A battle over 'God's will'

Pastor Jim Garlow asked the Oceanside congregation a question: "If the Father's heart was broken and you could do something about it, wouldn't you want to know?"

The people at New Venture Christian Fellowship, where Garlow was the guest preacher, nodded and murmured their agreement. Of course they would want to know.

God's heart is broken over same-sex marriage, Garlow told them. The cure: vote for Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment that would allow marriage only between one man and one woman.

To Garlow, what's at stake is nothing less than eternity – and doing "God's will." He brought volunteers onto the stage to demonstrate how God created man and woman and then brought them together.

"If I were the enemy, I would want to destroy that picture," Garlow said. "I would want to decimate the definition of marriage in the minds of the next generation."

With the vote just 51 days away, people of faith are lining up on both sides – and in the middle – of Proposition 8. But Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in La Mesa, where he regularly preaches to about 4,000 people, has emerged as a kind of General Patton in an evangelical army poised to try to pass the ballot measure Nov. 4.

Garlow frames the fight in sweeping terms.

"We're not wanting to win an election," he said. "We want hearts to be turned."

On the other side of Proposition 8 are people who count themselves just as religious and righteous as Garlow. They, too, are hoping to turn hearts.

"I believe that God has created me in the image that I am and God loves all of God's children," said the Rev. Scott Landis, a gay man who is pastor of Mission Hills United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination that supports same-sex marriages.

Rabbi Laurie Coskey, who is part of the Union for Reform Judaism, which opposes Proposition 8, balks at Garlow's comments about God being broken-hearted over expanding marriage to homosexuals.

"That is pretty presumptive to know how God feels," said Coskey, the executive director of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.

Coskey has officiated at two same-sex weddings and has more coming up.

"If God is broken-hearted, God is broken-hearted around injustice," she said.

A battle over 'God's will'
San Diego Union Tribune - United States