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As the battle over same-sex marriage played out in Massachusetts in 2003, the Republican Party reacted cautiously--afraid to alienate its social conservative base but afraid, too, of a backlash against a full-fledged culture war. The "family values" movement had no such qualms. Focus on the Family, with its vast Christian media empire based in Colorado Springs, launched a media campaign and its president, James Dobson, took a leave from his paid post to free himself from not-for-profit constraints and fight gay marriage "on the political level." After several months of furious organizing, Dobson complained, only thirty senators have endorsed the proposed constitutional amendment. That is why, a week after Massachusetts began issuing same-sex marriage licenses, Focus on the Family, along with the Family Research Council and the National Association of Evangelicals, organized a live church service, dubbed "The Battle for Marriage," simulcast to 500 Christian congregations, to prepare their troops for a major fight. Some speakers tried to offer up Capitol Hill-ready talking points--about the effects of same-sex marriage on childrearing, public school curriculums and divorce and cohabitation rates--and hawked literature, such as Focus on the Family's "Marriage Under Fire," with its eleven focus-group-tested arguments against same-sex marriage. In their more candid moments, Christian right leaders acknowledge that gay activism is not the only force undermining traditional ideas about marriage. Studies have shown that born-again Christians experience a higher divorce rate than both mainline Protestants and secular couples. However deeply felt the battle against gay marriage is, it has its political usefulness, too. Races for governor, Congress and Senate in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland and Minnesota had been decided in part on the question of gay marriage and gay civil rights--and that in each case, "pro-family" candidates were victorious.
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