I’ve spent the last few days dealing with a sudden and severe attack of employment, but have watched with great interest the aftermath of Prop 8’s passage.  John has chronicled much of that here on Article VI Blog.  To me, two aspects of the matter seem most fascinating:  The unity of the ProtectMarriage coalition in covering one another’s “backs;” and the beginning of a very important debate about where the country is going with the overarching issues associated with same-sex marriage.

Standing Together

I’ll start with the Catholics.  On Nov. 7, Bishop William Weigand, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, released a statement “in response to attacks on the Mormon Church for supporting California’s Proposition 8, defending the traditional definition of marriage.”  (Notably, Bishop Weigand is the former Bishop of Salt Lake City.)

Catholics stand in solidarity with our Mormon brothers and sisters in support of traditional marriage—the union of one man and one woman—that has been the major building block of Western Civilization for millennia.

The ProtectMarriage coalition, which led the successful campaign to pass Proposition 8, was an historic alliance of people from every faith and ethnicity. LDS were included–but so were Catholics and Jews, Evangelicals and Orthodox, African-Americans and Latinos, Asians and Anglos.

Bigoted attacks on Mormons for the part they played in our coalition are shameful and ignore the reality that Mormon voters were only a small part of the groundswell that supported Proposition 8.

As the former bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, I can attest to the fact that followers of the Mormon faith are a good and generous people with a long history of commitment to family and giving to community causes.

I personally decry the bigotry recently exhibited towards the members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints—coming from the opponents of Proposition 8, who ironically, have called those of us supporting traditional marriage intolerant.

I call upon the supporters of same-sex marriage to live by their own words—and to refrain from discrimination against religion and to exercise tolerance for those who differ from them. I call upon them to accept the will of the people of California in the passage of Proposition 8.”

I can tell you from first-hand experience that Bishop Weigand is right about the involvement of the Catholics.  On Election Night I was chatting with Brian Brown (no relation).  Brian, himself a Catholic, is the Executive Director of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which issued the “Thank a Mormon” e-mail John wrote about yesterday.  He was effusive in his gratitude to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for its role in the Prop 8 battle.  When I pointed out that Mormons had not really gotten involved until mid-summer 2008, Brian informed me that NOM and related Catholic organizations had been working on Proposition 8 for about a year, since well before the California Supreme Court decision in May.  They were the ones who did the hard pick-and-shovel work of gathering signatures for the petition, raising the early money, and all the other hundreds of tasks necessary to mount a constitutional amendment initiative campaign in California.

I have less information about early Evangelical support for Prop 8, but I understand it was massive.  Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Church in La Mesa, California was an early leader and a major fund-raiser.  Anyone following Prop 8 knows this, and saw and heard Pastor Garlow on television and radio many times.  In mid-September comments on the role of Mormons in the coalition, he said 

“I would not, in all candor, have been meeting [Mormon leaders] or talking with them had it not been for” the marriage campaign. He said he had developed a “friendship” with the Mormons he met, although he feels the theological differences remain “unbridgeable.”But he noted how Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants have formed tight bonds through their joint work against abortion, and he said a similar process might occur with Mormons.

I met Pastor Garlow once, just before he appeared on a Los Angeles television debate on Prop 8.  He expressed then, and has repeatedly expressed since, his gratitude to other ProtectMarriage coalition members, especially the Mormons, and has pledged his tireless support to the Latter-day Saints against the attacks leveled against them by No On 8 supporters.  We probably have not heard the last from Pastor Garlow about that.

The Debate on the Horizon

NRO’s editors captured it:

The current conflict over marriage is in part a proxy for a larger ongoing conflict about the role of religious people and religious values in public life. As courts come to endorse the principle that sexual orientation is just like race, American government is going to find itself in the position of treating traditional faith communities just like racists. Voters should beware — if they are consulted on the matter.

Think about it:  There is a strong movement under way, sponsored by intellectuals on the Left and pressed agressively in the courts by gay rights advocates, in favor of treating sexual preference as an immutable characteristic, like race.  This is more than a theoretical concern.  The California Supreme Court has already adopted that view in its May 2008 decision, In re Marriage Cases.  What the advocates of same-sex marriage want to do is expand that jurisprudence throughout the country.  If they have their way, any church that recognizes only traditional marriage will be seen, in the eyes of the law, just like churches who once opposed interracial marriage. In other words, same-sex marriage proponents argue that there is no difference between society’s protection of a same-sex couple’s right to marry, and its protection of an interracial couple’s right to marry.   

This is a serious issue that needs a just resolution reflecting the will of American society while still protecting the human rights of gays and preserving traditional marriage as the ideal. That is a tall order. Getting to such resolution will require hard work and commitment to ensure that the national debate is taken seriously. If we have learned anything from Prop 8, it is that the political and news media establishments cannot be counted on to ensure that a fair and open discussion takes place. All faiths who support traditional marriage have a dog in this fight.  Is there anywhere a clearer example of the common ground Evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons and others share in the public arena?

Just something to think about as we move forward and the 2008 election fades into history.

John comments: (A day late and a dollar short) First of all, I am grateful to see the Roman Catholic and Evangelical leadership in the Prop 8 effort stand in solidarity with the LDS on this, and it does look like some Evangelical houses of worship are (and others) beginning to feel the sting here.  Nonetheless, given that between only 2 and 5% of the votes cast in favor Proposition 8 were cast by Mormons, the actions of the protesters are hugely and disproportionately aimed at Mormons.  The “protests” are spreading outside of California.

As I have argued I, as an Evangelical, have a moral obligation to come to the aid of the Mormons in the face of this sort of onslaught, but as the protests spread, I have a practical one as well.  Simply put, we’re next.  Mormons are the battlefront in what is all our battle.  The opposition has used the force of the courts and the people of California have said “NO” - now they seek through intimidation and violence to do what they could not achieve legally.  They wish to dictate our religious expression and practice to us - first the LDS and then the rest of us.  We are not just defending the LDS here, we are defending ourselves.

We need to hear from more than just the Yes on 8 leadership in solidarity with the LDS here, we need to hear from Al Mohler, and James Dobson, and Frank Pastore, and Kevin McCollough, and every other creedal Christian leader whom this blog engaged in debate during the primary campaign.  This is so fundamentally about simple American decency, religious freedom and the proper functioning of our republic, that politically active religious leadership of all stripes simply cannot try to straddle the fence or sit on the sidelines.  Theology just does not enter this picture.

Destruction of property, threats of violence, and the disruption of the peaceful assembly of people for worship are not how we do things in this nation - particularly in the wake of a fair, lawfully conducted, VOTE BY THE PEOPLE.   That is what is at stake here - not the issue of who is and is not a “cult,” or who knows what about Jesus - this is about the simple fact of how we do things in this nation.  We all have to stand solid for that.
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