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Freedom to Marry Week Begins, 11th Year of Events Nationwide

Awareness of the Need to End the Exclusion of Same-Sex Couples from Marriage at a New High

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: February 11, 2008
MEDIA CONTACT:
Evan Wolfson, Executive Director
212-851-8418
evan[AT]freedomtomarry.org
Mobile: 646-263-5552

(New York, February 11, 2008)— Gay and non-gay organizations have scheduled over 100 events in 21 states across the nation in honor of the 11th Annual Freedom to Marry Week (Feb. 10-16), seizing an opportunity to highlight how the denial of marriage harms families, while helping no one.  The renewed conversations come as major court decisions, legislative progress, and ballot-measures all will be claiming space on the country's calendar this election-year.

“Freedom to Marry Week 2008 is one more chance to ask those around us to put themselves in same-sex couples’ shoes and ask, 'How would I feel if I couldn't marry the person I love?',” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry and author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality and Gay People's Right to Marry. “With state high court decisions in marriage cases pending in Connecticut, California, and Iowa; legislatures from New Jersey to Washington, Maryland to Illinois, New York to California, dealing with the reality that civil unions don't work and the freedom to marry matters; and conversations among the reachable middle moving hearts every day, Freedom to Marry Week offers an opportunity to give people the information they need to rise to fairness.”

Freedom to Marry Week occurs every year, right around President Lincoln's Birthday and Valentine's Day, to give gay and non-gay people around the country an opportunity to gather to talk about our lives, our loves and our families, celebrate the victories from the year before and continue the fight for the freedom to marry.

For event listings and to learn more about Freedom to Marry Week, visit: http://www.freedomtomarry.org/get_involved/freedom_to_marry_week_2008.php

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Freedom to Marry is the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Launched in 2003, Freedom to Marry is headed by Evan Wolfson, nationally recognized as a central "architect of the marriage equality movement." Freedom to Marry guides and focuses this social justice movement on a nationwide level, serving as a strategy and support center for national, state, and local partners, a catalyst that drives and shapes the national debate on marriage equality, and an alliance-builder fostering support from non-gay allies.