Politics & Government

Prop. 8 Rally: Marriage Backers Cite History, Science and 'the Will of God'

"No court can change the definition of marriage any more than they can change the law of gravity," downtown crowd is told

Updated at 11:25 p.m. March 26, 2013

Thousands of miles from Washington—and hours after arguments over Proposition 8 had ended at the U.S. Supreme Court—advocates of “traditional marriage” made their own case in downtown San Diego.

Carrying signs, banners and listening to speeches, about 80 people gathered near the federal courthouse on Broadway around lunchtime Tuesday to voice support for the state’s 2008 voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.

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“Activists seek to overrule not only the will of the people but the will of God,” said Becky Davies, public affairs director of the local Mormon Church.  “It wasn’t government or man that established marriage as the union of one man and one woman but God himself.”

Citing the Bible, social science, constitutional history and personal experience, about a dozen speakers—in English and Spanish—made the case for Prop. 8, overturned on appeal.

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Hugh Largey, vice president of the San Diego Diocese chapter of Knights of Columbus, emceed the event.

Also associated with St. Michael’s Church of Poway, Largey said marriage as God’s plan has been “carved in all our hearts for 4,000 years. It works.”

Bishop George McKinney of St. Stephen’s Cathedral Church of God in Christ told the sun-splashed crowd: “Marriage is valuable in itself. But its inherent orientation to the bearing and the rearing of children contributes to its distinctive structure. … We believe [traditional] marriage is important to the common good.”

A rally had been held in the same spot Monday in favor of what proponents call marriage equality, and no counterdemonstration occurred Tuesday. But at least one same-sex marriage supporter came to document the rally for her blog.

Accompanied by her German shepherd Justice and carrying a Canon camera, Tamandra Michaels took pictures of the rally and questions from a KPBS TV crew on the edge of the rally.

Nearby, county Republican Party Chairman Tony Kravric monitored his mobile phone while street people with wrinkled faces eyed the scene.

Attorney Charles LiMandri, founder and head of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, told the crowd that the definition of marriage written by Noah Webster in his first American dictionary in 1828 was embraced by the founding fathers.

“The people who wrote the Constitution of the United States—the document that the opposition is relying upon—shows how they viewed marriage,” LiMandri said.

The definition, in part, said: “Marriage is the act of uniting a man and a woman for life. …. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes.”

LiMondri added his take: “You have to have that procreational aspect, which same-sex couples by definition cannot have.”

He added: “No court can change the definition of marriage any more than they can change the law of gravity.”

The Rev. Jacob Bertrand, a priest from St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Chula Vista,  said: “True love begins when self-donation exceeds self-satisfaction” and quoted scripture.

“Let’s all be encouraged by Psalm 37,” he said. “Do not fret because of the wicked. Do not envy those who do evil—for they whither quickly like grass and fade like the green of the fields.”

Then came a medical doctor—George Delgado of Culture of Life Family Services—who took a social science tack.

“Enshrining homosexual relationships into law … would be a huge disaster,” Delgado said. “It would amount to a huge, uncontrolled social science experiment foisted upon society—with our children as virtual lab animals.”

He then got some chuckles by saying: “Maybe that’s not such a good metaphor—because even lab animals are protected under the law.”

A college freshman followed.

Olivia Nelson of John Paul the Great Catholic University of San Diego described her parents, married 29 years, and what she’s learned from them.

 “My mom will never know what it’s like to be a man,” Nelson said. “My dad will never know what it’s like to be a woman. And I’m glad—because my family needs both.”

Said emcee Largey after taking the microphone:  “We have youth on our side as you see.”


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