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Speakers rally against abortion, gay marriage
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FarkRAPID CITY — The South Dakota Family Policy Council managed to almost fill South Canyon Baptist Church for a rally Monday in favor of banning gay marriage and abortion.
About 750 people attended the Protecting Life and Marriage rally Monday night, which featured keynote speaker Alan Keyes, a former Republican candidate for president and a staunch opponent of abortion and homosexuality.
He called abortion and homosexual marriage “one and the same issue.”
“Abortion does at the physical level what homosexual marriage does at the institutional level,” he said, explaining that both go against what God intended.
Keyes, who was preceded by former Houston pastor Rick Scarborough and Pastor Laurence White of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston, talked about numerous issues but focused mainly on the upcoming issues of Referred Law 6, which would ban almost all abortions in the state, and Amendment C, which would ban gay marriages, civil unions and “quasi-marital” relationships.
He said the court’s ruling in Roe. v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision which affirmed women’s right to have abortions, was unconstitutional.
“When the court touched the issue, they violated the constitution,” he said.
Scarborough talked extensively about the abortion and gay marriage issues, comparing at one point the United States from when he was younger to the state he says it is in now.
“We’ve gone from ‘True Grit’ to ‘Brokeback Mountain,’” he said, referring to the Western movies from different decades.
The crowd loudly agreed with numerous points made by speakers, gave several rounds of applause and enthusiastically sang along to hymns during the rally that lasted more than two hours.
The church holds 778 people, and South Dakota Family Policy Council executive director Robert Regier said he had expected to fill it during the rally.
He said the speakers had “done a great job of energizing the Christian voters. That was our goal — to mobilize and energize the church, to engage the cultural and political process.”
The rally started at 7 p.m. and was still going after 9 p.m.
Tom Garinger of Rapid City said he was pleased with the event and impressed by the speakers, whom he said were “pretty awesome.”
“These are real influential leaders in our country,” he said. “We came here tonight because I completely and firmly believe abortion is murder, and South Dakota can be a forerunner to bring God’s blessing back in the nation.”
Rapid City pediatrician Don Oliver also commented during the rally. He said one of his patients gave him hope that voters would uphold the ban. The 16-year-old patient was raped by her brother and had decided to keep the baby.
“I have faith that if a 16-year-old can get it right, so can South Dakotans,” he said.
Contact Ryan Woodard at 394-8412 or ryan.woodard@rapidcityjournal.com
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