A $10 million campaign to win gay
marriage premiered Monday on CNN.
The group Freedom to Marry has pledged
to raise $10 million over the next three years for the Why Marriage
Matters campaign.
“Across the country the thinking of
many Americans, from the president to the people next door, continues
to – as the president put it – 'evolve' towards support for
same-sex couples joining the freedom to marry,” Evan Wolfson,
president of Freedom to Marry, said in a statement announcing the
campaign.
“By engaging friends, families, and
neighbors in personal conversations about why marriage matters, each
of us help fair-minded people wrestling with a lack of information
and uncertainty, and change hearts and minds,” he added.
In the ad, real life gay and straight
couples explain why marriage matters to them.
“It wasn't until I was in this
relationship that I experienced what it was to want to be with
somebody forever,” a woman in a lesbian relationship seated next to
her partner says.
The campaign also includes a website at
WhyMarriageMatters.org.
Other events on Valentine's Day
included a
flashmob dancing to the Beatles in the Iowa Statehouse rotunda,
gay
marriage backers delivering carnations to lawmakers in Maryland
and gay
couples applying for licenses in states where the institution is not
legal.