SAN FRANCISCO - A representative from a U.S.-based family group urged Chinese to be more outspoken against legislation and court decisions that would promote homosexual marriage and education in the United States, at the first ever Chinese American pro-life conference.
"To have godly laws, we must have godly people in the legislature. Unfortunately, in California, we have too few," said Peter Henderson, dir. of Public Policy for the California Family Council, in association with Focus on the Family.
The statement comes during a pending California Supreme Court case involving a San Francisco Superior Court ruling in March that struck down Prop 22, a legislation that states "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid of recognized in California.”
The case is currently awaiting appeal, and will not receive a California Supreme Court decision until 2007.
"61 percent of Californians supported Prop 22, while only one judge decides to not support it. I don’t think that’s fair," said Henderson.
Henderson pointed out healthy marriage create stronger families that produce children with better moral values, and that broken families often show signs of parental "alcoholism, poverty, gambling, abuse, infidelity, death, and absenteeism."
"So what’s it going to be? God’s way (for marriage), or man’s way," Henderson said, pointing to a slide of a traditional Chinese marriage picture placed next to a homosexual marriage scene.
Henderson urged parents and pastors to pray for government officials, elect God-honoring representatives, and lobby behind existing representatives in an effort to protect the traditional definition of marriage.
Rev. Thomas Wang, a prominent evangelical leader and outspoken critic of gay marriage, rallied behind Henderson, asking Chinese Christians to consider their responsibilities to society.
"If the church only cares about itself, then it is committing a sin," Wang emphasized to the predominantly Cantonese dialect-speaking audience. "The reason why the society is like this today is partially because the church gave up."
Henderson noted that Chinese in America should be like the Three Gorges Dam that controls "the mighty Yangtze (river)" and block “the culture of sin and immorality" that is flooding the United States.
The Saturday conference held at The First United Presbyterian Church of San Francisco marks the first Chinese Christian pro-marriage conference in California’s Bay Area.
The event was sponsored by the Traditional Family Coalition, Chinese Christian Herald Crusade, Great Commission Center International USA, and the California Family Council.
