"That Doesn't Look Like A Riot to Me"

California's Proposition 8 passed last week, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry in the state. Beginning the day after the election, opponents of the measure, upset by the outcome, began gathering in vigil and protest, most notably in front of the LDS church in Westwood. They're upset by the support that church provided to the passage of the proposition.

Over the weekend someone emailed me a "news bulletin" claiming that Christians were being targeted with threats of violence by these protesters. The story came from World Net Daily featured the headline: "'Gay' threats target Christians over marriage ban." The story's evidence of that serious claim? A comment left on a single blog.

By contrast, the LA Times coverage of the protests has asserted things like,

Police guided the demonstrators through the streets for more than three hours without major confrontations. No arrests were reported.

Then yesterday the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins went on CNN and claimed that the protesters were "rioting." The remark comes at about 2:55.


When asked "Where were the riots," Perkins answers, "There were arrests the other night."

Do the math: some arrests=a riot.

No matter how you come out on this issue, it is certainly disconcerting to see people who's position is based wholly on moral conviction demonstrating such a callous disregard for the truth.

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Doctors Against Prop 8

The California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics is opposing Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that seeks to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. Here's their reasoning:

The physical growth, development, social and mental well-being of all children is supported by allowing parents a full range of parental legal rights, such as Social Security survivor benefits, health benefits for dependent children, and legally recognized consent for education and medical decisions. In order to protect and promote the best interests of the child, the AAP-CA supports equal access for all California children to the legal, financial and emotional protections of civil marriage for their parents, without discrimination based on family structure.

So much for the Yes on 8 campaign's "do it for the kids" argument.

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It's Over

I've voted, cast my absentee ballot in the largest voting district in the country, done all the research and filled in all the circles, sealed it, signed it, and sent it in.

I've only posted one item about this state's Proposition 8. I've known for some time how I would probably vote on it, but I remained open to wisdom and direction until Saturday, when I'd heard enough. The argument about the need for legal, social, and biological protections engendered in traditional marriage to be preserved hovered at the back of my mind for days.

On Saturday the wife was phoned by a Yes on 8 volunteer who warned that failure of the proposition would result in lawsuits against churches refusing to marry same-gender couples and in a mandate for public schools to promote those marriages. Neither of those claims are true (are synagogues sued that refuse to marry non-Jews? Catholic churches that won't marry divorced people? And the California Teachers' Association is forcefully opposing the measure), and yet this well-intentioned volunteer was spending her morning stating that they were, motivated largely, she professed, by her religious convictions.

After weeks of editorials, calls from Focus on the Family, yard signs, and newspaper ads, this call cemented what had been my pervasive leaning all along. What it made clear was that advocates of the measure are passionately concerned to defend an institution, marriage, that they believe has been instituted by God. The subject of Proposition 8 is, after all, marriage: who can participate in it and who cannot.

I too believe that marriage is a God-given institution, and yet I lack the zeal for protecting or preserving or defending it evidenced by Proposition 8's supporters. I've made my peace with the competing claim in all of this, that who and who is not admitted into a people's institutions is a matter of civil rights and that to deny access to an institution's legal and social benefits and responsibilities to a group of people based on an inherent characteristic of those people is wrong. It's a moral problem. God doesn't like it. It's wrong when it pertains to race. It's wrong when it pertains to gender. It's wrong when it pertains to sexual orientation.

Ultimately, I'm not persuaded that an institution ordained by God needs such vehement human policing. For one, proponents of "traditional" marriage have a tendency to amplify the importance of family in the Biblical narratives, overlooking the ways in which the God of the Bible repeatedly sends people out, away from the family as a traditional institution (Jesus is a pretty good example). But more to the point, such frenzied patrolling of marriage as a tradition belies a lack of belief in that very tradition. To truly believe in something is to trust that it does not depend upon your effort for its survival.

Praising the no-frills naturalistic painting style employed by his father, Thomas Merton says, ". . . a religious man respects the power of God's creation to bear witness for itself." I read that sentence, tucked neatly into the opening paragraphs of Merton's memoir The Seven Storey Mountain, on Saturday afternoon.

Then I put down the book and voted.

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What's on Your Ballot II

Proposition 8 is the most notorious of the 12 ballot propositions Californians will vote on in just over a week. It's a measure to "eliminate the right" of same sex couples to marry, a right that was granted by the California Supreme Court on May 15th (this blogger's birthday).

You're for this or you're not; there's very little grey. Among those for are the LDS church, Focus on The Family, and the Knights of Columbus. The opposed include the California Teachers' Association, Pacific Gas & Energy, and Brad Pitt.

This week saw the release of threatening letters sent by the "Yes on 8" campaign to entities that have given money to defeat it. They are clear in their message: withdraw your support from the opposition, give us money, or else. Read one such letter here. Money quote:

"Were you to elect to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. You would leave us no other reasonable assumption. The names of any companies or organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to Protectmarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published. It is only fair for Proposition 8 supporters to know which companies and organizations oppose traditional marriage.

Classy.

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