Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
September 2008 – “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” That’s the famous opening for the long-running NBC show Saturday Night Live (SNL), delivered as the comic punchline to the show’s opening skit.
But it’s what I was literally thinking on June 17 in a small room inside the Sacramento County Courthouse. I was one of a crowd of media people gathered to film and photograph the “wedding” of two men. It was one of the first such marriages performed in California a little more than a month after the state’s Supreme Court legalized homosexual marriage.
As the acting justice of the peace said the words, “By the power vested in me by the State of California, I now pronounce you husband and husband,” my mind kept wondering when someone was going to blurt out the SNL line. Or at least, at some point, everyone would admit that this was all one big joke.
Against nature
I have been to countless weddings in my life, and as a minister I have performed many. To hear a minister’s ceremony end with the words, “I now pronounce you husband and husband,” is like Alice’s trip to the upside down world of Wonderland.
Marriage is not something society can define or redefine on a whim. Governments can regulate marriage, but they cannot define it any way they please.
This is because marriage predates governments and arises out of the way God designed mankind. God created humanity in two genders as an expression of His image. A man and woman can be wed – that is, joined in marriage – because a man and woman can become one flesh.
Governments have recognized this because it became obvious that when one man and one woman were joined as one flesh, another life was often created. And it was best that that third life should be nurtured by the two people who brought it into this world.
If it were not so cumbersome I would consistently put the words marriage and wedding in quotes when they appear in phrases like same-sex “marriage” or gay “wedding” because they really are not marriages. Two men cannot wed. Neither can two women. They can love each other, they can be committed to stay together and care for one another. But they cannot wed.
What the California Supreme Court has done is akin to it declaring that, on October 15, men in that state must be allowed to conceive and then bear children and give birth in nine months. Otherwise the state is discriminating against men on the basis of gender.
Yes, such a ruling would be ridiculous because men cannot conceive a child within their own bodies. They are not designed for this purpose.
California’s last hope
Moreover, what happened in California on May 15, the day the state’s high court declared the one man/one woman model of marriage to be unconstitutional, has triggered a legal tsunami that could obliterate traditional marriage nationwide.
That was why I was in California with two other AFA guys, Randy Lucius and Travis Haley. We were in the initial stages of producing an AFA video in support of the pro-family forces battling to save marriage in the Golden State.
Their last hope: Proposition 8, an initiative that will appear on the ballot in California when voters go to the polls November 4. It would amend the state constitution with the simple words: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
While in California we interviewed a number of articulate, involved champions of traditional marriage. Later we flew to Virginia to interview Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship International and an influential evangelical writer and speaker.
Colson’s words seemed to set the battle over Prop 8 in frightening perspective. “This vote on whether or not we stop the gay marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” he said gravely. “We lose this [and] we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion.”
Religious freedoms threatened
Think that’s an exaggeration? Just ask officials with Catholic Charities in Boston. Since the early 1900s Catholic Charities has been involved in making communities more sound through ministries such as adoption services.
However, the city of Boston ordered Catholic Charities to begin placing children with homosexual couples in order to comply with laws that forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation.
But homosexual adoption runs counter to the Catholic Church’s religious views on human sexuality, marriage and the family. When Catholic Charities asked for a religious exemption to the non-discrimination law, it was refused. Catholic Charities was forced to end its adoption ministry after more than a hundred years.
Or you could ask the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in New Jersey, which is owned by the United Methodist Church. When Ocean Grove officials refused to allow two lesbians to use church facilities for a “commitment ceremony,” the lesbians sued. Once again the legal weapon was a state law that declared discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to be illegal.
In this conflict between religious freedoms and homosexual rights, guess which one won the day? If you guessed gay rights, you’re right. The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association lost its tax- exempt status.
Gay money pours into the fight
Don’t think for a minute that homosexual activists don’t see the importance of this struggle over Proposition 8. Millions of dollars are pouring into the state in order to keep same-sex marriage legal.
In fact, as I was writing this piece, the San Francisco Chronicle was reporting that Utah native Bruce Bastion, the multi-millionaire co-founder of the WordPerfect software brand, had written a $1 million check to the campaign to derail Prop 8.
The Chronicle also said that two of the most influential homosexual rights groups in the country, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, had raised almost $800,000, and that a Cleveland businessman had anted up another $500,000, in order to defeat the November ballot measure.
Why the large sums of money, which are expected to keep pouring into California in the months before voters go to the polls? HRC spokesperson Brad Luna told the Chronicle: “This is a campaign that’s important to the entire country. The result [of the fight against Proposition 8] will have effects across the United States.”
Indeed. One study estimated that 70,000 gay and lesbian couples would travel to California over the next several years and get married in the Golden State. Of course, those couples would then return to their own states, and many of them will no doubt demand – in court – that their marriage licenses be honored.
A victorious revolution?
This is why AFA is spending money on a video to help the courageous pro-family stalwarts in California. We hope the video will encourage Christians to go to the polls and vote on November 4 to preserve traditional marriage. No, scratch that. Preserve real marriage.
If Proposition 8 is not passed in November, Californian Christians will see their religious freedoms begin to evaporate, and their children will be indoctrinated in public schools to embrace homosexuality.
For the rest of us outside California’s borders, we will be in for a season of legal and moral chaos. What was once unthinkable in America – the complete and total victory of the sexual revolution, led by its sodomitic vanguard – will be a reality.
And that’s no SNL punchline. 
