Coalition Letter Opposing Marriage Promotion Provisions

Dear Senator Boxer:

Thank you for your recent endorsement of welfare reauthorization principles outlined by Senator Kennedy that include restoration of benefits for immigrant families, adequate childcare funding, and no increase in the work activity requirements for parents.

Unfortunately, the Kennedy letter remained silent on the insidious attack against women, communities of color and gays and lesbians. In the name of "healthy marriages," President Bush and House Republicans are proposing to divert a minimum of $1.8 billion in welfare funds towards programs that promote marriage and give states economic incentives to spend even more TANF money on marriage promotion to the non-poor population.

We need your leadership to prevent discrimination against unmarried families and to ensure that TANF Reauthorization focuses on programs that move families out of poverty.

We call on you to write a letter to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Minority Leader Charles Grassley asking them to reject the $1.8 billion currently slated for marriage promotion over the next six years and invest in programs that strengthen families by increasing access to higher education and child care supports.

The marriage promotion initiative jeopardizes families by:

1. Infringing on privacy rights by interfering with an ultimately personal decision.
2. Shifting needed resources away from womenıs economic empowerment and legitimizing the specious claim that marriage itself can solve poverty.
3. Putting women on welfare and their children at risk of domestic violence and in jeopardy of economic coercion.
4. Discriminating against same-sex couples, single parents, and parents who choose not to marry their partners.
5. Perpetuating the dangerous myth that single mothers, especially African-American and Latina women, are to blame poverty in the United States.

Polling conducted by Peter Hart and Associates in March 2002 demonstrates that less than five percent of Americans believe marriage promotion should be a principal goal of welfare policy. In the last six years, forty-four states have rejected marriage promotion programs for mothers on welfare, choosing to spend federal welfare funds on childcare, training and education.

Families in California and across the country need your leadership to ensure that the final Senate welfare reauthorization bill does not squander desperately needed welfare funds on dubious marriage promotion schemes.

Sincerely,