Rabbis Rally in Opposition to Prop 8 While a Mormon Lawyer Thoroughly Debunks Another Mormon Lawyer

Since practically all supporters of banning marriage equality hold their beliefs because of specific doctrinal tenants of their faith, making church-state separation a secondary concern for them, it's important to highlight the many people of faith who reject writing discrimination into our state constitution.

This Friday, more than 250 Jewish rabbis and leaders will unveil two full-page ads they plan on publishing in California's two major Jewish publications -- the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and J-Weekly. They will explain why the Jewish community, a community very familiar with state-sponsored discrimination, intends to overwhelmingly reject Proposition 8. They will be joined by Diane Olson and Robin Tyler, litigants in the same-sex marriage case and the first same-sex couple to be married in Los Angeles County.

Meanwhile, with Mormons completely dominating the Yes on Prop 8 campaign, having raised 77 percent of all Yes funds since July 1, Morris A. Thurston, a practicing Mormon and professor at Brigham Young University law school, has released a thorough refutation of the Yes campaign's "Six Consequences if Proposition 8 Fails" "fact" sheet. You really just need to read the whole thing, but I think this is my favorite:

"Ministers who preach against same-sex marriages may be sued for hate speech and risk government fines. It already happened in Canada, a country that legalized gay marriage. A recent California court held that municipal employees my not say: "traditional marriage," or "family values" because, after the same-sex marriage case, it is "hate
speech."

Response: Of course, anyone can be "sued" for anything, but no minister has been convicted of a crime in Canada or the United States for preaching against same‐sex marriages. The Owens case, on which this statement is based, was brought well before gay marriage was legal in Canada and did not involve a minister, but a private citizen. In that case, a man named Hugh Owens produced bumper stickers and took out an ad that depicted two stick figures holding hands, covered by a circle and a slash, along with a reference to a passage in Leviticus that says that a man engaging in homosexual activity "shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them." The lower court ruled that this amounted to hate speech, but the decision was overturned on review. The current Canadian law on hate propaganda excludes any speech if it is spoken during a private conversation or if the person uttering the speech "is attempting in good faith to establish by argument an opinion on a religious subject." Thus, even ministers who preach against same‐sex marriages in Canada have no risk of legal liability or government fines.

This would never be an issue in the United States because we have far more liberal freedom of speech and religion laws than does Canada. There have been no hate speech lawsuits in Massachusetts, which has been a gay marriage state for four years."

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