Proposition 8

Fire Dog Lake blogger Teddy Partridge has been doggedly live blogging the California Proposition 8 gay-marriage trial in San Francisco– the trial to determine the constitutionality of the anti-gay mariage ballot initiative that the Mormon Church and Colorado Springs evangelical group Focus on the Family poured money into to help pass in 2008. Only one [...]

The Mormon church poured money and effort into the campaign to pass Proposition 8 in California, the initiative that outlawed gay marriage there. Director Reed Cowan’s documentary about the effort was accepted into the Sundance film festival and will make its debut in Park City next month. The film features interviews with Mormon leaders and [...]

A state lawmaker who has sponsored bills expanding civil rights for gay couples in Colorado said Tuesday afternoon he wasn’t surprised California’s Supreme Court upheld a ballot measure banning gay marriage but called the decision “a blip” in the country’s advances toward equality.

State Rep. Mark Ferrandino, a Denver Democrat and the first openly gay man to sit in the Colorado legislature, said he expects California voters to go back to the polls to overturn Proposition 8, which passed last fall with 52 percent of the vote.

TCI’s Ernest Luning was a guest on the Jay Marvin Show on AM760 Thursday to explore the $1.25 million contribution to the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 by Focus on the Family and its allies.

Listen to the segment where Jay and Ernest debate the merits of the donations while the ministry was laying off staff and a new emerging evangelical movement away from controversial social issues.

Following Focus on the Family’s ballot box success on the anti-gay marriage measure Proposition 8 in California, the multi-million dollar Christian publishing empire set it sights a bit closer to home — in Wyoming.

But the famously fickle Equality State legislature rejected the “defense of marriage” measure floated by several Mormon lawmakers and backed by the newly-formed WyWatch Family Institute which is reportedly closely aligned with Focus and its affiliate the Colorado Family Institute.

One of the more fascinating elements of today’s investigative report on the $1.25 million contributed by Focus on the Family and its allies is how internal campaign-style “bundling” quietly propelled the Christian media organization into the Prop 8 troika with the initiative’s more public proponents, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and Knights of Columbus.

Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family gave $727,250 in cash and services to the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 campaign in California, according to records released by the California secretary of state, including a $100,000 check in late October, just days before the evangelical media empire announced it planned to lay off nearly 20 percent of its employees.

While there has been public scrutiny of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its attempts to influence the campaign to reverse a California Supreme Court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, Focus on the Family and related donors pumped more than six times as much as the Mormon church did into the ProtectMarriage.com campaign, records show.

Activists claim that money from the Mormon Church was the deciding factor in passing Proposition 8 in California — banning gay marriage. The church claims to have only spent a few thousand dollars on the campaign, but ANP has uncovered evidence that may expose a gaping hole in that claim. Also, the IRS forbids religious organizations from “substantially” lobbying for political legislation. Did the Mormon Church violate this law?

A full page New York Times ad has sparked a war of words between gay groups and their allies and conservative religious leaders. The ad, sponsored by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asserts that gays and lesbians have engaged in a pattern of mob violence against Mormons after the passage of Proposition 8 in California; gays meanwhile have pushed back, asserting that the church is not the victim.

Today, gays across Colorado woke up and … called in gay. They will not work, they will not shop, but instead plan to volunteer at their local soup kitchens or collect donations for food banks or signatures for a petition to repeal Proposition 8 in California.