How low they will go nobody knows.

I had very low expectations for the decency and honesty of the circus of religionists who are running the Yes on 8 antigay campaign in California. But I have to confess, they have sunk far lower than I anticipated.


Previously this blog discussed how this political campaign issued a press release basically lying about a group of children who were taken to City Hall by their parents to greet a teacher who had been married. The Yes on 8 campaign issued statements about how the charter school, the children attended, was indoctrinating children and “teaching gay marriage”.

Now the campaign has issued a television ad using images of the school children and repeating the lie. In their ad they never once mention that it was the parents of the children who took them to City Hall. And, to clarify, the children waited outside City Hall to greet their teacher, they did not attend the wedding as the Yes on 8 campaign has pretended.

Of course the parents of these children are furious. The children went to City Hall because their parents requested it! They went during lunch hour, they took public transit to get there (not a school bus), and they went with parents. But Yes on 8 is lying to the voters in order to strip gay couples of their rights -- gee, it’s a good thing the Yes on 8 campaign is run by “good Christians”. Imagine how nasty and dishonest they would be if they weren’t such fine, moral, upstanding individuals!

Parents of the children, whose photos were used without permission in the Yes on 8 ad have asked that the campaign stop using images of their children. Of course, since the Yes on 8 campaign is so concerned about the well-being of children they told the parents that they would refuse to comply. One mother of a child, Laura Hodder said: “You can’t use children’s images in political statements like this. No one asked us to use our children. No one talked to us about this. And I feel like my children are being manipulated.”

Of course, the kids are being manipulated by the Yes on 8 campaign, whose integrity is on the same level as their honesty. The Yes on 8 campaign doesn’t care about children and certainly it doesn’t care about these children. Children are a smokescreen, a political device used by fanatics in their hate propaganda. Those wanting the right to control others constantly claim “it’s for the children”. Hitler saved kids from Jews -- just read the Nazi propaganda articles published by Julius Streicher. And the fanatics in Yes on 8 are saving children from their teachers and parents.

Two sets of the parents of the children issued a statement denouncing the lies about their children. Those parents were Laura Hodder and Matt Alexander, and Jen Pres and James Moore.

Not only did the Yes on 8 campaign lie in the ad but they stole private property. The photo of the children used in the Yes on 8 television ad was aired without permission of the San Francisco Chronicle which owns the rights of the photo in question. The parents also asked the Chronicle to exert their right the photo owner to stop this.

One of the parents, Matt Alexander, is himself a school principle and he said: “I’m a school principle so I know something about education and parents rights. And the opt out law is something we readily apply all the time. so let me join every other educator in the state and ask Prop 8 to also stop lying about the opt out law.” The Yes on 8 campaign has denied that parents have the right to decline sex education for their children in spite of it happening all the time.

Jen Press, one of the mother’s noted that the Yes on 8 campaign is inherently antifamily. “"Prop 8 claims to be about families, but we're here to say you can't be for families by attacking our families. You can't be for families and take these children's innocent images and flash them not only on television statewide, but on your fund raising page. This must stop right now."

But lying for Jesus seems popular with the Yes on 8 fanatics. And as more polls, except the manipulated poll they released, show that they are losing they are getting desperate. The New York Times quotes several fundamentalists saying that they absolutely must win this campaign if their agenda is to go forward. Chuck Colson, convicted Watergate criminal and born-again preacher, said they had to stop the “gay-marriage juggernaut” and said it was Armageddon. He said: “We lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion.” How allowing freedom to others takes away one’s own freedom is beyond me.

The far-Right Family Research Council said the vote in California is “more important than the presidential election”. Tony Perkins, a spokesman for this group said, “we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage.” Of course marriage isn’t being lost at all. Apparently allowing people you hate to marry is losing marriage.

And, to “prove” their point the Yes on 8 campaign brought over a fundamentalist minister from Sweden who was prosecuted under Sweden’s hate speech laws for his rabid antigay sermons. To be clear, I oppose hate speech laws but such laws ARE NOT marriage laws. Marriage laws had nothing to do with this bigots problems and the Yes on 8 campaign knows it.

But the logic of the fundamentalist is not bound by normal rational though processes.

The Times reports that fundamentalist have gone on fasts to show their spirituality and apparently to manipulate God into rigging the election. One minister moved his seven children to California to hold public pray-ins because “there is a spiritual battle in an unseen realm”. Clue: that fundy talk to say that they are fighting alleged demon possession.

As the campaign moves closer to election expect the Yes on 8 campaign to go even lower. They literally have no moral compass at all and will do whatever it takes to add bigotry to the state constitution. You may think my view of these Christians was overblown before. But just watch them. They are proving my point far beyond what even I expected from them.