This morning, the Supreme Court declined to rule on California’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage. The judges’ decision effectively allows same-sex couples to marry. Central California played a major role in the law’s passage in 2008, and, on both sides, reaction to the court’s decision was passionate. From the Cornerstone Church in downtown Fresno, FM 89’s Rebecca Plevin reports that Proposition 8 supporters will keep fighting.
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Martha Kistler strongly believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.
“We need a family unity,” Kistler says. “We need a mother and a father and children. Period. That’s the way God created us, that’s the way we need to have it.”
Just a few hours after the Supreme Court issued its ruling, Kistler gathered with about 40 other Proposition 8 supporters at the Cornerstone Church. They vowed to defend traditional marriage.
“I think that we have a tremendous chance and I think that God is in control and I think we’re going to succeed in this. I really do,” Kistler says.
Jim Franklin, the church’s senior pastor, addressed the group. He says he’s disappointed that the government is not listening to its people, who voted five years ago to ban same-sex marriage.
“In reality, that now is what this question is about,” Franklin says. “It’s not about who’s sleeping with who, it’s about do the people of the State of California have the right to govern themselves?”
Mark Curts agrees. He’s a pastor at the First Southern Baptist Church in Hanford, and says the battle over Proposition 8 is not over.
“It’s very obvious to everyone with an open mind that a majority of Californians… support traditional marriage, and that’s been the type of marriage that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years, in many cultures all over the world,” Curts says.
Same-sex couples can’t yet obtain marriage licenses. That will happen once the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifts its stay on the District Court’s ruling, which found that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. The California Department of Public Health says that could take a month or more.
