http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/merc.../printstory.jsp

quote:

Gay-vow backlash brewing in S.J. EVANGELICALS SEEK TO TOSS OUT COUNCIL RULING By Robin Evans Mercury News Incensed by the city of San Jose's decision to recognize same-sex marriages, a group of evangelical Christians has hired a well-regarded Sacramento consultant to explore a recall effort or ballot initiative to overturn the action. ``The repercussions are going to be different here than in San Francisco,'' said Bill Buchholz, pastor of the Family Community Church, of the council's March 9 vote. ``People make jokes about San Francisco. We don't want them making jokes about San Jose.'' Sacramento-based Russo, Marsh + Rogers will begin by surveying Silicon Valley attitudes before recommending a course of action, said Larry Pegram, a city council member for two terms in the 1970s who attends one of the churches involved, South Valley Christian. The firm's successes include the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis and the campaign for Proposition 22, the state initiative defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. The firm could not be reached for comment Monday. In Silicon Valley, the evangelical clout could be potent. San Jose has the largest concentration of evangelical megachurches -- those that draw more than 2,000 people to multiple Sunday services -- in Northern California, according to a study by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research. Most megachurches are in Southern California but in the north, no city has more than San Jose's four. A conservative estimate puts the city's evangelical church membership at 20,000. And in general, the churches are experiencing rapid growth. Evangelicals believe in the literal truth of the Bible, including that God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman. Political observers say it's not inconceivable the groups could collect the nearly 46,000 signatures needed to qualify a mayoral recall for the ballot. A referendum would take about 19,000 signatures. ``Overturning a city law would be unusual, but I wouldn't discount it,'' said Bill Spohn, a professor of religion at Santa Clara University. ``If you're a church leader, it's an issue you can really galvanize people around. In terms of politics, it's not so much money but the people they can mobilize.'' In 1996, a coalition of taxpayer groups and evangelical congregations collected 60,000 signatures to stop a domestic partnership registry approved by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors from taking effect. Two years later, the board, seeking to avoid a referendum over the controversial measure, voted 4-1 to repeal its own ordinance. San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales said he hopes cooler heads prevail. ``This could be incredibly divisive for the people of San Jose and possibly their congregations,'' he said. ``I hope they'll allow some time to go by and see what the court says.'' But Gonzales' own unwillingness to wait until the state Supreme Court ruling expected this summer heightened the pastors' frustration. They met with the mayor before the vote, but he seemed to have his mind made up, said Doug Tiffin, one of the group of about 20 pastors at the meeting. ``We pleaded with him to wait, and he dismissed us,'' said Tiffin, pastor of the Crossroads Bible Church. Recent findings by the Mercury News that the mayor is collecting campaign funds beyond city limits has only added to their consternation. ``It's a leadership style that seems to dismiss the input of the people,'' Tiffin said. ``He seems to put himself above the law, which we feel is poor leadership.'' The organizing group includes the pastors of Family Community Church, Jubilee Christian Center, Cathedral of Faith, South Valley Christian Church -- who altogether preach to nearly 15,000 on a Sunday -- and other evangelical churches whose services attract 1,000 to 2,000. Interest in the campaign is reportedly growing outside that church coalition. ``If there is action taken, and I sense there probably will be, it will certainly be broader-based than just a group of pastors,'' Pegram said. He belongs to the Values Advocacy Council of Santa Clara County, a year-old organization that helped raise $10,000 to hire the consultants. ``The city council decision was certainly the catalyst to bring all of the interested people together.'' This is the ``sleeping giant'' that local clergy warned would be awakened by the council's action in response to San Francisco's authorization of same-sex marriages last month. Thousands of couples from all over the country flocked there to be wed. One of them was San Jose city employee Tina Salas, who then sought city benefits available to married couples but not domestic partners -- for example, health care for the couple's children. Her request prompted the city to move swiftly to allow her to immediately qualify for marriage benefits. For Gonzales, it was an equal-rights decision, one that will be rescinded if the state Supreme Court rules against same-sex marriage this summer. A good number of Christian pastors supported the city's decision. And Santa Clara County filed a friend of the court brief to help San Francisco as it battles the state over the right to issue same-sex marriage licenses. To most of the South Bay's evangelical pastors, who largely don't support domestic partners' policies but have chosen not to oppose them, sanctification of same-sex marriage crossed the line -- violating not only a moral code but state law -- Proposition 22. ``You have a city official telling you same-sex marriage is a civil right. We want people to understand this is someone redefining something that God created,'' Buchholz said. ``We may not be unanimous about this, but the majority of the churches are united. We're going to take a stand.'' The same-sex marriage issue promises to be as galvanizing as abortion, at the local, as well as national, level, said Kyle Fisk, executive administrator of the National Association of Evangelicals. ``Frankly, this may be the mobilizing issue,'' he said. ``And it's not just evangelical Christians but Catholics, Mormons and Jews who are concerned about protecting the definition of marriage and the family as the basic social structure of our country.''

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quote:

ISSUE : Gay rights debated Some advocates of same-sex marriages see parallels with the civil rights movement. By Bob Keefe Cox News Service On March 7, 1965, John Lewis led 600 blacks from Selma en route to Montgomery to protest for civil rights. They got only six blocks before Alabama authorities, using tear gas and billy clubs, turned them away on a day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday." Last week, Lewis stood before a Senate committee in Washington, comparing the gay marriage movement to the civil rights movement he helped lead 40 years ago. "We have been down this road before in this country," Lewis, now a Democrat congressman from Atlanta, told fellow lawmakers. "The right to liberty and happiness belong to each of us and on the same terms, without regard to either skin color or sexual orientation." There’s no comparison between the violent clashes seared into the history of the Southern civil rights movement and the joyous gay wedding marches in San Francis- co and elsewhere in recent months. But Lewis isn’t alone among civil rights leaders who say today’s gay marriage movement isn’t unlike their own movement of the 1950s and 1960s. NAACP Chairman Julian Bond has called attempts to prohibit gay marriage "an attempt to write bigotry into the Constitution," although the NAACP hasn’t taken a position on whether gay marriage is right or wrong. In a speech in New Jersey last week, Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., also called gay marriage a civil rights issue. A ban on same-sex unions, she said, is a form of "gay bashing" that would do nothing to protect traditional marriage. Few issues are more contentious in America today than whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Gay marriage ceremonies officiated by defiant public officials have sparked debate and outrage across the country, leading President Bush to push for a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a man and a woman. But is gay marriage really a matter of civil rights? Hardly, said Atlanta-area pastor Donn Thomas. He was one of about two dozen ministers who gathered in Atlanta last week to denounce gay marriage and any comparisons of the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement. "I do not see gay marriage as a civil right. I do not see gay marriage as a right, period," Thomas, a bishop of Messiah’s World Outreach Ministries, said in a telephone interview later. "This is not an issue of discrimination; it’s not an issue of hatred or anger. It’s an issue of morality as we see it rooted in the word of God." Along with other ministers, Thomas issued a statement they plan to deliver to the Georgia Legislature supporting a statewide ban on gay marriage and denouncing comparisons between the rights of gays and blacks. "To equate a lifestyle choice to racism demeans the work of the entire civil rights movement," the statement said. "People are free in our nation to pursue relationships as they choose. To redefine marriage, however, to suit the preference of those choosing alternative lifestyles is wrong." Almost single-handedly, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom started the debate over gay marriage when in February he directed clerks to rewrite city laws to get around a California ban on same-sex marriages. In the weeks that followed, more than 4,000 gay couples from across the country flocked to San Francisco to get a city-condoned marriage license before the state Supreme Court ordered the city to stop. Prohibiting gays to marry, Newsom has said, is discriminatory and therefore violated the California Constitution. "America" A merica has struggled since its inception to eradicate discrimination in all forms," he said in February. "California’s constitution leaves no doubts; it leaves no room for any form of discrimination." Like San Francisco, other cities also are in legal limbo over their attempts to legalize gay marriage. Benton County, Ore., has stopped issuing any marriage licenses — for gay couples as well as heterosexual couples — until the state Supreme Court there makes a decision on the legality of same-sex marriages. In New Paltz, N.Y., two Unitarian Universalist ministers are facing criminal charges for officiating same-sex marriages. For gay rights activists, last week’s support from civil rights leaders was quickly embraced. Their comments "are consistent with their historic fight against discrimination," said Winnie Stachelberg, political director for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. "It shows that it’s always the right time to fight against discrimination." If nothing else, the divisiveness over gay marriage in America is similar to the divisiveness over civil rights for blacks and others in the 1950s and 1960s. In a November 1963 Harris poll, only a slim majority — 54 percent — of respondents said they favored civil rights legislation that ultimately would end segregation and discrimination in voting. About 14 percent of respondents to other polls during that time said there was basis in the Bible for segregation. Recent polling on gay marriage also shows the country is split on the issue and whether there ought to be a constitutional amendment prohibiting it. A CNN/USA Today Gallup nationwide poll conducted Feb. 16-17 showed that 64 percent thought gay marriage should not be recognized as valid. Other polls indicate that a slight majority of Americans favor a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage. Americans also relate homosexuality with religion, according to other surveys. A Pew Forum nationwide poll taken Oct. 15-19 showed that 55 percent of respondents said homosexuality was a sin. About 28 percent said that gay marriage is morally wrong or prohibited by the Bible. John D’Emilio is a history professor and director of the Gender & Women’s Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He’s also a homosexual who has written extensively about the gay rights movement. D’Emilio said that in some ways, the gay marriage movement is similar to the civil rights movement. But, he adds, it’s a moot point. "I don’t know why are we making the comparison," he said. That said, D’Emilio understands why some civil rights leaders and proponents of gay marriage would make the link. "The Southern civil rights movement of the 1960s is probably without question the most inspiring, most dynamic, most important social movement in the 20th century," he said. "Whenever we as a nation think about social injustice, we think about that," D’Emilio said. "It’s a movement that’s provided a model for countless other groups over the last 40 years."

I really see no need to post lengthy quotes and normally do not, but the gay marriage debacle is absurd in my opinion. I live in Georgia and we're taking action to outlaw same sex marriage period.
Don't know what's going on up north, but us southerners could give a damn. We live by our own rules down here.


[[[smoke]]]

quote:

``The repercussions are going to be different here than in San Francisco,'' said Bill Buchholz, pastor of the Family Community Church, of the council's March 9 vote. ``People make jokes about San Francisco. We don't want them making jokes about San Jose.''

wow... some argument

i saw this guy preach on saturday and i ended up drifting off three times.

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Last edited by fuct4less on Apr-02-2004 at 00:26

quote:

Originally posted by fuct4less wow... some argument i saw this guy preach on saturday and i ended up drifting off three times.

You went to his church service? It must have been interesting to say the least. I haven't been to church in years, but I still think of myself as a Catholic after all the brainwashing of my formative years.


I'm also surprised to see a site like WND hacking Bush's credability to bits:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/

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Last edited by DaveSZ on Apr-04-2004 at 10:55