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Loading ...Religious leaders call for fast in support of gay marriage ban
09.25.2008 9:40am EDT
(San Francisco, California) Hundreds of pastors have called on their congregations to fast and pray for passage of a ballot measure in November that would put an end to gay marriage in California.
The collective act of piety, starting Wednesday and culminating three days before the election in a revival for as many as 100,000 people at the San Diego Chargers’ stadium, comes as church leaders across California put people, money and powerful words behind Proposition 8.Some pastors around the state and nation are encouraging their flocks to forgo solid food for up to 40 days in the biblical tradition.
Jim Garlow, the pastor of the evangelical Skyline Church in San Diego County, said he expects up to 100 young adults to spend five-plus weeks on his campus, subsisting on soup, juice and the promise of societal salvation.
“This is not political to us. We see it as very spiritual,” said Garlow, a leader of an interfaith coalition that has held monthly teleconferences, shared sermons and solicited donations for the ballot measure.
Alarmed by a California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage, churches of many faiths have banded together in support of a measure that would amend the state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. They have become the single largest force behind the measure, recruiting volunteers, raising money, registering voters, manning phone banks and distributing campaign literature.
Under federal law, religious organizations cannot endorse political candidates but are free to campaign on social issues without endangering their tax-exempt status.
Along with evangelical Christian groups such as Focus on the Family and Family Research Council, the leaders of Roman Catholic, Mormon, Southern Baptist, Orthodox Jewish and Seventh-Day Adventist congregations have endorsed the measure and urged the faithful to give.
The Knights of Columbus have given nearly $1.3 million, making the Catholic fraternal organization the largest single contributor to Yes on 8. Donations from individual Mormons account for more than $6.4 million of about $17.3 million raised so far, according to Mormonsfor8.com, a Web site set up by a church member.
Religious leaders have addressed the issue from the pulpit, in Sunday schools and Bible study meetings, and through telephone calls, letters and visits to parishioners.
The California Conference of Catholic Bishops has given the state’s 1,600 parishes Sunday bulletin inserts about Proposition 8, and every diocese is holding workshops in English and Spanish.
“This Supreme Court decision was a huge wake-up call for Catholics. It was shocking,” said Bill May of San Francisco, leader of Catholics for Protect Marriage. “The sense is that this is the last chance to restore the definition of marriage, and if unsuccessful, it is going to have serious ramifications for California and across the country.”
Mormon congregations in California are taking marching orders straight from Salt Lake City. A June 29 letter in which the Mormon president asked members to lend support to the proposed amendment has been read repeatedly at church services, along with a 1995 church proclamation that warns: “The disintegration of the family will bring … the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.”
Thousands of same-sex couples have tied the knot in California in the three months since the nation’s most populous state legalized gay marriage. Massachusetts is the only other state to allow gays to wed.
Liberal congregations also have entered the Proposition 8 debate, though not as vigorously as their conservative brethren.
A coalition of religious leaders called California Faith for Equality has been working to persuade people of faith to oppose the ballot measure on spiritual and social justice grounds. California’s Episcopal bishops also have come out against the measure, which a Field Poll reported last week was opposed by 55 percent of likely voters.
“Everybody understands that Jesus, in his own culture, was notorious and persecuted for consorting with outcasts,” said the Rev. Peter Laarman, a United Church of Christ minister who opposes the gay marriage ban. “When Jesus said all are welcome at the table, I think he really meant all.”
I say let them starve.
Hate motivates some extreme stuff. It’s only a matter of time before these Christians start blowing themselves up and flying airplanes into buildings.
Wth any luck, some of these dumbass people will starve to death and we’ll be rid of a few more nutjobs from this planet!
Maybee they will be to weak to vote…
“Religion is the Crack Cocaine of Humanity” ~ by Bud Evans
Even in the face of a mulitude of attacks which the LGBT community has suffered in the last several years under the dictatorship of der Fuhrer Bush and the RepubliNazis; regardless of these cretins’ desperate and cynical machination by making same-sex marriage equality a wedge issue by which to goose their spiteful lynch-mob into a frenzied stampede to the polls on election day; notwithstanding the Democrats cowardly “playing it safe” official national policy of standing for absolutely nothing until the polls say it’s ok to do so; despite it all, my bubble of optimism remains unbroken.
The tide of history is at our side. It is just a matter of time before we are free. Nothing will prevent it; nothing will deter it. It is far past time that the phrase, “Liberty and Justice for All”, means something in the USA. Soon it will, and all of the homophobes can go put keffiyehs on their heads and immigrate to Saudi Arabia if they want the law to impose their religious lunacy on those who don’t wish to live their kind of hate-filled lives.
The horrors that are committed in the name of any alleged “god” makes one wonder if there is anything in any religion that is worth bothering with. Organized religions are either private clubs, political caucuses or lynch mobs. And far too many are a curse on humanity. Someone once told me that it isn’t religion that does these things, it’s the people. To which I respond: Yeah, that’s kind of like the simple-minded mantra of the NRA which moronically claims, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. As if no contributing relationship or association exists. Nope, sorry that wont wash anymore.
More often, religions provide the twisted justification for violence –they always have. This is especially true when you have people in the Protestant Evangelical Cults; in the Catholic Klan, and in the Muslim Mob who constantly belittle, persecute, and attack the hundreds of millions of Gays and Lesbians in this world. Anything that threatens their limited world view, based on their irrational obsession with superstition, must be controlled, altered or destroyed — according to them.
I ask them to give me one “rational” reason, I ask for just ONE carefully thought-out and intelligent justification for the maltreatment and the limitations on the civil rights of Gay and Lesbian citizens around the globe. But they can’t give one. That is why these hate-filled depots turn to the superstitious mandates of religion in order to justify their evil acts. None of the powerful, of any faith, can hold the moral high-ground especially when self-styled “christian” and militant Muslim leaders encourage and incite violent anti-social reactions by their adherents through their perpetually demeaning rhetoric and their pathological behavior towards Gay and Lesbian human beings.
As I’ve always said, religion is the last refuge for the scoundrel. And it always will be until people respect the humanity in their fellow man and woman, and not try to force people to be just like them. Nothing is more destructive to one’s sense of individuality and to the human spirit or to one’s pursuit of happiness than imposing one people’s beliefs on another — either through legislative action or through force of violence. If the old maxim, “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right so say it.” — could be amended to include, “I may not agree with the choice of what kind of non-related, adult human being you choose to love in a monogamous relationship, but I’ll defend your right to make that decision for yourself.” If only people could mind their business and not try to take away from others the rights they take for granted for themselves….well, then it would be a safer and a more respectful world for millions of more people.
There is hardly a mole-hill of good that religion has done compared to the mountain of evil that most Abrahamic religions (extreme Orthodox Judism, Fundamentalist Protestantism and current Catholic Christianity as well as militant Islam) have directly and indirectly perpetuated by forcing their tenets on others who do not bend a knee willingly to these retrograde expressions of tribalism. Yet some people say that organized religion has perfomed some good functions. By comparison, yes, some people can legitimately admire Hitler because his socialist policies helped to get the German people out of the Great Depression? But do we forgive him for all of his atrocities because he did some good too? I think not.
Likewise, in light of all the bad that has been done in the “cause” of religion, wouldn’t we be better off without any of it? Just like we’re better off without Communism and Nazism. Wouldn’t humanity function better and grow more creatively and be more productive in a secular, rational society where the individuality is more encouranged than blind comformity to a herd mentality that make a virtue out of ignorance and superstition.
If you can’t be a good person and teach the ethics of right and wrong and proper social behavior to your children without beating some religious dogma into their heads, then you are a crummy parent. Reliance on superstition is a poor substitute for reason. Religion most often relies on stifling curiosity about the natural world and about life’s great mysteries– and that makes religion very dangerous and extremely detremental to human advancement.
Most religions have so much in common with communism and fascist regimes which have created similar cult messiahs (Stalin, Mao, Jerry Falwell, Fidel Castro, Pat Robertson, Ronald Reagan, Ayatollah Khomeini, Adolf Hitler, many former Popes, and especially the current one, etc) and similar demands are made on mindless conformity for “the greater good” of society. In other words, to quash opposition to their despotic grip on power. Communist, Fascist, Muslims and Christians all burned books when so-called “dangerous thoughts or ideas” were promulgated in them. The same brainless “religion-based” censorship often targets art and even music. It is so obvious; religion is antithetical to human development. It retards rather advances mankind. It is a millstone that we no longer have to endure.
“Religion is the opiate of the people,” Karl Marx used to say. Too bad ol’ Karl substituted one form of totalitarianism and self-delusion for another. Although, regarding one thing he was right — it’s about time most of the planet heads to the Betty Ford clinic and gets detoxed off from organized religions of all persuasions. It would be a far, far better world if they did.
~ Bud Evans
*(Click on my name at the top to go to my blog)
As usual more hype from the religious right. What I can’t figure out is why you even dignify printing their bloated estimates of attendance of a revival that hasn’t even happened. I’m disappointed in 365Gay, being lead down the primrose path.
Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. So Christians are fasting. Big woo! I’ve been fasting in favor of equal marriage rights and social justice one day a week for years now. Personally, I think the gods are on the side of fairness and equality.
Hey, Bud, what about being a little more succinct in your comments? Get to the point and refer to your blog. If we want to read more, we’ll go there. If not, we can quickly move on to hear what others have to say.
In regards to Prop. 8 in California; what ever happened to the separation of Church and State? When are these religious fanatics going to stop trying to push their beliefs down our gullets?
Lord knows they are starved of human decency already…
Ask them how they like their pork after fasting then read Leviticus to them verbatium. F’ng Hippocrates.
Hi Friends,
We should, and I will,
pray for god to give them some brains
which he/she apparently left out of
their DNA.
After seeing the audience of delegates to the Republican National Convention, I would believe that many of then would only benefit from an extended period of reduced caloric intake. It appeared that many of them could consider an “extended fast” to be just what the doctor ordered.
So is this like, um, Christian Ramadam???
To be effective I would suggest the fast last at least five years.
Bud Evans – “The horrors that are committed in the name of any alleged “god” makes one wonder if there is anything in any religion that is worth bothering with.”
Buddhists come to mind, but seeing as how they don’t make waves in causing problems for other people, it’s easy to see how they slipped under your radar.