Supporters of a constitutional ban on gay marriage released their second television ad Wednesday featuring a Pepperdine University School of Law professor offering disputed predictions about what will happen if Proposition 8 fails.

The commercial depicts a pig-tailed girl excitedly telling her horrified mother how she learned in school "that a prince can marry a prince and I can marry a princess." Richard Peterson then appears on screen.

"Think it can't happen?" the assistant professor asks. "It's already happened" in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize same-sex marriages, Peterson says. An unseen narrator then warns parents that they'll be legally helpless to keep the topic of gay marriage out of California's public school curricula if Prop 8 fails.

Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for California's superintendent of schools, Jack O'Connell, said the ad's claims are false. ...

[Another] spot also features Peterson repeating the claim about gay marriage being taught in schools and warning that churches could lose their tax-exempt status for opposing same-sex unions.

But the author of a newspaper op-ed cited in the ad as the basis for Peterson's comments said the pro-Prop 8 campaign "completely distorted" his position.

"I never, ever, ever said anything about if churches do not perform same-sex marriages that you'll lose your tax-exempt status," said Robert DeKoven, a professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego. DeKoven's commentary in the July 3 edition of the Gay & Lesbian Times argues that it's unfair to give tax breaks to politically active religious institutions but not to individual activists and donors. ...

Ellen Aprill, a tax law professor at Loyola Law School, called Peterson's claim "a bit of fear mongering." Challenges to a church's tax-exempt status based solely on its stance on gay marriage would probably not survive in federal or state courts, she said.

"We have many places where we recognize religious organizations' right to free expression," Aprill said.

posted by Imapp Staff at 5:16 PM | link

<< Home