Hundreds for Prop. 8

Valley Press ^ | Friday, October 24, 2008. | JAMES RUFUS KOREN

[BenLurkin]

LANCASTER [California] - On the fourth day of a weeklong bus tour of California, the lead attorney for the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign stopped at Lancaster Baptist Church to whip up support - and money - for the campaign. Prop. 8 would amend the California constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman. Same-sex marriages became legal in California this summer after the state Supreme Court ruled that a state law banning same-sex marriages was unconstitutional.

Prop. 8 legal counsel Andrew Pugno said voters need to "send a message to activist judges," and tell them "they cannot take our vote away." He was in Bakersfield earlier in the day and will be in Los Angeles today.

Lancaster Baptist Church, a socially conservative, evangelical congregation, is home turf for the campaign, and Pugno asked the hundreds in attendance Thursday to reach into their wallets to help fund TV ads in the final days before the Nov. 4 election.

"Sometimes we don't put our money where our mouth is," said Sherry Marquez, a Lancaster City Councilmember and Lancaster Baptist Church member. She asked people... "pay for a TV ad today."

Pugno, who has been barnstorming the state since Monday, visiting Sacramento, Chico, the Bay Area and several communities in the San Joaquin Valley, also asked the crowd to volunteer by sending e-mail to friends, making phone calls and knocking on doors to rally support for Prop. 8, which opponents say will strip Californians of civil rights.

John Goetsch, executive vice president of West Coast Baptist College, which shares its campus with Lancaster Baptist Church, took the crowd through the biblical account of creation and said God intended marriage to be only between a man and a woman.

"God designed this unique relationship," he said.

[Parley Baer]

We are for Prop 8 and have 3 signs as we live on a corner. Two on the lawn and one up high on the garage.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I sure hope this passes, and send a message to the activist judges about legislating from the bench.

In the three liberal states in which the courts have imposed homosexual marriage, each court has ruled by a 4 to 3 margin. Each court, by a 1 vote margin, has voted to change the law and change the definition of marriage. Even among liberal court judges, there is no unanimity that traditional marriage discriminates against the homosexual community.

Some compare the gay marriage court cases to the civil rights movement. At least in Brown vs. Board of Education, the vote was unanimous. There was no strong legal opposition to the legal concept of equality expressed in Brown. Whereas with homosexual marriage, even liberal leaning judges are divided in their opinion of what the law requires.

And based on the narrowest margins possible, we are going to change the most fundamental foundation unit of civilization to make Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign happy.