shepard at the hands of pathological thieves in Wyoming.

Dobson has now announced his imminent retirement, and they are looking for someone new to head the organization.

2. Concerned Women for America - They've done an excellent job in hiring Bob Knight and Peter LaBarbera to staff their Culture and Family Institute. But it's still an adjunct to CWA. This group must be sent out on its own with its own lobbying staff to compete with the opponents on an equal basis.

3. Family Research Council - Under the new leadership of trial lawyer Ken Connor, they are taking an excellent aggressive stance. But it is not the fulltime organization that is needed. They have too many other things to do.

4. American Family Association - Their location in Mississippi will never "play" with the prejudices of Massachusetts. They do excellent work, but they will never get by the prejudice and hatred in our state.

Any Organization That Takes on This Battle Can Not Be 1) Religious, 2) Or Attack Homosexuals.

The statement in the next paragraph is fraught with danger. It's the type of soundbite which opponents can, and will, use against you. Any friend must think long and carefully about this message before emoting.

None of our action organizations on the national level should be 1) religion-orientated or 2) attack homosexuals.

Every one of the four groups mentioned above scores an A+ for never attacking homosexuals. When I first got into this in 1998, I expected to find all types of hateful comments from the way the NYTimes/Globe were reporting the story.

I looked all over the Internet, expecting to discover this "hate" from Christians, but all I found was love and concern. There were one or two extremists out there who said they were Christians, but anyone can say that. All the reputable Christians and observant Jews were loving and rational.

But on the "religious" issue, they are all "wrong." It's true that "religious" people have a large concern about this and many other family issues, but we cannot limit the debate to just them. If we have to convert every person to Christianity or Judaism before we elicit their support for families with a mother and a father, we will not get much support.

Although some of our supporters in Massachusetts had difficulty with that concept at first, they no longer do as they have come to understand.

You don't have to be "religious" to understand that a child needs a mother and a father.

I Didn't Understand Either — Until I Started MassNews

I was not interested in homosexual issues a few years back. I had known a few such guys in my days at Williams College in the 1940s. They were nice enough and got into good fraternities. When I had my business, they were some of my best employees, not because I was forced to hire them but because they were good at their work.

My first real clue came in 1998 when the daily newspaper in New Bedford (owned by the Wall Street Journal) published a column which said that Christians have been the worst bigots ever known in the history of the world, as proven by what happened to Matthew Shepard. (Although that story about Shepard has turned out to be a big hoax, a NYTimes/Globe propaganda lie, they keep repeating it over and over.)

My second clue came in 2000 when Don Feder told a group of non-liberal activists that they were all asleep. (I was new to the movement and that ad hoc group has never met again) He said that homosexual marriage was the most important issue they were facing that year, and if they didn't deal with that problem, it didn't matter what else they did.

Then I read the Vermont Supreme Court decision which came out a month or so later. It mandated its Legislature to enact either civil unions or homosexual marriage.

Being a lawyer, I quickly realized as I read their opinion that if the courts begin to decide the definition of marriage, they would change our entire society.

Then I noted that the Legislature and Judiciary of Massachusetts had already recognized and protected its homosexuals (as had Vermont) and if any judge were to follow only legal reasoning, we would soon have homosexual marriage in Massachusetts.

(The peculiar thing is that marriage was established to protect women and their children, but it was women who were against it in Vermont. Only 41 of the men in their Legislature voted for the Court's proposal while 60 were against it, but the women favored the proposal by 35-9 (a 4 to 1 margin). The final vote was 76 for the measure and 69 against.)

The main concern at that time in Massachusetts was not gay marriage, but its precursor, domestic partnerships. Cardinal Law's office expressed its concern about the bill on domestic partnerships which had already passed the state Senate but was being held up in the House.

When I talked with knowledgeable people, I discovered that Don Feder was right. There was not much concern from our leaders, including those who ran MFI.

Someone Had to Alert Mass. Citizens

I was more than busy running MassNews. I had never worked so hard in my entire life, with 16-hour days, 7-days a week being the norm. But my wife, Sally, thought this marriage issue was crucially important.

So we hired two firebrands just out of Brandeis and sent them off to start an office in May 2000 in Waltham. I stayed out of it because I was very busy with MassNews.

They had only two instructions: 1) This should not be religious in any way. This must be won on secular grounds or it would never be won. We would need both religious and non-religious people behind us. 2) Do not bash homosexuals. They have "good" and "bad" people just like other groups. Many of them support us.

They worked closely with a lot of groups in the state. We discovered the next summer that we had a problem because MFI thought the protection of the traditional family should be done in increments.

But we had just seen what happened in California where they had passed an Amendment in 2000 with great enthusiasm without dealing with domestic partnerships, only to see the homosexuals come back with great force that same year with civil union legislation. The people on our side had to work very hard (with a lot of help from Focus on the Family) to stop it. It still keeps coming back every year.

The man in charge in California advised everyone not to copy their mistake. It had caused serious problems and discouraged their people. He counseled that both gay partnerships and civil unions had to be addressed at the same time. His advice was echoed by three family organizations, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council and American Family Association. The other, Focus on the Family, also appeared to agree.

But when it came time to write our Amendment, MFI was very passionate that we do as California had done. However, that was not what we chose to do. None of us believed that the opposition in Massachusetts would change their strategy no matter what we did, whether we included domestic partnerships or not. We would only mislead our people.

Under the tutelage of our remaining Brandeis graduate and the hard work of everyone, including many organizations and churches and volunteers, we did very well in the fall of 2001 gathering signatures. We passed all the hurdles (which were huge) and accomplished the impossible.

But the opposition, which had expected us to fail, became alarmed. They could think of no way to stop us — but stop us they must or the SJC would be unable to impose gay marriage on the state. The only way to stop us was by breaking the law and refusing to allow a vote on the Amendment in the Legislature as required by the state Constitution.

After all, they reasoned, we would never win 25% of the Legislature if they, the majority, never allowed a vote to take place.

We got over 200 people to come to Beacon Hill and attend the first vote at the Statehouse in June. Over 500 came on July 17. When the Legislature broke the law on July 17, the whole world saw them do it. There was a lot of coverage in the daily newspapers.

But our friends all ran from the field of battle, the staff of MFI among them. They flew off to Colorado to a convention of Focus on the Family. And they never returned. That was the last we saw of them.

I had never worked for Mass. Citizens for Marriage before, but there was no one at this point but my wife and me.

Just think where we would be today if everyone had stuck together and exposed the scandal even more, instead of forgetting it. We did our best with many ads on WRKO and other stations. It was our publicity that damaged Shannon O'Brien, but we couldn't go it alone against the NYTimes/Globe. Our picketing of Jane Swift's office for seven weeks was seen by her and was part of the reason she finally requested an advisory opinion from the SJC. There was much other work we accomplished alone, but you don't have time to read it all.

When Justice Cordy asked the Asst. Attorney General at our oral argument on May 9, 2003, which Amendment is now before the Legislature, the judge was expressing the confusion that everyone now feels because of the "new" Marriage Amendment from MFI.

We are constantly asked what we think about their Amendment. We have never answered, but it's now clear that we must do so.

Everyone knows that in sports, war or any other contest, you don't quit when the going gets a little tough. We had Sen. Birmingham on his knees last July and Shannon O'Brien would soon follow.

(Mitt Romney was not smart enough to capitalize on their blunder either. Even if Romney didn't want to endorse the Marriage Amendment, he should have taken aim at the Democrats' violation of the law. That was a big issue in the minds of many voters. The vast majority of Republicans in the Legislature had voted to have a vote on the Amendment, while the Democrats voted against it. What an opportunity for Republicans and other non-liberals!)

Evelyn Reilly is a veteran activist who has worked for many conservative causes. She was head of the Christian Coalition in Massachusetts and she then came to work for me as office manager at MassNews. But that was too confining. So when the Chairman of MFI called for a recommendation, I said she would be fine working with people where she could pick the number of hours she desired. A lobbyist would probably be a good spot.

We at Mass. Citizens for Marriage had allowed MFI and Cardinal Law's office to do all the lobbying on the Protection of Marriage Amendment as we had no experience in that area. That turned out to be a serious mistake. Two days before the vote, on July 15, 2002, Evelyn returned from a two-week vacation at the Cape and informed everyone that she was talking with legislators from the other side and trying to reach a compromise. Reach a compromise???

MFI had assured us all along that they had been told that we would get the necessary fifty votes if the measure got to a vote. (They were right on that point!)

Our opponents could not ask for a better device to confuse and divide our troops than another Amendment.

Does MFI's Amendment stand a chance? Most people would answer that it does not. Certainly, the Protection of Marriage Amendment stood a better chance last year than this one does now. If everyone had stayed the course, they could have helped put a lot more pressure on everyone.

It is unclear why they have done such a thing. Or why they have sent some of these emails:

After their proposed Amendment was postponed this month to next November, they sent an email which said: "On Monday, we had a minor (possibly a major) miracle. . Thanks be to God! Thank God for Speaker Finneran and Rep. Phil Travis [who has done all this at the request of MFI]." After receiving that epistle, one person emailed to me: "Jeepers, talk about putting a shine on a sneaker. What are they smoking over at MFI?"

They showed their national importance by praising the state of Texas with the following: "Marriage Defense from Texas to Mass. Massachusetts Family Institute commends the state of Texas on the passage of their Defense of Marriage Act."

They say they wrote the new Amendment. "Months ago MFI drafted and proposed the Marriage Affirmation and Protection Amendment (MA&PA) to defend the traditional definition of marriage." However, their draft appears to be exactly the same as our draft, except they deleted some language at the end.

They appear to have forgotten their old friends. Here's one example: "In 2002, a Protection of Marriage Amendment (initiative petition) was filed after the collection of 130,000 signatures. It passed through all the legal hoops and challenges, and then a maneuver by the Senate President adjourned the constitutional convention without a vote, effectively killing the amendment. The primary proponent of the amendment requested a decision by the state supreme judicial court (SJC) asking whether the legislature had done their duty by adjourning." The "primary proponent," of course, was us.

It appears that Evelyn Reilly greatly enjoys the process. She was excellent in working on the signature drive. Whether she wins or loses almost appears to be immaterial to her.

Don't misunderstand. I will say a few prayers for MFI myself because those who still believe that parents should raise their own children in families, as they always have, are in a tough battle.

But this proposal by MFI will take a major miracle. I believe we would have gotten 50 to 55 votes (25%) if the Legislators had been forced to go on the record last July as voting for or against traditional marriage. But MFI is betting the farm that they will get 101 votes in November (over 50%), as they are required to do in order to move their legislative amendment along (inasmuch as they did not obtain any voter signatures).

Although the Bishops and the laity of the church have been enthusiastically supportive, the Cardinal's staff has become very distracted since we started in the spring of 2000. They instructed all their major donors to save their money for the lawyers that the church is needing to hire.

(What's worse is that the Cardinal's office appears to be heading down the same road that caused Cardinal Law's problems. As we have said many times, the fault in the Cardinal was that he was following the secular path of psychiatrists instead of what God has said. The calls today for Law to be criminally charged are silly. He was merely doing what all the secular voices were telling him.

(But the frightening part of this is that the editor, Deal Hudson, of the Catholic publication, Crisis Magazine, says they are heading down the same road again. According to him, the Boston Archdiocese has chosen to institute a program called, "Talking About Touching" from a secular group in Seattle. It's designed for kids from kindergarten on. It will be mandatory for all children and parents will not be allowed to watch. A concerned group from St. Catherine of Siena school in Norwood has created a website at www.germino.biz/scsparents.)

It's difficult to know what will happen now in the SJC. I don't believe they will send our Amendment on to the Secretary as we requested. But this is a political court and additional political pressure would have been heard by them.

I believe that gay marriage is more difficult to predict. I do not know the personal feelings of the judges although their past decisions tend to indicate that they favor gay marriage. Certainly Marshall and Greaney do. But how do they feel about violating the U.S. Constitution and its guarantee of a republican form of government?

I believe I have made some on the SJC concerned that it could be a disaster for them if they were to impose gay marriage. They now understand what happened to Birmingham and O'Brien.

Certainly, MFI has hurt us because they have given the wrong impression that not many on our side understand what is happening and we are not unified. The truth is that the people do understand much better than their leaders.

Hopefully, we will at least get a few dissenters from the SJC in the Goodridge case. If our whole movement were to become vigorous and determined, we might still have an impact on this court -- not by contacting them directly. They read the papers and listen to the radio. They know what is happening.

1) If the SJC mandates gay marriage, it should ignite a firestorm against the entrenched liberals across the state if our political leaders have any sense this time around. This will probably require new, young leaders.

2) The scandal by the Legislature, Gov. Swift and the SJC in failing to require a vote last July on the Marriage Amendment should not be forgotten. This should be a constant rallying point for non-liberals.

3) We will stay in-their-face with lawsuits so that they will not forget. Although we will continue to face liberal judges in the federal courts in Massachusetts, we believe they will be a little more shocked about what is happening here than are our state judges.

The family organizations on the national level are not unified about the best strategy. They have the right to disagree but not to belittle the others.

Sidebar:
Pawlick Files Libel Suit Against New York Times Company
Atty. J. Edward Pawlick has filed a libel suit in federal court against the New York Times Company on behalf of his wife, Sarah McVay Pawlick, for defamation by both the New York Times newspaper and the Boston Globe.

Sidebar:
Bay Windows Says Extreme Liberals, Not Homosexuals, Responsible for Illegal Vote

The homosexual newspaper, Bay Windows, wrote after the July 17 session that extreme liberal groups were responsible for the illegal actions and that most homosexuals were not interested in "marriage."