Outside the Supreme Court: Clashing religious views

A clash of religious perspectives was on display outside the San Francisco Civic Center plaza this morning.

Beneath a giant TV screen in front of City Hall, Bishop Yvette Flunder of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ exhorted the crowd at an interfaith prayer service to "thank God, everybody."

"Your bigger God, much bigger, than the small religious boxes that we put you," she declared. "We ask you for the freedom today ... freedom to have our relations boldly without fear of reprisal."

Lynn Gardner, an intern minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, rocked out to a choir singing the hymn "I Ain"t Afraid."

"I ain't afraid of your Yahweh," they sang, as Gardner snapped her fingers and waved an "I [heart] my wife" sign. "I ain't afraid of your Jesus. I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your God."

Gardner, whose wife is also a minister, said she came out to the plaza because "my faith calls me to be here, because I believe in equality."

Across the plaza, contractor Ruben Israel of Los Angeles was also demonstrating his faith. His sign declared that, "Homo-sex is a threat to national security."

And his exhortations, delivered via bullhorn, were even less equivocal. To the justices, he shouted: "When you stand before God, you won't have the ACLU to protect you."

And to the same-sex marriage supporters, he warned: "Where was the tolerance of God during the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. If you think God is all-forgiving and loving and tolerant, where was the tolerance of God when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah?"

-- Maria L. LaGanga

Comments

[z]

This is possibly the most unnecessary "controversey" ever.

There are two aspects of a marriage governed by the encompassing society:

1) The legal contractual aspect, guranteed to all by the US constitution;

and

2) The spiritual/church aspect, which is the purview of the churches, constitutionally separate from the state.

Any two unrelated people of legal age can form a legal contractual partnership otherwise known as a marriage.

Whether its blessed/sanctioned/consecreted/confrimed by a church is up to that church and not a matter of the state.

Why California courts used analogies to civil rights laws to uphold a fundamental contractual right is perplexing, and has added to the unnecessarily perception of the unsettled nature of current law.

And by the way, "marriage" is not mentioned in the US Constitution or Bill of Rights. But contract rights and the establishment clause are definately there.

[Paul]

Abraham asked God if even 1 person in the city was good, if he would spare everyone, even the wicked, and God said yes.

The city was not just filled with males, it had males AND females, as they are referred to as "people" just once, which means that the reference to "men" is the generic term for any human being, just as "all men are created equal" does not exclude women.

The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were engaging in lust, it had little to do with homosexuality.

I'd also like to say that even God admitted that humans are wicked in their youth, he accepted this as a fact. Immature humans do bad things. He also admitted in the story of Noah that the destruction of the earth because of the wicked was a mistake, and he promised he would never do it again.

Sometimes I wonder if the people using the Bible to sqwuak about homosexuality have even read the thing.

[Randy]

Without doubt...the god in you, the god carved and placed in a temple, the god of your family, the god in your driveway, the little god below your belt, many gods. One Creator, One Judge, One Eternal Father, One Truth who we keep far away lest He threaten our little gods.

[Kevin]

"When you stand before God, you won't have the ACLU to protect you."
Demonstrating yet again that conservatives are funnier than liberals...

"Your bigger God, much bigger, than the small religious boxes that we put you," she declared.
This is inadvertently very funny for sounding a lot like that prayer from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life."

"I ain't afraid of your Yahweh," they sang, as Gardner snapped her fingers and waved an "I [heart] my wife" sign. "I ain't afraid of your Jesus. I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your God."
What's that old joke? Unitarians believe in one God...at most.

[r]

Your report is filled with "bias" notions. I hope your practice is not good representative for the rest of news reporters and media workers. If the rest of the folks report the way you do, our whole generation is doomed.

[Kevin]

The US Constitution is not (or at least should not be) a Rorschach test where we are free to find anything we like. It had a specific meaning to the framers and to the voters who approved it. Does anyone really think that any of them thought they were establishing a right for people of the same sex to marry? If people don't like the constitution, state or federal, let them amend it through the proper channels. If they can't muster the votes, they lose. This is a democracy. You're not going to be happy all the time. Heck, all but one of the people for whom I voted lost outright the other day. But I'm not going to appeal to the courts and try to have Mayor Villaraigosa's re-election invalidated. I may not agree with the majority, but I agree with their right to outvote me.

[Jim]

I wonder how many people would still support "majority rules" if we had voted to ban their right to speak out on the internet...