Post by Bozur on Jul 2, 2005 23:18:47 GMT -5
NY Times: What's Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage? (It's the Gay Part)
By RUSSELL SHORTO
NY Times
June 19, 2005
The small but grandiose building at the corner of Eighth and G Streets NW in Washington, tucked directly behind the National Portrait Gallery, holds its own in a city packed with monumental architecture. You step into the lobby and automatically look around for a plaque, figuring that with its dark wood paneling and marble columns, this must be the onetime home of Rutherford B. Hayes or some other historical personage heavy with Victorian-era dignity. As it turns out, the structure, with its architectural signals of tradition and power, was built in 1996 for its tenant: the Family Research Council, the conservative public policy center.
In the gift shop just off the lobby -- where you can buy research-council thermoses and paperweights and the latest titles by Peggy Noonan, Alan Keyes, John Ashcroft and Pat Buchanan -- sits one of Washington's most unusual museum displays. Moms and dads who are planning to take the kids to the nation's capital this summer for an infusion of American history might want to add it to their itinerary, since it carries the lesson up to the present and right into their own living rooms. Beneath a large wall-mounted plaque emblazoned with the group's slogan -- Defending Family, Faith and Freedom -- and flanking a rather ferocious-looking American eagle statue are two large, museum-quality glass cases. The one on the left contains a complete groom's outfit -- tux, tie, fluffy shirt -- and the one on the right holds a bridal gown and all the trimmings, right down to the dried bouquet. Color snapshots of happy wedding parties festoon both display cases, and the back wall of the bridal unit features verses from the book of Genesis, King James version:
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. . . . And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
This shrine to marriage as a heterosexual, Judeo-Christian institution is a totem of conservative Christianity's mighty political wing and a flag marking its territorial gains in what its leaders see as a decisive battle in the culture war. In May 2003 the heads of 26 conservative organizations, including the Family Research Council, formed an entity, which they called the Arlington Group, to pool resources and come up with a combined strategy for fighting the forces of secularism. They thought it would be an amorphous battle, with many fronts. But just a month later the United States Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that had declared consenting homosexual sex illegal. Gay rights groups saw the Lawrence v. Texas ruling as a watershed: an endorsement, at the federal level, of homosexuality itself. So did the conservative leaders. Then in November of that year came the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that gave same-sex couples in the state the right to marry.
The effect of this one-two punch, which was heightened by the mayor of San Francisco's granting of same-sex marriage licenses the following February, was galvanizing for the Arlington Group members. The nebulous culture war instantly focused into a single issue. Since the ultimate goal of Arlington's member organizations is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as a heterosexual union, they formed another entity, the Marriage Amendment Project, to spearhead this mission. The Family Research Council offered space in its building for the project, and as an expression of the enthusiasm of the research-council staff for the initiative, the manager of the gift shop came up with the idea of the shrine to marriage, which comprises real-life wedding memorabilia donated by employees.
The exhibit itself could very likely serve as a cultural litmus test. Perhaps half the population would see the disembodied wedding outfits preserved in glass cases and guarded by a wooden eagle as bizarre, even lurid, while for the other half the display would trip different signifiers: sanctity, defiance, determination. On so many fronts that is where we are as a nation these days: divided, clearly and seemingly unbridgeably, in sensibility, values, foundations, even sense of humor.
As hot-button issues go, however, gay marriage probably isn't a classic divide. For one thing, the country is fairly decisively opposed to it. The vote last November -- all 11 states that had anti-gay-marriage amendments to their state constitutions on the ballot saw those amendments pass -- made clear that most people are not comfortable with the idea of extending the marriage franchise to same-sex pairings. And polls on the issue reinforce the point. Only about a quarter of voters surveyed in the national exit poll following the election favored same-sex marriage, and interestingly enough, only about half of gay and bisexual voters did.
People have given pollsters many different reasons for their opposition to gay marriage. Some base their feelings on what you might call linguistic grounds: a belief that the definition of the word ''marriage'' necessarily involves one person from each sex. Others say that it would be bad for children or that the purpose of marriage is to procreate or that they just don't agree with the idea. Then there is the compromise position. In April, Connecticut passed a law recognizing same-sex civil unions, which have been legal in Vermont for five years. The fact that civil unions, as well as efforts to extend specific rights and benefits to gay couples, receive significant support in polls suggests that many who object to gay marriage nevertheless see an underlying civil rights issue.
But as I learned spending time among the cultural conservatives who are leading the anti-gay-marriage charge, they have their own reasons for doing so, which are based on their reading of the Bible, their views about both homosexuality and the institution of marriage and the political force behind the issue. In the words of Gary Bauer, president of American Values -- one of what is now a total of 61 organizations under the Arlington Group banner, with a combined membership of 60 million -- gay marriage is ''the new abortion.'' He meant that, as with abortion, conservatives see gay marriage as a culture-altering change being implemented by judicial fiat. But gay marriage is also the new abortion in that it is for groups like Bauer's a base-energizing and fund-raising issue of tremendous power.
During last year's election campaign, at the same time that he was calling for a federal constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage, President Bush was giving a moderate sheen to the position of the conservative Christians with whom he is closely allied. As he said in his final debate with John Kerry, responding to a question about homosexuality: ''I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that. And I also know in a free society, consenting adults can live the way they want to live. And that's to be honored.''
But for the anti-gay-marriage activists, homosexuality is something to be fought, not tolerated or respected. I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-gay-marriage cause who said in essence: ''I have nothing against homosexuality. I just don't believe gays should be allowed to marry.'' Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.
You could make an argument that the center of the opposition to gay marriage is not in Washington but 40 miles away, in a ranch house in Catonsville, Md., a suburb of Baltimore. Laura and Dave Clark live there with their four children. The house is tucked cozily into the back of a cul-de-sac in a 1970's housing development. Inside, it is wall-to-wall carpeting and hand-me-down furnishings. Snapshots of the kids cover the refrigerator door. The couple's wedding album is prominently displayed on a table in the living room. Dave works for the federal government. Laura home-schools the 7-year-old twins, Grace and Cole, while also looking after 5-year-old Kayla and 3-year-old Jacob.
In mid-May, on one of the first really warm days of the year in the East, I sat on the screened-in back porch with the Clarks. The lawn we looked out on had plenty of room to play, but all four kids preferred to be on the porch, riding tricycles and training-wheeled bicycles in a tight circle around the adults, bashing into one another, performing for their parents and the visitor. Family trips, home-schooling, Bible school, gymnastics classes: the conversation was decidedly kid-centric. ''At the stage of life we're in, it's all about family,'' Dave said.
It was because of Laura that I had first come to know the Clarks a couple of months earlier. She is 33 and was born and raised in the area. After high school she went to nearby Towson State to study accounting. She dropped out before getting her degree, but not before finding Christ through the college youth ministry. She met Dave at around that time, and they married when she was 20.
Laura tends to wear a plain and determined expression, eyes heavy-lidded but face wide, giving an effect that could be bewilderment, outrage or concentration. The more time I spent with her, the more apparent it became that her quiet matter-of-factness is rooted in the deep satisfaction she says she feels in her roles as mother and housewife and in the clarity of her worldview. She describes herself as an introvert, and while she has long held a well of Christian convictions, she said, ''for most of my life, until about two years ago, I was wishy-washy, a people pleaser.'' Around that time, the pastor of her nondenominational evangelical church began a series of pulpit seminars, which had a profound impact on her. ''One was the Kingdom Assignment,'' she said. ''You volunteer to do it. The church gives each person who signs up $100 to invest. The challenge is to do something God-honoring with it. Then you come back and give a presentation in front of the church and tell people what you did and what you learned.''
Laura chose to buy copies of the Christian inspirational book ''Traveling Light for Mothers'' and give them to mothers she met. ''I never liked public speaking,'' she said, ''so the whole thing was a challenge for me.'' The other event was a series of sermons based on the best-selling Christian book ''The Purpose-Driven Life.'' ''It really helped me to clarify things,'' she said. ''I learned that God has a purpose for me. I used to see things as separate. But everything is connected: my life, my family, society. Before, I didn't want to rock the boat. Now I don't mind rocking the boat, as long as it's based on truth.''
Not long after this period in which she came to feel a new sense of purpose, Laura read about the pro-gay-marriage action in Massachusetts, and she found herself e-mailing news articles about it to friends. She looked at the development not as an effort by members of a minority to win rights that others have long enjoyed but as an attack on society's most basic institution by forces bent on creating an amoral, anything-goes culture. ''The gay activists are trying to redefine what marriage has been basically since the beginning of time and on every continent,'' she said. ''My concern is for the children -- for the future.''
She believed that what happened in Massachusetts could happen in Maryland. ''My first reaction was frustration,'' she said, ''knowing that this is a legislative issue and the court in Massachusetts had overstepped their bounds.'' Laura had never been an activist before, but now she wanted to get involved, so she contacted the national headquarters of the Family Research Council, and they put her in touch with a local group called the Family Protection Lobby, which has monitored state legislation from a conservative Christian perspective since 1980. She talked with Doug Stiegler, a retired plumbing contractor turned Christian missionary, who has been head of the Family Protection Lobby since 1993. Stiegler began to initiate her into the ways of the state government.
''We had bills in our State Legislature last year to protect marriage,'' Laura said. ''I didn't understand why they didn't go through, especially when polls show people in this state and in the country overwhelmingly support traditional marriage.'' With Stiegler's encouragement, Laura got in her car one day and drove to Annapolis, where there was a bill before the Legislature that would give domestic partners in Maryland the right to make medical decisions for each other. She saw it as a back-door attempt to get government authorization of gay unions, and with the help of an aide to a conservative state legislator, she found herself testifying against it. ''I didn't realize you could testify as a citizen,'' she said. ''I thought you had to be an expert. So I gave several reasons why I opposed this legislation: as a taxpayer, as a citizen, as a mom and as a person of faith.''
A few months later, the whole matter became more immediate and pressing when she read that nine same-sex couples, assisted by the American Civil Liberties Union and a statewide gay rights group, Equality Maryland, had filed a lawsuit against the state, asking that a 1973 law defining marriage as between a man and a woman be declared unconstitutional. Laura told Stiegler she wanted to do more, and they worked out a volunteer position for her at the Family Protection Lobby that is an extension of the e-mail alerts she had sent to friends. Her job for the organization is to troll the Internet for news articles and developments, nationally and in the state, that have to do with same-sex marriage and other issues of concern to the group, like abortion, and then compile them into a newsletter that is e-mailed to members. Her main sources include the Web sites of The Washington Times and the Family Research Council, as well as the Drudge Report. ''It works out really great because I can do it from home, while I'm with the kids,'' she said.
I say that Laura Clark could be considered a power center for the opposition to gay marriage because the energy, zeal and legwork on that side come from people like her. The conservative leaders may have as an ultimate goal an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but the fact that the Marriage Amendment Project in Washington has a staff of two shows that they don't put much stock in that coming to pass anytime soon. Instead, the game is being played out at the state level, so that it is actually a series of games, each with its own dynamic. The various conservative Christian groups leading the anti-gay-marriage charge cooperate in many ways. Local groups with ties to one of the big national organizations may meet as events are heating up in their state. ''Sometimes we have coordinated attacks,'' said Michael Bowman, the director of state legislative relations for Concerned Women for America, a public policy organization based on biblical principles that was founded by Beverly LaHaye, who is married to the best-selling Christian writer Tim LaHaye. ''Our local person will be in touch with the Catholic Conference person or with Focus on the Family. They'll create e-mail loops, decide when to hit the pavement.'' Gay marriage is providing unparalleled momentum for this kind of linkage, Bowman added: ''The marriage issue is waking up alliances that never existed. Abortion was never like this.''
On April 5, Kansas became the 18th state to vote to amend its constitution to forbid same-sex marriage. Texas will have the issue up for popular referendum this year, and it will be on the ballot in many other states in 2006, when Americans will go to the polls to vote in, among other things, the midterm Congressional elections. There are grass-roots battles going on now in Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, South Dakota, Arizona, Washington, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota. In May, conservative groups in California and Arizona announced petition drives that would force a referendum in those states.
I could have gone to any of these places to learn how the people who are most deeply opposed to gay marriage think. But Maryland is an interesting combination: it is traditionally a blue state, but it has a strong core of social conservatism. There is a Republican governor and a Democratic-controlled State Legislature. And the A.C.L.U.-backed lawsuits filed by gay couples have fanned the flames of activism and outrage.
Those at the center of the opposition are, almost to a person, motivated by their brand of Christian beliefs. That was apparent in conversations I had with activists around Maryland and in several other states, and it was much in evidence at a dinner that Laura Clark arranged for my benefit, to which she had invited six friends who were active in the cause, all of whom were eager to explain what drives them. Most were born and raised in Maryland, and all but one -- who is registered as an Independent -- are Republicans. We made our way around the buffet Laura laid out on the dining-room table -- sliced lunch meats, hamburger buns, tomato and onion slices, bowls of pretzels and chips, cookies and several two-quart plastic bottles of soda -- then sat down to chat.
Meredith Fuller, who is 37 and works as a comptroller for her church, said that it was in talking with Laura that she came to realize the dimensions of the issue. ''I used to feel that as a Christian my job was to deal with political issues from a prayerful standpoint,'' she said. ''Now I think this is the defining issue of my generation, and I want to take a stand.''
Bryan Simonaire works for a contractor that supports the U.S. Air Force. He and his wife, who was not present, have seven children. He is planning to run for the State Senate in 2006, and he said that the gay-marriage issue was one important reason. He put it in historical terms: ''I remember talking to my parents about Roe v. Wade. And I asked them, 'Where were you while it was happening?' They didn't think they could do anything about it, and really they couldn't because it was done by the courts. I want to be able to tell my children that when people were battling this issue, I was on the front line.''
Brian Racer is pastor to Laura and Dave Clark and a local opinion shaper on social issues. He is a tall, rangy 43-year-old man with a big mustache and a conversational style that is casual but enormously self-confident. Racer has a vigorous Christianity-in-society approach, which is illustrated by a recent move he made. When Mel Gibson's movie ''The Passion of the Christ'' came out in February 2004, he, like many ministers around the country, booked a whole theater in the local multiplex to accommodate the members of his church. But the venue itself -- comfortable seats, good acoustics, convenient location -- clicked for him. He worked out a rental arrangement with the manager of the theater. So now the Clarks and their fellow congregants worship at the Open Door Bible Church in Theater 24 in the Muvico multiplex at the Arundel Mills Mall. ''The teens think it's pretty cool,'' he said. ''After service they can go have lunch at the food court, then come back to the theater and see a movie.''
I found what Racer had to say on the subject of homosexuality a clear and direct summation of the views of the others Laura had invited over that night and of the other anti-gay-marriage activists with whom I spoke. ''The Hebrew words for male and female are actually the words for the male and female genital parts,'' he told me. ''The male is the piercer; the female is the pierced. That is the way God designed it. It's unfortunate that homosexuals have taken the moniker 'gay,' because their lifestyle and its consequences are anything but. Look what has happened in the decades since the sexual revolution and acceptance of the gay lifestyle as normal. Viruses have mutated. S.T.D.'s have spread. It shows that when we try to change the natural course of things, what comes out of that is not joy or gayness.''
The others in Laura Clark's living room, sitting with paper plates balanced on their laps, nodded and added supporting sentiments. Explaining how homosexuality resembles an insidious disease, Racer said, ''If you have a same-gendered union, you have no natural, biological way to propagate your philosophy.'' So, he explained, it seeks to spread itself by other means, including popular culture. Bryan Simonaire added: ''We have to recognize that they have a strategy to propagate their lifestyle. Think back 10 or 20 years ago, when you had the first openly homosexual person on TV. It was shocking to a lot of people. Now it's the norm on television, so you don't have the shock factor. Then they had two men with a passionate kiss on TV. That's the road they're heading down. They have a strategy.''
By RUSSELL SHORTO
NY Times
June 19, 2005
The small but grandiose building at the corner of Eighth and G Streets NW in Washington, tucked directly behind the National Portrait Gallery, holds its own in a city packed with monumental architecture. You step into the lobby and automatically look around for a plaque, figuring that with its dark wood paneling and marble columns, this must be the onetime home of Rutherford B. Hayes or some other historical personage heavy with Victorian-era dignity. As it turns out, the structure, with its architectural signals of tradition and power, was built in 1996 for its tenant: the Family Research Council, the conservative public policy center.
In the gift shop just off the lobby -- where you can buy research-council thermoses and paperweights and the latest titles by Peggy Noonan, Alan Keyes, John Ashcroft and Pat Buchanan -- sits one of Washington's most unusual museum displays. Moms and dads who are planning to take the kids to the nation's capital this summer for an infusion of American history might want to add it to their itinerary, since it carries the lesson up to the present and right into their own living rooms. Beneath a large wall-mounted plaque emblazoned with the group's slogan -- Defending Family, Faith and Freedom -- and flanking a rather ferocious-looking American eagle statue are two large, museum-quality glass cases. The one on the left contains a complete groom's outfit -- tux, tie, fluffy shirt -- and the one on the right holds a bridal gown and all the trimmings, right down to the dried bouquet. Color snapshots of happy wedding parties festoon both display cases, and the back wall of the bridal unit features verses from the book of Genesis, King James version:
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. . . . And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
This shrine to marriage as a heterosexual, Judeo-Christian institution is a totem of conservative Christianity's mighty political wing and a flag marking its territorial gains in what its leaders see as a decisive battle in the culture war. In May 2003 the heads of 26 conservative organizations, including the Family Research Council, formed an entity, which they called the Arlington Group, to pool resources and come up with a combined strategy for fighting the forces of secularism. They thought it would be an amorphous battle, with many fronts. But just a month later the United States Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that had declared consenting homosexual sex illegal. Gay rights groups saw the Lawrence v. Texas ruling as a watershed: an endorsement, at the federal level, of homosexuality itself. So did the conservative leaders. Then in November of that year came the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that gave same-sex couples in the state the right to marry.
The effect of this one-two punch, which was heightened by the mayor of San Francisco's granting of same-sex marriage licenses the following February, was galvanizing for the Arlington Group members. The nebulous culture war instantly focused into a single issue. Since the ultimate goal of Arlington's member organizations is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as a heterosexual union, they formed another entity, the Marriage Amendment Project, to spearhead this mission. The Family Research Council offered space in its building for the project, and as an expression of the enthusiasm of the research-council staff for the initiative, the manager of the gift shop came up with the idea of the shrine to marriage, which comprises real-life wedding memorabilia donated by employees.
The exhibit itself could very likely serve as a cultural litmus test. Perhaps half the population would see the disembodied wedding outfits preserved in glass cases and guarded by a wooden eagle as bizarre, even lurid, while for the other half the display would trip different signifiers: sanctity, defiance, determination. On so many fronts that is where we are as a nation these days: divided, clearly and seemingly unbridgeably, in sensibility, values, foundations, even sense of humor.
As hot-button issues go, however, gay marriage probably isn't a classic divide. For one thing, the country is fairly decisively opposed to it. The vote last November -- all 11 states that had anti-gay-marriage amendments to their state constitutions on the ballot saw those amendments pass -- made clear that most people are not comfortable with the idea of extending the marriage franchise to same-sex pairings. And polls on the issue reinforce the point. Only about a quarter of voters surveyed in the national exit poll following the election favored same-sex marriage, and interestingly enough, only about half of gay and bisexual voters did.
People have given pollsters many different reasons for their opposition to gay marriage. Some base their feelings on what you might call linguistic grounds: a belief that the definition of the word ''marriage'' necessarily involves one person from each sex. Others say that it would be bad for children or that the purpose of marriage is to procreate or that they just don't agree with the idea. Then there is the compromise position. In April, Connecticut passed a law recognizing same-sex civil unions, which have been legal in Vermont for five years. The fact that civil unions, as well as efforts to extend specific rights and benefits to gay couples, receive significant support in polls suggests that many who object to gay marriage nevertheless see an underlying civil rights issue.
But as I learned spending time among the cultural conservatives who are leading the anti-gay-marriage charge, they have their own reasons for doing so, which are based on their reading of the Bible, their views about both homosexuality and the institution of marriage and the political force behind the issue. In the words of Gary Bauer, president of American Values -- one of what is now a total of 61 organizations under the Arlington Group banner, with a combined membership of 60 million -- gay marriage is ''the new abortion.'' He meant that, as with abortion, conservatives see gay marriage as a culture-altering change being implemented by judicial fiat. But gay marriage is also the new abortion in that it is for groups like Bauer's a base-energizing and fund-raising issue of tremendous power.
During last year's election campaign, at the same time that he was calling for a federal constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage, President Bush was giving a moderate sheen to the position of the conservative Christians with whom he is closely allied. As he said in his final debate with John Kerry, responding to a question about homosexuality: ''I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that. And I also know in a free society, consenting adults can live the way they want to live. And that's to be honored.''
But for the anti-gay-marriage activists, homosexuality is something to be fought, not tolerated or respected. I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-gay-marriage cause who said in essence: ''I have nothing against homosexuality. I just don't believe gays should be allowed to marry.'' Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.
You could make an argument that the center of the opposition to gay marriage is not in Washington but 40 miles away, in a ranch house in Catonsville, Md., a suburb of Baltimore. Laura and Dave Clark live there with their four children. The house is tucked cozily into the back of a cul-de-sac in a 1970's housing development. Inside, it is wall-to-wall carpeting and hand-me-down furnishings. Snapshots of the kids cover the refrigerator door. The couple's wedding album is prominently displayed on a table in the living room. Dave works for the federal government. Laura home-schools the 7-year-old twins, Grace and Cole, while also looking after 5-year-old Kayla and 3-year-old Jacob.
In mid-May, on one of the first really warm days of the year in the East, I sat on the screened-in back porch with the Clarks. The lawn we looked out on had plenty of room to play, but all four kids preferred to be on the porch, riding tricycles and training-wheeled bicycles in a tight circle around the adults, bashing into one another, performing for their parents and the visitor. Family trips, home-schooling, Bible school, gymnastics classes: the conversation was decidedly kid-centric. ''At the stage of life we're in, it's all about family,'' Dave said.
It was because of Laura that I had first come to know the Clarks a couple of months earlier. She is 33 and was born and raised in the area. After high school she went to nearby Towson State to study accounting. She dropped out before getting her degree, but not before finding Christ through the college youth ministry. She met Dave at around that time, and they married when she was 20.
Laura tends to wear a plain and determined expression, eyes heavy-lidded but face wide, giving an effect that could be bewilderment, outrage or concentration. The more time I spent with her, the more apparent it became that her quiet matter-of-factness is rooted in the deep satisfaction she says she feels in her roles as mother and housewife and in the clarity of her worldview. She describes herself as an introvert, and while she has long held a well of Christian convictions, she said, ''for most of my life, until about two years ago, I was wishy-washy, a people pleaser.'' Around that time, the pastor of her nondenominational evangelical church began a series of pulpit seminars, which had a profound impact on her. ''One was the Kingdom Assignment,'' she said. ''You volunteer to do it. The church gives each person who signs up $100 to invest. The challenge is to do something God-honoring with it. Then you come back and give a presentation in front of the church and tell people what you did and what you learned.''
Laura chose to buy copies of the Christian inspirational book ''Traveling Light for Mothers'' and give them to mothers she met. ''I never liked public speaking,'' she said, ''so the whole thing was a challenge for me.'' The other event was a series of sermons based on the best-selling Christian book ''The Purpose-Driven Life.'' ''It really helped me to clarify things,'' she said. ''I learned that God has a purpose for me. I used to see things as separate. But everything is connected: my life, my family, society. Before, I didn't want to rock the boat. Now I don't mind rocking the boat, as long as it's based on truth.''
Not long after this period in which she came to feel a new sense of purpose, Laura read about the pro-gay-marriage action in Massachusetts, and she found herself e-mailing news articles about it to friends. She looked at the development not as an effort by members of a minority to win rights that others have long enjoyed but as an attack on society's most basic institution by forces bent on creating an amoral, anything-goes culture. ''The gay activists are trying to redefine what marriage has been basically since the beginning of time and on every continent,'' she said. ''My concern is for the children -- for the future.''
She believed that what happened in Massachusetts could happen in Maryland. ''My first reaction was frustration,'' she said, ''knowing that this is a legislative issue and the court in Massachusetts had overstepped their bounds.'' Laura had never been an activist before, but now she wanted to get involved, so she contacted the national headquarters of the Family Research Council, and they put her in touch with a local group called the Family Protection Lobby, which has monitored state legislation from a conservative Christian perspective since 1980. She talked with Doug Stiegler, a retired plumbing contractor turned Christian missionary, who has been head of the Family Protection Lobby since 1993. Stiegler began to initiate her into the ways of the state government.
''We had bills in our State Legislature last year to protect marriage,'' Laura said. ''I didn't understand why they didn't go through, especially when polls show people in this state and in the country overwhelmingly support traditional marriage.'' With Stiegler's encouragement, Laura got in her car one day and drove to Annapolis, where there was a bill before the Legislature that would give domestic partners in Maryland the right to make medical decisions for each other. She saw it as a back-door attempt to get government authorization of gay unions, and with the help of an aide to a conservative state legislator, she found herself testifying against it. ''I didn't realize you could testify as a citizen,'' she said. ''I thought you had to be an expert. So I gave several reasons why I opposed this legislation: as a taxpayer, as a citizen, as a mom and as a person of faith.''
A few months later, the whole matter became more immediate and pressing when she read that nine same-sex couples, assisted by the American Civil Liberties Union and a statewide gay rights group, Equality Maryland, had filed a lawsuit against the state, asking that a 1973 law defining marriage as between a man and a woman be declared unconstitutional. Laura told Stiegler she wanted to do more, and they worked out a volunteer position for her at the Family Protection Lobby that is an extension of the e-mail alerts she had sent to friends. Her job for the organization is to troll the Internet for news articles and developments, nationally and in the state, that have to do with same-sex marriage and other issues of concern to the group, like abortion, and then compile them into a newsletter that is e-mailed to members. Her main sources include the Web sites of The Washington Times and the Family Research Council, as well as the Drudge Report. ''It works out really great because I can do it from home, while I'm with the kids,'' she said.
I say that Laura Clark could be considered a power center for the opposition to gay marriage because the energy, zeal and legwork on that side come from people like her. The conservative leaders may have as an ultimate goal an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but the fact that the Marriage Amendment Project in Washington has a staff of two shows that they don't put much stock in that coming to pass anytime soon. Instead, the game is being played out at the state level, so that it is actually a series of games, each with its own dynamic. The various conservative Christian groups leading the anti-gay-marriage charge cooperate in many ways. Local groups with ties to one of the big national organizations may meet as events are heating up in their state. ''Sometimes we have coordinated attacks,'' said Michael Bowman, the director of state legislative relations for Concerned Women for America, a public policy organization based on biblical principles that was founded by Beverly LaHaye, who is married to the best-selling Christian writer Tim LaHaye. ''Our local person will be in touch with the Catholic Conference person or with Focus on the Family. They'll create e-mail loops, decide when to hit the pavement.'' Gay marriage is providing unparalleled momentum for this kind of linkage, Bowman added: ''The marriage issue is waking up alliances that never existed. Abortion was never like this.''
On April 5, Kansas became the 18th state to vote to amend its constitution to forbid same-sex marriage. Texas will have the issue up for popular referendum this year, and it will be on the ballot in many other states in 2006, when Americans will go to the polls to vote in, among other things, the midterm Congressional elections. There are grass-roots battles going on now in Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, South Dakota, Arizona, Washington, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota. In May, conservative groups in California and Arizona announced petition drives that would force a referendum in those states.
I could have gone to any of these places to learn how the people who are most deeply opposed to gay marriage think. But Maryland is an interesting combination: it is traditionally a blue state, but it has a strong core of social conservatism. There is a Republican governor and a Democratic-controlled State Legislature. And the A.C.L.U.-backed lawsuits filed by gay couples have fanned the flames of activism and outrage.
Those at the center of the opposition are, almost to a person, motivated by their brand of Christian beliefs. That was apparent in conversations I had with activists around Maryland and in several other states, and it was much in evidence at a dinner that Laura Clark arranged for my benefit, to which she had invited six friends who were active in the cause, all of whom were eager to explain what drives them. Most were born and raised in Maryland, and all but one -- who is registered as an Independent -- are Republicans. We made our way around the buffet Laura laid out on the dining-room table -- sliced lunch meats, hamburger buns, tomato and onion slices, bowls of pretzels and chips, cookies and several two-quart plastic bottles of soda -- then sat down to chat.
Meredith Fuller, who is 37 and works as a comptroller for her church, said that it was in talking with Laura that she came to realize the dimensions of the issue. ''I used to feel that as a Christian my job was to deal with political issues from a prayerful standpoint,'' she said. ''Now I think this is the defining issue of my generation, and I want to take a stand.''
Bryan Simonaire works for a contractor that supports the U.S. Air Force. He and his wife, who was not present, have seven children. He is planning to run for the State Senate in 2006, and he said that the gay-marriage issue was one important reason. He put it in historical terms: ''I remember talking to my parents about Roe v. Wade. And I asked them, 'Where were you while it was happening?' They didn't think they could do anything about it, and really they couldn't because it was done by the courts. I want to be able to tell my children that when people were battling this issue, I was on the front line.''
Brian Racer is pastor to Laura and Dave Clark and a local opinion shaper on social issues. He is a tall, rangy 43-year-old man with a big mustache and a conversational style that is casual but enormously self-confident. Racer has a vigorous Christianity-in-society approach, which is illustrated by a recent move he made. When Mel Gibson's movie ''The Passion of the Christ'' came out in February 2004, he, like many ministers around the country, booked a whole theater in the local multiplex to accommodate the members of his church. But the venue itself -- comfortable seats, good acoustics, convenient location -- clicked for him. He worked out a rental arrangement with the manager of the theater. So now the Clarks and their fellow congregants worship at the Open Door Bible Church in Theater 24 in the Muvico multiplex at the Arundel Mills Mall. ''The teens think it's pretty cool,'' he said. ''After service they can go have lunch at the food court, then come back to the theater and see a movie.''
I found what Racer had to say on the subject of homosexuality a clear and direct summation of the views of the others Laura had invited over that night and of the other anti-gay-marriage activists with whom I spoke. ''The Hebrew words for male and female are actually the words for the male and female genital parts,'' he told me. ''The male is the piercer; the female is the pierced. That is the way God designed it. It's unfortunate that homosexuals have taken the moniker 'gay,' because their lifestyle and its consequences are anything but. Look what has happened in the decades since the sexual revolution and acceptance of the gay lifestyle as normal. Viruses have mutated. S.T.D.'s have spread. It shows that when we try to change the natural course of things, what comes out of that is not joy or gayness.''
The others in Laura Clark's living room, sitting with paper plates balanced on their laps, nodded and added supporting sentiments. Explaining how homosexuality resembles an insidious disease, Racer said, ''If you have a same-gendered union, you have no natural, biological way to propagate your philosophy.'' So, he explained, it seeks to spread itself by other means, including popular culture. Bryan Simonaire added: ''We have to recognize that they have a strategy to propagate their lifestyle. Think back 10 or 20 years ago, when you had the first openly homosexual person on TV. It was shocking to a lot of people. Now it's the norm on television, so you don't have the shock factor. Then they had two men with a passionate kiss on TV. That's the road they're heading down. They have a strategy.''