Stephanie Salter

By Stephanie Salter
The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE, Ind.

In the wake of California’s passage of Proposition 8, and similar anti-gay couples referenda in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas, I can’t help but think how pleased Jesus must be.

Why, in California, alone, the Mormon and Catholic churches and other religious organizations raised and spent nearly $36 million to persuade voters to keep secular marriage strictly heterosexual. That impressive outlay of cash in such frightening economic times seems particularly Christ affirming, don’t you agree?

Millions of Americans don’t know how they will warm their homes this winter because of rising prices on natural gas, propane and electricity. State and local governments are slashing services to keep up with funding shortfalls. Unemployment levels are expected to hit 7.5 percent sometime next year. Jobs, pensions and 401(k) plans are disappearing, and the ranks of the uninsured continue to grow.

And yet religious leaders across America managed to inspire their respective flocks to put individual needs aside, dig deep, sacrifice and donate millions to the worthy cause of denying gay and lesbian couples the legal status of civil marriage.

Or, in the case of Arkansas, “pro-family” voters were moved to ban adoption or foster parenthood by any spouseless singles or couples, straight or gay, “cohabitating outside a valid marriage.”

I would imagine Jesus’ heart was especially warmed on Election Day by the fact that Arkansas authorities acknowledge they already have about 75 percent more children in need of adoption or a foster home than they have prospective parents. Thank heavens 57 percent of voters ensured that the possible parent pool will grow no larger from same-sex couples, heteros living in sin or — God forbid — one-person households.

So, too, in Florida, where spiritually fired voters just squeaked by the mandated 60 percent required to install heterosexual marriage in the canon of the state constitution.

As John Stemberger, the chairman of the Florida Yes2Marriage advocacy group, exalted after the election, “We’re just amazed and grateful at the response. When you strengthen marriage and family you are solving so many problems in society.”

Isn’t that the truth? So many problems that dog us as a society — the high divorce rate and our dependence on foreign oil, for example — surely will be solved by banning full legal marriage rights to loving, monogamous, committed homosexual couples.

Didn’t Jesus say this over and over again in the Bible?

Hmmm, come to think of it, no, he didn’t. While Christ missed few opportunities to instruct us about loving God and our neighbor, about taking care of the poor, sick, hungry, ill-clad, ill-sheltered, orphaned, widowed and imprisoned, he never actually weighed in on the subject of homosexuality.

This leads some people to question just how big a threat Jesus perceived lesbian and gay people to be to morality and the ability to follow him. Fortunately, Christian leaders don’t need specific Gospel citations to know God’s mind or to speak for his son.

Besides, they always have Leviticus, which no doubt bolstered the Orthodox Jewish leaders who joined evangelical Christians, Catholics, Mormons and groups such as Focus on the Family to amass 52 percent of the vote for California’s Proposition 8.

Leviticus is the Old Testament mother lode for anti-gay everything.

It condemns homosexuality, or at least men lying with men as if one of the men were a woman. It also prohibits eating the meat of cud-chewing, cloven-hoofed animals and advises parents to kill their children if the kids curse Dad or Mom. But, for some reason, not many folks quote those parts of Leviticus much anymore.

Lest I mislead, not all religious people in California jumped on the Yes on 8 hay wagon. Many reformed Jewish groups and all six dioceses of the Episcopal Church publicly supported the No on 8 movement.

Again, fortunately, the Catholic Church more than made up for their wayward cousins. The Catholic Bishops of California encouraged time, talent and treasure from their faithful for Prop. 8’s passage. Citing their church’s long-held notion that children are “a primary societal rationale for the institution” of marriage, the Catholic bishops quoted Pope Benedict XVI:

“Only the rock of complete and irrevocable love between man and woman is capable of acting as a foundation for a society that can be home to all human beings.”

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony further insisted, “Proposition 8 is not against any group in our society. Its sole focus is on preserving God’s plan for people living upon this earth throughout time.”

A major appeal to Catholic voters the Sunday before Election Day appears to have paid off handsomely. While Catholics usually make up about 24 percent of the California electorate, pollsters say they were 30 percent of it on Nov. 4 — and 64 percent of them voted Yes on 8.

Among the TV ads the pro-8 folks were able to air with their $36 million were commercials warning that U.S. churches would lose their tax exempt status if Prop. 8 were defeated and that ordinary people could be sued for their beliefs.

Those predictions were a mighty stretch of the truth, but what does it matter now that God’s will has been done? Jesus must have said somewhere that the end justifies the means, right? Or he meant to.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.