Gays, Allies Meet to Fight Prop. 22

About 250 religious leaders and gay-rights advocates from across the nation gathered at an Irvine church Monday to rally opposition to a state initiative that would bar California from recognizing same-sex marriages.

“Proposition 22 cannot prevent our love,” the Rev. Elder Nori Rost, leader of a gay and lesbian congregation in Colorado Springs, Colo., said of the initiative known as Limit on Marriages. “Love is a divine gift that cannot, should not and will not be legislated away.”

Rabbi Denise Eger of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood said, “This proposition will create havoc in our state. It will take away our new hard-won civil rights.”

The gathering at Irvine United Church of Christ was organized by the National Religious Leadership Roundtable, an interfaith group from spiritual and religious organizations that support gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. The group is holding its two-day biannual meeting in Santa Ana, partly to demonstrate that even in Orange County, known as a stronghold of the religious right, there is considerable opposition to Proposition 22.

During Monday’s three-hour rally there was no conflict or protest as participants applauded speakers and quietly browsed at tables displaying fliers and T-shirts.

“What we have here is a liberation movement,” Robert Goss, a professor of religion at Webster University in St. Louis, told the gathering. “The religious right has expended many resources, and we must do the same. We are committed to the politics of compassion, and Proposition 22 is bad law.”