Two Visions for Ohio

This evening I attended an event that was co-sponsored by the ACLU of Ohio and Equality Ohio. I missed the first part of it due to some of the worst traffic I've ever experienced in this area, but fortunately arrived in time to hear both Adam Leddy and Lynne Bowman speak. Lynne is the Executive Director of Equality Ohio and appears at the end of this video that the group released today: Two Visions for Ohio.

Adam spoke first, and talked about the key players in Ohio's theocracy movement, Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values, Rod Parsley of the Center for Moral Clarity and Reformation Ohio, and Russell Johnson of the Ohio Restoration Project. He also described his own visit to Rod Parsley's World Harvest Church. It gave me a sense of how captivating Parsley's performance is to the people in attendance, and how he is able to hold such sway over so many people. Pretty frightening, actually. He also mentioned that Rod Parsley one of a group of ministers that is pushing the White House to take military action against Iran. Apparently that will help make Jesus come back sooner. (Shudder.)

Adam blogs at happyagenda, which tracks "how religious extremists are influencing Ohio public policy".

One of the things Lynne mentioned that was quite striking was that Equality Ohio has analyzed the voting trends on Issue 1, the so-called "same sex marriage ban". They compared precincts where people voted against Issue 1 by at least 60/40 to those that passed it by at least 60/40. She said that, if we were 50/50 going into election day, Issue 1 would have passed by 13%, because their side had higher turnout. She emphasized the important of door to door canvassing and talking to our neighbors plays in "changing hearts and minds".

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