Join

 Rep. Matt Shea, Executive Board member of PMW

and

DiAnna Brannan, Director of Grassroots PMW

For an R-74 campaign overview and update, petition overview, discussion of starting an official Clark County R-74 campaign steering committee, Q and A, and prayer. The goal of a steering committee will be to increase the communication between the campaign and the local grassroots helping with the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

Come and learn what you can do to get R-74 on the ballot. Hear Preserve Marriage Washington’s winning strategy to “reject” SB 6239 this coming November.

Thursday April 12th, 7:00 – 8:30 pm

Shiloh Fellowship

10709 SE 10th St.

Vancouver, Wa. 98664

For presentation questions contact DiAnna Brannan at

grassroots@preservemarriagewashington.com

 Basic Points about the measures and the work:

• The R-74 petition is printed on green paper, I-1192 on white, clarify if signer has signed both.
• R-74: All petitions must be received by the state no later than JUNE 6, 121,000 valid signatures are needed. Gives voters an opportunity to vote on the recently passed law (ESB 6239). Vote to REJECT [X] the law.
• Remember with R-74 you are not voting on the referendum per se, you are voting on the law itself.
• I-1192: All petitions must be turned into the State by JULY 6, 242,000 valid signatures are needed. This changes the marriage is between “two persons” RCW language to “one man and one woman”. Vote to Approve [X].
• An easy way to remember which way to vote is Referendum = Reject, and Initiative = “the ayes have it”.
• Don’t get sucked into pointless arguments! It is obviously OK to attempt to persuade but consider not wanting to lose a handful of signatures attempting to win one convert.
• If out in public places, go in teams, be safe, be aware!
• Upon proper signature count and appropriate voter responses, R-74 by its own merits stops all the changes in the law from going into effect, I-1192 on its own merits would allow the law to take effect from July to November but would prevent the Legislature from attempting the same for two years.
• The new law does not grant any new religious protection; in fact it does not protect individuals and private non-religious organizations at all.
• BE ACTIVE, NOT PASSIVE. BE POLITE.

Signature pointers from the I-1192 website:

• It is critical that the registered signature on file and the petition signature match.
• Is the formation of the letters identical?  Did you write a cursive “S” on one form and a printed “S” on the other?
• Did you use a nickname on one and a full legal name on the other?  Was the voter card signed “Robert” but the petition signed “Bob”?
• Many Asian and Russian names may have the first and last names transposed.  In the native country the last name comes first but in America the opposite is true.
• Some of the petitions had only one initial and one fully spelled name.  Catherine Johnson could be “C. Johnson” in order to fit in the space but this may have resulted in a rejection.
• Changes in names due to marriage, divorce, and dare I state “sex changes” may not have been reflected in the signature cards.
• Be sure to fill out all boxes and not simply write the shorthand marks of two lines to indicate same as above “ || ”.

Answers to petition concerns from the Secretary of State Office of Elections:

• An invalid signature does not invalidate the entire petition.
• Other marks eg. spilt soda, ink marks,  does not invalidate a petition.  Any signature line that is legible will be counted as long as it is registered and the information otherwise qualifies. Each name and signature line is judged by its own merits.
• What if the signer has moved? Voters how have recently moved may still sign the petition, what matters is that they are registered. If someone is registered and has been actively voting – in the state – but has recently moved their signature will be counted. The best practice is to be registered at current address.
• It is ok to register a voter and sign a petition at the same time. The caveat however is that a newly registered voter sheet should be sent to the county auditor or the SOS within 5 business days.
• RCW 9A.46.020 applies to any conduct constituting harassment against a petition signature gatherer. This penalty does not preclude the victim from seeking any other remedy otherwise available under law.

Please join Pastor Ken Hutcherson, Pastor Shahram Hadian, and Initiative 1192 author, Stephen Pidgeon for a time of prayer and a discussion on protecting the Biblical definition of marriage.  Lunch will be provided.

Date:            Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

Time:             12 Noon to 1:30 PM

Location:       Shiloh Fellowship

10709 SE 10th St

Vancouver WA. 98664-4709

Download and print event flier and invite your pastor!

Please join us

Monday March 19th, 7:00 pm

Camas Assembly of God

500 SE Everett Rd.

Camas, Washington 98607

(360) 360-834-2291

Pick up I-1192 and R-74 petitions, voter registration forms, receive general instruction and pointers on signature gathering, and network with other people for the sake of signature gathering and information dissemination.

We are about two weeks away from distributing petitions for Referendum 74, which would repeal legislation redefining marriage in Washington state. The hearing over the ballot title will take place on March 13th. Within 5 days of the hearing, we will have the final ballot title for the referendum.

While thousands of people have already requested petitions to be mailed directly to them, many thousands more will be looking for petitions once they become available. We must make sure that petitions are easily obtained.

In order to make the distribution and collection process as easy as possible, we are in need of at least 100 locations throughout the state that could serve as regional petition centers.Churches, business, or organizations will be ideal.

These regional petition centers will be tagged and displayed on an online map to help friends locate their nearest pickup and drop-off locations. Each location will need to be able to do the following:

• Predictable and publishable hours for pickup and drop-off.
• Provide a contact number.
• Gather the names of those picking up petitions, the number of petitions they take, and their estimate of how many signatures they will gather.
• Provide a Frequently Asked Questions document for each person picking up petitions.
• Serve as a location where people can drop-off signed petitions.
• Record an estimate of how many signatures each person is returning.

Pick-up and drop-off sheets, a FAQ document, as well as shipping labels will be provided to all of our regional petition centers. If you are willing to help with this effort, simply fill out this form and one of our fabulous and cheerful volunteer coordinators will be in touch shortly.

Thank you in advance for your assistance with Referendum 74.

It’s a pleasure to serve with you.

Regional Form

I want to collect signatures

1. The divorce of gender from the marriage relationship inherently divorces the idea of gender from
parenting.

The redefinition of marriage in Washington State changes marriage from “husband and wife” to
“spouse 1 and spouse 2” and therefore must accommodate this gender neutral redefinition legally to
include “parent 1 and parent 2” instead of “mom and dad”. The new law clearly states that within the
context of marriage gender does not matter, and therefore by extension, gender of the parents does not
matter for children. Two adults are sufficient to raise children, not a mom and a dad. We know that the
primary function of marriage is procreation and the creation of a stable environment for the rearing of
children. Because this law indirectly asserts that moms and dads don’t matter, our state has
intentionally opened the door for further dysfunction as it will be forced to adopt and promulgate the
position that children do not need a mother and children do not need a father but rather simply need
parents.

2. Bad public policy.

Not only does the new law create bad public policy because of the divorce of gender from marriage and
by extension the divorce of moms and dads from parenting, it makes bad policy because the criteria for
marriage has been changed. Washington State and in general our entire society has always recognized
four basic criteria for marriage: 1. Must be over 18 years of age, 2. Must not be married already, 3.
Must not be a close kin such as a parent, a sibling, a cousin, etc., and 4. Must be of the opposite sex.
Along with the redefinition of marriage, the criteria for marriage have been altered effectively replacing
the fourth criteria, “must be of the opposite sex”, with ‘love”. Love has never been a requisite for
marriage in the eyes of the law for good reason. With the addition of love to criteria it now places a
precedent within the criteria itself of which the first three criteria may be legislatively or legally altered.
The primary criteria for allowing the redefinition of marriage was that “love and commitment” are
sufficient reasons to alter one of the state’s marriage criteria, that being the case then, it is likely
sufficient to alter any of the marriage criteria. This of course allows an easy precedent to allow any form
of marriage relationships. Imagine the long term results on children and society if the marriage criteria
are further altered.

3. Religious persecution is eminent (and imminent).

The intent of the original proposed bill states the purpose of the law is to “end discrimination in
marriage based on gender and sexual orientation in Washington” and while the law seeks to protect
religious freedom it must be noted religious freedom is not the primary intent of the law but a
contingency to make the law palatable to the general public – the primary intent, they claim, is to end
discrimination. There are two incongruent concepts incorporated into this law however; the first is
homosexual marriage, the second is religious freedom. Although some churches blur the line between
these two, the Bible is clear; the exercise of biblical religious freedom precludes same sex marriage and
therefore promulgates discrimination against same sex marriage. If the backers of this law continue in
their pursuit then religious freedom will inevitably come further under attack. It was “domestic
partnerships but not marriage” a few years ago. Today it is “homosexual marriage but not to inhibit
religious exercise”. Tomorrow, there is no reason to believe that it will be anything but “inhibit religious
exercise in favor of homosexual marriage”. The end result will be to increase discrimination, only
against the church. The truth of this has been very obvious recently particularly in healthcare concerning
the Catholic Church nationally and in our own state concerning the 5 year battle over the personal
conscience of the Olympia pharmacists to not dispense the “Plan-B” contraceptive pill. Fortunately
though in this case, the courts upheld religious freedom judging in favor of religious expression.

I would like to extend a personal thank you to all who attended the meeting last Friday evening with State Senator Don Benton and Family Policy Institute of Washington’s Joseph Backholm. Thank you also for taking the time to fill out the communication cards. The contact information will be instrumental in getting us working together effectively and efficiently.

Both Joseph and Senator Benton spoke with great reason as to the exceptional importance of protecting the definition of traditional marriage. A debt of gratitude is owed for the actions of both men in their efforts. A special thanks goes out to East Park Church in support of the meeting and to the Reverend Robertson for his service as church liaison for the evening.

Please be expecting further communications within the next week either via e-mail or by phone especially if you had marked prayer team or church liaison on your contact card. Identifying church bodies whereby signature gathering may be facilitated is critical in the waiting period of the referendum petitions to be published. Please note though that the imitative (I-1192) petition has been published but we will need to print the petitions locally from a PDF file and distribute. Please see the bottom of the side bar below for a link to the I-1192 petition PDF file.

Within the next 2 weeks the general plan is to begin to widely circulate both the initiative and referendum petitions to churches and signature gathering teams. There will be more information to follow within the week concerning this.