Marriage debate hits streets

The crossroads for Spokane’s piece of the cultural war was Boone and Howard Sunday, where scores of protesters chanted to make same-sex marriage legal while thousands prayed inside the Arena to prevent it.

An estimated 4,000 members of Inland Northwest Christian churches came to the Veterans Memorial Arena for a “Mayday for Marriage Rally” sponsored by the Coalition for Authentic Marriage.

For them, an authentic marriage consists of a man and a woman. Some in the Arena wore T-shirts proclaiming, “1 Man, 1 Woman, 1 Nation Under God.” Their program included a petition to the Legislature to pass an amendment to the state Constitution that would define marriage that way.

Outside on the sidewalk, close to 100 people gathered to protest the rally, waving signs with slogans like “No matter how much you pray, we won’t go away” and “God loves us and we’re gay.” While groups of people crossed Howard from the nearby parking lots to enter the Arena, a transgender protester screamed through a bullhorn that they weren’t being Christian for denying homosexuals the right to marry, and that their hate for gays was going to “mess up their karma for a week.”

Barbara Lampert, a longtime activist and regular candidate for local political office, collected signatures on a petition to have the Legislature consider making gay marriage legal.

Inside, a gospel choir in robes belted out hymns.

Outside, protesters sang “We’re going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married” in a spirited, if somewhat off-key version of “Chapel of Love.”

Inside and outside, each side accused the other of being passionately committed to the wrong cause.

Jim Putnam, senior pastor of Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, told the crowd inside the Arena that the protesters outside were a sign of “a cultural war going on.” But he drew applause when he added:

“Those people are not our enemies. They’re just like the rest of us – lost and needing to come home to the faith.”

Putnam urged the crowd to fight spiritually, sharing their faith with others and living what they preach.

“It would be nice if those who were fighting for marriage would at least stay married,” he said. “For too long, we’ve been known as people who point fingers and judge, rather than saying, ‘Come in, we love you.’ “

Outside on the sidewalk, Kelly Stevens was hoping for a change of heart of another kind. Stevens, from the Odyssey Youth Center, began organizing the protest about 10 days earlier when she first heard about the rally.

“I’m gay and I love my partner very much,” Stevens said. “I’d like to be able to marry. Why shouldn’t I?”

Through e-mails and phone calls, gay activists rounded up about 80 protesters to picket on the Arena sidewalk. They were joined by about two dozen Lewis and Clark High School students who tried to organize a last-minute rally in Riverfront Park, but moved to Howard.

Although the rally inside the Arena had greater numbers, the protest outside had better visibility, Stevens said, and could make Spokane residents realize homosexuals just want to get rights that other people have.

With the election just over three weeks away, some political activists were drawn to the area. Several Republican legislators attended the Arena rally, while some protesters outside sported shirts or buttons for John Kerry. The campaign staff for Rep. George Nethercutt, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, distributed leaflets that featured their candidate and his wife, and described him as “a strong conservative leader who knows marriage is between a man and a woman.”

People at the Mayday for Marriage Rally were urged to vote, get involved with the political process, and most of all pray.

“You should vote, every single time. But that will not, in and of itself, change this country,” Putnam said.

“We need to put prayer back in our houses before we tell politicians to put prayer back in our schools,” said Alec Rowlands, senior pastor of Westgate Chapel in Edmonds, who predicted the state and nation were on the verge of a spiritual awakening.

That type of shift might be needed to change the state Constitution to outlaw homosexual marriage in Washington, said Kristen Waggoner, a Seattle attorney involved in the court fight to preserve current state marriage laws, which ban gay marriage.

Judges in King and Thurston County have both ruled those laws are unconstitutional. The cases will be combined and go to the state Supreme Court early next year, but Waggoner predicted the high court will uphold those decisions and open the door for same-sex marriage.

The only recourse would be to amend the state Constitution, but that takes a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature. She doubted that it would get a simple majority right now.

To win the battle, churches need to exercise leadership and their members need to ask God to “transform minds.”

“It’s not about winning arguments, it’s about changing hearts,” she said.