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02/05/10: Salt Lake Tribune: "Gay rights: Oakland LDS Stake tries to heal post-Prop 8 rifts"

In June 2008, the LDS First Presidency asked all California Mormons to give their time and money to Proposition 8, a ballot measure striking down gay marriage. Many members did so with gusto, circulating petitions, raising money, sending e-mails to church lists and putting up lawn signs.

That left other Bay Area Mormons, particularly those with gay friends and relatives, feeling embattled and alienated. Some stepped away temporarily from church; others left for good. Those who remained often felt at odds with fellow believers.

Oakland Stake President Dean Criddle, a respected lawyer and gentle leader, sensed the ripples of collective pain and wanted to reunite his flock, says Matt Marostica, bishop of the Berkeley Ward.

So Criddle and his counselors assembled quotes and speeches from LDS general authorities that stressed love and compassion for those with same-sex attraction. They then asked each of the 10 wards in the stake to hold a joint meeting of adult members during church services on either Aug. 30 or Sept. 6 to hand out the quotes and listen to personal stories from area members.

[read more at Salt Lake Tribune...]

01/30/10: LGBT POV: "American Foundation for Equal Rights' Prop 8 Trial Summary"

Documents and videos presented by the Olson and Boies team also revealed that the Prop. 8 campaign paid for broadcasts that sought to link marriage equality to incest, polygamy, bestiality, and pedophilia to justify the restriction of people's civil rights. This clearly points to the discriminatory motivations and unconstitutionality of the initiative.

Olson and Boies also presented to the court the depositions of the four expert witnesses that the defendant-intervenors dropped from their witness list. The defendant-intervenors cut their witness list from six to two after those experts made several statements damaging to Prop. 8 and in support of the plaintiffs' case during their depositions. Go to: http://www.equalrightsfoundation.org/press-releases/defendant-experts-undercut-prop-8/.

The defendant-intervenors' own experts stated under oath in their depositions that:

• Equal marriage would increase family stability and improve the lives of children

• Sexual orientation is not something that can be readily changed

• Gay men and lesbians have faced a long history of discrimination including violence - discrimination that continues today and that includes Prop. 8

• There is broad scientific and professional consensus in favor of equal marriage

[read more at LGBT POV...]

01/27/10: Box Turtle Bulletin: "Perry v. Schwarzenegger: day eleven summary"

Miller admitted that some people voted for Proposition 8 based on stereotypes, but he could not say to what extent.

Then it got unpleasant for Miller. He has a new book that came out in 2009 in which he argues that initiatives that disadvantage minorities "can easily tap into an anti-minority sentiment". He even gave examples including initiatives directed towards restricting the rights of homosexuals. One of Miller's examples of initiatives that tapped into anti-minority sentiment and disadvantaged homosexuals was Proposition 22, the original ban on gay marriage that was overturned by the California Supreme Court.

Miller argued in his book that courts needed to strictly scrutinize initiatives and not be lenient because their role was to protect minorities from such initiatives. He had written in an article that "Once this majority puts its preference into the state constitution, the legislature and state courts can't take it out. Only federal courts are the remedy.".

A year later, Miller "no longer believes" his own book. In fact, he "did not believe all of it" when he wrote it. (Miller has just torpedoed his own career.)

[read more at Box Turtle Bulletin...]

01/26/10: Advocate: "Minter's Take on the Prop. 8 Trial "

One of the defendants' strategies is to divert attention from the real issues in the case by casting themselves, incredibly, as the victims of alleged persecution. Prop. 8 targeted gay people in order to strip them of a fundamental right. And yet the defendants have fixated on alleged incidents of harassment of Prop. 8 supporters during the campaign. In fact, they have even gone so far as to suggest that Prop. 8 passed in part because voters reacted negatively to alleged "violence" by Prop. 8 opponents. Given the damage inflicted on LGBT people by antigay stereotypes and bigotry, it is shameful that the defendants would engage in such obvious appeals to that very bigotry, but of course, such a strategy is on par with everything they have done throughout and since the campaign. While we are optimistic that the ninth circuit will reject such claims for the bogus antigay baiting they are, the public may in fact adopt this narrative as accurate, which would be dangerous and distressing.

[read more at Advocate...]

01/26/10: San Francisco Appeal: "Update On Prop 8 Trial, Day 10: The Mighty Political Clout Of The Gays"

Under cross-examination from plaintiffs' attorney David Boies, Miller admitted that some of the materials he relied on in his testimony were supplied by lawyers for Proposition 8 rather than his own research.

Miller also agreed that the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy discriminates against homosexuals and that no other minority group in the nation is dismissed from the armed services on the basis of its status.

The Proposition 8 sponsors are seeking to use Miller's testimony to counter an opposing view presented by Stanford University political science professor Gary Segura on behalf of the plaintiffs last week.

Segura testified that gays and lesbians lack "a meaningful degree" of political power.

He said that gays and lesbians have been targeted nationwide in ballot initiatives, including Proposition 8, more than any other group and have lost 70 percent of more than 150 ballot measures presented to voters throughout the country since the 1970s.

"Initiatives have been used to roll back gains by gays and lesbians over and over again," Segura said last week.

[read more at San Francisco Appeal...]

01/25/10: AP: "Prop 8 Backers Voiced Fear Of Polygamy, Bestiality"

It appeared the lawyers were introducing the material to demonstrate the campaign for the ban appealed to religious-based, anti-gay bias to scare voters into supporting the measure.

The trial, being held in San Francisco, is the first in a federal court to examine if states violate the U.S. Constitution by preventing same-sex couples from marrying.

Proposition 8 sponsors objected to the video, saying the content of the simulcast was not controlled by campaign managers or leaders.

However, Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker allowed the material to be put into the record because the coalition of religious and conservative groups behind Proposition 8 paid for Garlow's work.

In the six-minutes of video shown for Walker, various people opined on the negative consequences of legalizing gay marriage. One unidentified speaker compared the potential social impact of "this social reengineering of marriage" to the way the 9/11 terrorist attacks made the world "a fundamentally different place."

[read more at AP...]

01/21/10: SF Gate: "Gays lack clout, Prop. 8 trial witness says"

A political scientist testifying on behalf of supporters of same-sex marriage said Wednesday that gays and lesbians have little political power and can't count on most of their friends in high places, including President Obama.

At a federal court trial in San Francisco on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, Stanford University Professor Gary Segura cited ballot measures, state and federal laws, hate crime statistics and opinion polls as evidence that gays and lesbians, like racial minorities, need judicial protection from discrimination.

"Gays and lesbians do not possess a meaningful degree of political power. They are not able to protect their essential interests," said Segura, who heads the university's Chicano studies program and co-directs its Center on American Democracy.

[read more at SF Gate...]

01/19/10: Box Turtle Bulletin: "Perry v. Schwarzenegger to be reenacted on YouTube"

After the Supreme Court blocked video broadcast of the federal trial to decide the constitutionality of a gay marriage ban last Wednesday, freelance journalist and filmmaker John Ireland decided he'd produce his own version and post it on YouTube.

"People want to see this drama unfold and there is a tremendous narrative that was propelled by that first day of testimony," Ireland told On Top Magazine on Sunday. "This is the first time that gay and lesbian people have talked about their lives in federal court. It's historic from that point of view."

Ireland said he's basing his storytelling on the accounts of bloggers present at the trial that started last Monday in a San Francisco courtroom.

[read more at Box Turtle Bulletin...]

01/18/10: SF Gate: "Dueling portraits of Prop. 8 backers at trial"

While Prop. 8's sponsors strive for a benign image of their supporters as parents and family members motivated by their faith and concern for their children, their opponents are trying to paint a more sinister picture of fearmongers appealing to prejudice.

Their prime example has been William Tam, a San Francisco chemical engineer who was one of five official proponents of the ballot measure.

Tam, who heads the Traditional Family Coalition, sent a letter to churchgoing supporters in the Asian American community during the campaign warning that "other states would fall into Satan's hands" if Prop. 8 lost.

San Francisco's government, "under the rule of homosexuals," would legalize sex with children and prostitution, and "more children would become homosexual," Tam wrote.

At a deposition that was videotaped and played in court, Tam said he was concerned that every child would "grow up thinking whether he would marry John or Jane" if same-sex marriage were legalized. His own daughter, he said, told him "her classmates chose to become lesbians and experiment with it" after hearing about same-sex marriage.

It was just the sort of disclosure the plaintiffs were looking for as evidence that the Prop. 8 campaign was designed to appeal to anti-gay stereotypes. They plan to call Tam as a witness this week.

[read more at SF Gate...]

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