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Churches Pushed Passage Of Marriage Amendment

Photo by KEVIN HOWE

The gay marriage issue is more about saving black families than politics, says the Rev. Stephen Nunn.

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By LINDSAY PETERSON

lpeterson@tampatrib.com

Published: November 6, 2008

TAMPA - The Rev. James Favorite had long favored changing the state constitution to ban gay marriage, but he sharpened his message when the Florida NAACP came out on the opposite side.

"We had a great effort," he said. "I addressed it from pulpit. I told the members this is wrong" for other groups to be contradicting the church. "We are supposed to be the ones who set the pace."

Both supporters and opponents of Amendment 2 credit pastors statewide with helping persuade enough voters to approve the measure on Tuesday. It needed at least 60 percent of the vote. It got more than 62 percent.

The amendment changed the constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman and to nullify any other union "treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof." Same-sex marriage has been illegal in Florida since 1997, but supporters said a constitutional shield was necessary to prevent judges from overturning the law.

Pastors in the black community played an especially key role in passing Amendment 2, said Terry Kemple, president of the Community Issues Council, which began working with a group of black churches several months ago to solidify their support of Amendment 2.

"I can't tell you how many of those pastors gave messages to their congregations, but it was a lot of them," Kemple said.

It helped having a black man, Barack Obama, on the ballot, Favorite said. Even though he opposed Amendment 2, "he brought the numbers out."

Exit poll numbers reported by CNN showed that more black than white voters favored Amendment 2. More than 70 percent of the black voters among the 3,212 respondents voted yes, compared with 60 percent of whites and 64 percent of Latinos. Eighty percent of black voters between 30 and 44 voted yes, compared with 70 percent of younger black voters. Vote counts for other ages weren't available.

White people who identified themselves as conservative Republicans and evangelical overwhelmingly favored the amendment, the poll showed. More than 80 percent of them voted yes.

Not all clergy supported Amendment 2, however. Rabbi Merrill Shapiro criticized it from his post at Temple Beth Shalom in Palm Coast. Most Jewish voters opposed Amendment 2, according to the CNN poll, but Shapiro said they were outnumbered by the evangelicals.

The passage of Amendment 2 was a testament to "the power of the pulpit," Shapiro said. "We count the number of people to whom we are speaking in the course of a weekend ... We know we have that influence and that power," he said. However, some religious leaders "see themselves as tools of political power."

The gay marriage issue is about much more than politics to the black pastors, said the Rev. Stephen Nunn, of Trinity Gospel Community Church in Tampa. It's about saving the black family.

"The divorce rate is higher among black families and you tend to have more dysfunctional families," he said, but "you can see that when there's a man and woman present as husband and wife, you see a significant difference in the responses of the children."

The opponents of Amendment 2 said its narrow view of the family threatens to break couples apart.

By nullifying anything that is the "substantial equivalent" of marriage, it could outlaw domestic partnerships. Those are legal arrangements that allow two unmarried people to share health care and other benefits.

"The discriminatory language that will now be written into our state's guiding document may go far beyond limiting marriage to threaten health and other benefits for all Floridians, gay and straight," said the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida in a statement on Wednesday.

Amendment 2 supporters say that's a scare tactic and that courts will not see domestic partnerships as the "substantial equivalent" of marriage.

"We hope they are right," said Michael Kenny, deputy campaign manager of the Amendment 2 opposition.

More than 40 states have laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. A total of 30 specifically define marriage in their constitutions. That includes Florida and two other states that passed similar measures Tuesday, California and Arizona.

Reporter William March contributed to this report. Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834.

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