San Francisco -- A large crowd of about 7,000 Asian American Christians, mostly Chinese, rallied Sunday, April 25, to protest against legalization of gay marriage in San Francisco, one of the instigator cities of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. A few people went against the march to support gay marriage.
Dressed in T-shirts that read: “Marriage/1 man + 1 woman” in English and Chinese, the crowd protested saying gay marriage goes against the Bible and threatens the future of families and society. More than 150 Bay Area churches participated in the march.
Phil Busbee, an organizer and the pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Francisco, said he is well aware of the challenges of representing traditional Christian values in a very liberal city that is open to gay culture and personal freedom.
"We recognize we're not the dominant culture in the city of San Francisco and that causes us to be more humble and reasonable and puts us in a place of dialogue rather than dictation," he said. "We're not coming at it with pride and arrogance and demanding. ... We think our ideas deserve consideration.''
"We're not here today to antagonize or to hate people, we're here with true love and true concern," Thomas Wang, of the Great Commission Center International, a South San Francisco missionary organization, said addressing the crowd. "God created one man and one woman -- Adam and Eve. They became husband and wife and the first human family began. ... We believe any deviation from it will bring disastrous results.''
Wang said legalizing same-sex marriage would eventually lead to polygamy, multipartner marriage and incest. "It is something that is going to happen unless we do something about it now," he said.
