c. 2008 Religion News Service
Both sides gear up for costly Calif. fight over gay marriage
LOS ANGELES (RNS) The election-year fallout from Thursday’s (May 15) ruling by the California Supreme Court to allow same-sex marriage has both sides of the religious and political landscape building their barricades.
Gay marriage advocates are jubilant but cautious as they hold onto their landmark court victory, while the opponents hope to make it a major issue in the November elections.
“A lot of people are very angry about the court’s decision, calling up, e-mailing, asking what they can to help,” said Andrew Pugno, the attorney for backers of a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage and, if approved by voters, trump the court’s decision.
With funding from Focus on the Family and other groups, the “Protect Marriage” measure has gathered more than 1.1 million signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
“An anchor of the coalition has been the churches that gathered these signatures. They provided the bulk of the manpower to make this happen,” Pugno said. “In some ways, the arrogance of the court has really ignited the anger of the voters and given a boost to the marriage amendment.”
Pugno said his group will petition the state supreme court to stay its decision “until the voters have a chance to have a final say on this issue.” Without a stay, same-sex marriages would begin June 15.
The decision could prove difficult for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, who appears likely to become the Democratic nominee. Obama has said he opposes gay marriage but supports equal rights for gay couples.
One day after the ruling, the California Republican Party Web site said “it will be interesting to see how Barack Obama tip-toes around this issue.”
The United Church of Christ, of which Obama is a member, applauded the decision. The UCC voted to support civil marriage for same-sex couples at its General Synod in 2004.
“Until all couples are able to marry, their separate status will never be equal status,” said the Rev. John Thomas, the UCC’s general minister and president.
_ David Finnigan
Coast Guard grants religious exemption on vaccine
WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Coast Guard has granted a religious exemption to an officer who sued after being denied a waiver from receiving a Hepatitis A vaccine that he believed was derived from aborted fetuses.
Lt. Cmdr. Joseph J. Healy, a Catholic from Catonsville, Md., sued the Coast Guard in 2007 after his original request for an exemption was denied. He had stated his Catholic beliefs caused him to oppose abortion, and he believed claimed that the vaccine is derived from the cells of aborted fetuses.
“Christians shouldn’t be punished for abiding by their beliefs against abortion,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented Healy and planned to seek a dismissal of the suit.
“The Coast Guard has done the right thing in recognizing that those who lay their life on the line to defend our shores are entitled to the same freedom as anyone else not to have their particular beliefs disregarded.”
In 2006, the Coast Guard announced that all active-duty members were required to receive the Hepatitis A vaccination unless they could prove immunity. Healy argued in his suit that receiving the vaccination would cause him to “be impermissibly participating in the evil of abortion.”
Eric Young, a litigation lawyer for the Coast Guard, said a notice was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on May 9 stating that Healy had been granted a temporary religious exemption.
“The Coast Guard rescinded its original denial letter and looked at it under a new set of glasses, essentially, and reached a decision that it was appropriate to grant a temporary exemption,” Young said.
The waiver request notes that “exemption may be revoked under imminent risk conditions.”
Young said religious exemption requests are rare in the Coast Guard and in the last decade, Healy’s is the only one he knows has been approved.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Baha’is, State Department condemn arrests in Iran
WASHINGTON (RNS) U.S. Baha’is and the U.S. State Department are condemning Iranian officials for imprisoning six prominent Baha’is earlier this month.
The six men and women, all leaders in Iran’s national Baha’i committee, were in their homes in Tehran on Wednesday (May 14) when Iranian intelligence officials arrested them and took them to a prison notorious for human rights abuses.
A seventh Baha’i leader had been arrested March 5 in Mashlad.
“This development signals a return to the darkest days of repression in Iran in the 1980s when Baha’is were routinely arrested, imprisoned and executed,” said Michael Cromartie, chair of the independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The State Department has called the arrests a “clear violation of the Iranian regime’s international commitments and obligations to respect international religious freedom norms.”
Baha’is form Iran’s largest non-Muslim community, according to the commission, and have long been persecuted by Iranian authorities, who view them as apostates. Persecution has flared since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, with Baha’is suffering harrassment, physical attacks, arrests and imprisonment, the commission reports.
_ Daniel Burke
Bio-pic on Billy Graham wraps filming in Nashville
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) Producers here recently wrapped filming on “Billy: The Early Years,” a new movie on the life of evangelist Billy Graham that is scheduled for theatrical release this fall.
The full-length bio-pic focuses on the famed evangelist as a young man. Starting with Graham as a North Carolina farm boy, the movie follows his life as he studies at Wheaton College in Illinois, where he meets his wife Ruth, then continues on to Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles crusade.
“It’s kind of a Norman Rockwell view of America in the ’30s and ’40s … told through the prism of Billy Graham and his family,” said Larry Mortoff, one of the movie’s producers.
The film is being made independent of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, although Mortoff said the association is aware of it. Graham, 89, is in failing health at his home in western North Carolina.
A centerpiece of the story is the relationship between Graham and fellow evangelist Charles Templeton, a well-known preacher who befriended Graham but later struggled with his own faith. The movie looks at “the little-known `Templeton years’ as Graham learns … how to spearhead the post-World War II faith movement and become a rising star of American Christendom,” the filmmakers said.
With the Templeton-Graham relationship shown through flashbacks, veteran actor Martin Landau portrays the older Templeton, who is played as a young man by Kristoffer Polaha from the TV series “Miss Guided.” Armie Hammer, great-grandson of philanthropist Armand Hammer, plays the young Graham.
The evangelist’s first cousin, Nashville resident Bill Graham, briefly portrays the preacher as an older man. The cousin said filmmakers cast him when he showed them a photo taken of both men from the side, revealing similar profiles.
Scripting the movie involved extensive research, with filmmakers combing through archives to carefully reconstruct the evangelist’s life between 1934 and 1949, Mortoff said.
“We wanted to tell a true story, a compelling story,” Mortoff explained, one that would “walk the line of … complete respect for the life and life work of Billy and Ruth Graham.” He added, “we were going to be under a microscope because we were making a movie about a living icon.”
Filmmakers plan to release the Graham movie nationwide this fall on 500 screens after premiers in Nashville and possibly Orlando, Fla. Mortoff said plans call for showing the film to pastors and encouraging churches to support the movie.
InService America, the Forest, Va.-based agency that helped promote Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” to evangelical Christian audiences, will also market the Graham film, Mortoff said.
_ Ted Parks
Quote of the Day: Naval chaplain Rev. Frank Munoz
(RNS) “Every day that passes is one more day that people are dying from disease and hunger and we are sitting here unable to help _ it’s very frustrating _ (and) all we can do is shake our heads in disbelief.”
_ The Rev. Frank Munoz, an Episcopal Navy chaplain stationed aboard the USS Juneau off the coast of Myanmar, in an interview with Episcopal News Service about delays in reaching the country after a devastating cyclone.
KRE/LF END RNS
