Don Wildmon
AFA/AFR founder
January 2009 – I am proud of the pastors, ministers and priests in California who stood up for traditional marriage and encouraged their parishioners to vote for Proposition 8 this past Election Day. The church in this nation owes them a great debt of gratitude.
Prop 8 was the voter initiative that amended the California constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. It reversed the judicial activism of the California Supreme Court, which, by a 4-3 ruling on May 15, had declared same-sex marriage legal.
Thousands of pastors were involved, communicating with one another, working together for a common cause and encouraging their people to get involved in the political process.
It wasn’t a runaway vote, but Prop 8 passed 52%-48%. Those pastors who got involved made a real difference. They supplied the ground troops which made victory possible.
AFA worked closely with the pastors. We gave a financial gift to help them get organized and started. We produced a DVD defending traditional marriage and sent it free of charge to 16,000 California churches so pastors could show it to their congregations. We also sent an additional 3,000 free DVDs dubbed in Spanish to Hispanic churches in that state.
In the months and years ahead, what the California pastors did is exactly the kind of effort that will be required of pastors and churches to uphold traditional values based on God’s Word. On issues like homosexuality, secular progressives are becoming more aggressive in pushing their agenda.
Make no bones about it. The secular progressives have a goal: Silence the pulpits, immobilize the pews, make Christianity irrelevant.
After Proposition 8 passed, for example, a Palm Springs candlelight vigil in protest of the vote turned ugly as a 69-year-old Christian woman was attacked when she brought a cross in order to witness to members of the crowd. According to a Palm Springs newspaper, the crowd chanted, “Go home!” “Nazi!” and “Shame on you!” and then “pressed in on [her], ripped the cross from her hands and stomped on it.”
Christians received similar treatment in San Francisco’s Castro District. As a group stood peacefully singing, a mob of angry homosexuals surrounded them. According to the Idaho Values Alliance, the Christians were “doused with hot coffee, soda and alcohol, spit on, hit on their heads with their own Bibles, thrown to the ground and kicked repeatedly.”
After the Prop 8 vote, though apparently not directly connected to it, one church in Lansing, Michigan, was actually invaded during its morning worship service by homosexual activists who ran through the sanctuary screaming things like “Jesus was a homo!” Two lesbians ran to the front and began making out. The homosexuals fled before law enforcement arrived.
With these kinds of incidents happening across the country, I hope the efforts by the pastors in California will serve as an inspiration to other pastors and churches. And I want to express my appreciation for those who took a stand for the family.
May your tribe increase! 
