16 Matthew J. Walton and Susan Hayward marriages between Buddhist women and Muslim men. A draft of the law circulated in July 2013 mandated that Buddhist women seek official permission from local authorities before marrying a man of another faith. It also included a clause that the man must convert to Buddhism if he wished to marry a Buddhist woman. The law, which has Some of the most controversial been supported and lobbied for by many monastics, is presented monastic mobilization has as a response to the rumor that centered on restricting BuddhistMuslim men marry Buddhist women to convert them and Muslim interfaith marriages so spread Islam, discussed further below. Over the summer of 2013, monks carried out demonstrations to show support for the bill and allegedly collected some 2.5 million signatures in support of it (Mahtani 2013). Legislative action related to religious identity has expanded since the middle of 2013. Buddhist nationalist groups worked with sympathetic political parties to introduce four bills in parliament in July 2013; these bills were related to interreligious marriage, religious conversion, monogamy, and population control (Eleven News 2014).19 Following a monks’ conference in Mandalay in January 2014, renewed public pressure from monks and laypeople brought the issue back into the spotlight (Zarni Mann 2014). Cautious in the run-up to the 2015 national elections, Myanmar’s political leaders have been careful to neither publicly support nor oppose the pieces of proposed legislation, although the legislation appears to have sufficient support within the parliament and a vocal constituency of monks and lay supporters (Radio Free Asia 2014b). However, in May 2014, an alliance of civil society organizations issued a statement strongly opposing the proposed laws, claiming that they violated the rights of women and minorities (Shwe Aung and Solomon 2014). MaBaTha responded quickly with a statement calling the civil society groups “traitors on national affairs” and disputing their claims to represent Burmese communities because they were “backed by foreign groups” (Nyein Nyein 2014). In the following weeks, some of the most prominent members of the civil society groups that signed the statement received death threats, yet they have continued their public opposition (Yen Snaing 2014).