More than two dozen Christian and pro-family organisations have announced its intention to oppose same-sex marriage and make the issue a hot-button social issue of the 2004 US Presidential election.

The coalition of conservative political groups announced at a press conference last Thursday that they have joined together to preserve the traditional definition of the institution in the United States and campaign for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.

Called the Federal Marriage Amendment, the two-sentence amendment will not only outlaw gay marriages, but also to prohibit the recognition of any civil rights for same-sex or unmarried heterosexual couples, including civil unions and domestic partnerships.

President George Bush has declared Oct. 12 to 18 as Marriage Protection Week. Ironically, the campaign starts the day immediately after National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11.

The Coalition to Protect Marriage, which includes Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, American Family Association, Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the National Religious Broadcasters and Home School Legal Defense Fund, has plans to blanket the airwaves, church media and public venues with messages about the importance of traditional marriage, said Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America.

They will supply literature about same-sex marriage to over 70,000 churches that week, and Christian radio stations are planning a barrage of programming on the issue.

The groups moved to form the coalition after the US Supreme Court in June struck down laws against sodomy in Texas as well as 12 other states. Some believe that the ruling could set the stage for homosexual unions.

The coalition also fears that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will give a favourable ruling on a pending case that will give same-sex couples the legal right to wed, leading other states to follow suit.

"We want to make sure that homosexual marriage is not legal in this country," Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America, told the Associated Press. "This is the very underpinning of civilisation. If we remove those foundations, our entire civilisation will come crumbling down," she said.

Several of the organisations have already declared that they want to get state and federal lawmakers on the record about marriage and has threatened to blacklist any politicians who support same-sex unions in any form.

"There is not a politician in America today who will get away without being very specific about where he or she stands on this issue," said Gary Bauer, president of American Values. "We pledge to defeat any politician who is AWOL or in doubt about the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman."

The coalition's ultimate goal of enacting a federal marriage amendment will require the support of two-thirds of the members in both houses of Congress and then be ratified by 38 states.

The move is said to have galvanised anti-gay supporters and evangelical Christians throughout the US in record speed and numbers.

Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission resident Richard Land said he has never seen in his "40 years of ministry any issue that has come even close to this issue in rousing the grassroots Southern Baptists and other evangelical Christians to making a stand," Land said.

"[T]hey understand at an intuitive level. They are coming to us out of the woodwork. Churches that are not a regular part of our network... want us with them, and they want to be with us on this issue."

---

Focus on the Family Founder and Chairman James Dobson echoed Land, saying that no issue like the battle over marriage has "come along in our lifetime to mobilise people of faith and people of a conservative conscience. And Congress will hear from them. We have already heard from them, and we will stand together with them."

Unsurprisingly, the campaign has met with strong opposition from equal rights advocates and the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) who have created their own movement during the same week, dubbed Marriage Equality Week, to counter Marriage Protection Week.

The MCC is a "worldwide fellowship of Christian churches with a special outreach to the world's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities" with some 44,000 members in more than 300 congregations in 17 countries across the globe.

The Rev Troy Perry, a gay priest who founded the fellowship of churches, told the gay web site, 365gay.com, that the "religious right" was trying to deny homosexuals equal rights.

"We are not seeking special treatment," Perry told the website. "We seek equality. We are asking that the marriage laws be applied equally to all couples, regardless of sexual orientation. That is the only gay agenda - equality for everyone under the law."

"We must respond positively and proactively to these messages of intolerance, oppression and hate," he said.

Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry, a New York-based progressive organisation fighting for marriage equality, views the anti-gay amendment as a dangerous precedent.

"The Constitution has never in the history of this country been amended to single out and discriminate against a group of Americans," he said.

Constitutional amendments "have always been in the direction of supporting equality and inclusion, not ever to discriminate."

"Its not a 'marriage amendment.'" He continued, "it is a sweepingly broad attack on families under the guise of being about marriage."

"This is not just anti-gay," he said. "It's anti a vision of the world that allows people to make their own choices about marriage, family, intimacy, love, sex and same-sex equality."

David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest homosexual rights group, said yesterday: "We consider this to be a politically motivated, mean-spirited attack on gay and lesbian families.

"If they're looking to make a political issue out of attempting to deny children raised in gay families the safety and security of a legal structure provided by a civil [marriage] license, that's going to backfire with the American people."