Media Release
8 August 2012

Marriage Petition Hits 20,000 Signatures In First Week

A website to protect the current definition of marriage as ‘one man one woman’, and cyber-attacked by opponents in an ‘unprecedented attack’, has experienced phenomenal interest, media coverage, and a strong response in its first week.

“Despite being hacked and forcing the site down for almost 36 hours, the number of people signing the petition in the first week supporting the current definition of marriage has reached almost 20,000 – and the signatures continue to pour in,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

The petition says “I support the definition of marriage in New Zealand being maintained as one man one woman. I oppose any attempt to redefine it.”

The website is www.protectmarriage.org.nz and has been launched in response to the private members bill of Labour MP Louisa Wall which seeks to change the legal definition of marriage.

“There is no shortage of energy and robust debate – and on such an important issue as the role and purpose of marriage, that’s great news,” says Mr McCoskrie. “We have been calling for recognition of the value and importance of marriage for a long time. Although distracted by the ‘definition’ debate, it is still a great opportunity to promote marriage and its important function and purpose in our culture.”

The website crashed on its first day after huge amounts of traffic through the site and then a ‘large scale denial of service attack’ – labelled ‘unprecedented’ by the web hosting company based in Christchurch

“There is plenty of debate to ‘go under the bridge’ yet on marriage – and politicians would be wise to hear both sides of the debate before making any final decisions. Marriage is too important to be based on catch-phrases of ‘equality’ or ‘rights’ without considering the long-term consequences of playing with definitions,” says Mr McCoskrie.

ENDS

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