Tag: Proposition 8

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.

The fallout is still coming down in a big way over California’s Proposition 8 election results. There have been largely symbolic pushbacks over the voter-approved law that strips gay couples from the right to marry each other — like last weekend’s protest in Colorado at the Century Boulder Theater. And there are larger stakes issues at play as well — like an investigation into whether the Mormon Church, which heavily funded the measure, violated state laws by failing to report campaign expenditures.

Colorado Congressman Jared Polis and his partner, Marlon Reis, will be among those boycotting the Century Boulder Theater on Sunday. The movie house plans to show the film “Milk,” based on the story of Harvey Milk, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and pioneer in the gay-rights movement who was gunned down in 1978. The theater company owner’s CEO, Alan Stock, donated $9,999 to California’s Yes On 8 campaign to prohibit gays from marrying.

Don’t ski here, don’t hike here, don’t convention here, don’t come here. That was the message, coming from the higher echelons of Hollywood, indeed from gays and lesbians and their friends across the country, in the weeks after Colorado became the “Hate State” and Colorado Springs the “Belly of the Beast” when Colorado voters approved Amendment 2 in 1992. Now post-Proposition 8, California and even Utah have found themselves the targets of even more sophisticated boycott efforts.