SAN FRANCISCO — God was in the eye of the beholder Thursday morning at the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza, where hundreds of spectators gathered to watch the California Supreme Court on a massive outdoor TV screen and wrangle over the sanctity of marriage.
The occasion: Attorneys from both sides of the gay-marriage debate were arguing the merits -- or demerits -- of Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California. The dress code: dreadlocks, nose rings, rabbit costumes, clerical collars, wedding veils, hair colors not found in nature (and some that were), rainbow stripes, American flags, suits. The demeanor: loud.
"You're bigger, God, much bigger than the small religious boxes that we put you in," Bishop Yvette Flunder of San Francisco's City of Refuge United Church of Christ declared at an al fresco, pre-hearing interfaith service. "We ask you for the freedom today . . . to have our relationships boldly without fear of reprisal."
Across the broad, rain-damp plaza, Los Angeles contractor Ruben Israel held in his right hand a sign that declared "Homo-sex" a "threat to national security." In his left hand was a bullhorn.
"If you think God is all-forgiving and loving and tolerant," he blared, "where was the tolerance from God when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah?"
And so it went for the better part of six hours as attorneys argued, justices probed, demonstrators shouted and entrepreneurs hawked buttons, T-shirts, churros, hot dogs, pretzels and lattes. Business, at least for caffeine, was brisk.
Couples on both sides of the debate pushed strollers, each trying to show with toddler-size flesh what a real family looks like. A bright red truck with a picture of two men kissing and a sign proclaiming "Homosexuality is sin" circled the block. Helicopters hovered overhead.
The much-ballyhooed "gay agenda" came in for multiple interpretations. A chatty T-shirt on one broad back exhorted America to "Stand up and stop the gay agenda. . . . Do not validate homosexual conduct to the children. It will be taught in school!"
A picket sign countered with a picture of a house with a family of four stick figures and the words: "The gay agenda . . . our hope . . . our prayer . . . our dream."
Posited a third: "The gay agenda: 1) Equality. 2) Shopping. 3) See #1."
