Opponents of gay marriage to rally at Safeco Field today

SEATTLE — Opponents of gay marriage, including members of hundreds of conservative Christian churches, will gather today at Safeco Field for a "Mayday for Marriage" rally.

"It’s going to be a complete worship service, with a lot of music and a 200- to 300-voice choir," said Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church of Redmond. "It’s definitely a God thing."

Organizers hope to attract 35,000 people to the noontime rally to hear speeches by religious leaders, including James Dobson, founder of the evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family.

The gay rights organization Don’tAmend plans to protest the event with several hundred of its supporters on the sidewalks outside the home of the Seattle Mariners.

"I think they picked Seattle because we are such a liberal city and they just want to be in our face," said Bill Dubay, the state leader of Don’tAmend, a national organization seeking to stop a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.

The Rev. Joseph Fuiten, pastor of the 5,000-member Cedar Park Assembly of God church in Bothell, said local pastors want to publicize the importance of traditional marriage.

"Since the beginning of time, marriage has been between a man and a woman," Fuiten said Friday. "All of Western civilization has been a part of this idea going back to Plato and the Greeks and the Romans.

"Now, we have activist judges and renegade politicians who want to overthrow Western civilization, federal and state laws, and change the definition of marriage."

Six gay couples who were denied marriage licenses filed a lawsuit in March challenging the state’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of a man and woman. And earlier this month a measure extending municipal employee and volunteer benefits to married same sex couples cleared the City Council unanimously.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels proposed the measure, largely to reduce the paperwork for couples who have been entitled to benefits under domestic partner provisions since 1989.

Fuiten said Saturday’s rally has been planned for six weeks and churches in the state paid the Mariners $120,000 to rent the baseball stadium. He said he expects about 500 churches in the state to contribute to paying for the event.

The stadium was built mainly with taxpayers’ money, but Fuiten said he didn’t see any problem with that.

"They rented it to us because we’re citizens of the United States and our money says ‘In God We Trust,’ " he said. "I don’t think religious people have been excluded as citizens."

The Mariners, who operate the publicly owned ballpark, have taken no position on the gay marriage issue, said Rebecca Hale, public information director for the team.

"This is a facility that was constructed primarily with public funds," Hale said. "We, as operators of the facility, have an obligation to make it available to members of the community for public gatherings, no matter what we think of their political beliefs."

Hale noted that Safeco has been rented in the past for political rallies by both Republican and Democratic candidates.

"There have been events on both sides of the abortion rights issue," she said. "We would certainly consider an event on the other side of the gay marriage issue under the same circumstances that this was considered."

The rally, which is free, will be noon-2 p.m. Gates to Safeco Field open at 10 a.m.

Dubay said his "welcoming committee" will be outside the stadium handing out materials from 10 a.m. to noon, and then plans to go home.

Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb said officers will be present. But Dubay and Fuiten expect the event to remain peaceful.