Proposition 8 foes hold gay marriage boot camps

Determined to avoid the mistakes of their last, losing campaign for gay marriage, gay rights activists are launching the first of what they hope will be many “marriage equality training camps” in Los Angeles this weekend.

The idea is to train activists in “the practical, hands-on skills to organize in their communities to restore marriage equality for same-sex couples to California.”

Though Proposition 8, which amended the constitution to ban same-sex marriage, passed with 52% of the vote in November, both sides expect the matter to come back on the ballot in the next few years.

That  likely will happen no matter which way the California Supreme Court rules on a legal challenge to Proposition 8. The camps are based on training sessions held by the supporters of  Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

This first training in Los Angeles is generously underwritten by Dr. Bill Resnick and Dr. Doug Cordell. Co-sponsors include the 150,000-strong SEIU-United Healthcare Workers-West (SEIU-UHW), led by openly gay president Sal Rosselli; the California Nurses Assn.; and MoveOn.org Political Action.

"The Camp Courage training, inspired by 'Camp Obama,' is based on grassroots organizing models that have developed leaders and nurtured progressive social movements for many years, including the fundamentals of community organizing; volunteer recruitment and management; voter persuasion and more," according to a statement.

--Jessica Garrison

Photo: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[subwarrior]

Wow Teressa,

The truth that this is a choice stares you right in the face and you look at Thomas' story and call it a lie. Someone who made the wrong choices for years and changed, and you take one look and say, "It can't be true". Well, there is no persuading you. Here a man turned, and had a child, that he otherwise could not have had, and you turn around, deceived by your strong, overwhelming, and uncontrolled lusts, and denigrate him. There is no shame for you though. Your choices are shameful enough, and it is hard to add anything on top of those.

Do you even know what lust is? If you did you would not be mistaking it for true love.
And please explain how a minority can repent and become a different race (they can't), is at all related to a homosexual, who can (but refuses) to change their choices. The way you feel, think, and act is based on your conscious decisions. You err in thinking your habitual decision for homosexuality is truth, misunderstanding that any behavior, long continued in, becomes desirable and certainly would "feel" like love. It isn't though.

[Jim]

subwarrior, perhaps instead of asking homosexuals to change their "choice" to be gay, you should instead change your "choice" to follow a religion. Perhaps we can get 52% of Californians to vote that your religion is wrong and you should not be permitted to have it legally recognized. Would that be right? After all, you CAN simply CHOOSE to follow a different, more socially acceptable religion, can't you?

If you think this scenario violates your freedoms, then why can't you see that you're proposing violating ours?

The fact that the government allowed same-sex marriage for a few months in no way made it "right" or "wrong." Government cannot make those decisions without stomping on someone's freedom of belief. Those who believe same-sex marriage is OK were allowed to be married. Those who believe same-sex marriage is not OK were allowed to not marry a member of their own sex.

For freedom of belief to be respected for everyone, government must by its nature be more tolerant than you or I. We can, and should, continue to peacefully argue it out, but you cannot legislate that I may not marry, and I may not legislate that you must accept me. That's how freedom works.

And, yes Teressa is perfectly within her rights to believe (as I do) that those who "changed" their sexual orientation have, in fact, merely repressed their natural and healthy sexual orientation. Changing religions is much easier to do. I've done so twice.

[Teressa Spencer]

subwarrior/Thomas,

I'd say it is you who does not understand.

If a person's only natural love attraction is toward their own gender (homosexual), and they ignore it and marry the opposite gender, they are pretending to be something they aren't. That is a lie.

Just like if a straight person married someone of the same gender, that would be the exact same lie. It's not that hard to understand.

If I chose to marry a man, and perhaps have a child with him, that does not make me straight. That's like a blue-eyed person putting in green contact lenses and saying, "Look now I'm a green-eyed person." No, you're not. You can pretend to be, and you can fool people into thinking you are, and you might even get compliments on what pretty green eyes you have, but the TRUTH will forever remain for the rest of your life that you are a blue-eyed person.

If you can't see that then you don't even understand the concept of truth, which I thought was pretty basic.

People who claim they decided not to be gay anymore are fooling themselves. You simply can't choose your sexual orientation any more than your eye color. You are what you are. The only choice involved is whether you lie about it or face up to it like an adult.

[subwarrior]

Jim,

For it to be relevant for me to change my religion, I would have had to tried to force the state to alter it's laws to mandate everyone agree that my religion is correct, unalterable, and a fact of nature. I did not do that so that is irrelevant reasoning. You on the other hand have tried to make the rest of California accept that this abominable choice is somehow normal, and that we should accept the law making it so. The relationship (just like the relationship between african-american civil rights and gay rights) is a reasoning error where two unequal premises are incorrectly equated to each other. That is where lust comes in. Armed with lust, simple, reasonable arguments no longer make sense, and your senses are dulled to any truth, no matter how powerful.
I will include in a following post, just five stories of the thousands in existence, of people who grew miserable of the lie both you and Teresa, and the media perpetuate. The system may not accept web addresses.

Teresa, I am having trouble understanding where you can prove you are homosexual. Have you found the gay gene the rest of us are unaware of? I am not interested in the medical journals could be's, maybe's, the evidence suggests, and perhaps. I want concrete, solid facts. In the absence of this proof (and decidedly there is an absence) are you asking me to rely on your extremely biased, and subjective opinion that homosexuality is inherent, biological, and unchangeable? And you are to be believed, in your short sub-60 year lifetime above a thousand year old bible? What evidence and facts do you have to refute thousands of years of human history?

In summary any person choosing the action of homosexuality has a choice. Because you refuse to acknowledge the power you have to resist this choice, does not reduce the truth of your possession of that power one iota. You weakly submit to what you should courageously resist, and then become angered when the rest of us attempt to remind you of the truth. By your rationale married adults should carry on adultery with anyone, simply because it feels good, and they should not deny themselves. Fornication is also permissible, because it would be harmful to deny ourselves the least bit of pleasure. Your hedonistic, immoral, undisciplined approach would go a long way in eroding the discipline (there has been plenty of erosion without your help) that has given this nation it's status as the most powerful on earth. Luckily for you the voters of California denied you the right to play a starring role in the Decline and Fall of the United States.

[Jim]

subwarrior, so am I correct in assuming that you believe the overwhelming majority of research in the fields of medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and sociology to be incorrect, since these fields all agree that homosexuality is not chosen, and is not harmful to those who practice it or to society?

If so, I'm curious on what grounds you base your own research. If it is based on the Bible or the opinion of people who have not stood up to a scientific process of peer review, then you're dealing with belief. If it is based on anecdotes, again, you're dealing with belief. Under the First Amendment and Article I of the California Constitution, you are entitled to that belief, but you are not entitled to impose it on me, as I am equally entitled to my belief. Government may not legislate belief. If it did, it would violate the First Amendment and Article I of the California Constitution, bringing me back to exactly the point you're trying to refute.

In other words, you're begging the question. You assume that homosexuality is a choice and is not normal. Therefore you reason that no other rationale can be valid. However, you neither accept that what you espouse is a belief (as I assert) nor provide scientific evidence to support it as fact (as Teressa is arguing).

If I were you, I'd accept it as belief and hold tight to your First Amendment right to preach bigotry, because if Teressa wins, we WILL impose our belief on you, since it won't violate a right you claim it doesn't apply to. :)

[Teressa Spencer]

subwarrior/Thomas dear, I can no more "prove" my sexual orientation than you can "prove" that God exists.

But I have no reason to lie. (You are the one with a reason to lie.) Take my word for it, I know very clearly what intimate love feelings are, and I know that I have only ever felt them in any way, shape or form for women. I do love men, but I love men as friends, buddies, brotherly-type feelings. Completely different than how I feel toward women. That makes me homosexual. A majority of people have those same intimate love feelings toward the opposite gender. Those people are heterosexual. See how that works?

So I could pretend, or refuse to acknowledge my sexuality honestly, or lie...but the fact remains I am who I am. And you are what you are.

I don't think you're understanding me - I fully acknowledge that I have the power to choose to marry a man. Of course I could do that. I could marry a man, maybe have children (or not) and make the best of it. Some people make decent lives out of that lie. Fine with me. But I will never use the beautiful gifts of my free will and conscience and honest love to not only live that lie but drag others into it with me. I'd rather die.

That's why I can't understand how you can be happy in the way most people who live honestly are. In fact, I don't think you are. I think underneath you have a large amount of hostility toward yourself for this torturous lie you've created, and you vent it by lashing out at people who have the courage to happily live openly gay lives. It's tragic.

And please don't lecture me on hedonism. I am nothing like what you describe. You have created a whole fantasy in your mind where you come out looking righteous and I'm something bad. It's absolutely crazy. All in your head.

Even with that, I don't care how much you ruin you life and that of your poor wife. But it is YOU who will not give me the same consideration, even when my life is none of your business. Why?

So go on, throw your life down the drain living your "straight" life even though you admit yourself you are gay. The more you lash out at me the more I know you are doing exactly what I thought. It's pathetic. And you will NOT keep me from equal rights just to appease your fabricated life. I'm happy just as I am. You're the one who's not!

[subwarrior]

Ah yes, Teressa, the infamous "accuse your opponent of the very vice they condemn in you" card. Very logical. We know that our view of others is quite often a mirror of ourselves, so to accuse me of your vice, is understandable, however nonsensical.

If you are going to assert strongly to the rest of us that homosexuality is who you are, then I respectfully ask, that you be able to provide the supporting facts. Without them, you are simply asking us to throw away our hard-earned thousands of years of experience and rely on your word????

Great Scott, where does it end? Your inability to prove your homosexuality in no way reflects on my ability to prove my beliefs, which are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Were I to attempt it, I have history, archaeology, and thousands of years of human experience to support me, which cannot be said of your cause.

The saddest thing, and the greatest proof of my point, is that you not only fail to prove your own point, but resort to accusing a single male virgin, with very strong, but controlled, desires for the opposite sex, of this unseemly, vile, and base vice. You are of course, forgiven in advance, as you know not what you say, much less what you do.

[Kevin]

There is no way I will vote with people who persecute and intimidate their political opponents. I'm not going to empower people I don't trust.

[subwarrior]

Teressa,

The Thomas post was copied and pasted from a web page where the story, in it's entirety was told, of his redemption from the homosexual lifestyle. Every time I try to post it, this website rejects the posting, so I cannot include it. If you really want it, I can find a way to get it to you. I want to make it very clear, that I am not Thomas. I realize it may have been easy to infer this.

[Teressa Spencer]

Subwarrior/Thomas, I'm not playing a game. You all but admitted yourself that you are gay but got married anyway and blah blah blah. It's all in YOUR post on "January 24, 2009 at 09:04 AM". You signed it "Thomas" but it came from your sign on. Did you forget? Or not mean to let it slip or what?

What would you accept as proof of gayness? This is so stupid! Of course I can't prove it to you. That is just plain dumb. You're in such denial you can't even see how silly you're being.

That is EXACTLY like me saying, "Until you can prove there is a God, it's just a silly delusion that you're fooling yourself with." Tell me how it's different, genius.

You can not prove there is a God. I can not prove I am gay...but I am.

Besides, you are dragging this way, way off subject. I suspect it's because you know you are wrong and have no logic in your arguments.

Denial! ha ha ha ha

[Teressa Spencer]

subwarrior, whether you are Thomas or not, the fact remains: people who deny their sexual orientation are destined to become another Ted Haggard. Another Larry Craig. Another Mark Foley. Another Bob Allen.

Sooner or later that lie destroys you and the people around you. Yet inexplicably that's the answer you propose. I think that shows great disregard for the spouse and children of those who live that lie.

It's so unnecessary. If more people would stop obsessing about it and mind their own business we could all put our time and energy into actual problems.

Even so, I personally don't care if people live that lie. It's not my business. But I refuse to be pressured to live my life by those twisted, dishonest, tragic ideals. Gay people will have civil equality whether you like it or not.