''This is a rising up over a 5,000-year-old institution that is being hammered right now. What binds us together is one common obsession: . . . marriage.''

Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Church, an evangelical congregation in La Mesa and an organizer of an anti-gay marriage movement known as Proposition 8. Mormons, Catholics and evangelical organizations say they are working together to get a state-wide ban passed this November, and in September they plan to have 1 million people leave their congregations and temples (including Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus) to place signs on their yard in support of Proposition 8. (LA Times)

''I will defend to my last breath the right of any of those folks to exercise their religion as they believe they are called to do it. But I'll resist to my last breath, vote, e-mail and blog their right to inflict their religious beliefs on the Constitution of the state of California.''

Susan Russell, a priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, saying that gay marriage in no way infringes on people's religious freedom as the proponents of Proposition 8 are claiming. (LA Times)