Clearly, faith groups that support gay rights should be given every opportunity to do so.

I think there has been, and continues to be, an ongoing distrust by many gay people of anything or anyone associated with organized religion simply because of the historical enmity shown by some religions towards homosexuality. This is something that not only gay leaders but individual gay people need to overcome.

Obviously, we need to reach out to everyone and every organization that is sympathetic to the cause of gay rights.

It also illustrates for us that many of the “leaders” of our community are out of touch.

We have natural allies in those churches who, for religious reasons, are completely dedicated to bringing about equality. They support gay rights not just because it’s a good liberal idea, but because they sincerely believe that they are doing God’s work – loving their neighbor, empowering the (polically) weak, and bringing justice to the oppressed.

In some parts of the state, much of the No on 8 work was being done by church groups.

Yet for some reason, the Campaign kept them mostly hidden and did not utilize their unique ability to speak from a position of moral authority.

Let’s hope that the new leadership which is growing out of the Prop 8 fiasco will be willing to include Mainstream Christianity into our quest for equality.

Here is a link to a short article that explains some of the differences fairly directly but without deep analysis.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/evangelicals/evmain.html

I think this gives us a clue as to where we should look in faith communities for allies in the struggle for gay freedoms.