California to Vote on Marriage Amendment

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California to Vote on Marriage Amendment

Special Report - June 3, 2008
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen certified that a measure to amend the state’s constitution defining marriage as “between a man and a woman” will appear on the ballot for the November election. The measure needed 694,354 valid signatures to appear on the ballot. According to a press release from Bowen’s office, “initiative proponents submitted 1,120,801 signatures in an attempt to qualify the measure, and it qualified through the random sample signature check.”

The appearance of this measure on the California ballot comes less than one month after the state’s Supreme Court struck down California’s law prohibiting same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.

“This really is good news for the people of California,” said Matt Lytle, director of research for the North Carolina Family Policy Council. “With this measure on the ballot, Californians have the opportunity to reverse the decision by the California Supreme Court. The events in California show that marriage in North Carolina is not safe from redefinition by the courts, even though marriage is currently protected by state statute. Unless voters in North Carolina have the opportunity that Californians will have—the opportunity to vote on an amendment to the State Constitution—then North Carolina could soon become the testing ground in the southeastern United States for same-sex marriage activists.”

North Carolina is the only state in the southeastern United States besides Florida that does not have a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Florida voters will have the opportunity to vote on such an amendment in November. Senate Bill 1608—Defense of Marriage, a bill that would give North Carolina voters the chance to vote for an amendment to the State Constitution, has been filed in the 2008 legislative session. Similar bills have been filed for the past four years, but have all died in the General Assembly.