Pastors step from pulpit into public fight over gay marriage
LORI CAIN
/ Statesman Journal
The Rev. Dennis Tuuri, a co-petitioner of a constitutional amendment proposed to ban gay marriage, delivers an Easter Service on April 11.
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Christian clerics are aggressively fighting against gay marriage.
STEVE LAW
Statesman Journal
April 16, 2004
They call themselves reluctant warriors, forced from their pulpits to defend a 4,000-year-old tradition called marriage.
A week after San Francisco began sanctioning gay weddings in time for Valentine’s Day, a group of fundamentalist Christian pastors filed initiative petitions to bar the practice in Oregon.
When Multnomah County entered the fray March 3 and started issuing same-sex marriage licenses, the pastors organized a protest within hours, then mounted an aggressive legal battle to block the county in court.
Who are these little-known pastors-turned-activists, who call themselves the Defense of Marriage Coalition?
Critics say they’re merely a kinder and gentler — and better-organized — version of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which divided the state and the Oregon Republican Party with a string of anti-gay initiatives over the past two decades.
Dennis Tuuri and other pastors in the Defense of Marriage Coalition say they aren’t out to harm gays and lesbians, and reluctantly stepped into the political arena to defend their holy traditions.
What’s clear is that the newly organized pastors’ group could play an increasingly influential role in Oregon politics and civil society.
The Defense of Marriage Coalition is the leading opponent of a landmark lawsuit taking center stage in a Portland courtroom today. Oral arguments for a suit brought by nine gay and lesbian couples kick off a test case designed to go all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court, to decide the constitutionality of gay marriage here.
The Defense of Marriage Coalition also is pushing an initiative petition to amend the Oregon Constitution by banning gay marriage. If the voters side with the coalition, they could trump any ruling on the subject by the Oregon Supreme Court.
Nashif central
Tuuri and fellow pastor Kent Walton are the chief petitioners of the constitutional amendment. But Tim Nashif is the leader pulling the pastors together to build their collective political clout.
The longtime political director of the Oregon Family Council, Nashif eschews publicity about himself and did not want to be photographed for this story. “I don’t profess to be the guy who is leading this whole thing,” he said. Yet others describe him as pivotal.
“The driving force behind it is Tim Nashif and the Oregon Family Council,” said Kelly Clark, an attorney hired by the coalition to wage its court battles.
“Oregon Family Council has a lot of experience in working in this arena, so (Nashif) has kind of become our leader because he’s knowledgeable in this whole arena.” Walton said.
Legally, the Defense of Marriage Coalition is an assumed business name of the Oregon Family Council, which was co-founded by Nashif a quarter-century ago. The council is primarily known for sending thousands of voters’ guides to Christian congregations each election cycle. The guides judge candidates and ballot measures from a socially conservative perspective: opposed to abortion and gay rights and supportive of school vouchers allowing children to attend private and religious schools with taxpayer money.
The Oregon Family Council also gives money to Republican candidates and ballot measure campaigns, and is increasingly important as a money player in Salem. In a recent filing with the Elections Division, the council reported raising $206,299, nearly all of it in small donations.
“That tells you they have a helluva mailing list, and/or a base in churches,” said Dave Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
That makes the council a potentially potent political force, as it moves beyond registering church members to vote and advising them how to vote.
Nashif also is chief executive officer of Gateway Communications, which offers a multitude of services for political campaigns and other clients: five printing presses, direct-mail service, a 24-line phone bank and other services. Of the $120,996 spent on politics this cycle by the Oregon Family Council, $96,571 of it went to Gateway.
Nashif wears another hat as chairman of the Multnomah County Republican Party, a post he also held from 1986 to 1990.
As national campaign financial reform brings a surge of political money to state and county party groups, Republicans wanted a pragmatist like Nashif in charge instead of some of the “wild-eyed radicals” who have been local-party leaders, said Jerry Keene, an openly gay Republican and precinct person in the Multnomah County GOP.
Avoiding OCA comparisons
Nashif and others in the Defense of Marriage Coalition are quick to dismiss comparisons to the Oregon Citizens Alliance.
“The definition of marriage has nothing to do with any kind of past gay rights or ballot measure movement that was done,” Nashif said. “We have never been aggressive with our agenda. Even this is defensive.”
The pastors only mobilized after a Massachusetts court opinion saying gay couples had a constitutional right to marry, Nashif said. It was clear that Oregon’s Constitution could be interpreted the same way.
Pastors involved in the Defense of Marriage Coalition could have mounted an initiative campaign any time in the past several years to put a state version of the national Defense of Marriage Act on the ballot, Nashif said. “We purposely chose not to,” he said.
“We’re not trying to be mean or hateful to the homosexual community,” said Tuuri, also a board member of Oregon Family Council. “It seems to me that organization (OCA) was less than compassionate in the issue.”
Oregon Family Council has worked diligently behind the scenes for 20 years to get grass-roots conservatives out to vote, Clark said. “They’re much more pragmatic, I would say, than some of the old ideologues. They’re both more influential and I think more sophisticated.”
“They’re not attacking the gay community with this,” Keene said. “That’s a smarter political approach than the one before, because they become less subject to being stereotyped themselves.”
“I’ve always had the sense that the Oregon Family Council has tried to be the kinder and gentler voice of the evangelic and fundamental Christian political movement,” Fidanque said. “They have far greater resources and are much more mainstream than the OCA and the Christian Coalition of Oregon.”
Sophistication worrisome
That sophistication worries some gay-rights supporters.
“There’s kind of a leadership vacuum in the extreme right now, and I think we’re seeing new people step into that vacuum,” said Roey Thorpe, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, a gay-rights group.
In the past, people who sought to deny civil rights always argued they were just trying to preserve the status quo, Fidanque said. But without access to marriage, gays and lesbians won’t have full rights, even if they’re allowed Vermont-style civil unions, he said. “No matter how you couch it, it’s not not going to be equal to marriage. It would be separate but equal.”
Thorpe, whose group collaborated with Multnomah County commissioners to ensure hundreds of gay and lesbian couples could marry before legal intervention blocked the ceremonies, was blunt in her assessment of the Defense of Marriage Coalition.
“I think that the language that they’re using is a political tactic,” she said. “You scratch the surface and what bubbles up is the same anti-gay sentiment that has been present in every anti-gay campaign in Oregon.”
Not a gay-bashing agenda
Defense of Marriage Coalition leaders insist they only want to preserve marriage, not bash gays. But many of their public statements and published positions show strong opposition to gay rights.
Six questions are used by the Oregon Family Council’s fall 2002 voters guide to assess candidates’ positions on what are termed moral issues. Two of them relate to gay rights.
From the way the questions are framed, it’s clear that the proper “pro-family” position espoused by the Oregon Family Council is to oppose granting benefits to gays’ and lesbians’ domestic partners that are akin to what married couples get. And they make it clear gays and lesbians shouldn’t have protected minority status that would grant them civil rights.
“This is not a civil rights issue,” said Walton, an independent pastor who works with the Oregon State/Southwest Washington Mens’ Ministry Leadership Network.
The traditional concept of marriage, he said, derives from God.
“This isn’t a government institution we’re talking about. This is an institution that came from the heart of the creator of the universe. This is not just another government program.”
Walton and Tuuri said granting gays and lesbians the right to marry merely condones an unhealthy lifestyle.
Trying to help homosexuals is like giving sugar to a diabetic, Tuuri said. “We’re not hating anybody,” he said. “We’re trying to say we don’t think that’s a proper action to engage in, homosexual activity.”
Based on his view that homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle, Tuuri can’t agree that gays and lesbians deserve civil rights as a protected minority.
He said he doesn’t believe gays and lesbians are born that way, or have a different physiology that makes them turn to same-sex relationships. “I don’t think that the research on the science is at the place yet where we know what that all means,” Tuuri said.
Rhetoric toned down
Some gay-rights supporters, like members of the Oregon Family Council, are trying to tone down the rhetoric to avoid a repeat of past divisive battles.
“I’ve never said it was bigotry. I’ve never said it was hatred,” said George Eighmey, a former lawmaker who was one of the first openly gay members of the Legislature.
“No, these people are fearful,” Eighmey said. “It is an irrational fear that if somehow we as a society adopt and accept gay relationships as part of the mainstream, it will undermine what they know.”
Senate Democratic Leader Kate Brown, D-Portland, a bisexual, urged groups on both sides to avoid name calling.
“Do I think the position they’re taking is anti-gay? Yes, but I think it’s their principles and that’s OK,” Brown said.
“I would put the ball in their court. Let’s separate the church versus state and figure out a way that we can allow adults to marry that doesn’t allow a religious connection.”
Nashif counters that he simply wants to let the voters of Oregon decide.
“I would like to ask why they’re opposed to a vote of the people,” Nashif said. “The reason is that the people are solidly against defining marriage as anything but between a man and a woman.”
Attorney general Hardy Myers has completed work on ballot explanatory language that would go to voters if the initiative measure qualifies for the Nov. 2 ballot. Critics have until April 22 to appeal that wording to the Oregon Supreme Court.
If the court drags out deciding that inevitable appeal, it could doom supporters’ chances of gathering the necessary 100,840 signatures by the July 2 deadline.
But if the court finishes its review quickly, Nashif and others are confident they can get volunteers in hundreds of sympathetic church congregations to gather the signatures quickly.
If that happens, Oregon voters will decide the most controversial issue facing the state right now.
Who’s Who in the Defense of Marriage Coalition?
The Political Organizers
Tim Nashif
is the low-key political director and co-founder of Oregon Family Council, which produces a voters guide aimed at socially conservative Christians that’s distributed through churches. Nashif assembled the Defense of Marriage Coalition, and helped mobilize pastors for the initiative campaign to bar gay marriage. He’s an ordained pastor with City Bible Church in Portland and serves as chairman of Multnomah County Republican Party. Nashif also is chief executive officer of Gateway Communications, which handles much of Oregon Family Council’s business. Gateway does printing, direct mail, phone banking and other services for political campaigns and regular commercial clients.
Mike White is executive director of Oregon Family Council, which raises more than $200,000 in political donations each election, collected from several thousand supporters.
Chief Petitioners for the Initiative
Dennis Tuuri is pastor of Reformation Covenant Church in Oregon City, and on the board of Oregon Family Council’s Political Action Committee. He’s also the executive director of Parents Education Association, a home-schooling group. The association produces its own voters guide to provide a Biblical perspective on ballot measures, on subjects ranging from genetically engineered foods to earthquake safety bonds to taxes.
Kent Walton works with the Oregon State/Southwest Washington Mens’ Ministry Leadership Network, and is an ordained Church of God minister. He once was an Oregon leader for Promise Keepers, which stresses men’s role at the helm of families.
Other pastors
Frank Damazio is senior pastor of City Bible Church in Portland.
T. Allen Bethel is senior pastor of Maranatha Church in Portland and president of Albina Ministerial Alliance. The alliance includes 125 largely African-American congregations in Portland.
Ray Cotton is senior pastor of New Hope Community Church in Clackamas.
Other helpers
Kelly Clark, a former legislator now practicing law, was hired to fight the Multnomah County decision granting gay marriages, and handle the subsequent constitutional challenge. Clark, who is not working on the initiative campaign, said he might support granting gays and lesbians the right to civil unions in lieu of marriages.
Greg Byrne is the attorney working for the coalition on the constitutional amendment.
Chuck Adams, a Republican political consultant from Salem, also is advising the Defense of Marriage Coalition.
Moral litmus test
Oregon Family Council, which organized the Defense of Marriage Coalition, asked candidates six questions for its November 2002 voters’ guide, to determine their positions on what it calls “key moral issues.”
In each case, a ‘yes’ answer was considered the “sound pro-family position.”
Here are those questions as they were framed:
1. Abortion: Do you consider yourself ‘pro-life’? That is, are you opposed to legalized abortion?
2. Parental Notification: Do you support legislation requiring a parent or guardian be notified before an abortion may be performed on a minor?
3. Homosexuality: Do you agree that homosexuals should not be granted constitutionally protected minority status?
4. Domestic Partnership: Do you agree that ‘domestic partners’ should not be given similar benefits as those afforded to married couples?
5. School Choice: Do you support an educational voucher that would allow students to attend the public, private, or religious school of their choice?
6. Oregon’s Tax Kicker: Do you support Oregon’s law that returns over-collected taxes back to taxpayers?
Key contacts
Basic Rights Oregon has helped same-sex couples who want to get marriage licenses. To learn more, call (503) 222-6151, send an e-mail to info@basic rights.org"
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon is representing same-sex couples in court. To learn more, call (503) 227-3186 or send an e-mail to couples@aclu.org
Defense of Marriage Coalition is seeking to end same-sex marriages through the courts and an initiative banning gay and lesbian marriage. Leaders include:
Kelly Clark, a Portland lawyer, (503) 306-0224
Tim Nashif, Multnomah County Republican Party chairman and chairman of the Oregon Family Council, (503) 262-7500 or (503) 257-0444.
Frank Damazio, senior pastor of City Bible Church of Portland, (503) 255-2224
Allen Bethel, pastor of the Maranatha Church of God of Portland and the leader of the Albina Ministerial Alliance, (503) 288-7241
Also backing an initiative banning same-sex marriage is the Oregon Citizens Alliance. Lon Mabon, its leader, can be reached at (503) 463-0653.
Steve Law can be reached at (503) 399-6615.
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Oregon pastors react quickly
Nov. 18, 2003: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that denying marriage rights to same-sex couples violates state Constitution. Court gives state Legislature six months to address the problem.
Feb. 12, 2004: Newly elected San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom orchestrates nation’s first same-sex marriages approved by government.
Feb. 19: Fundamentalist Christian pastors in Oregon submit initiative petitions to amend Oregon law and Constitution to clearly bar gay marriage.
Feb. 24: President George W. Bush endorses amending the U.S. Constitution to bar gay marriage.
March 3: Multnomah County Commissioners encourage Oregon’s first government-sanctioned gay marriages, saying to do otherwise would violate Oregon Constitution. Opponents, adopting the name Defense of Marriage Coalition, vow to fight the move in court and via an already-launched initiative campaign.
What’s next
Oral arguments occur today in Portland for a landmark legal case designed to resolve the constitutionality of gay marriage in Oregon.
A hearing on the test case brought by nine gay couples begins at 9 a.m. in Multnomah County Circuit Court, 1021 S.W. Fourth Ave. Room 228. This is the case that all sides agreed will be brought to the Oregon Supreme Court for an ultimate ruling.
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