Again and again, California voters have had their voice and their vote on Proposition 8 rejected. Mostly by powerful homosexual marriage activists, judges and sympathizers. But the people who want their constitutionally expressed will to be legally established have tolerated the repeated necessity of fighting for it in court. The appeal is court again, and sympathizers of the voters have joined in.

The breadth of support for the marriage amendment is showing.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit received 25 friend-of-the-court briefs Friday in support of California’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that protects marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Included among the briefs is one submitted by 13 state attorneys general.

The briefs demonstrate the breadth of support for marriage, the amendment, and the state’s initiative process currently under attack in the federal lawsuit Perry v. Schwarzenegger as well as the breadth of concern about the possible wide-ranging effects of the lawsuit. The case–being defended by the ProtectMarriage.com legal team, which includes attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund–could eventually affect 61 million Americans in the 9th Circuit and ultimately the entire country.

“What’s at stake in this case is bigger than California and bigger even than marriage,” said ADF Senior Counsel Brian Raum. “These briefs demonstrate the wide-ranging concerns about marriage, voter rights, judicial activism, religious liberty, and other issues and how they will be affected nationwide if this lawsuit is allowed to prevail. A diverse number of Americans understand that this lawsuit seeks to impose–through a San Francisco court–an agenda that America has repeatedly rejected.”

For many reasons. Because there’s so much at stake.

Surrender on gay marriage is surrender on marriage – which is surrender on the family and, ultimately, surrender on civilization…

All they do is accelerate the decline of an institution as old as human society. How can we say yes to gay marriage and no to polygamy, group marriage, cohabitation, child brides and other lifestyle choices seeking official sanction?

That’s not far-fetched. When such established law is overturned and replaced with an ideological version, it’s only a matter of time before it will be challenged in other ways currently considered unimaginable or unacceptable. When Roe v. Wade was decided, approving justices did not foresee that it would expand to cover all abortion on demand for any reason as a legally protected choice all the way through the infanticide of partial-birth abortion.

The pro-life movement has engaged more Americans on that issue, especially in election cycles. Defenders of traditional marriage are mobilizing voters ahead of the Fall elections. This is one of the most important issues they say, and it hasn’t received enough attention. It is now.

“This is our time to stand up and defend marriage as a unique institution that, from the beginning of human history and in every culture, is the union of one man and one woman for the propagation of the human family and the upbringing of children,” said Rev. John Quinn, Bishop of Winona [Iowa], a diocese of 130,000 Catholics, in the diocesan paper, The Courier.

The Minnesota Catholic Bishops are launching an aggressive six week campaign to remind or re-catechize Catholics about the truth of marriage, and urge them to contact their legislators, become informed about the candidates, and vote in the November 2 elections to defend marriage.

Minnesotans go to elect a new governor and legislature November 2, and the issue of marriage and same-sex “marriage” is at the forefront…

Local KSTP-TV reports the campaign effort involves sending a DVD on marriage to every single parishioner in the diocese – approximately 800,000 Minnesota Catholics – with an eight-minute message that also features Minneapolis-St. Paul Archbishop John Neinstedt. The video was prepared by the Knights of Columbus and is expected to be mailed out Wednesday.

“Our target is basically our Catholic people,” Nienstedt told ABC 5 Eyewitness News. “To remind them of what we believe and why we believe it and why it’s so important that they believe it.”

If marriage is lost, we lose everything.