The depositions of Prop 8 witnesses Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young who may have withdrew out of fear for their own safety reveal today how damaging their statements could have been (and ultimately are) to their case. Watch:

Paul Nathanson a Canadian religious scholar who just happens to be gay (duh!) was also trotted out in Varnum v. Brien which ultimately led to the Iowa Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage. In the document Defending Faith, Family and Freedom by the Family Research Council Nathanson is quoted as saying that cultures can only survive and thrive via opposite-sex marriage.

“Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival … every human society has had to promote it actively … Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.”

Not surprisingly marriage scholar Maggie Gallagher also surfaces in said document.

Nathanson and Young also co-authored  Marriage à la mode: Answering the Advocates of Gay Marriage in 2003 which attempts to dissect and tear down many marriage equality positions. Some of their arguments below.

Argument 7: Children would be no worse off with happily married gay parents than they are with unhappily married straight ones: This comparison is false, because it involves the best of one scenario with the worst of another. A legitimate comparison would compare either the best of both or the worst of both. Once again, we suggest that the best of marriage (providing at least one parent or other adult of each sex) is better than the best of gay marriage (which provides two parents of the same sex and none of the other one).

Argument 15: Anyone who opposes same-sex marriage is homophobic: This argument amounts to verbal terrorism. By “homophobic” is meant prejudice and hostility, although this word actually connotes the neuroticism of a phobia. The implication is that only evil or sick people can possibly disagree with any claim made by gay people. So much for the possibility of rational debate. (Never mind that not even all gay people are in favor of gay marriage.)

Moreover, this is an ad hominem argument. It is easy to trivialize arguments by attacking the personal integrity of those who make them. That way, you need not deal with the argument itself.

It’s a lengthy document but a good source for “verbal terrorists” such as myself in developing counter arguments.

Narrated by Dustin Lance Black, 8: The Mormon Proposition is a new documentary by Reed Cowen which takes an in-depth look at the involvement of the Mormon church in the passage of California’s Proposition 8. Trailer below:

Find out more at MormonProposition.com.

H/T to Pam’s House Blend.

Just when you think the world can’t get any smaller. Remember Chris? He was the fella outside an Obama townhall last week in Phoenix with a semi-automatic rifle strapped to his back as a part of staged act to demonstrate his right to bear arms. Guess where this guy goes to church? Yes that’s right. Pastor Steven L. Anderson’s Faithful Word Baptist church in nearby Tempe Arizona. Pastor Anderson’s been getting a lot of press lately for preaching death to Obama and homosexuals. Fancy that. Watch the video below demonstrating the linkage between these two men…

Thanks to an intrepid sleuther at Crooks & Liars for discovering the linkage.

A lesbian couple claims they were the victims of an anti-gay assault while attending a Baptist church in Memphis Tennessee.

Monique Stevens, who is a lesbian, said she and her partner were attending the 11 a.m. service at New Olivet Baptist Church because they wanted to meet the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., who they intended to support in the Oct. 15 mayoral election.

An hour into service, Whalum told the congregation to bow to the ground and blow kisses to God, Stephens said, but she and her partner, who are agnostic, did not move.

She said Whalum and church members began calling them “devil worshippers” and “gay,” among other derogatory names. Security guards surrounded and pushed them out of the sanctuary. Stephens said her glasses were broken and both she and her partner of three years have bruises and scratches from the altercation. No arrests were made, police said.

Whalum, however, said the women were “being disruptive, boisterous and speaking loud. They had to have some kind of agenda to come in church like that.”

More from the Memphis Flyer:

When Stevens placed her arm around her partner, the women claim a security guard asked the two to leave the church, claiming he’d already called the police. They allege that a group of young men pushed them out of the church while others taunted them with calls of “bitch” and “devil worshipper.”

According to Rod 2.0, Pastor Whalum, who stood idly by as the event transpired, was a vocal opponent to proposed anti-discrimination ordinance back in July.