Source: Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Palm Beach Post
TAMPA -- The group backing a state constitutional amendment to limit marriage only to straight couples kicked off its publicity campaign Thursday with a group of Christian senior citizens.

The Florida Coalition to Protect Marriage held several news conferences across the state heralding the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, including one at Beulah Baptist Church in Tampa, the city's oldest black Baptist church.

The coalition's former Florida4Marriage.org campaign is becoming Yes2Marriage.org, evoking its place as Amendment 2 on the November ballot.

The public relations offensive was aimed at an issue that may become the crux of the campaign - whether it could ban civil unions, employee benefits and spousal legal privileges for all nontraditional couples, as well as banning same-sex marriage. Opponents say it could, which could affect cohabiting unmarried elderly people, common in Florida.

Similar amendments have become the basis for legal challenges to those partnership benefits and privileges in some of the 27 other states that have passed them, the opponents contend.

In Michigan, which passed a gay-marriage ban in 2004, the state attorney general has argued it prohibits public agencies and schools from extending health-care benefits to domestic partners.

Florida's proposed amendment limits marriage to "the legal union of only one man and one woman" and specifies that "no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

The vague language could be interpreted as a ban on the domestic-partnership benefits that some local governments offer employees, said Stephen Gaskill, a spokesman for Florida Red and Blue, a group campaigning against the amendment.

A similar argument was used in 2006 by opponents of a marriage-restriction measure in Arizona, the only state where an amendment has failed.

In Tampa, Sara Tillis of Idlewild Baptist Church called that argument on partnership benefits "fraudulent" and said Florida elderly people "won't be fooled by our opponents' dishonesty and deception."

About 15 seniors and members of the clergy gathered at the Tampa church and said they wanted to protect a sacred institution they believe God created. They called marriage the cornerstone of society, which they think is losing family values.

In West Palm Beach a retired high school principal and a local married couple joined organizers from the Florida4Marriage advocacy group during a news conference at First Baptist Church.

"The world that we grew up in is very different than the world we live in," said Sidney Lanier, a retired Florida Highway Patrol officer who lives in Palm Beach County with his wife of 53 years, Cecile.

Some changes have been good, Lanier said, "but some things are never meant to change, because they define us as human beings."

Opponents of the amendment shot back in a news release that independent legal analysis of the language indicates it could be used to challenge partnership benefits as well as prohibiting same-sex marriage.

"Amendment 2 won't ban 'gay marriage' since same-sex unions are already prohibited by not less than four separate Florida laws," but it "could dramatically interfere with existing benefits and legal protections for all Floridians," said the release from Stephen Gaskill, spokesman for Florida Red&Blue/SayNo2.com.

While Florida has a state law banning same-sex marriage, supporters of the proposed law, known as Amendment 2, want the ban embedded in the Constitution and have collected enough signatures to take the proposal to voters on Nov. 4.

Full article: Politics: State: Marriage amendment backers start campaign | Tampa Tribune
Backers kick off campaign for marriage amendment | St Petersburg Times
Gay-marriage-ban push under way | Palm Beach Post