The Christian Right Picks California for Culture War Election Showdown

Robin Tyler and Diane Olson spent every Valentine's Day since 2001 at a courthouse in Beverly Hills seeking a marriage license in recognition of their years of commitment to each other.

Every year, they were turned down by the same clerk, until finally, on June 16, the state official handed them a California marriage license, which now reads "spouse and spouse" instead of "husband and wife."

Their wedding ceremony, which was performed by a rabbi outside that same courthouse, included 65 invitees, as well as more than 100 reporters and photographers from all over the world who wanted to document the historic moment.

Tyler and Olson became the first lesbian or gay couple to marry, after spending more than 15 years pioneering the fight for marriage equality. The two were plaintiffs in the California Supreme Court case, Tyler v. County of L.A., which was just decided in mid-May. For the first time, a court extended the institution of marriage to lesbian and gay couples.

"It is marriage equality," Tyler said. "They didn't invent a new certificate of marriage. They extended the current definition of marriage to include us."

Tyler and Olson finally had their wedding day. Their union drew worldwide media coverage, but the day wasn't free from the hostility of Religious Right demonstrators.

"They were yelling that we were going to hell," Tyler said "At a Jewish wedding! They think they have a cornerstone on what is moral. They are not our definition of morality."

Those demonstrators were an early skirmish in a new war Tyler and Olson now have to fight in California. The couple has won their fundamental right to marry from the highest court in the state, yet they will have to battle to keep it, thanks to Religious Right groups pushing Proposition 8, an initiative that will appear on California's November ballot.

Proposition 8 would amend California's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage by defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. If passed, the amendment would alter the state's constitution so the recent California Supreme Court decision would no longer be applicable.

Tyler and Olson have been hopeful that their marriage would show Californians that "we haven't fallen into the Pacific Ocean or the world hasn't ended because we have married each other," and stop reasonable people from voting for Proposition 8.

"Surely, once the public saw the joy on the faces of all of the same-sex couples getting married in California, and saw that nothing was going to be taken away from their own marriages, they would not vote for a mean-spirited constitutional amendment that protected nothing except the right to discriminate," Tyler wishfully wrote in a blog for the Huffington Post soon after the Supreme Court's decision came down.

To some degree, Tyler has been right -- seeing her and Olson's happiness has changed the viewpoint of many Californians. Prior to the Supreme Court decision, polls showed that 51 percent of people in California were against same-sex marriages, but a CBS poll, taken the day following the court's decision, showed that 57 percent of Californians are pro-marriage equality.

Yet Religious Right groups do see losing Proposition 8 as the end of the world -- the "Armageddon of the culture war," as Religious Right leader Charles Colson said, quoting a Princeton professor during a conference call with pastors who were strategizing to pass Proposition 8. Conservative Christian forces think the Bible mandates marriage as between a man and a woman, and they want governmental policy to reflect that doctrinal position.

"This is where if we lose, it would be very hard to turn the ship right again," said Colson, according to a report in Charisma, a leading Pentecostal magazine. "If we win, we might start rolling back the other side. This is a major, major struggle, and we should spare nothing in defining marriage the way every civilization has as the union of one man and one woman joined together as one flesh, as we believe in the Scripture in order to procreate."