Focus on the Family sets sights on Colorado

Measures against gay unions backed

Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 5, 2006 at midnight

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The political arm of Focus on the Family has quietly launched a high-priced campaign to support two measures that oppose legal recognition of gay unions.

Focus on the Family Action has played a pivotal role in the recent wave of successful state ballot measures across the country that prohibit gay marriage.

Now it is active in Colorado.

In the past two months, Focus on the Family Action has given $500,000 to the campaign arm of a new nonprofit group called Colorado Family Action Inc., records indicate.

A staffer at the Colorado-Springs based evangelical organization helped form the new group, registered in the name of former Colorado U.S. Attorney Michael J. Norton.

Both Norton and Jim Pfaff, the Focus official working with the new group, declined to identify members or strategy.

"This organization won't be revealing strategy and tactics," Pfaff said. "I'm going to leave it to you to observe what's done."

Pfaff said Colorado Family Action will promote "pro-family issues - standing up for life from conception until death."

The stated purpose of Colorado Family Action's issue committee, also registered in Norton's name, is to support a proposed state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a heterosexual union and an initiative that seeks to prohibit legal recognition of domestic partnerships. Both will appear on the November ballot if backers collect enough valid voter signatures.

Focus on the Family Action has already spent more than $60,000 in direct contributions to the two ballot measure sponsors.

It also gave the issue committee $250,000 on June 23 - most of which was spent three days later on television-ad purchases - and another $250,000 on July 24, according to secretary of state filings.

Officials at two Denver network-TV stations and one in Colorado Springs said that the television ads will air in October and early November.

The huge infusion of cash into the looming gay-rights debate is not the first. Backers of a domestic partnership ballot measure, which would grant gay couples many of the rights and responsibilities of married couples, have already raised more than $600,000.

Colorado Family Action is one of more than 33 such state councils across the nation, Pfaff said.

Among other issues, he said the councils have played critical roles in passing ballot initiatives that define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

In Ohio, for example, Citizens for Community Values Action, a family policy council affiliated with Focus on the Family Action, gave $1.18 million to support the 2004 anti-gay marriage ballot measure, according to a January report by the Institute on Money in State Politics. This was almost twice the total amount spent by opponents.

In Colorado, supporters of a domestic partnership ballot measure said they have been expecting a massive campaign by Focus.

"Our assumption was always that the opposition to basic rights would come largely out of Focus on the Family," said Sean Duffy, leader of Coloradans for Fairness and Equality.

Who's involved?

Groups sponsoring ballot measures related to legal recognition of gay unions and funds raised:

• Coloradans for Marriage: Supports a heterosexual definition of marriage in the state constitution - $250,000

• Protecting Colorado Children: Supports a measure to prohibit legal recognition of domestic partnerships - $10,000

• Coloradans for Fairness and Equality: Supports a measure that gives legal rights and responsibilities to gay couples - $600,000

Big money

$1.18 million was given by Citizens for Community Values Action - a family policy council in Ohio affiliated with Focus on the Family Action - to support the 2004 anti-gay marriage ballot measure, according to a report by the Institute on Money in State Politics.

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