Prop 8 trial turns its focus toward religious views

The anti-gay beliefs held by religious leaders and their followers came under scrutiny Wednesday during the federal Prop 8 trial with emotional testimony from a gay Denver man whose family forced him into ex-gay therapy as a child.

Religion and its impact on the views American's hold toward homosexuality also came up during the testimony of Stanford political professor Gary M. Segura as well as during snippets of videotaped depositions from two of the expert witnesses for Prop 8's backers who withdrew at the start of the trial last week.

The trial looking at the constitutionality of Prop 8, a constitutional amendment that ended California's legalization of same-sex marriage in November 2008, is now midway through week two. It will resume Thursday, January 21 inside the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker.

Wednesday morning an, at times, emotionally rattled Ryan Kendall recalled for the court the three years he spent undergoing conversion therapy at the insistence of his parents, who told him he would "burn in hell" when they read in his journal that their then-13-year-old son was gay.

"My parents flipped out," said Kendall, 26, who now works for the Denver Police Department analyzing data from an FBI secure database. "It was shocking. I had never heard anything like that from my mother. You don't get anything worse than eternal damnation."

Growing up in Colorado Springs, Colorado he attended Evangelical Christian Academy, a local elementary school where he was subjected to anti-gay bullying.

"Boys in my class would call me names like faggot, homo, a queer, or just gay," said Kendall, adding that his glasses were once broken when several boys used them to play "Monkey in the Middle" with him. "It was scary to go to that school with kids taunting me with a word so close to the truth."

His parents, "horrified" by the treatment he was receiving, moved him to a new school, said Kendall. But during the fight over Amendment 2, a law Colorado voters enacted in 1992 that stripped gay people of any rights offered by governmental bodies within the Rocky Mountain state, Kendall said his parents were avid supporters of the measure.

"During discussion of the Amendment 2 fight my parents would talk about homosexuals seeking special rights. They felt threatened by homosexuals," said Kendall. "They felt our family was threatened."

Between the ages of 14 and 16 Kendall underwent treatment for being gay with Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., a practitioner of conversion therapy with the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality in Encino, California. He would mostly speak to Nicolosi over the phone once a week and would occasionally fly out for in-person sessions.

"I was told the goal was to make me a heterosexual," said Kendall of the treatment most psychologists and psychiatrists find more damaging than useful in treating patients confused by their sexual orientation. "The therapist told me my parents didn't want me to be gay and that I needed to change because homosexuals were bad people."

Instead of making him straight, Kendall said he remained gay but became suicidal and depressed.

"My life had fallen apart. I did not have my faith, family, everything had just kind of stopped," he said. "I couldn't take it anymore. If I didn't stop going I wasn't going to survive. I was going to kill myself."

He sought help from state child protective services and emancipated himself from his parents' control. In the intervening years Kendall said he "wandered through life" applying for odd jobs and turning to drugs to numb the pain.

"It was a struggle for survival," he said.

Eventually by the age of 21 he had turned his life around, though to this day he does not speak with his mother. Today he is a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and chairs Denver's GLBT Commission, which advises the city's mayor on LGBT issues.

"Yes, it has been a long, hard journey," he said.

Under cross-examination, Yes on 8 lawyer James Campbell implied that since Kendall was forced to go to the reparative therapy and did not attend the sessions on his own accord was the reason why he remained a homosexual.

"Your only goal was to survive going to that therapy?" asked Campbell. "You had no goal of changing your sexual orientation?"

Kendall replied, "That is correct."

Politics and religion a potent mix, says academic
During his time on the witness stand Wednesday, Stanford's Segura told the court that gays and lesbians have no "meaningful political power" in America and are in fact "politically vulnerable." This political impotence manifests itself in the LGBT community's inability to fight off or defeat anti-gay voter initiatives such as Prop 8, testified Segura.

"They don't have the numbers and resources to be effective political advocates in a lot of arenas," he said.

A leading reason why a large majority of Americans are "not very fond" of LGBT people is because of what they are taught from their religious leaders, said Segura.

"Religion is the chief obstacle to gay and lesbian progress," he said, noting how effective religious leaders are at conveying anti-gay messages to their congregations through their weekly sermons. "After the government it is difficult to think of a more powerful entity than the church. It provides people to meet together on a weekly basis."

He said this was demonstrated during the Prop 8 battle in 2008 when conservative faith-based leaders organized phone conferences with 1,700 pastors from across California and took part in "rapid response teams" to reach voters with pro-Prop 8 messaging.

"Biblical condemnation of homosexuality and the teachings against gays and lesbians on a constant basis lays the groundwork against gay and lesbian political achievement," said Segura. "I think most campaigns would be thrilled to have 1,700 people on a conference call. That is a profound volunteer corps."

The federal trial over Prop 8 centers on the question of whether voters passed the anti-gay measure due to animus, or hatred, toward LGBT people as the plaintiffs are arguing or whether Prop 8's supporters were merely voting to keep marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, as the Protect Marriage group's lawyers contend.

Perhaps the most damning testimony Wednesday for the Yes on 8 side's arguments came from the depositions of two of their own expert witnesses they tried to block from being introduced into evidence.

Professors Paul Nathanson, Ph.D., and Katherine Young, Ph.D., both from McGill University in Canada, refused to testify after it was thought the trial's proceedings would be broadcast over the Internet. The attorneys for Prop 8's proponents told the court the two expert witnesses feared they would be harassed should their testimony be broadcast to the public.

But the plaintiffs' attorneys argue that the true reason they withdrew the two professors was because they both disputed key claims made by Prop 8's backers during their depositions in the case.

Under questioning from David Boies, one of the co-counsels arguing on behalf of two same-sex couples in the Perry vs. Schwarzenegger case, Nathanson and Young both acknowledge that granting gay and lesbian couples marriage rights would increase family stability and improve the lives of children.

The two academics also testify during the depositions that LGBT people have faced a long history of discrimination, including violence, and much of it has been driven by the homophobic teachings of various religions.

"The Catholic Church does believe homosexuality to be gravely immoral and outside the order of God," said Nathanson, who specializes in religious studies.

He agreed that for the past 50 years both religion and society have been hostile to gays and that religious teachings are a primary cause of gay bashings.

Young, who also focuses on religious studies, acknowledged during the portion of her deposition shown in court that "there was a religious component" to the bigotry and prejudice gays face in the United States.

Young also testified in the video that, rather than the legalization of same-sex marriages leading to a drop off in heterosexual marriages as Prop 8's lawyers have argued, there is evidence showing that increases in female literacy rates have led to increases in divorce rates and declining birthrates.

When asked by Boies if a societal norm from the past should be continued into the future - one of the basic arguments used by anti-gay groups to oppose what they see as "redefining traditional marriage" by granting same-sex marriages - Young disagreed.

"Just because something is a norm doesn't mean it is a necessary norm. It needs to be re-evaluated in the contemporary context," she said.

Videos of their depositions can be viewed at http://www.equalrightsfoundation.org/news/katherine-young-deposition-transcript-video/ and http://www.equalrightsfoundation.org/news/paul-nathanson-deposition-transcript-video/.

For daily updates on the court proceedings, check the Bay Area Reporter's Web site each afternoon at http://www.ebar.com.