Marriage equality

Dear MoveOn Member,

Today, we won a huge victory, thanks to you. President Bush failed to pass his Constitutional amendment denying marriage equality to same-sex couples. The amendment failed resoundingly in a Senate vote this afternoon, with just 48 votes in favor and 50 against.

Constitutional amendments require 67 votes in the Senate, so Bush's failure to muster even a simple majority was a major defeat for him, and a huge victory for all of us.

Even if he lost the vote, Bush was hoping to use it to rally his base. But six Republican Senators voted against it. The Washington Post says: "The vote by the Republican-controlled Senate amounted to an embarrassing defeat for President Bush and conservative leaders who had pushed hard for approval of the amendment..."*

Earlier this week, the Senate was getting flooded with calls in favor of the amendment, generated in large part by right-wing religious television networks. Our petition and our calls helped turn the tide. More than 500,000 of us signed the "United, Not Divided" petition in just 48 hours, and more than 20,000 of us made phone calls too.

We also put an ad on TV. You can see it on CNN for the rest of this week, or watch it here:

Real: http://cdn.moveon.org/media/gaymarriage.rm
Quicktime: http://cdn.moveon.org/media/gaymarriage.mov
MPEG: http://cdn.moveon.org/media/gaymarriage.mpg

This overwhelming response in support of civil rights for all Americans also energized people who'd never taken part in a MoveOn campaign before &mdashl with this message, we welcome more than 150,000 new members to MoveOn.org, raising our total U.S. membership to nearly 2.5 million.

Together, we're showing President Bush that his divisive politics will get him nowhere. And we're growing stronger by fighting back.

It's a great day for America. Thank you for making this victory possible.

Sincerely,

--Carrie, Joan, Lee, Marika, Noah, Peter, and Wes
The MoveOn.org Team
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

* For the full story from the Washington Post, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49537-2004Jul14.html