Take Action

The Coalition for Marriage and Family seeks to promote grassroots action by ordinary citizens to advance pro-family policies in Massachusetts. From calling your state senator on a piece of legislation, to marching on Beacon Hill or attending a hearing, to holding a sign for a local selectman candidate, there are numerous activities you can engage in to help make our state a more family-friendly place. Please check back on this page often for different activities and ways you can be more involved, and visit our Events page.

Bulletin Insert Program

As part of our new Church Education Initiative, the Coalition will regularly be producing bulletin inserts for distribution in churches. These will include informational bulletins, ones calling for action by parishioners, and ones announcing upcoming events. The bulletins can be found here:

About Us
Senate Budget
Oppose Elena Kagan

Support Laura's Law

Laura's Law (An Act Relative to a Woman's Right to Know) - The Coalition is partnering with the Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Massachusetts Family Institute, and Catholic Citizenship in championing this women's health bill. Named after Laura Hope Smith, a 22 year old Cape Cod woman who died during an abortion, this law would help prevent further tragedies. A woman considering abortion should be provided with the most accurate information available concerning the physical, psychological and emotional risks and complications associated with abortion. She should also be given a 24-hour waiting period between her request for an abortion and the scheduling of the procedure, offered an ultrasound of her preborn child, and informed of alternatives to abortion, as well as the services available should she decide to not abort the child.

Any facility in which abortions are performed should be held to the same medical standards as other surgical offices. Women should be treated by an abortion provider under the same careful scrutiny of personnel, procedures and facilities that applies to other surgical providers.

This bill is pro-life, pro-family, pro-safety, and pro-women's health.

Click Here to Email Your Legislators in Support of Laura's Law

Click Here for a Legal Summary of Laura's Law

Oppose the Transgender Bill

Transgender Rights/Hate Crimes (An Act relative to gender based discrimination and hate crimes) - MassEquality and other gay special interest groups have pledged once again to devote significant resources to a bill granting special protections to transvestite or so-called "transgender" people. If adopted, this bill would allow virtually anyone, regardless of sex, to enter single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms. It would also add the vague term "gender identity or expression" to the hate crimes law, making it a civil rights violation to deny a transgendered person access to facilities of the opposite sex.

Click Here to Email Your Legislators in Opposition to this Bill

Click Here for a One-Page Handout on the Transgender Bill

Participate in Our Letter Drive Opposing the Transgender Bill

The Coalition is asking our church-going supporters to participate in a letter drive opposing the Transgender Bill. For churches willing to participate, we'll be distributing form letters, instructions, and information about the bill. We'd like the letters returned to our office ASAP for distribution at the State House shortly thereafter.

This gives you several Sundays to speak with your pastor, gain his approval, and conduct several weeks of letter drives to educate and gain the support of those in your church.

For a quick, one-page hand-out about the legislation to give to your pastor, click here: http://www.mafamily.org/issues/docs/53_MFIPolicyBrief-GID.pdf

If you can participate, PLEASE email us at info@coalitionformarriage.org, with your name, address, phone number, and the church where you would like to conduct a drive. If others from that church are participating, we'll put you in touch with them so you can work together.

Oppose the Health Curriculum Frameworks

Comprehensive Sex Education (An Act relative to providing health education in schools) Planned Parenthood and its pro-abortion allies will make another attempt to establish comprehensive health (read: sex) education from grades K-12 as part of the core curriculum required for graduation from Massachusetts public schools. This sex-ed curriculum, if adopted, would greatly undermine the traditional values of public school students, teaching them to celebrate sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, and transgenderism. It would require the teaching of how to obtain an abortion without parental consent to children as young as twelve, as well as where to obtain confidential contraceptives. It would impose an additional requirement on our already cash-strapped public school systems at a time when they're struggling to maintain funding for other worthwhile programs.

Click Here to Email Your Legislators in Opposition to this Bill

Click Here for a One-Page Handout on the Health Curriculum

Support the MFI Religious Freedom Bill

Student Religious Freedom (An Act Protecting the Religious Freedom of Students) MFI has filed a bill protecting the religious freedom of students in schools. While students already have the right to express their religious beliefs in school, many teachers and administrators are uninformed or misinformed on these rights, confused about the so-called "separation of church and state." This law will codify the individual rights of students and compel the state to inform school districts of these rights. This will help prevent incidents where students are told they cannot have a religious-themed paper or choose a religious work for a homework assignment. It will ensure teachers are educated regarding student rights to free expression.

Click Here to Email Your Legislators in Support of this Bill

Support the Opt-In Bill

Opt-In for Sex Education (An Act Relative to Parental Notification and Consent) - The Coalition supports Rep. Brad Jones' updated parental notification and consent bill. This bill changes the standard sex-education notification policy from "opt out" to "opt in," allowing parents to sign their children up for elective sex education instead of being required to take them out. It also provides a "conscience clause" for teachers and administrators to prevent them from being forced to participate in anything that violates their religious beliefs.

This updated bill removes the word "primarily" (which provides a large loophole) from the description of applicable content. It specifically adds "sexual orientation" to applicable content.

Click Here to Email Your Legislators in Support of this Bill

2007 - 2008 Legislative Session

HPV Vaccine: Oppose Senate Bill 102
Update: Did Not Pass

This bill would have required that all girls as young as 11 years old be given the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine. This very new vaccine could potentially have damaging side-effects. Therefore, it should be made available to patients through their health care providers and at the discretion of parents, and not mandated by law and financed publicly.

Read the testimony of MFI's Evelyn Reilly at a recent hearing on the bill

The Health Curriculum Frameworks
Update: Did Not Pass, but was refiled for the 2009 session

This legislation would require that the Mass. Health Curriculum Frameworks be adopted statewide and made a requirement for graduation. There are portions of this bill regarding reproduction, sexuality and family that are deeply troubling from a parent's rights perspective. This bill also adds an unfunded mandate to our already-stretched public school system. Parents should decide what aspects of health education are taught to their children, not state officials.

Read MCFL's in-depth analysis of the frameworks

Distribute THIS flyer at church to Call YOUR elected officials to oppose casino gambling

Abstinence Funding: Support acceptance of the federal abstinence grant
Update: Grant not accepted due to a veto by Governor Patrick

This is $700,000 of free federal funding for our schools, but it must be included in the approved budget if Massachusetts it to receive the funding. Healthy Futures is the program that is used by many middle schools around the Commonwealth. This program teaches teenagers to form healthy relationships and to avoid having sex until they are older. It gives teens the facts about sexually-transmitted diseases and speaks truthfully about the consequences of unintended pregnancies. Massachusetts law requires that abstinence education programs be used in conjunction with comprehensive sex education that concentrates on contraception. Any claim that this money would be used for "abstinence-only" programs is false.

Read an opinion piece from the Boston Globe about abstinence by Gilbert Thompson