December 3, 2003

 

Office of the President

Steven W. Fitschen

 

Believe it or not, I didn’t want to write THIS letter.  Why?  Because I wanted to write a DIFFERENT letter . . . BUT I had to write this one.  Please read this letter right away!

 

Dear Friend of the Family,

 

I am so grateful for ALL THE THINGS you help the National Legal Foundation do.  Together we do SO MANY vitally important things.

 

In fact, that’s why I didn’t want to write THIS letter.  In my last letter to you—and to all of our friends and supporters—I told you about the assault on marriage in Nebraska.

 

But by now I’m sure you’ve heard that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has said that HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE MUST BE ALLOWED IN MASSACHUSETTS!

 

And so, I MUST write to you about the same topic.  And yet . . . even as we gear up for this critically important battle for marriage, I know that you are as concerned as I am about all the other work of the National Legal Foundation.

 

Please know that even as we need your prayers and strong financial support for the battle to protect marriage and the family, so we also need that support for all the things you help us do.  Please let me remind you of just some of the things your prayers and donations enable us to do:

 

¨      We defend religious liberty.

 

¨      We fight for the unborn . . . and for the Free Speech rights of pro-life activists.

 

¨      We fight against judicial tyranny.

 

¨      We seek to restore sanity to the public schools by defending Bible Clubs, Bible curriculum, intelligent design curriculum, and the rights of school children to wear religious T-shirts, hand out literature, and tell their friends about Jesus.

 

¨      We fight against the scourge of pornography.

 

¨      We have our own in-house think tank, the Minuteman Institute, that produces key scholarship in areas of vital importance in the “culture wars.”  As you probably remember, our research was cited twenty-five times at former President Clinton’s impeachment hearings.

 

¨      We have a special project, R.S.V.P. (the Religious Symbols Victory Project), that monitors the assault on religious displays across the nation.  These monuments are special targets for those who seek to remove every vestige of America’s religious heritage from our public life.

 

So you see, protecting marriage from the onslaught of the homosexual agenda is just one of the things that your prayers and gifts make possible . . . BUT, it is the one I must talk about again.

 

When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared that homosexual marriage must be permitted in Massachusetts, they declared war on marriage in America!

 

Within minutes—literally—I was in contact with other pro-family leaders across the country.  Later that day, I received a call from Capitol Hill.  Rest assured, the National Legal Foundation is pulling out all the stops in this critical war.

 

As you have probably heard, the Federal Marriage Amendment has been reintroduced in the United States Senate . . . and now has 100 co-sponsors in the House!  I have personally worked on a Federal Amendment for four years now . . . in anticipation of just such a day!

 

And meanwhile the battles go on in many of the states . . . such as the one in Nebraska that I wrote about last time.

 

That’s why I need to hear from you today.  We need your prayers.  We need your financial support.  And I need you to fill out our Marriage Petition.

 

Every time I hear from Congressmen, they are concerned about whether the American people will stand with them on this issue.  You see, they hear from the homosexual activists all the time.

 

Please sign your petition and return it to me as soon as possible so that I can forward it to those Congressmen and Senators who want to do the right thing and just need our support.  They need to hear from us, too . . . and not just the homosexuals!  When I receive your petition, I will forward it—together with those from many other supporters—to our friends in Congress.

 

Please respond with your petition and your very best gift without delay . . . and please pray!

 

                                                For the family,

 

                                                Steven W. Fitschen

                                                President

 

P.S.  Even as the battle for marriage and the family continues on many fronts—and consumes so much of our time, attention, and funds—all the other work of the National Legal Foundation that I mentioned goes on as well.  We have a brief on a religious liberty case due at the Eighth Circuit tomorrow, December 4th.  We have an anti-pornography brief due at the United States Supreme Court on December 10th.  And we have a religious liberty brief due at the Supreme Court on December 19th.

 

Please pray for me, for the entire staff, and for the judges and justices who will read the briefs.  And please send your very best gift today to support all of this vital work . . . we cannot afford to fail!