Dr. James C. Dobson Speaks Out Against Gay Marriage Bill

Focus on the Family
Monday, 14 January 2002

Focus on the Family Founder Rallies Christians to Stop California Legislation That Would Destroy Traditional Marriage

In a nationwide radio broadcast Monday, Focus on the Family President James C. Dobson, Ph.D., joined by Family Research Council President Ken Connor and Alliance Defense Fund President Alan Sears, called on Christians to register opposition to a proposed piece of legislation in California that would change the nature of marriage in California and across the nation.

Assembly Bill 1338, sponsored by Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood), would establish civil unions for homosexual couples as equal to traditional marriage, and according to the bill's author, would affect 1,500 state laws that currently apply only to heterosexual marriage. The California Assembly plans to vote on the bill this month.

Dobson, heard by 7.5 million listeners each week, told his audience the bill would overturn the will of Californians. In March of 2000, 61 percent of California voters supported Proposition 22, declaring that marriage should be exclusively between a man and a woman. He added that what is happening in California will eventually travel to other states, and that the California Legislature is now "completely out of control" when it comes to issues affecting families.

"The California Legislature has been captured, almost without opposition, by those who hold a gay and lesbian philosophy and by a governor — Gray Davis — who has signed into law a host of pro-homosexual bills revolutionizing that state," Dobson said. "The result is a tsunami, a tidal wave, of anti-family and immoral legislation that is rapidly forcing the citizens of California to accept and live by an alien system of values that would never be approved if put to the voters."

"There is a point where we need to say, 'Enough is enough,' and we are there," he said. "I think this Legislature not only wants to change the culture of California — and do it very radically and very quickly — but also, by extension, the culture of the United States."

Sears, a former federal prosecutor and the administrator of the legal-defense organization known as the Alliance Defense Fund, said the creation of civil unions would not only reconfigure the face of marriage, but would also punish those people who do not willingly go along with its demands.

"(The bill) says that clergy cannot be forced to perform a civil union, yet religious organizations who employ (people) in non-clergy positions must recognize civil unions, provide for them in health insurance and other benefit packages, and those who don't comply will be punished," Sears said. "The (homosexual) agenda is not about tolerance; it is about silencing and forcing compliance with the rigid demands of the homosexual lobby."

Dobson, Sears and Connor predicted that the enactment of civil unions would lead to the legal recognition of group marriage and other non-traditional relationships.

"If marriage means everything, it means absolutely nothing," Dobson said.

More information about AB 1338 is available on the Focus on the Family Web site at www.citizenlink.org.

For more information, or to contact Focus on the Family, see their website at: www.family.org