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Stance about-face at issue. BY JULIA DUIN Evangelical leaders say they are bewildered and stunned by the Rev. Rick Warren's apparent turnaround on gay marriage after the famous California pastor said earlier this week that he was not a proponent of California's Proposition 8. Mr. Warren told CNN's Larry King on Monday that he "never once even gave an endorsement" of the proposition, which said marriage in the state could only involve one man and one woman. The measure won at the polls last November by a close margin, in effect negating an earlier California Supreme Court ruling allowing gay...

Here are campaign spending totals for the 12 propositions on California's Nov. 4 ballot and the top donors to each campaign: - Proposition 1a, a $9.9 billion bond measure to help pay for a high-speed rail system. Yes on Proposition 1a: $2.5 million; top donor, California Alliance for Jobs, $616,500. No opposition campaign. - Proposition 2, an initiative the set standards for farm animal enclosures. Yes on Proposition 2: $10.6 million; top donor, The Humane Society, $4.1 million. No on Proposition 2: $8.9 million; top donor, Cal-Maine Foods, $591,210. - Proposition 3, a $980 million bond measure to pay for...

Proposition 8 Donor Maps, for San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Orange County, are now posted at EightMaps.com. Proposition 8, of course, was the proposition that amended the California Constitution to bar legal recognition of same-sex marriage. The map is built -- presumably automatically -- from the data reported by the California Secretary of State's office. (The site I linked to contains the committee id's, but if you click on the committee name, you'll see the individual contributors.) Many of the listed contributions are $50 or below...

President Bush once remarked at a White House party that in the famously liberal enclave of San Francisco, his supporters were so rare that "you could probably fit them all in one room." He wasn't exaggerating, and he would do little to alter his standing. He never once set foot in San Francisco during his two terms, and he was hardly much chummier with California as a whole, the nation's most populous state and the world's eighth-largest economy. The 43rd president's legacy in the Golden State, according to the unsparing assessment of Democratic consultant Phil Trounstine, is "zilch." "He regarded...

California's intellectual pipeline to the White House is again open wide and flowing, as the Golden State will have key advocates bending President-elect Barack Obama's ear on its behalf. Naturally, the nation's most populous and electorally rich state (which is also rich with campaign contributors) would have a great deal of influence. But the Democratic stronghold mattered less to the Bush administration. As Chris Lehane, a former Clinton administration official and San Francisco political consultant, said: "Before, the door was slammed in our face. Now, the welcome mat is out. The access issue is a big deal." "You have an...

Forget Illinois: California is poised to be the top dog in Obama-era Washington. With roughly a half-dozen Cabinet and key administrative appointees and a powerhouse congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, California is shaping up to be the new Texas, the alpha state whose cultural and policymaking influence was inescapable through most of the last eight years. President-elect Barack Obama’s energy secretary-designate is Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Hilda L. Solis, a Los Angeles-area Democratic congresswoman, was named last week as Obama’s choice for secretary of...

The backlash continues to roar in California as gay activists continue to silence opposition while waiting for the Calif. Supreme Court to weigh in on Prop 8. The Mormon Church and Chuck Norris are feeling the heat while Linda Harvey receives threats. A Houston lawyer "who brazenly identified himself," wrote, "You are very much being watched! All you jeebus-lovin-christers rights will slowly be taken away one by one the more you try to press your beliefs down our throats." An elderly woman is swarmed, her cross ripped out of her hand and stomped on while the news anchor, Kris Long,...

The attitude of white, liberal Hollywood toward African- American churches has long been one of almost participatory respect. ... It was only recently that the A-list discovered that this love is unrequited. Last month, Proposition 8 passed, making gay marriage illegal in California, and the demographic that lent insult to injury was the state’s African-American voters. They came to the polls in record numbers to support Barack Obama, and they brought with them a fiercely held and enduring antipathy toward homosexuality: 7 in 10 blacks voted in support of traditional marriage. ... “It’s their churches,” somebody whispered to one of...

San Francisco's Roman Catholic archbishop says he invited leaders of the Mormon Church to get involved in the campaign to pass a gay marriage ban in California this year at the request of his fellow bishops. Archbishop George Niederauer wrote in a column to be published in a diocesan newspaper Friday that he wanted to address the "many misunderstandings and hard feelings" resulting from Proposition 8's adoption. It's the first time the archbishop has commented on how churches organized to help push through the initiative, which overturned the California Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex nuptials. Mormon leaders had given...

Bishops of Los Angeles issue letter reassuring gays in the wake of Prop. 8 The bishops of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, led by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, issued a letter to homosexual Catholics on Friday seeking to ensure them that the Church’s support for Proposition 8 was not meant to diminish their dignity or their membership in the Church. The true aim of the Church’s support, the bishops write, was to “preserve the ordered relationship between man and woman created by God.” The pastoral letter, which was printed in the archdiocesan paper The Tidings, is written to all homosexual...

Prop. 8 Thank You Petition An online petition has been posted here where individuals can express solidarity and thanks to the Mormon Church for strongly supporting California’s Proposition 8. The ballot initiative was approved by California voters Nov. 4, thereby amending the state constitution to define marriage as a one-man, one-woman institution. Since the initiative was passed this month, homosexual activists have conducted hostile demonstrations outside Mormon churches and some homosexual leaders have called for retribution against Mormons who supported Proposition 8. The thank-you petition states, “Anyone who participated in this process has come to admire the competence, diligence and...

More than 3,000 people, including longtime Mormon critic James Dobson of Focus on the Family, have signed an online petition thanking the LDS Church for its efforts on behalf of California's traditional marriage initiative known as Proposition 8. "Anyone who participated in this process has come to admire the competence, diligence and moral courage that so many members of your faith community displayed as part of this coalition effort -- as Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons and people of other faith communities all came together to fight this great battle for marriage," says the petition, which is addressed to LDS President Thomas...

Parishioners of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Modesto have been told they should consider going to confession if they voted for Barack Obama, because of the president-elect's position condoning abortion. "If you are one of the 54 percent of Catholics who voted for a pro-abortion candidate, you were clear on his position and you knew the grav- ity of the question, I urge you to go to confession before receiving communion. Don't risk losing your state of grace by receiving sacrilegiously," the Rev. Joseph Illo, pastor of St. Joseph's, wrote in a letter dated Nov. 21. The letter was sent...

Late last night, Hannah-Beth Jackson conceded to Tony Strickland in the hotly contested race for California’s 19th State Senate District. That ends more than three weeks of waiting for the remaining votes to roll in. Some are still to be counted, but Strickland leads by about 900 votes, and Jackson is conceding a victory is now mathematically impossible. This marks the conclusion of the state’s most expensive legislative race in history — costing more than $10 million — and also one of the closest ever. In the November 26 email to the media and her supporters, Jackson’s campaign team explained,...

Great Victory ... Thank You! Butte County took a little longer to come in than we had expected, but it was worth the wait. The count is now complete with the possible exception of a handful of votes in El Dorado County and the election result stands at: McClintock 185,615 and Brown at 183,840. The lead of 1,775 votes is a margin of victory that puts us well outside the possibility of a recount changing the outcome. To put it in perspective, it is more than twice the margin by which I lost the race for State Controller in 2002....

Butte County took a little longer to come in than we had expected, but it was worth the wait. The count is now complete with the possible exception of a handful of votes in El Dorado County and the election result stands at: McClintock 185,615 and Brown at 183,840. The lead of 1,775 votes is a margin of victory that puts us well outside the possibility of a recount changing the outcome. To put it in perspective, it is more than twice the margin by which I lost the race for State Controller in 2002. The numbers came in a...

Mormons have a reason to be nervous. I didn't fully appreciate it two years ago, when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first came under an intense political spotlight. In 2006, Mormon officials had begun making the media rounds, prepping for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's expected try for the Republican presidential nomination. This protective measure stood out. No evangelical contingents were giving theological primers in anticipation of Mike Huckabee's run. Few officials were warning Catholics to not do as Rudy Giuliani does on abortion before his run. Why did the Mormons need to do advance work? We...

Last week in a Denver suburb, someone lit a Book of Mormon on fire and dropped it on the doorstep of a Mormon temple, presumably as a statement about the church’s support of Proposition 8 in California, an initiative that amended the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. In a move that may make gay-rights supporters’ heads spin, the incident is being investigated as a hate crime. The outbreak of attacks on the Mormon church since the passage of Proposition 8 has been chilling: envelopes full of suspicious white powder were sent...

Should there be boycotts, blacklists, firings or de facto shunning of those who supported Proposition 8? That's the issue consuming many in liberal Hollywood who fought to defeat the initiative banning same-sex marriage and are now reeling with recrimination and dismay. Meanwhile, activists continue to comb donor lists and employ the Internet to expose those who donated money to support the ban. Already out is Scott Eckern, director of the nonprofit California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, who resigned after a flurry of complaints from prominent theater artists, including "Hairspray" composer Marc Shaiman, when word of his contribution to the Yes...

Park Township, MI — The elections are over, the people have spoken (or perhaps more accurately, the people have grumbled) and we no longer have to endure endless political ads. On a whim, I drove by our local Democratic headquarters yesterday, and to my surprise, I noticed that it was quiet. All the windows were still intact, the cars parked there still had inflated tires, signs hadn’t been defaced, and there was not a single protester marching in front of their door. Weird. I drove down Eighth Street and was amazed to find that there were no pickets in front...