Preserving Marriage, Protecting Families

Arlington, WA, November 9, 2009 - I write today to acknowledge that our amazing campaign to turn back SB 5688, has, sadly, come up short. While the last of the votes are still being counted, we are at a point where we simply cannot prevail over the slight majority of Washington voters (mostly residing in King County) who have voted to Approve SB 5688.

We were greatly outspent and dragged through numerous signature counts and courts by our opponents and not one editorial board that I know of backed the REJECT R-71 effort!  Yet we determinedly carried forward our mission to defend marriage in Washington - and progress has been made in spite of the loss!

Click here to read an interesting article from Sunday's Everett Herald "Gay marriage issue can wait, say Referendum 71 partisans".  

As one of our campaign spokesman, Bob Struble noted in the Catholic Exchange today: 

"Although we lost narrowly in the Evergreen State, we did give our opponents a run for their money - several times more money than our backers were able to raise. We won 29 of 39 counties, notwithstanding that most politicians, big corporations, and mainstream media were arrayed against us. We lost by only about five percentage points in a state where, due primarily to Seattle's King County, the political climate is foul - possibly the worst environment for cultural conservatives among the 50 states. Last year, some 58% of Washington voters approved an assisted suicide law, and in 1998 a ban on partial-birth abortion was rejected by 57%."

While we ended up losing the popular vote, we have succeeded in many, many ways. We won nearly 48% of the vote, defying a hostile state political establishment and liberal media machine! Without question, people of faith and social conservatives have been revived as a political force in Washington.

With a grassroots campaign short on money but big on heart, we did much with little as we focused our limited campaign funds on yard signs, campaign literature, radio and cable television ads. The courageous Bible-believing churches and organizations that we worked with performed magnificently.

As we noted in our November 3rd press release, "R-71 has identified upwards of 200,000 people who are willing to take action to protect marriage, the family and children. It has also identified a legal team that has won victory after victory, a team that will now defend R-71 petition signers and their right to anonymous political speech before the United States Supreme Court."

We continue to believe that we can and will win future battles decisively if we continue to persevere even in the face of adversity. It is obvious that much work remains to be done here in Washington, especially in King County.