Proposition 8 and Beyond -- The Mormon (LDS) Church and Same-Sex Marriage
What are the impacts of the involvement by the Mormon (LDS) Church in Proposition 8 and other battles involving same-sex marriage? You can review many articles regarding this issue at prop8-lds.com and prop8-lds.com/page2.html. A sample of these articles is included below.
1. LDS Church files SCOTUS brief supporting Prop 8, DOMA
2. Mormon church "regrets" Calif. gay marriage ruling
3. Gay marriage fight, 'kiss-ins' smack Mormon image
4. LDS church push benefited Prop. 8, but Mormons say they've been unfairly targeted
5. Mormon Church feels the heat over Proposition 8; The church, which has long sought to be seen as part of America's mainstream, joins with other religious organizations to back California's ban on gay marriage. But now it has become a political target
6. LDS elders showed seasoned political savvy on California's Prop. 8
7. Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage
8. The Mormons Are Coming!'; Supporters of Same-Sex Marriage Trumpet the Church's Work Against It
9. Mormons Boost Antigay Marriage Effort; Group Has Given Millions in Support of California Fund
10. Utah money helped push Prop 8 spending to historic level
11. '8: The Mormon Proposition': Audacious look at church's role in gay-marriage ban
12. Gay-marriage ruling brings split Utah reaction
13. LDS apostle: Prop 8 backlash against Mormons like civil-rights-era persecution of blacks; Now Dallin H. Oaks faces his own backlash
14. Prop 8 involvement a P.R. fiasco for LDS Church; The campaign offered fuel for critics
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LDS Church files SCOTUS brief supporting Prop 8, DOMA
by Ben Winslow
SALT LAKE CITY -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has filed a pair of briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to uphold California's Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
The briefs were drafted by lawyers for the LDS Church here in Utah and filed Jan. 29 before the nation's top court on behalf of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Romanian-American Evangelical Alliance of North America, Truth in Action Ministries, and the Mormon Church.
"Our theological perspectives, though often differing, converge to support the proposition that the traditional, opposite-sex definition of marriage in the civil law is not only constitutional but essential to the welfare of families, children, and society," Von Keetch of the Utah-based firm Kirton McConkie, wrote in the DOMA brief.
In the Proposition 8 briefing, the coalition argues that the Ninth Circuit Court should be reversed. The panel of judges ruled the measure, which banned same-sex marriage in 2008, is unconstitutional.
"The people of California violated no one's civil rights when they adopted Proposition 8. Their twice-expressed preference for the traditional definition of marriage over an untested rival conception was thoroughly rational. It is therefore thoroughly constitutional," Keetch wrote in the Prop. 8 brief.
The LDS Church has been the subject of controversy and protest over its involvement in the passage of Prop. 8. It encouraged members to donate time and money to ensure its passage. The backlash was felt nationwide, with protests around Temple Square.
While insisting that it believes marriage is between a man and a woman, the LDS Church has appeared to soften its tone toward the gay community. The church recently launched a website to encourage "greater compassion" toward the LGBT community, and acknowledged that sexuality is not a choice.
The LDS Church's amicus curiae brief is one of dozens being filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. A number of religious, civic and private organizations are filing "friend of the court" briefs, weighing in on whether same-sex marriage should be allowed.
Most recently, Utah Attorney General John Swallow joined other states in asking the court to uphold Prop. 8 and DOMA. The Utah Pride Center plans to file a brief in support of same-sex marriage.
Fox 13, Salt Lake City, February 3, 2013
See http://fox13now.com/2013/02/03/lds-church-files-scotus-brief-supporting-prop-8-doma.
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Mormon church "regrets" Calif. gay marriage ruling
Brock Vergakis, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says it regrets a federal judge's ruling overturning a ban on gay marriage in California.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights.
In 2008, church leaders urged Mormons to give their time and money to support Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote.
Church members were among the campaign's most vigorous volunteers and by some estimates contributed tens of millions of dollars to the effort.
That involvement frequently made the church a target for much of the anger gay rights supporters felt after California voters approved the ballot measure. Some people also decided to boycott Utah - home to church headquarters - as a result of its involvement, although the impact was minimal.
The church said the decision reopens a vigorous debate over the right of the people to define marriage.
"There is no doubt that today's ruling will add to the marriage debate in this country and we urge people on all sides of this issue to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different opinion," church spokeswoman Kim Farah wrote in a statement.
Like many faiths, Mormons believe traditional marriage is an institution established by God. The church has consistently fought gay marriage legislation across the U.S. since the 1990s.
"California voters have twice been given the opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage in their state and both times have determined that marriage should be recognized as only between a man and a woman. We agree. Marriage between a man and woman is the bedrock of society," Farah wrote.
The church has no official position on civil unions but has said it does not object to limited rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, as long as those rights don't infringe on religious liberties.
Sacramento Bee, August 4, 2010
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Gay marriage fight, 'kiss-ins' smack Mormon image
By Jennifer Dobner, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY -- The Mormon church's vigorous, well-heeled support for Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California last year, has turned the Utah-based faith into a lightning rod for gay rights activism, including a nationwide "kiss-in" Saturday.
The event comes after gay couples here and in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, were arrested, cited for trespassing or harassed by police for publicly kissing. In Utah, the July 9 trespassing incident occurred after a couple were observed by security guards on a downtown park-like plaza owned by the 13 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The court case was dismissed, but the kiss sparked a community backlash and criticism of the church.
"I don't think that kiss would have turned out to be the kiss heard round the world if it were not for Proposition 8," said Ash Johnsdottir, organizer of the Salt Lake City Kiss-In.
Atali Staffler, a Brigham Young University graduate student from Geneva, Switzerland, said she joined the 200 or so people who filled a downtown amphitheater for the event because she has watched her gay father and many gay friends struggle to find their place.
The 31-year-old, who was raised Mormon but is not active in the church, said the church shouldn't be involved in Prop. 8.
"I encourage them to promote the values they believe in and to defend their religious principles in advertisements, but civil rights have nothing to do with religious principles," she said.
Twenty-two people, many of them strangers to one another, gathered under the scorching sun on Washington's National Mall to participate in the national smooch. They were gay and straight, couples and singles of all ages, with placards that read "Equal Opportunity Kisser" and "A Kiss is a Not a Crime."
"This is America. A kiss on the cheek is OK," said Ian Thomas, 26, of Leesburg, Va., who organized the Washington Kiss-In. "It's got to be OK. If not, we're in serious trouble."
About 50 people, mostly gay and lesbian couples, gathered at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta and kissed for about five minutes.
"You think that America is evolving into a gay-friendly nation," said Randal Smith, 42, "but what happened in Texas and Utah show us it's still a long way off."
National organizers say Saturday's broadly held gay rights demonstrations were not aimed specifically at the Mormon church. But observers say the church's heavy-handed intervention into California politics will linger and has left the faith's image tarnished.
"What I hear from my community and from straight progressive individuals is that they now see the church as a force for evil and as an enemy of fairness and equality," said Kate Kendell, executive director of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights. Kendell grew up Mormon in Utah. "To have the church's very deep and noble history telescoped down into this very nasty little image is as painful for me as for any faithful Mormon."
Troy Williams, who is gay and grew up Mormon, said ending the tension between gays and the church requires mutual acceptance and understanding.
"For both sides to peaceably coexist, we're all going to have to engage in some very deep soul searching," said Williams, a Salt Lake City-area activist and host of a liberal radio talk show.
Church insiders say Prop. 8 has bred dissent among members and left families divided. Some members have quit or stopped attending services, while others have appealed to leadership to stay out of the same-sex marriage fight.
But church spokeswoman Kim Farah said Friday that Mormon support for traditional marriage has nothing to do with public relations.
"It's too easy for those whose agenda is to change societal standards to claim there are great difficulties inside the Church because of its decision to support traditional marriage," Kim Farah said. "In reality the Church has received enormous support for its defense of marriage."
Mormonism teaches that homosexual sex is considered a sin, but gays are welcome in church and can maintain church callings and membership if they remain celibate.
The church has actively fought marriage equality legislation across the U.S. since the early 1990s and joined other faiths in asking Congress for a marriage amendment to the Constitution in 2006.
Last year at the urging of church leaders, Mormons donated tens of millions of dollars to the "Yes on 8" campaign and were among the most vigorous volunteers. The institutional church gave nearly $190,000 to the campaign - contributions now being investigated by California's Fair Political Practices Commission.
After the vote, many gay rights advocates turned their anger toward the church in protests and marches outside temples that singled out Mormons as the key culprits in restricting the rights of gay couples.
That constituted a setback for the faith, argued Jan Shipps, a professor of religious history and a Mormon expert from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Mormonism, Shipps said, has struggled with its image since its western New York founding in 1830 for a host of reasons, including polygamy.
Leading up to Salt Lake City's 2002 Olympic Winter Games, the faith worked hard to craft a modern, mainstream image, touting its unique American history, culture and worldwide humanitarian work to thousands of reporters.
"This really undercut the Mormon image that had been so carefully nurtured during the Olympics," Shipps said.
Church representatives don't discuss public relations strategies or challenges publicly, but at a semiannual conference in April, church President Thomas S. Monson seemed to be clearly feeling a post-Prop. 8 sting.
In an era of "shifting moral footings," Monson said, "those who attempt to safeguard those footings are often ridiculed, picketed and persecuted."
That argument doesn't wash for Linda Stay, whose ancestors were early Mormon converts. Stay said she was doubly transformed by Prop. 8. She and her husband, Steve, finally quit the church - along with 18 other family members and a few close friends - and became gay right activists.
The St. George woman's family, which includes two gay children, will play a central role in a documentary film, "8: The Mormon Proposition" currently in production. Stay's son, Tyler Barrick, married his boyfriend in San Francisco on June 17, 2008, the first day gay marriage was legal in California.
Miami-area filmmaker Reed Cowan said the Stays' story is a painful representative of many Latter-day Saint families, including his own, that needed to be told.
"It used to be that I could defend my church and my heritage, but what they did here, they crossed the line and they made it very hard to defend their actions," said Cowan, whose family has cut him off since he began work on the film.
With the gay rights fight far from over, some believe Prop. 8 could continue to frustrate the church's image for years to come, much like polygamy - the church's own one-time alternative form of marriage - and a policy on keeping black men out of the priesthood, issues that have lingered years after the practices were abandoned.
"The church is certainly going to survive and thrive, there's no question about that," said the National Center for Lesbian Rights' Kendell, who is raising three kids in California with her partner of 16 years. "The issue is, what will be its image in the average American mindset."
To see the church characterized, because of its own actions, as one in a group of anti-gay religions and as a religion that forces members to choose faith over family is "a tragedy of generational proportion," she said. "And it seems to me, that it was entirely unnecessary."
Seattle Post-Intelligence, August 15, 2009
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LDS church push benefited Prop. 8, but Mormons say they've been unfairly targeted
By Michelle Beaver
Four months before California voters headed to the polls to decide the fate of Proposition 8, the Church of Latter-day Saints put out a call for help.
A letter from church President Thomas Monson was read at every ward in California. It told members to "do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time."
Organization meetings broke out across the state, but the leaders wanted more. Additional letters were sent to every church, with titles such as "Thirty People in Each Ward" and "More than Four Hours per Week."
Donations from individual Mormons poured in and Mormons hit the streets, going door to door, hanging up signs, campaigning against the measure through phone banks. Funding was used for everything from newspaper ads to television commercials.
That push from the Mormon church is widely credited as helping propel Proposition 8, which defined marriage only as a union between a man and a woman, to victory in November 2008.
The measure's fate remains tied in the courts: A federal judge has struck down the law, and an appeal is pending a state Supreme Court decision on whether proponents of the law have authority to defend it in court, since state officials have declined to do so.
Mormons dispute charges they were the main impetus behind Proposition 8's passage -- arguing that they were only part of a large coalition of churches and residents that favored the ban on same-sex marriage. Many
Mormons say they have been disproportionately targeted for their activism. In some cases, the backlash was violent, and, church members say, smacks of discrimination.
"We had protests outside of our temples, white powder delivered, vandalism of our church buildings and individuals targeted who gave only minor donations (to the proposition)," says Scott Gordon, president of the Redding-based Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, which defends Mormon theology.
"Some (Mormons who donated to Proposition 8) lost their jobs," Gordon says, "while others felt truly frightened, only because they participated in the democratic process."
Proposition 8 passed with 52 percent of the vote. Only about 2 percent of the state's population is Mormon, so Mormons alone did not pass the proposition, but they did donate a lot of time, money and organizational expertise.
Proposition 8 was the most expensive campaign on a social issue in the state's history, with both sides raising a combined $83 million.
Supporters raised $39 million, with the largest sum, $27 million, coming from California. The second-highest contributions to the Yes on 8 campaign -- $2.8 million -- came from the state of Utah, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis.
Mormons for Proposition 8, a website organized by opponents that claims to track contributions from individual Mormons, says LDS members donated more than $20 million in support of the measure. The state, however, does not track the religious affiliation of donors, so the site's claim is difficult to confirm. The site also has been controversial, with Mormons complaining it does not track the donations of members of other faiths.
LDS officials initially denied that the church contributed money, claiming that only members contributed. California's Fair Political Practices Commission in 2009 asked the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other groups to hand over financial records regarding Proposition 8 and learned that the church spent almost $200,000 on the campaign. One-third of that included money paid to church employees who were on the clock while organizing for the proposition. Other expenses included airline tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals.
Mormons are practiced at organization, says Richard Bushman, a professor of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University and author of "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling."
"They combine two qualities that make it easy for them to work together. The first is that they are respectful of authority," Bushman says. " They believe the church organization derives its authority from God, and contributing to the congregation's work is an essential part of serving God."
Further, he adds, the church has no paid clergy, and wards have no paid staff. Congregants willingly step forward to perform necessary tasks.
"It is a people's church," Bushman says. " The buildings now do not even have paid janitors. Even in the wealthiest congregations, the members take turns cleaning the building. This means there is high buy-in."
Still, the church didn't force anyone to vote for Proposition 8, says Charles Pope, 55, a Santa Cruz finance executive and member of the LDS Church. Pope says he acted from his own free will when he donated money, made and posted signs, and encouraged others to support Proposition 8.
"I think the church was very instrumental because we were willing to go out and speak about it and make certain a lot of people understand our point of view, but a lot of other people and religions had that point of view, too," Pope says. "But you never hear about those other religions being cast in the same light as the LDS."
Same-sex marriage supporters don't understand Mormons, Pope says.
"It's always been cast that everyone on our side was a hate monger," he says. "Is there any room for compromise in our position? No. We feel it's a doctrinal and a moral issue, but that's still a long way from being hate mongers and discriminators."
Proposition 8 pitted many people nationwide against Mormons, and also splintered Mormon congregations, says Clark Pingree, a 35-year-old wealth manager for Wells Fargo, and a longtime Walnut Creek resident. He is gay and was raised Mormon but is no longer with the church.
"I have seen so many families and friendships destroyed by Prop. 8," Pingree says. "I've seen my own family's relationship strained because of Prop. 8."
Pingree believes the proposition gave both sides excuses to "demean and judge." He doesn't like the LDS denouncement of same-sex marriage and no longer attends church, but still considers himself Mormon. It's common for disaffected members to identify with their Mormon culture -- after all, being LDS is for many a wonderful experience full of friends, purpose and community service.
"It's such a strong and concentrated religion that it's more of a way of life and an identity," Pingree says.
Former Mormon Kerry Rutz, 51, a landscape architect who moved to San Francisco in 1998 and recently relocated temporarily, says anger has not died down regarding Proposition 8.
"On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being angry, the gay population in the Bay Area is running an anger level of about 100 against the Mormon church," says Rutz, who is gay. "I don't think that anger is likely to change, and I certainly hope it doesn't."
Mormons don't hate homosexuals, Gordon said.
The church's only position on homosexuality is that marriage should exist between a man and a woman, and that homosexuals "are children of God and our brothers and sisters," Gordon says.
"This position is articulated in the pamphlet on homosexuality which starts with the line, 'You are a son or daughter of God, and our hearts reach out to you in warmth and affection,' " Gordon adds.
Retaliation against Mormons was troubling, says lawyer Jay Pimentel, of Alameda. Part of an LDS line that has lived in the Bay Area since 1850, Pimentel donated $1,500 toward Proposition 8, canvassed neighborhoods, assembled phone rosters and called people to remind them to vote.
After the proposition passed, according to Pimentel, a San Francisco group mailed a letter to every neighbor within a few blocks of his home informing them that he supported the proposition and suggesting he should have supported local charities instead. Ironically, Pimentel volunteers for and donates to several Bay Area charities, including some of those listed on the mailer.
"They were assuming I was homophobic or discriminatory or uncaring, and that would be incorrect," says Pimentel.
"Had Prop. 8 not passed, it would not have occurred to me to retaliate against those who had voted against it (or) funded the campaign against Prop. 8."
Pimentel says the fight against Prop. 8 was well under way before Monson sent his letter in June 2008. The Catholic Church was also instrumental in its anti-gay-marriage campaigning, yet Catholics haven't been vilified for their support, he says.
The Mormon church won't allow its leaders to be interviewed on same-sex marriage, but on its website, the church says it does not object to gay rights already established in California, including those regarding housing, employment and medical care, and that the church does not condone "any kind of hostility toward homosexual men and women."
Pimentel says he and many other Mormons support civil unions for gays, and that Mormons want gays to keep the rights California affords them.
Nonetheless, the church's stance on Proposition 8 created casualties.
One young Silicon Valley woman, who wanted her name withheld because she is critical of the church and doesn't want members to mistreat her, was hurt by her family's support of Proposition 8. She was raised Mormon and married a man who turned out to be gay. She says local church leaders and fellow Mormons blamed her for making him gay and don't support her ex in his new lifestyle.
"My parents, quick to obey the words of the prophet, donated $1,000 to the 'Yes on 8' cause," she says. "You can imagine my pain when I came home and visited them for the weekend and saw that yard sign poked in the grass."
Public balance on this topic is difficult, she says.
An important need for gay couples: the ability to have their unions recognized publicly, and to receive full legal rights that heterosexual couples have. An important need for Mormons: the assurance that they will never have to perform gay marriages.
Such protection for the church is vital, says Alyssa Johanson, a 29-year-old research scientist who lives in Union City. She is Mormon and supports Proposition 8.
"This is a tricky issue to deal with, because heterosexual marriage is a key doctrine of our faith and is the crowning ordinance performed in our temples, which are our most sacred houses of worship," Johanson says. "Because few states have tougher anti-discrimination policies than California, we worry about the impact that legalized gay marriage will have on our continued ability to worship according to our beliefs."
Mormons would indeed feel better if there were a guarantee they wouldn't have to perform same-sex marriages, says Robert Rees, of Boulder Creek, an educator at UC Santa Cruz and other California universities. Rees is Mormon and has been married for 50 years. He does not support Proposition 8, and says that viewpoint caused problems for him with some brethren.
"One of the unfortunate results of Proposition 8 is that it tended to divide some LDS congregations, in some cases pitting member against member," Rees says.
Proposition 8 has been hard for all sides involved, according to San Jose teacher Vanessa, 29. She requested her last name not be used because community members have already insulted her for her Proposition 8 views, she says, and she doesn't want to argue anymore or be discriminated against.
"I can understand why the gay community feels they've been discriminated against, because they have been," she says, "but I do feel there's a big misunderstanding on our views of homosexuals."
She says she has close relationships with gay family members and colleagues, but doesn't want the definition of marriage expanded.
She's proud of the work her fellow Mormons did to support Proposition 8, but she knows her church wasn't alone in its activism -- it was just especially good at it.
Contra Costa Times, March 13, 2011
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Mormon Church feels the heat over Proposition 8
The church, which has long sought to be seen as part of America's mainstream, joins with other religious organizations to back California's ban on gay marriage. But now it has become a political target
By Nicholas Riccardi
In June, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a fateful decision. They called on California Mormons to donate their time and money to the campaign for Proposition 8, which would overturn a state Supreme Court ruling that permitted gay marriage.
That push helped the initiative win narrow passage on election day. And it has made the Mormon Church, which for years has striven to be seen as part of the American mainstream, a political target.
Protesters have massed outside Mormon temples nationwide. For every donation to a fund to overturn Proposition 8, a postcard is sent to the president of the Mormon Church. Supporters of gay marriage have proposed a boycott of Utah businesses, and someone burned a Book of Mormon outside a temple near Denver.
"It's disconcerting to Latter-day Saints that Mormonism is still the religious tradition that everybody loves to hate," said Melissa Proctor, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School.
As an indication of how seriously the Mormon leadership takes the recent criticism, the council that runs the church -- the First Presidency --- released a statement Friday decrying what it portrayed as a campaign not just against Mormons but all religious people who voted their conscience.
"People of faith have been intimidated for simply exercising their democratic rights," the statement said. "These are not actions that are worthy of the democratic ideals of our nation. The end of a free and fair election should not be the beginning of a hostile response in America."
Jim Key, a spokesman for the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, said barbs by gay marriage activists were directed at church leadership, not individual Mormons.
"We're making a statement that no one's religious beliefs should be used to deny fundamental rights to others," he said.
Proposition 8 opponents estimate that members of the Mormon Church gave more than $20 million to the effort to pass the measure, though that is difficult to confirm because records of campaign donations do not include religious affiliation.
For years, church leaders have tried to blunt the assertion that Mormonism is somehow out of the political and cultural mainstream. The backlash over gay marriage carries risks and rewards toward that goal.
To support Proposition 8, the Mormon Church entered into a coalition with other religious organizations, including evangelical groups that have tended to view Mormons warily. It was a Catholic bishop, Mormon officials said, who requested the Mormon Church bring its members into the fight. Now those groups are rallying behind the embattled church.
"Being against gay marriage puts the church right in the mainstream of American religious behavior," said Quin Monson, a political science professor at Brigham Young University.
But the outrage directed toward the church could hurt its efforts to expand.
"The backlash is going on all over the country," said Jan Shipps, a prominent scholar of modern Mormonism who is an emeritus professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. "There are people who had a lot of respect for the Mormons who now say, "Well, they're just like the Christian right." "
That's ironic, Shipps said, given that the Mormon Church has a more tolerant stance on homosexuality than some evangelical groups. The church has pointedly declined to state that homosexuality is a choice. And it has cautioned against programs that purport to "cure" same-sex attraction, even though Mormon theology holds that marriage is a divine relationship between men and women that continues into the afterlife.
Also, Shipps said, though the church had been riding high ever since the successful 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the gay marriage fight and other recent setbacks have forced the church to deal with skepticism over its faith and history.
First there was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination. Many in the church were shocked that Romney's Mormon faith was a source of discomfort for some voters.
"Latter-day Saints were just amazed to think there was such bigotry in the country," church spokesman Michael Otterson said.
And a raid on a polygamous breakaway sect in Texas last spring was a reminder of the church's practice of multiple marriages in the 19th century, even though the Mormon Church has long renounced polygamy.
"That whole story in Texas was probably much worse for the church's image than Proposition 8," Monson said.
Some have suggested that Mormons might have been eager to cement partnerships with other churches, especially because evangelical voters were particularly distrustful of Romney's faith.
But Otterson dismissed that possibility. "That kind of thinking would never even factor into the thinking of church leadership," he said. "The church couldn't remain silent on a pivotal issue like this."
Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2008
See http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/17/nation/na-mormons17.
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LDS elders showed seasoned political savvy on California's Prop. 8
Rebecca Walsh, The Salt Lake Tribune
At post-election rallies in California, protestors passed out IRS complaint forms.
The paperwork for reporting a tax violation by a nonprofit was already filled out -- with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' name and address. People simply had to sign the bottom.
The Internal Revenue Service ultimately will decide whether the Mormon church crossed a line in U.S. tax law when it funneled at least $190,000 of its own resources and directed individual members to give and give often in the $83 million campaign to ban gay marriage in California.
I doubt it. South Temple and their attorneys are too careful for that.
Documents leaked to Californians Against Hate show in fascinating detail the calculated way Mormon spiritual leaders spearheaded Hawaii's gay marriage fight 10 years ago. The handful of memos from then-Elder Loren C. Dunn to various members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles reveal a political machine within a patriarchy of faith:
Richard Wirthlin, not yet a general authority, polled the relative popularity of Mormons versus Catholics. When results showed Catholics had a better image in Hawaii, Mormon leaders decided to stay in the background. They hired a Hawaiian advertising firm, McNeil Wilson, on a $250,000 retainer. They tacked on gambling and legalized prostitution to give the anti-marriage front group "room to maneuver in the legislature" and "broaden our base and appeal," Dunn wrote. They searched for an "articulate middle-age mother" who was neither Mormon nor Catholic to be the face of the campaign.
The documents are old -- mostly updates and memos dated between 1995 and 1998. And the church won't say they're real or acknowledge they were leaked.
"We are unconcerned about these documents," says spokesman Scott Trotter. "The Church's position on the importance of traditional marriage has been consistent over the years."
There's no reason to think the internal political organization built by Dunn and Wirthlin and others has been dismantled. If anything, the political fight to amend California's constitution shows LDS elders have learned from their mistakes and honed their campaign strategy. Rather than financing the crusade themselves as they did in Hawaii, giving $400,000 in church funds, leadership decided to call on members nationwide for financing.
Californians Against Hate Director Fred Karger is trying to make the case that the Mormon church violated California's Political Reform Act by obscuring the institutional money spent on advertising, phone banks and sending elders to the state to supervise and rally the faithful.
"They started this in 1988, putting together this plan to bring the church into a major role in opposing same-sex marriage," he says. "You kind of have a boilerplate."
Aside from financial disclosure discrepancies, the IRS is another matter. U.S. tax code prohibits churches and other nonprofits from spending "substantial" amounts of money on lobbying. Ultimately, IRS investigators will decide whether the Mormon role in Yes on 8 qualifies as substantial.
Watching from a distance, Salt Lake City tax attorney Bill Orton doesn't think so.
"I can't imagine that [church attorneys] Kirton & McConkie would miss something in tax law," says the faithful Mormon and former congressman. "I would not have injected the church into [the Proposition 8 fight] to the extent that they did. But I don't see that they've done anything unlawful. I don't think the church is in any trouble whatsoever."
Legal or not, the handful of documents Karger has posted at CaliforniansAgainstHate.com reveal the dual roles played by Mormon leaders. For faithful church members who still see the apostles as simple grandfatherly gurus of the spiritual, this is an awakening.
They're also canny political hands.
Salt Lake Tribune, March 26, 2009
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Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage
By Jesse McKinley and Kirk Johnson
SACRAMENTO - Less than two weeks before Election Day, the chief strategist behind a ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California called an emergency meeting here.
Frank Schubert was the chief strategist for Proposition 8, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman in California.
"We're going to lose this campaign if we don't get more money," the strategist, Frank Schubert, recalled telling leaders of Protect Marriage, the main group behind the ban.
The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a sharp-elbowed advertising campaign, and support for the measure was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote.
As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat - and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers.
"We've spoken out on other issues, we've spoken out on abortion, we've spoken out on those other kinds of things," said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. "But we don't get involved to the degree we did on this."
The California measure, Proposition 8, was to many Mormons a kind of firewall to be held at all costs.
"California is a huge state, often seen as a bellwether -- this was seen as a very, very important test," Mr. Otterson said.
First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians, conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with strong religious ties.
Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying "the formation of families is central to the Creator's plan," and urging members to become involved with the cause.
"And they sure did," Mr. Schubert said.
Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.
The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from "walkers," assigned to knock on doors; to "sellers," who would work with undecided voters later on; and to "closers," who would get people to the polls on Election Day.
Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of marriage God intended.
But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll instead, emphasizing that Proposition 8 was about marriage, not about attacking gay people, and about restoring into law an earlier ban struck down by the State Supreme Court in May.
"It is not our goal in this campaign to attack the homosexual lifestyle or to convince gays and lesbians that their behavior is wrong "the less we refer to homosexuality, the better," one of the ward training documents said. "We are pro-marriage, not anti-gay."
Leaders were also acutely conscious of not crossing the line from being a church-based volunteer effort to an actual political organization.
"No work will take place at the church, including no meeting there to hand out precinct walking assignments so as to not even give the appearance of politicking at the church," one of the documents said.
By mid-October, most independent polls showed support for the proposition was growing, but it was still trailing. Opponents had brought on new media consultants in the face of the slipping poll numbers, but they were still effectively raising money, including $3.9 million at a star-studded fund-raiser held at the Beverly Hills home of Ron Burkle, the supermarket billionaire and longtime Democratic fund-raiser.
It was then that Mr. Schubert called his meeting in Sacramento. "I said, `As good as our stuff is, it can't withstand that kind of funding,'" he recalled.
The response was a desperate e-mail message sent to 92,000 people who had registered at the group's Web site declaring a "code blue" - an urgent plea for money to save traditional marriage from "cardiac arrest." Mr. Schubert also sent an e-mail message to the three top religious members of his executive committee, representing Catholics, evangelicals and Mormons.
"I ask for your prayers that this e-mail will open the hearts and minds of the faithful to make a further sacrifice of their funds at this urgent moment so that God's precious gift of marriage is preserved," he wrote.
On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the church.
"I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories about members of the church who had worked long hours and lobbied long and hard," he said in a telephone interview from Orem, Utah.
In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40 million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.
Even with the Mormons' contributions and the strong support of other religious groups, Proposition 8 strategists said they had taken pains to distance themselves from what Mr. Flint called "more extreme elements" opposed to rights for gay men and lesbians.
To that end, the group that put the issue on the ballot rebuffed efforts by some groups to include a ban on domestic partnership rights, which are granted in California. Mr. Schubert cautioned his side not to stage protests and risk alienating voters when same-sex marriages began being performed in June.
"We could not have this as a battle between people of faith and the gays," Mr. Schubert said. "That was a losing formula."
But the "Yes" side also initially faced apathy from middle-of-the-road California voters who were largely unconcerned about same-sex marriage. The overall sense of the voters in the beginning of the campaign, Mr. Schubert said, was "Who cares? I'm not gay."
To counter that, advertisements for the "Yes" campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches losing tax exempt status or people sued for personal beliefs or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little explanation.
Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher's same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.
"We bet the campaign on education," Mr. Schubert said.
The "Yes" campaign was denounced by opponents as dishonest and divisive, but the passage of Proposition 8 has led to second-guessing about the "No" campaign, too, as well as talk about a possible ballot measure to repeal the ban. Several legal challenges have been filed, and the question of the legality of the same-sex marriages performed from June to Election Day could also be settled in court.
For his part, Mr. Schubert said he is neither anti-gay - his sister is a lesbian - nor happy that some same-sex couples' marriages are now in question. But, he said, he has no regrets about his campaign.
"They had a lot going for them," Mr. Schubert said of his opponents. "And they couldn't get it done."
Mr. Otterson said it was too early to tell what the long-term implications might be for the church, but in any case, he added, none of that factored into the decision by church leaders to order a march into battle. "They felt there was only one way we could stand on such a fundamental moral issue, and they took that stand," he said. "It was a matter of standing up for what the church believes is right."
That said, the extent of the protests has taken many Mormons by surprise. On Friday, the church's leadership took the unusual step of issuing a statement calling for "respect" and "civility" in the aftermath of the vote.
"Attacks on churches and intimidation of people of faith have no place in civil discourse over controversial issues," the statement said. "People of faith have a democratic right to express their views in the public square without fear of reprisal."
Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. "I think that shows colors," Mr. Ashton said. "By their fruit, ye shall know them."
New York Times, November 14, 2008
See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin
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'The Mormons Are Coming!'
Supporters of Same-Sex Marriage Trumpet the Church's Work Against It
By Karl Vick, Washington Post Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES -- As more states take up the debate on same-sex marriage, some advocates of legalization are taking a very specific lesson from California, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominated both fundraising and door-knocking to pass a ballot initiative that barred such unions.
With the battle moving east, some advocates are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality.
"The Mormons are coming! The Mormons are coming!" warned ads placed on newspaper Web sites in three Eastern states last month. The ad was rejected by sites in three other states, including Maine, where the Kennebec Journal informed Californians Against Hate that the copy "borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion."
"I'm not intending it to harm the religion. I think they do wonderful things. Nicest people," said Fred Karger, a former Republican campaign consultant who established Californians Against Hate. "My single goal is to get them out of the same-sex marriage business and back to helping hurricane victims."
The strategy carries risks for a movement grounded in the concept of tolerance. But the demographics tempt proponents of same-sex marriage: Mormons account for just 2 percent of the U.S. population, and they are scarce outside the West. Nearly eight in 10 Americans personally know or work with a gay person, according to a recent Newsweek survey. Only 48 percent, meanwhile, know a Mormon, according to a Pew Research Center poll.
Many Mormons also acknowledge a problematic public profile that could make it difficult for them to lead the fight against same-sex marriage. A 2008 poll by Gary C. Lawrence, author of "How Americans View Mormonism: Seven Steps to Improve Our Image," found that for every American who expresses a strong liking for Mormons, four express a strong dislike. Among the traits widely ascribed to Mormons in the poll were "narrow-minded" and "controlling."
"We're upside down on our image," said Lawrence, who organized Mormon volunteers in California, where on a typical Saturday 25,000 turned out to knock on doors. "People have misperceptions of us because of ignorance, because of the history of polygamy, and because we organize quickly, which scares some people."
Mormon officials have tried to stay out of the controversy that followed the California vote, when the church's prominent role in the marriage fight became clear. A spokeswoman in Salt Lake City declined to say whether the church is involved in debates going on in states such as New Jersey and New York, except to say that leaders remain intent on preserving the "divine institution" of marriage between man and woman. The faith holds that traditional marriage "transcends this world" and is necessary for "the fullness of joy in the next life."
The church has a top-down hierarchy that answers to the First Presidency, who also holds the status of prophet. Last June, congregations were read his letter urging that "you do all you can" to pass the California initiative, known as Proposition 8. Lawrence, who like Karger worked as a Republican political consultant, professed no concern about the effort to shift the focus away from the definition of marriage.
"He is demonizing the opposition. It's Political Consulting 101," Lawrence said of Karger. "The average guy does not know the extent to which the Mormon Church was involved on Prop. 8."
The proponents' strategy is grounded in a stubborn reality: While the number of states legalizing same-sex marriage is slowly increasing -- Maine recently became the fifth -- in every case the agent of change was either a court or a legislature. Voters have rejected the idea wherever it has appeared on a ballot.
The election results track public opinion nationwide. Polls consistently show that while a majority of Americans support some legal recognition of gay unions, more want to keep marriage reserved for a man and a woman.
The disparity is narrow and shrinking, however, and in California, Mormons may well have made the difference on Proposition 8, which nullified a decision by the state Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage.
A torrent of last-minute contributions from church members across the country financed well-framed TV ads in the final weekend of the campaign. Opponents' analysis of campaign-contribution reports indicated that Mormons contributed more than half of the campaign's $40 million war chest.
"The church's position on the issue of same-sex marriage is well known and well documented," church spokeswoman Kim Farah said by e-mail. She declined to comment on estimates from individual Mormons but emphasized that the church itself made no cash contribution. It reported "in-kind" contributions of $190,000, mostly in the form of staff members' time.
Rick Jacobs, director of the Courage Campaign, an advocacy group that produced a TV ad drawing attention to the Mormons' role in the campaign, said, "We have zero interest in demonizing anybody who believes in any religion."
In the spot, a pair of Mormon missionaries knock on the door of a lesbian couple, rifle their drawers and shred their marriage certificate in front of them.
Mormons "exist and flourish in this country because of the concept of equal protection," Jacob said, noting the persecution that drove members of the church to Utah in the 19th century. "I find it just an irreconcilable hypocrisy that a group that rightly thrives within the essence of the American system would seek to repress and deny rights to another. And it's even a little worse, because I certainly didn't choose to be gay. People make choices to be Mormons, or any other religion."
Mormon officials issued statements calling for "civility" in the wake of Proposition 8. "The Church has refused to be goaded into a Mormons versus gays battle and has simply stated its position in tones that are reasonable and respectful," one statement said.
Suspicions that the church may be working behind the scenes in other states are encouraged by documents showing efforts by the church to cloak its participation in a late-1990s campaign that led to a ban on same-sex marriage in Hawaii.
"We have organized things so the Church contribution was used in an area of coalition activity that does not have to be reported," a senior Mormon official wrote in one document Karger posted on his Web site, and the church has not disputed.
Mormon headquarters contributed $400,000 in an effort to persuade Hawaiians against same-sex marriage but urged the Roman Catholics to take the lead in a group dubbed Hawaii's Future Today after polls showed that the other church had better public acceptance. A decade after the 1998 Hawaii vote against gay marriage, Lawrence wrote that the image problem remained: "The collection of negatives they are willing to apply to us suggests that they view us as a growing threat."
That works for Karger, whose specialty at his consulting group was opposition research. "People will vote for someone because they like so and so, or because they don't like the other guy," said Karger, who entered gay activism to preserve the Boom Boom Room, a gay bar in Newport Beach, Calif.
And favorability ratings declined for Mormons over the last year, Lawrence said, from 42 percent to 37.
"Is it fruitful to use the Mormon bogey?" said Mark Silk, a professor of religion and public life at Trinity College in Connecticut. "My sense is that there aren't great risks to it. Once a religious institution is going to inject itself into a public fight, which the LDS did in a straight-up way, then I think people are prepared to say, 'Well, okay, you're on that side and we're against you.' "
Washington Post, May 29, 2009
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803573_pf.html
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Mormons Boost Antigay Marriage Effort
Group Has Given Millions in Support of California Fund
By Mark Schoofs, Wall Street Journal
Mormons have emerged as a dominant fund-raising force in the hotly contested California ballot fight to ban same-sex marriage.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have contributed more than a third of the approximately $15.4 million raised since June 1 to support Proposition 8. The ballot initiative, if passed, would reverse the current right of same-sex couples to marry.
The tally of Mormon contributions was provided by Frank Schubert, campaign manager for ProtectMarriage.com -- Yes on 8, the initiative's primary backer. A finance-tracking group corroborated Mormon fund-raising dominance, saying it could exceed 40%.
The Mormon Church decision to enlist members on behalf of the same-sex marriage ban has given supporters of Proposition 8 a fund-raising lead. The campaign to defeat the initiative has collected around $13 million so far, said Steve Smith, a top campaign consultant for No on 8, Equality for All. Both sides raised roughly equal amounts in the early stages, said Mr. Smith, but "all of a sudden in the last few weeks they are out-raising us, and it appears to be Mormon money."
The top leadership of the Mormon Church, known as the First Presidency, issued a letter in June calling on Mormons to "do all you can" to support Proposition 8.
Mormon donors said they weren't coerced. "Nobody twisted my arm," said Richard Piquet, a Southern California accountant who gave $25,000 in support of Proposition 8. He said Mormon Church leaders called donating "a matter of personal conscience." Some Mormons who declined to donate said their local church leaders had made highly charged appeals, such as saying that their souls would be in jeopardy if they didn't give. Church spokesmen said any such incident wouldn't reflect Mormon Church policy.
Same-sex marriage was legalized in California after the State Supreme Court ruled in May that an existing ban, enacted by referendum in 2000, was unconstitutional. That prompted opponents to organize the current ballot initiative to amend the state constitution, banning same-sex marriage.
Since then, the fight over the initiative has come to be seen as a crucial battleground: If voters uphold the right of gay couples to marry in the nation's most populous state, it could give momentum to efforts to legalize same-sex marriage elsewhere.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is bucking the conservative wing of his party to campaign against the initiative. The latest statewide poll, taken at the end of August, shows that 54% of the state's likely voters oppose the initiative while 40% support it.
The battle has drawn in money from around the country. The Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic group, has given more than $1.25 million to support Proposition 8. Focus on the Family, a nonprofit organization composed mainly of evangelical Protestants, has given more than $400,000. The Yes on 8 campaign has received "more proportionally from the Latter-day Saints Church than from any other faith," said Mr. Schubert, 35% to 40% of the total.
The Mormon Church encouraged its members to send their donations to a separate post-office box set up by a church member, said Messrs. Schubert and L. Whitney Clayton, a senior Mormon Church official involved in the campaign. Mr. Clayton said the church didn't keep track of how much individual Mormons donated, just the cumulative total. He said members bundled the donations and forwarded them to the campaign.
A Web site run by individual Mormons, Mormonsfor8.com, has tracked all donations to the Yes on 8 campaign of $1,000 or more listed on the California secretary of state's Web site. The site's founder, Nadine Hansen, said they have identified more than $5.3 million given by Mormons but believe that donations from church members may account for far more than 40% of the total raised.
Robert Bolingbroke, a Mormon who lives near San Diego, said he and his wife decided on their own to donate $3,000 in August. Later, he was invited to participate in a conference call led by a high church official, known as a member of the Quorum of Seventy. Mr. Bolingbroke, a former president and chief operating officer of The Clorox Co., estimates that 40 to 60 Mormon potential donors were on that call, and he said it was suggested that they donate $25,000, which Mr. Bolingbroke did earlier this month. Mr. Bolingbroke said he doesn't know how he or the other participants on the call were selected. Church leaders keep tithing records of active members, who are typically asked to donate 10% of their income each year to the Mormon Church.
Same-sex marriage hits at the heart of Mormon theology, said Terryl Givens, a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond. According to scholars and documents on the Mormon Church's official Web site, couples married in a Mormon temple remain wedded for eternity and can give birth to spirit children in the afterlife. Most importantly, Mormons must be married to achieve "exaltation," the ultimate state in the afterlife. Mormons also believe they retain their gender in the afterlife.
"This all explains the Mormon difficulty with homosexuality," said Mr. Givens. In a theology based on eternal gender, marriage and exaltation, "same-sex attraction doesn't find a place."
The church, which typically stays out of political issues, has occasionally entered the fray. In the 1970s, for example, it opposed the Equal Rights Amendment.
The prominence of Mormon donors in the Proposition 8 fight has also led to alliances with evangelical Protestant groups and other Christian religions, some of which have deep theological differences with Mormons.
Jim Garlow, pastor of the evangelical Protestant Skyline Church near San Diego and a leading supporter of Proposition 8, said, "I would not, in all candor, have been meeting them or talking with them had it not been for" the marriage campaign. Rev. Garlow said he had developed a "friendship" with the Mormons he met, although he feels the theological differences remain "unbridgeable."
But he noted how Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants have formed tight bonds through their joint work against abortion, and he said a similar process might occur with Mormons.
Asked if working on Proposition 8 might improve the standing of Mormons in the eyes of evangelicals, Mr. Whitney said, "That's just not been on our radar."
He said he would be happy to work with "anyone else who would be willing to roll up their sleeves and go to work to try to preserve marriage between a man and a woman. That's our interest."
Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2008
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Utah money helped push Prop 8 spending to historic levels
Donations -- Utahns contributed heavily to both sides
By Tony Semerad
The torrent of money that poured into campaigns for and against California's Proposition 8 may make it the costliest state ballot measure ever.
Contributions to both sides of the successful ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage have already topped a total of $75.2 million, according to disclosures filed with the California secretary of state. And almost 5 cents of every dollar came from Utah.
The picture may change when full financial reports are filed in late January, but documents now show Proposition 8's unsuccessful opponents actually out-raised supporters by about $1.9 million, yet still lost by 504,853 votes, a 4 percent margin.
''It was the most expensive social issue on a ballot anywhere,'' said Fred Schubert, a spokesman for ProtectMarriage.com, by far the biggest official fundraising group in favor of Proposition 8.
''I believe it simply reflects the passions people have surrounding the issue of marriage, on both sides,'' he said.
Those passions ran deep for Utahns, judging from the $3.6 million state residents contributed to the California campaigns. Fully 70 percent of Utah donations, or $2.58 million, went in support of the same-sex marriage ban, while $1.1 million was given to oppose it.
Utah ranked second only to California itself for total donations in support, while it ranked sixth for opposing donations, behind California and such heavily populated states as New York, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.
Utah's big-dollar involvement can be linked to the LDS Church, the state's dominant institution, which urged churchgoers in a variety of ways to support the measure with their time and money. While Catholic and Evangelical churches and affiliated groups gave cash directly to support Prop 8, official Mormon involvement centered on nonmonetary and organizational aid, in addition to rallying church members, documents show.
''Mormon members were instrumental in the campaign, there's no question,'' Schubert said from his Sacramento office. ''They donated far in excess of their representation in the population.''
Utah's numbers also were pushed dramatically skyward by a public-giving duel between former Word Perfect executives Bruce Bastian and Alan Ashton, estranged friends on opposite sides of the issue who each threw $1 million into the fray.
Bastian, of Orem, is gay and has given to similar causes in the past. Ashton, a Lindon resident, is an active member of the LDS Church, former mission president and grandson of the late LDS Church President David O. McKay. After initially giving $5,000 to the anti-Prop 8 Human Rights Campaign in May, Bastian gave $1 million in July. Ashton countered with a $1
million donation to ProtectMarriage.com in October.
''I gave my money because I was fearful, when the church stepped in, of what would happen, and it happened,'' Bastian said. ''And I think other people like me were trying to counter what they saw the church doing.''
Bastian said Prop 8 and the LDS Church's involvement had pitted family members, churchgoers and work colleagues against one another across the country. ''There is a lot of anger and hurt and it's not going away.''
Ashton did not return calls seeking comment.
At least 720 Utahns donated to the Prop 8 battle between Jan. 1 and Election Day, reports show, with about 78 percent of them supporting Prop 8. Utah donors on both sides work from a diverse range of jobs, from software millionaires, engineers and attorneys to ranchers, housewives, retirees and self-employed filmmakers.
While the majority of Utah donors did not list their employer on California financial disclosures, the top employers among those who did were Brigham Young University, the LDS Church and the University of Utah.
Donations came from residents in 80 different Utah cities and towns, spanning 16 of Utah's 29 counties. Opponents tended to live in Utah's 26 largest cities, while supporters were spread among 76 communities, large and small.
A majority of Utah contributors to the opposing side came from Salt Lake City. Supporters were more widely dispersed around the state, with concentrations in Provo, Salt Lake City, Orem, Bountiful, St. George and Sandy.
Excluding the Bastian-Ashton donations, the average donation by Utah supporters was $2,792, while opponents averaged $440 apiece.
Opponents of Prop 8 have been combing through donation reports since their defeat, seeking in some cases to publicize and target big-ticket supporters with calls of business boycotts. Several Utah donors contacted by The Salt Lake Tribune refused to comment, citing fear of retaliation. One rural Utah business owner who made a five-figure donation in supporting the measure said he had received harassing calls.
Another donor, Janna Morrell, a homemaker from Providence, gave $15,000 to ProtectMarriage.com in the closing days of the campaign. Later, when one California-based anti-Prop 8 group began posting names of large contributors on its Web site, instead of worrying, the 42-year-old mother of 12 called to insist they include her.
''I'm going to stand up even in the face of danger," said Morrell, who is LDS and learned about the measure from her brother, a California resident active in the campaign. ''I believe strongly that Proposition 8 is not meant to be anti-gay but it is meant to be in favor of marriage.''
Salt Lake Tribune, November 22, 2008
For searchable index of contributors, click here,
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'8: The Mormon Proposition': Audacious look at church's role in gay-marriage ban
By Jen Chaney, Washington Post Staff Writer
It takes a certain amount of nerve for a former Mormon to make a film that takes on the Mormon Church for alleged political meddling in one of the biggest gay-rights battles in recent history.
It takes even more nerve to then unveil that movie in Utah, the home of Mormon Church headquarters and the epicenter of the Latter-day Saints faith.
Clearly Steven Greenstreet -- a Silver Spring resident, onetime adherent to the Mormon faith and co-director of "8: The Mormon Proposition," one of the buzzier documentaries to debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival -- isn't lacking in the audacity department. His film -- which the church has blasted as "obviously biased," even before its release -- examines the church's role in the contentious campaigns over Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban Californians voted into law in 2008.
"One way or another, we're going to put this movie in front of as many voters as possible across the nation," Greenstreet says by phone from Park City, where the annual celebration of indie cinema and studio dealmaking has been underway for the past week. "The people in California went to the ballot box with misinformation and lies orchestrated by billions of dollars raised by a church."
Using internal church documents and recordings of Mormon officials, and interviews with gay activists, political figures and former members of the church, Greenstreet and his fellow director, Miami journalist Reed Cowan, make the case that the church overstepped its bounds as a nonprofit, religious organization to ensure that Prop 8 passed. But the movie doesn't just focus on that single piece of legislation.
"8" also explores the broader impact of what the filmmakers describe as the church's historically intolerant attitude toward gays, using tales of suicide attempts by young Mormons struggling with their sexual orientations and men still grappling with memories of the shock treatments they endured in order to "cure" them of their homosexuality.
"We have a lot of numbers and money and politics in our film, but really, it's about the people and their stories," Greenstreet, 30, says.
The church has not addressed specific allegations in the film. Mormon officials do not appear on-camera, although we do hear a phone call between church spokeswoman Kim Farah and Cowan, who also was raised Mormon. "I think that we don't want to put ourselves front and center in a battle with the gay community," she tells him.
When The Washington Post requested comment, the church forwarded its official statement, also from Farah: "We have not seen '8: The Mormon Proposition.' However, judging from the trailer and background material online, it appears that accuracy and truth are rare commodities in this film. Although we have given many interviews on this topic, we had no desire to participate in something so obviously biased."
The anti-gay group America Forever has taken a more pugnacious stance against the documentary, issuing 80,000 faxes to its base that condemn the movie as a "hateful attack" on the church and declare: "Shame on Sundance" and "Shame on Reed Cowan."
Early reviews of "8" have been mixed. Daniel Fienberg, a blogger for the Web site Hitfix, dismissed it as "sloppily assembled propaganda," while the Salt Lake City Tribune called it "a vital, important cry for an open dialogue." Variety said the film "covers a lot of ground in a short space, not always in the most organized way, but on enough fronts to spark an informed dialogue."
All the attention has sparked interest from distributors, Greenstreet and Cowan say, although they haven't inked any agreements yet. Adding currency to the film is a closely watched federal court case in California regarding the constitutionality of Prop 8, as well as President Obama's recently announced desire to end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Both filmmakers say their work on the movie has jeopardized relationships with their families, whose members continue to practice the Mormon faith. "I know they are hurt, and on so many levels, by the fact that I attach my name as a director to this film," says Greenstreet, whose parents still live in his home town of Pylesville, Md.
Cowan, 37, who grew up in the town of Roosevelt, Utah, and is openly gay, says he hasn't spoken to his sisters or father in six months. (He occasionally speaks to his mother.) "I'm sad to say my parents haven't gotten to any screenings yet," he says. "And they could."
Still, Greenstreet, who describes himself as a straight man and gay activist, doesn't regret his decision to make this film or to quit the faith that once defined his life.
"Leaving the church was a grueling and painful experience," he says. "It was one of the most difficult experiences of my life. But I am who I am today because of that decision."
Washington Post, January 30, 2010
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012904041_pf.html
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Gay-marriage ruling brings split Utah reaction
By Rosemary Winters, The Salt Lake Tribune
The LDS Church expressed disappointment at the news from California. Hundreds of jubilant gay-marriage supporters marched around the church's Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.On Wednesday, Utahns both panned and praised the decision of a federal judge in San Francisco to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that eliminated gay marriage in California. Two years ago, the campaign drew intense interest in Utah after the LDS Church urged its members to support Prop 8 with their cash and time. Utahns spent $3.8 million -- most of it to defeat gay marriage -- in the $83 million fight.
The federal ruling means, for now, gay marriage is legal -- again --in the Golden State.
But Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has put a temporary hold on issuing marriage licenses while he gives opposing sides in the lawsuit, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, time to debate whether there should be a long-term stay during appeals, which could extend for years and stretch as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We have plans to go to California as soon as possible and make our marriage legal," said Salt Lake City resident Jeff Key, who, on Wednesday, celebrated not only the ruling but the three-year-anniversary of his nonlegal wedding with his partner, Adam Nelson. "I'm feeling pretty proud to be an American right now."
In fact, Key knelt on one knee at a Capitol Hill rally Wednesday evening and asked Nelson, "Will you remarry me?"
Nelson said "yes" to the cheers of nearly 400 supporters of gay marriage. The crowd, flying both rainbow and American flags, swelled to 600, said organizer Eric Ethington, as the group marched from the Capitol to LDS Church headquarters and around Temple Square.
"We're all here. We're all equal," Ethington said before leading the march. "Get it through your head."
Earlier on Wednesday, the LDS Church lamented the overturn of the ballot measure it helped to pass, spending nearly $200,000 on the campaign, according to campaign disclosures.
"California voters have twice been given the opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage in their state and both times have determined that marriage should be recognized as only between a man and a woman. We agree," said LDS Church spokesman Michael Purdy. "Marriage between a man and woman is the bedrock of society. "
The church also called for "mutual respect" and "civility" in the ongoing debate over marriage.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, blasted Walker.
"This is what happens when judges make up the Constitution as they go along," Hatch said in a statement.
Cliff Rosky, a law professor at the University of Utah, praised the analysis that went into the decision as "correct. "Walker concluded that Proposition 8 denied gay men and lesbians their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection.
"Marriage is a fundamental right. The Supreme Court has made that very clear, " Rosky said. "I don't think that same-sex marriage is so different than other forms of marriage that it becomes [excluded from] the right to marry."
Brandie Balken, executive director of Equality Utah, agreed.
"Equality Utah has always believed that the Constitution does cover gay and transgender people," she said. "We support full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, which includes the right to marry."
In 2004, Utah voters approved a state constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage and civil unions.
If the Prop 8 lawsuit eventually lands in the U.S. Supreme Court, a decision there in favor of gay marriage could create a right for gay men and lesbians to marry in every state, said Bill Duncan, director of the Lehi-based Marriage Law Foundation.
Duncan, who filed a brief in the California lawsuit on behalf of religious groups siding with the Prop 8 defendants, disagrees with Walker's ruling. "
In order for something to be a fundamental right, it has to be deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition," said Duncan, who filed an amicus.
"Same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition."
Currently, same-sex marriages are allowed in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.
Salt Lake Tribune, August 5, 2010
See http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50052100-76/marriage-gay-decision-ruling.html.csp
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LDS apostle: Prop 8 backlash against Mormons like civil-rights-era persecution of blacks
Now Dallin H. Oaks faces his own backlash
By Rosemary Winters and Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune
LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks on Tuesday likened the post-Proposition 8 backlash against Mormons to the persecution blacks endured during the civil-rights struggle.
Now Oaks faces a backlash himself.
"Were four little Mormon girls blown up in the church at Sunday school? Were there burning crosses planted on local bishops' lawns? Were people lynched and their genitals stuffed in their mouths?" asked University of Utah historian Colleen McDannell. "By comparing these two things, it diminishes the real violence that African-Americans experienced in the '60s, when they were struggling for equal rights. There is no equivalence between the two."
Oaks, in a strongly worded defense of the church's efforts opposing same-sex marriage, told students at Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg that Latter-day Saints "must not be deterred or coerced into silence" by advocates for "alleged civil rights."
Last year, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints urged its followers to donate money and time to pass Prop 8, the successful ballot measure that eliminated the right of same-sex couples to wed in California. Afterward, protests, including several near LDS temples, erupted along with boycotts of business owners who donated to Prop 8 and even some vandalism of LDS meetinghouses.
"In their effect," Oaks said, "they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation."
Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP's Salt Lake branch, said there is "no comparison."
"I don't see where the LDS Church has been denied any of their rights," she said. "What the gay and lesbian communities are fighting for, that is a civil-rights issue."
In an interview posted on the LDS Church's Web site after the speech, Oaks called his analogy a "good one," but acknowledged that intimidation of Mormons in the wake of Prop 8 has not been "as serious as what happened in the South."
In his speech, the LDS apostle, a former Utah Supreme Court justice, cast the anti-Mormon furor as an attack on religious freedom.
"During my lifetime I have seen a significant deterioration in the respect accorded to religion in our public life, and I believe that the vitality of religious freedom is in danger of being weakened accordingly," Oaks said. "Atheists and others would intimidate persons with religious-based points of view from influencing or making the laws of their state or nation."
Judeo-Christian scriptures established the marriage of a man and a woman thousands of years ago, he said, and those who would change this ancient order "should not be allowed to pretend that those who defend the ancient order are trampling on civil rights."
Religious-freedom advocates said the speech contained sound points, but gay-rights supporters criticized Oaks for dismissing their cause.
Will Carlson, public-policy manager for Equality Utah, called legal protections for gay and transgender people, including anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws, "human rights."
"The right to earn a living, the right to stay in your home, the right to be free from violence, these are the priorities of the equal-rights movement," he said. "Even in the pursuit of marriage equality, it's about the legal protections that come with a marriage license. Just as the LDS faithful have a fundamental right to get married according to the dictates of their conscience, all Americans should have that right."
Carlson said his gay-rights group supports "religious liberty" and condemns "any vandalism or violence against any people."
Peter Danzig, a former Mormon and a spokesman for Foundation for Reconciliation, which aims to foster understanding between Latter-day Saints and the gay community, said he agrees on the importance of religious freedom. But he found it "astonishing" that Oaks failed to mention faiths that "honor" gay marriage. He also disagreed with Oaks' characterization of gay-rights advocates as largely atheists.
"Many activists are deeply religious people," he said.
The Salt Lake Tribune, October 14, 2009
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Prop 8 involvement a P.R. fiasco for LDS Church
The campaign offered fuel for critics
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
Although they live a continent away from California, LDS Church members Gregory and JaLynn Prince, of Washington, D.C., still have felt the backlash from their church's involvement in the traditional marriage initiative known as Proposition 8.
Their daughter, Lauren, a Boston University student, has lost friends over the issue, while their son, an LDS missionary in San Bernardino, Calif., has had a disproportionate number of potential converts cancel appointments.
About two weeks ago, during a first-ever class on Mormonism at Wesley Theological Seminary, where the Princes have built bridges for years, students pointedly asked them: "What was your church thinking?"
"We are not taking sides on the issue, but the way this was done has hurt our people and the church's image," JaLynn Prince said. "It reminds me of the naive public relations strategy we had regarding the Equal Rights Amendment."
In some minds, the so-called "Mormon moment" heralded at the start of 2008 has stopped short.
Just 10 months after the death of LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley, who spent nearly 70 years burnishing his church's public image, goodwill toward Mormonism that culminated during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games seems to have faded in a haze of misunderstanding and outright hostility.
Mean-spirited critiques of Mormonism during Mitt Romney's unsuccessful presidential campaign were followed by persistent news-media reports linking Latter-day Saints to the FLDS polygamous sect raided by Texas authorities. Now, angry opponents of Proposition 8 are demonstrating at Mormon temples, accusing the church of being anti-gay.
New President Thomas S. Monson faces a daunting public-relations challenge. He follows the well-respected Hinckley, who observers say had an intuitive gift for balancing the church's need to speak out on moral issues with the need to avoid appearing too extreme.
"The Olympics had this nice afterglow for Mormons and, boy, is that gone," said Sarah Barringer Gordon of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies LDS history and culture.
LDS Church apostles declined to be interviewed for this story, but the public affairs office did respond to questions.
"All in all, 2008 has been a particularly good year for the church," LDS spokesman Scott Trotter said. "The church dedicated four temples and announced eight more. Membership topped 13 million worldwide with over 52,000 missionaries in the field. While some of the protest activity we have seen has been deplorable, there are others who have taken the time to fully understand the church's position on marriage and home to respect this principled stand."
Gary Lawrence added his own optimistic view.
"These protests will help us. It puts a spotlight on us," said Lawrence, a leader in the Proposition 8 campaign and author of How Americans View Mormonism: Seven Steps to Improve Our Image.
"Which is worse -- antagonism or apathy? I believe apathy is our bigger enemy."
Following the pattern --- In a 1997 memo about the LDS Church's involvement in the campaign against gay marriage in Hawaii, the late Loren C. Dunn, then a general authority, noted that Hinckley approved Mormon participation but said "the church should be in a coalition and not out front by itself."
In the case of the Proposition 8, which supported a constitutional amendment to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman, the LDS Church only joined the Coalition to Protect Marriage in June after being asked by Catholic Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco, who presided over Utah Catholics for 11 years. The LDS First Presidency in a letter urged all California Mormons to give their time and money to the effort.
Ostensibly just part of a broad-based coalition, the Mormon faithful soon led the drive. They donated nearly half of the $20 million raised by Yes on 8, canvassed neighborhoods and staffed phone banks. Because the LDS Church routinely asks its members to give time and money, Mormons are "uniquely situated to be mobilized into politics," said David Campbell, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame. "But they only get mobilized when a match is lit, and that doesn't happen very often."
The Mormon push for Proposition 8 reinforces what people already think of Mormons, he said, "that they have a lot of money and are willing to work for a socially conservative cause."
That image may hurt the LDS Church with a wide swath of the American public.
Mark Silk, professor of religion in public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., thinks the visceral opposition to Proposition 8 is much more consequential for the LDS Church than either the Romney campaign or the perceived association with polygamy.
LDS officials decided to inject themselves in the fight to protect traditional marriage "in a big money way," Silk said. "That raises the specter not just of Mormon weirdness but also Mormon power as far as cash on the barrel."
Mormons could be forgiven for underestimating the opposition, he said. They likely thought they were on the winning side. After all, marriage initiatives have passed in about 30 states. But California is not an average state.
"People expect anti-gay referendums to pass -- and they do -- but it's California, for crying out loud," Silk said, ". . . not Zion."
Benefits of battle -- On the opposite side, are observers such as Kirk Jowers of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, who think the LDS Church actions may help it win friends among Evangelicals.
"Other members of this coalition may realize the significant role that LDS Church members played," and see that it took a disproportionate share of the opposition's arrows, he said.
The Rev. Jim Garlow is one of those evangelical allies.
Last week, Garlow, of Skyline Church in San Diego, was so outraged by the protests against Mormons that he e-mailed 7,200 California pastors urging them to "speak boldly" in defense of the LDS role in passing Proposition 8.
"We were not going to stand by and be silent while there was anti-Mormonism in the streets," Garlow said Friday. "Our theological differences with Mormonism are, frankly, unbridgeable, but these are our friends and neighbors and attacks on them are unacceptable."
The Proposition 8 campaign deepened his relationship with Mormons, he said, and the protests have solidified it.
It is not clear, however, whether the LDS Church will soon jump into another political fray.
"Politics is a tough game, especially at this visceral level where one side is talking about religion and the other about rights, " said Gordon, the Penn scholar. "I would be surprised to see them do this again. They really need to heal some wounds."
The Salt Lake Tribune, November 22, 2008
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When Mormons Mobilize: Anti-Gay Marriage Prop. 8 Effort "Outed"?
By Joanna Brooks
New documents introduced in the challenge to Prop. 8 reveal that the LDS Church sought to create "plausible deniability" in its role in supporting the Yes on 8 campaign. Why would the LDS hierarchy want to deny Mormon involvement?
On Wednesday, January 20, in a federal courthouse in San Francisco, plaintiffs in the Perry vs. Schwarzenegger trial challenging the legality of California's Proposition 8 introduced two documents (over strenuous objections from the defense) indicating close but cautious coordination between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Yes on 8 campaign.
The documents, according to plaintiffs' witness Gary Segura, a professor of political science at Stanford University, indicated a desire on the part of the Church to create "plausible deniability or respectable distance between the church organization per se and the actual campaign."
Segura's words soon rippled across the gay blogosphere, as trial watchers from The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan to Julia Rosen of the California-based Courage Campaign latched onto the phrase "plausible deniability" as an "explosive" indictment of the Mormon Church's allegedly behind-the-scenes relationship to the Proposition 8 campaign.
But to Mormons in California (both those who supported the Yes on 8 campaign and those who opposed it), the relationship between the church and the Proposition 8 campaign has always been undeniable.
Mormons Account for 75% of Donations
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has stated in its official news releases that it acted as part of a "coalition" of faith groups supporting Proposition 8, which amended the California State Consitution to eliminate civil marriage rights for gays and lesbians.
Says Laura Compton, spokesperson for Mormonsformarriage.com: "I've always said that it's a coalition and the Mormons are Goliath. "
Documents compiled by Mormon supporters of same-sex marriage --including campaign time lines and donor profiles -- show that LDS Church ecclesiastical structures, resources, and relationships were fully mobilized to generate the majority of volunteers and donations for the Yes on 8 campaign, even as Church members were coached to handle their Mormonism carefully in campaign contributions and activities.
There was nothing plausibly deniable about the Church's relationship to the Proposition 8 campaign when, in Sunday meetings on June 29, 2008, a letter from Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Thomas Monson was read over the pulpit of every Mormon congregation in California urging Church members to "do all you can" to support the ballot measure.
Early donations from Mormons were solicited in July, when letters read in Sunday meetings of men's and women's church auxiliaries conveyed a $10 million fundraising goal for July and August and instructed Church members to donate exclusively to protectmarriage.com. Donors were asked to identify their home congregation on donation forms, according to campaign observers, so that Mormon congregations could track their progress towards meeting fundraising targets set for each congregation based on their ability to pay as assessed from records of church offerings.
The Church-coordinated fundraising drive intensified in late August, when select LDS Church members identified as potential large donors were invited to participate in conference calls with members of the Quorum of the Seventy, a high-ranking Church leadership body. (Mormon Yes on 8 campaign observers believe that tithing records were used to identify call participants.) On the conference calls, high-ranking church leaders encouraged potential large donors to individually contribute $25,000 to protectmarriage.com.
That's when Nadine Hansen, a Mormon veteran of the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment, initiated an effort to document the extent of Mormon funding for the Yes on 8 campaign. During the ERA campaign, Mormon feminist Sonia Johnson had shared with Hansen fundraising disclosure sheets from an anti-ERA group that had raised money in California. Using church directories, Hansen was then able to identify "all but one or two" of the ERA donors as Mormon. Sensing that the Church was pressing ERA-era strategies into service once again, she prepared to undertake the same donor-identification project for Proposition 8 at the Web site mormonsfor8.com.
In early September, a surge of $25,000 donations began to appear in campaign finance records compiled by the California Secretary of State. Hansen and a crew of Mormon supporters of same-sex marriage began to comb large donor records to identify Mormon Church members. By Election Day, mormonsfor8.com volunteers had successfully identified more than 50% of the large donors as members of the LDS Church. "And we know that we did not identify all of the Mormon donors," Hansen relates. "You can see that in some places virtually all the money that came in came from Mormons. It's a safe bet to say that Mormons contributed over half the money. It might be as high as 75%."
Don't Dress Like a Missionary
Mobilizing highly centralized and hierarchical ecclesiastical structures, Mormons also contributed as much as 80-90% of the volunteer labor for the campaign.
Implementation of a statewide grassroots volunteer structure began in late July, with volunteers coordinated through geographically-organized Mormon ecclesiastical units called "wards" and "stakes. " Church members received "callings, " or ecclesiastical assignments understood by orthodox church members to be divinely inspired, from their local church leaders to serve as regional (or "stake"-level) directors and zip code (or "ward"-level) supervisors for grassroots campaigning. One LDS zipcode supervisor reported that the Mormon Church was "the only member of the Protect Marriage coalition" to participate in the Yes on 8 ground campaign.
On August 16, the Yes on 8 ground-campaign began its voter-identification phase, with a reported 15,000 - 30,000 Mormon precinct walkers knocking doors each weekend in August to identify "yes," "soft yes, " "undecided," "soft no," and "no" voters and to commit "yes" voters to display "Yes on 8" lawn signs. The door-to-door voter identification campaign continued through September.
Mormon volunteers were coached to avoid disclosing their ties to the LDS Church. "When we went to our training meetings, they said, don't bring up the fact that you're Mormon. Don't wear white shirts and ties; don't look like missionaries. When you go out [canvassing], bring a non-member friend. When you're calling people, don't say I'm a Mormon, " says Laura Compton.
On October 8, LDS Church members in California attended a special meeting broadcast from Salt Lake City by satellite to wards and stakes throughout California and to BYU students with California ties. Encouraging Church members to think of the satellite broadcast as though they were "sitting in [a] living room having a confidential talk, " high-ranking LDS Church officials, members of the Quorum of the Twelve and the Quorum of the Seventy, introduced Church members to the final voter persuasion and get-out-the-vote "phases" of the campaign, asking members to use social networking technology to "go viral" with their support for Proposition 8 and commit four hours each week to the ground and phone campaign.
A primary source of Mormon messaging during the Proposition 8 campaign was the anonymously-authored "Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails" document, which went viral across Mormon social networks after its introduction by email in mid-August and was utilized as a training document and handout in the Mormon-coordinated ground campaign. The document alleged that the legalization of same-sex marriage would eventuate in the teaching of same-sex marriage in public schools and the elimination of religious freedoms. Mormon legal scholar Morris Thurston described this as "untrue" and "misleading" and urged the LDS Church to discontinue its further dissemination.
Even as some Mormons urged the LDS Church to dissociate itself from questionable tactics of the Yes on 8 campaign, the profound connection between the Church and the campaign was obvious to insiders. As Laura Compton of mormonsformarriage.com relates, "Anybody who was part of the process knew exactly where they were getting their marching orders from. "
Highly centralized and hierarchical LDS institutional structures, widespread experience with door-to-door proselytizing, disciplined messaging among former missionaries, and extensive social networks that facilitated viral messaging, combined with a religious and cultural tradition that assigns enormous value to obedience to church authorities, service, discipline, and sacrifice to create a potent political force that was no secret to those within the culture.
According to Laura Compton, the LDS Church provided the "backbone of leadership, flesh of volunteers, blood of money" for the Yes on 8 campaign. "When there's a natural disaster, Mormons are among the first to mobilize with resources and volunteers, and they get a lot done very fast. This time they applied their talents to what they perceived to be a political disaster. They're good at mobilizing and they work hard. "
Still, Compton and other Mormon observers of the Proposition 8 campaign continue to wonder why the Church has been reticent to acknowledge the extent of its influence.
"They did not want to be outed, " Hansen relates. "And yet they were with ones with all the organizational skills. And whether its because [the Church] is concerned about tax-exempt status or they want to avoid bad publicity... they want to do it and not have anyone know they do it at the same time. "
One cultural factor contributing to this apparent two-mindedness is the continuing insularity of Mormon culture. Mormon studies scholars suggest that Mormons living outside of Utah (like other minorities) have developed a "divided sense of self" and a related tendency to adopt a self-monitored or "coded" form of speech with outsiders.
Hansen recalls this same insider-outsider mentality from the political struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment, recalling that a man from her Mormon ward "called me, upset because I had written this letter to the editor... "You're making the Church look bad," he said. But I said, "I'm not making the Church look bad. I'm telling what the Church is doing. If it looks bad, it's because it is bad. '"
Religious Dispatches, January 31, 2010
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August 4, 2010 -- Federal district court rules Proposition 8 is invalid -- See entire decision here.
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