UFI's Successes: 2005
Commission on Population and Development--New York City
UFI prepared beforehand for what we believed would be both an important opportunity and a pitched battle over reproductive rights. It was both. Our efforts were key not only in helping to get a family resolution to some key delegates, but also in holding the line on a very aggressive reproductive rights agenda.
Commission on the Status of Women--New York City
Worked with the U.S. State Department and Ambassador Sauerbrey in preparing strategy and language for the upcoming Commission on the Status of Women. Our lobbying team at the Commission worked with the U.S. and other delegations, and succeeded in getting on record important statements from various delegations that the language of the outcome document did not include a right to abortion.
ABA Model Code and Effect of Sexual Orientation Provisions
UFI analyzed the effect of certain sexual orientation provisions in the Model Judicial Code produced by the American Bar Association, and provided the analysis to interested parties.
UN AIDS Meeting--New York City
At the United Nations AIDS Conference in New York, UFI presented its Stay Alive Program to various African delegates and policy makers, a number of whom requested that the program be made available in their countries.
UN Millennium Summit--New York City
In preparation for the Millennium Summit, UFI prepared and submitted its comment on Secretary-General Kofi Annan's In Larger Freedom (http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/contents.htm). Our comment was posted, along with other such NGO comments, on the UN website at http://www.un-ngls.org/sg-report-NGOs-comment.htm. Our comment emphasized the central and irreplaceable role of the family in development goals, noting the unfortunate absence of the family as part of the development plan. UFI further reminded the Secretary-General of the commitment he had made December 2005 at the 10th Anniversary of the International Year of the Family to keep family at the forefront of development issues.
Lobbied at the Millennium Summit, working with the U.S. delegation and others, and successfully kept out of the document dangerous language on sexual and reproductive rights.
Defend Marriage
Canada: Canada was the focus of much of the effort to promote marriage in 2005, focusing on the showdown over C-38, the bill to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. Several efforts were undertaken to try to stop this legislation. One generated over 45,000 e-mails through the UFI site to the Prime Minister urging him to hold a nationwide referendum on the issue. Another, a national e-referendum, generated nearly 150,000 “votes” with about 55,000 new pro-marriage individuals identified and added to the database. In all, the Canadian database grew from about 20,000 at the beginning of the year to about 135,000 contacts presently. Most of those include complete street addresses.
Spain: A similar effort to defend marriage in Spain was conducted through the World Families Alliance (WFA) to support the efforts of Spanish pro-family groups to defeat same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption legislation there. UFI president Sharon Slater was invited to Spain to help the pro-family groups plan their strategy to fight the legislation. She had extensive opportunity to talk to the press and was also invited to address a pro-family rally of 1.5 million people in Madrid. As part of this effort, WFA generated about 2,000 international e-mails to each of a dozen targeted senators, which was the number requsted by the Spanish pro-family groups urging them to oppose a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. WFA also generated about 6,000 e-mails to the Spanish President urging him to abandon support for this legislation.
United States: In the U.S., our effort focused mainly in Arizona, California and Texas.
California has been the most active, first in the effort to oppose the passage of same-sex marriage legislation and then to urge the governor to veto it. In addition to Internet based alerts, groups of volunteers twice lobbied the state legislature personally. The chapter has also been heavily involved in the petition gathering effort to put a constitutional amendment on the 2006 ballot. This has also proven to be a great organizing tool and some very good volunteers have been identified on which future efforts can be built.
In Texas, Defend Marriage generated a series of targeted action alerts to the contact list to encourage voter turnout in support of that state's amendment.
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