We need your help to protect the gift of marriage this Christmas season!

In this season as we prepare for the greatest gift, we too must prepare to defend the rightful home of that gift: marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The November elections have brought us to a moment of unprecedented opportunity, with the chance to pass new marriage amendments, strengthen legislative protections, and even roll back same-sex marriage in states like New Hampshire and Iowa.

But it’s also a moment of profound risk. Risk of letdown. Of complacency. Of surveying our successes with satisfaction, while forgetting that all we accomplished on November 2 only set the stage for the larger mission to come.

Now is the time that we must begin working to capitalize on those opportunities – organizing, planning, and beginning the grassroots outreach that will turn our electoral successes into lasting legislative victories. NOM poured over $12 million—everything we had—into focused, strategic initiatives to protect marriage this year. We urgently need your help to prepare for the 2011 legislative sessions.

We’ve just launched our new Marriage Challenge website. Thanks to a generous marriage challenge grant, every dollar we can raise from now until Dec. 31, 2010 will be matched, doubling the impact.

Please take a moment to watch our new Marriage Challenge video, recapping our successes of the past year and setting the stage for 2011. Then take the Marriage Challenge with your most generous gift. Thanks to the challenge match, your $25 gift becomes $50. A $50 gift becomes $100 to protect marriage. And $500 becomes $1000 for marriage!

My wife and I were blessed with the birth of our seventh child last week—Madeleine Sophie Brown. As I look at these little ones, I am more determined than ever to do whatever lies within my power to preserve, protect and defend the institution of marriage and the religious liberty upon which our great nation was founded.

Now the question is: Are you willing to do what it takes to protect a culture of marriage and religious liberty for your children and grandchildren? Will you stand with me today? Accept the 30-Day Marriage Challenge and join us with a gift of $25, $50, $250 or more.

Then—and this is equally important—please ask 10 friends to join you in taking our 30-Day Marriage Challenge at this all too critical moment.