Editorial

There are plenty of understandable reasons why the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment did not receive enough valid petitions to appear on the 2006 ballot – a significantly higher number of petitions were needed than ever before, a much earlier deadline for the petitions to qualify, and another distractingly busy hurricane season.

Still, the bottom line is distressingly clear: you will not have the opportunity to protect marriage at the ballot box this November, even while there is a current lawsuit pending in Key West challenging the constitutionality of the state’s Defense of Marriage Act, and as more and more challenges to marriage mount across the nation.

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The good news is that all 456,363 valid petitions collected in the last year and counted by the state Division of Elections remain valid for four years, making qualifying the marriage amendment for the 2008 ballot a very reachable goal. If you signed a petition, you should know that petition is still good and it is unnecessary to sign another one.

We don’t have to start over; we just need to finish the effort – about 155,000 petitions will put the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment before the state’s voters in 2008.

The bad news is that the campaign to put the marriage amendment on this year’s ballot has revealed a disturbing degree of misunderstanding about what the law permits churches to do on these matters, a troubling misinterpretation of the First Amendment, and, most disconcerting, a significant level of apathy about the need to protect marriage in our laws.

Florida Baptists need to understand that churches promoting an effort to put marriage on the ballot do not in any way jeopardize those churches’ tax exempt status.

Dr. John Sullivan, executive director-treasurer of the Florida Baptist Convention, clearly underscored this point in the Jan. 19 issue of the Witness: “Not only is this something we ought to do because it’s the right thing, but also because we have a legal right to do it. The Florida Baptist Convention would not be promoting the petition effort if it were not legal. We have a legal right to become involved in the political process, as well as a moral obligation to support political initiatives and vote in elections.”

Religious liberty attorney Mat Staver told us, “It is not a violation of any law. Some people erroneously think that you cannot distribute or ask members to sign a petition on this or anything else. No church has ever been told that they cannot distribute voter initiatives.”

Further, I’m aware of pastors and others who have argued that it is – of all things – an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s “separation of church and state” for churches to promote the marriage amendment. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What the First Amendment’s religions clauses (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”) actually mean is the subject for another editorial, but it’s ludicrous to suggest that churches encouraging citizens to be engaged in the political and public policy process is unconstitutional. Christians – even pastors – are citizens and have the same rights as any other citizens, even when advocating a public policy that some find to be controversial (although marriage amendments have passed by overwhelming margins in every state that has put the matter to a vote).

Liberal religionists or secularists seem to not mind when pastors and religiously motivated citizens are involved in matters of public policy that fit with their political agenda (anti-war, poverty, civil rights, the environment, etc.), but the moment conservative Christian voters engage in matters like protecting marriage, then the separation of church and state canard is predictably claimed.

As absurd as the tax code and church-state separation violations are, more disconcerting is the apparent apathy of some citizens, most especially troubling among Florida Baptists. At one time, there were eight active challenges to Florida’s Defense of Marriage Act which limits marriage to one man and one woman in the state’s statutes. One of those challenges – based in Monroe County (Key West) – is still active.

All too frequently, other states’ marriage statutes are being challenged and, distressingly, some are being overturned. The latest is in Maryland, where a judge in Baltimore found that state’s marriage law unconstitutional because it discriminated against “gay marriage.”

It’s for this reason that 19 states have amended their constitutions to protect traditional marriage, and four others will be voting on similar measures this year. Tragically, Florida will not be one of them.

There is no question that it is simply a matter of time before Florida’s marriage law will be declared unconstitutional – and when that happens, the apathy of some citizens will turn to alarm. As Bill Bunkley, Florida Baptists’ legislative consultant, told me Feb. 1 when it was clear that the marriage amendment failed to qualify for the 2006 ballot, when a judge overturns Florida marriage statute, “a sleeping giant” will be awakened in the Sunshine State.

Let’s not wait until then to get this matter done so that we can vote to protect marriage in the 2008 election. If you have not signed a petition please do so immediately. You cannot do so via the Internet, but you can obtain the petitions online at www.Florida4Marriage.org or on our Web site, www.FloridaBaptistWitness.com. Churches which have not yet done so should hold petition drives in their congregations. Remember, only registered voters may submit petitions – which means that it may be necessary to first hold voter registration drives in churches, followed by marriage amendment petition drives.

The Florida Coalition to Protect Marriage is scheduled to announce Feb. 8 a new campaign to collect the remaining petitions needed to put the marriage amendment on the 2008 ballot: “155,000 petitions in 155 days.” In light of the fact that well over 200,000 petitions were submitted in the final two weeks of the initial effort, it is certainly an achievable goal to hope that the remaining 155,000 petitions can be collected in the next five months.

As disappointing as it is for Florida to be the first state to fail in its attempt to adopt a state constitutional amendment protecting marriage, Florida Baptists need to pray – and work – to be sure that this failure is only momentary.