YAKIMA — Hundreds of conservatives gathered Thursday in Yakima to condemn gay marriage, big government, socialism and the theory of evolution.

If that sounds broad and far-reaching, it’s because the evening was. Organized largely by Christian Broadcasting of Yakima, the One Nation Under God Tea Party drew about 400 people to the Yakima Convention Center.

Speakers included established Republican leaders such as Central Washington University political science professor Matt Manweller and state Rep. Matt Shea, R-Mead, as well as pastors, gay marriage opposition leader Larry Stickney and Leah Southwell of the John Birch Society.

As a group, they agreed that they don’t like the way things are going these days.

“We are willing to stand up and say, ’We are moving in the wrong direction,”’ said Marc Strobel, a pastor from Selah Covenant Church, who served as master of ceremonies.

Variations on the theme of standing up and taking back America were popular among the speakers, as was the idea that “rampant homosexuality” in America was leading to moral decay. The crowd applauded spontaneously at one point after attorney Stephen Pidgeon noted that homosexuality was once a felony in all 50 states.

Pidgeon, the legal mind behind Stickney’s efforts to challenge state domestic partnership law, also referred to the “evil doctrine of Charles Darwin” and said that gay-rights laws are an effort by states to declare themselves god.

“All human rights, to be human rights, must spring from supernatural authority,” Pidgeon said.

Manweller, a staunch free-market advocate who last year wrote the state Republican platform, put a historical spin on current events. Changes in American principles historically have been spurred by crises like the Civil War and Great Depression, he said. But now, people are flirting with socialism out of convenience because they’re unwilling to sacrifice in lean times, he said.

That’s what the people at the convention center need to fight, Manweller said.

“We are the people who are attracted to freedom more than security,” he said. “We are the people who are attracted to opportunity rather than tranquility. We are the people attracted more to making something rather than taking something.”

Stickney, whose “reject Referendum 71” campaign seeks to overturn the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law passed by the state Legislature this year, kept the crowd at a fever pitch.

“We’re in perilous times, as Mr. Manweller says,” Stickney said. “Referendum 71 is our chance to fight back.”

Outside, about 10 demonstrators stood with signs encouraging voters to approve Referendum 71. Among them was the Rev. Jane Newall, founder of Yakima’s Rainbow Cathedral Metropolitan Community Church, who disapproves of the way the conservative movement has claimed Jesus as theirs alone and wanted to let people know not all of Yakima’s Christians support revoking gay rights.

“For me as a minister, it’s pretty disgusting that Christian Broadcasting of Yakima is sponsoring it,” Newall said. “That doesn’t feel very Christian to me.”