AlterNet: Conservatives Push Hard for Gay Marriage Ban

Conservatives Push Hard for Gay Marriage Ban

By Karen Ocamb, AlterNet. Posted October 16, 2008.

An influx of cash from the Religious Right has boosted the campaign for Prop. 8, pushing the anti-gay measure dangerously ahead in the polls.



Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told MSNBC recently that the economic crisis would trump cultural issues in his battleground state Nov. 4. Blue-collar working-class families are trending for Democrat Barack Obama for president, he said, worried more about their budgets than Obama's African-American race.

Obama's Republican opponent, John McCain, on the other hand, is having difficulty with some of his angrier supporters who perceive Obama in various permutations of "the Other" -- making him "dangerous," as the National Republican Trust put it in an e-mail distributed by the conservative publication Newsmax.

But while the world watches the critical presidential match, there is another high-stakes culture clash being waged, pitting the gay community against the Religious Right. It is the battle over Proposition 8, an initiative on the California ballot that would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.

For gay people and their allies, the battle is not only about retaining the "fundamental" right to marry, as the California Supreme Court ruled May 15; it is also about not letting the majority vote to take away an existing right of the minority and thus adding to other disgraceful moments in American history, such as when the country tolerated Jim Crow laws and the Japanese internment, to name a few examples.

For the proponents of Prop. 8, however, the battle is "spiritual warfare," with religious freedom and the nation itself at stake if same-sex marriage is allowed to survive and spread beyond California's borders. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/sex/103041/conservatives_push_hard_for_gay_marriage_ban/