Oakland, Calif., Jan 30, 2010 / 05:05 am
Retaliation against supporters of Proposition 8 continued in California as homosexual activists have worked to remove a 96-year-old man from a theater board appointed by the Oakland City Council. Though he won defenders, the Oakland mayor has withdrawn his appointment pending “further consideration.”
Lorenzo Hoopes has volunteered with the Paramount Theatre of the Arts for decades and had been on its board of directors for 20 years, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) reports. A former Safeway executive, he also served on the Oakland school board for 17 years.
Hoopes is also a former president of Oakland’s Latter Day Saints temple. In the 1950s he served as executive assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, who would go on to become the LDS Church’s thirteenth president.
While his reappointment to the theatre board would normally be routine, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists are protesting the move because he donated $26,000 to support the Prop. 8 campaign. The 2008 measure successfully restored the state’s definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.