LDS Church defender compares DV to Hitler

I’m happy to be an LDS member. We have experienced persecutions including an extermination order issued by a state governor.
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However, I recommend that Brother Wright take counsel from these comments from B. H. Roberts in answer to a not-favorable publication by the Ministerial Association of Salt Lake City, given at the June, 1907 Mutual Improvement Association conference:
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Gentlemen, we acquit you of the intention of persecution. When the Revs. Phineas Ewing, Dixon, Cavanaugh, Hunter, Bogart, Isaac McCoy, Riley, Pixley, Woods and others carried on an agitation in Missouri against “Mormonism” and the “Mormons” that resulted in burning hundreds of our homes and driving our people—including women and children, remember—to bivouac out in the wilderness at an inclement season of the year; when the mob incited by these reverends, your prototypes, gentlemen, laid waste our fields and gardens, stripped our people of their earthly possessions, keeping up that agitation until twelve thousand or fifteen thousand people were driven from the state of Missouri, dispossessed of several hundred thousand acres of land—two hundred and fifty thousand acres, to be exact—which they had entered, and rendered them homeless—we might call, we do call, that persecution. When the Rev. Mr. Levi Williams led the mob that shot to death Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith in Carthage prison, and when the Rev. Mr. Thomas S. Brockman led the forces against Nauvoo, after the great body of the people had withdrawn from that city, and expelled the aged, the widow and the fatherless, and laid waste the property of the people—we think we are justified in calling that persecution, of which right reverend gentlemen were the chief instigators. And when in this territory some years ago one wave of agitation followed another, of which your class, and some of you, were chief movers, until a reign of terror was produced, and a regime was established under which men guilty at most of a misdemeanor, could nevertheless be imprisoned for a term of years covering a lifetime, and fined to the exhaustion of all they possessed, under the beautiful scheme of segregating the offense into numerous counts in each indictment; and when in that reign of terror women were compelled to clasp their little ones to their breasts and go out among strangers, exiled from their homes—we might be inclined to call that persecution. But our experience has been such that we scorn to call such attacks as this review of yours persecution. It does not rise, gentlemen, I assure you, to that bad eminence. So we acquit you of any intent in your review to persecute us. You need not fear that such a charge will be made, we are not so thin-skinned as all that. Besides, gentlemen, your power is no longer equal to your malice, and so we do not believe you will ever be able to persecute us again.

Sorry “manaen,” the Mormon church’s history of persecution doesn’t justify its persecution of the LGBT community.

What Dr. B comveniently fails to state is that, while the Mormon (LDS) Church itself has reported giving only $190,000 to support the prop-Proposition 8 campaign, members of the Mormon Church gave more than $20 million in an effort to ban gay/lesbian marriage.
Such contributions occurred AFTER the hierarchy of th Mormon Church urged its members to support Proposition 8.
Dr. B and other Mormons seems surprised that gays and lesbians are upset by their right to marry being taken away from them. How would you feel if–by a vote of members of your state–any of the following happened to Mormons (or any other religious, ethnic or gender group):
1. You were not allowed to own property.
2. You were not allowed to vote.
3. You were not allowed to receive equal pay for equal work.
4. You were not allowed to be the religion that you wished to be.
5. You were not allowed to marry someone of your faith.
You would — and rightfully so — be outraged at the terrible injustice. But that is EXACTLY how gays and lesbians feel that their right to marry in California has been taken away — in large part by the outpouring of Mormon dollars (more than $20,000,000) from around the country, as well as substantial support from Mormons in California and Utah who called on phone banks and walked the streets in support of Proposition 8.

churches have always been able to spend their money supporting social causes, as long as they don’t take position on candidates. neither the churches that supported nor opposed california prop8 should lose their tax exemptions. should black churches that lobby for social justice issues be threatened by the IRS? should progressive churches that support human rights issues lose their exemption?

Jeff and Merced, we aren’t asking that you don’t critize our choices we are asking that you actually be respectfull of our right to say your wrong. Secondly 20,000,000 by memebers isn’t the same as 200,000 by a tax exempt church.
Oh that’s right a church’s tax exempt status matters but the no on prop 8 fund raziers with tax exempt status doesn’t matter. They spent more then the Yes on 8 but that doesn’t matter cause you agree with them. Funny how you only want the law to apply to who you agree with.
You all sound like Obama and his nominations getting off for not paying thier taxes. AS long as he nominates them you won’t care cause they believe in what you want. But if it was Republician the whole country would be outraged… Same dang thing the LAWS of the UNITED STATES only apply when you poor loosers want them too.

Having never had the chance to meet Hitler (before my time), I don’t know the depth of his hatred for Jews. I can only assume it must have been pretty deep though as he went to great extremes to suppress their rights, the same as he did with gay people.
I really haven’t heard of anyone at the Dallas Voice trying to take away any rights from the Mormons and if they have been killing Jews and Gays like Hitler, they have done an awesome job of keeping it a secret. It would be a great scoop for my radio show.
As far as myself, I do hate the Mormazoids, probably in the same way the Jews hated Hitler…….I have lived through to much in my life to put up with their bigoted bullshit in the name John Smith and his golden plates and magic underwear. They only deserve hate and scorn. They are the stale bologna of the religious food chain that spends millions in order to make them feel superior.
I am far too old and jaded to play nicey nice with a group of fucked up douche bags because some find it to be politically correct.
On the other hand, if given the chance, I’d fuck Mitt Romney in a New York second, slap his white ass a few times and send him on his Mormon way.
Taking the high road is very over rated. If we keep turning the other cheek, we will end up dizzy as hell and turning in circles.

JE,
If you are unable to see the difference between advocating for or against a specific politician or political party vs. participation in ballot initiatives that speak directly to the convergence of social/cultural foundations and governmental policy then you need to sharpen your understanding of jurisprudence and general logic. You also seem to be completely oblivious that the one kind of institution granted specific and explicit protection in the Bill of Rights is “Religion.”
Kia,
You would be well advised to actually try and contribute something of substance. Try actually responding to the points given rather than type out some pointless guess with the inane and knee jerk ‘pop off’ response that screams the simple nature of your mentality.
John Wright,
There’s no persecution by the LDS Church, nor it’s general membership (surely there are dispicable outliers on our side just as there are on the LGBT side) of the LGBT community. The claim of such is fabricated from, and an extension of, the distortion as to what constitutes ‘rights’ and what constitutes ‘marriage.’ I feel that with the words of those seeking to be at the cutting edge on your side of this debate have made it very very clear that they are seeking to remake the very foundations of society. I personally don’t think it’s wise to tinker with what is essentially the core mechanism or transmitting society. Just as it would be unwise to try and substitute DNA dominated biology in favor of something else so to is it unwise to think you can tinker with the core of humanity’s self replicating mechanisms and think you’ll get a viable incarnation of culture or humanity.
If this were about rights then you’d realize that the sexes create fundamental differences in the dynamics they produce. Regardless of sexual orientation that fact is something you can’t change. Women are women, men are men and there are irreversible implications that flow from that. That is why we give to all adult males the exact same right and to all adult females we give the exact same right. When you confuse the two you are operating in defiance of

Smore:
Let me spell it out for you. The list was to provide EXAMPLES of other groups IN THE PAST that were subject to discriminatory actions–just like gays and lesbians are CURRENTLY discriminated against in their right to marriage.
1. Owning property — California and a number of other states did not allow certain groups (such as African-Americans or Japanese) to own property in certain areas until the discriminatory laws were overturned.
2. Vote–Women only received the right to vote in the past century and American Americans only received the right to vote (in many areas) after 1964.
3. Equal pay — Until the 1970s, women were not required to receive equal pay for equal work.
4. Religion — Even American has discriminated against certain religious groups. In Boston, there is a statute to women in the 1600s who were hung because they tried to spread their religion. There are obviously other groups (including Mormons) that have been discriminated against becaue of their religion.
5. Right to Marry– Until 1948 in California and 1967 in many other parts of the United States, whites and blacks could not get married. It took the California Supreme Court to overturn this discriminatory law in California (1948) and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967.

Smore:
You are missing the point. Your church Prophets urged its members to contribute to Proposition 8 and they did. While Mormons like yourself clearly have the right to contribute, you have to understand that give more than one-half of the total contributions to Proposition 8, you will take some heat. If you and the other members of the Mormon (LDS) Church can’t take the heat, then you should not have gotten involved in politics.
You may have won the first round, but the war is not over yet. Twenty to 30 years from now, history will question why a formerly oppressed group (the Mormons) led the battle to take away the rights of another oppressed group (gays and lesbians). And history will likely judge you in the same way that it now looks at the bigotry of former Alabama Governor George Wallace–not very well.

Jeff From Merced.
150 years of history hasn’t changed the fact that Mormons are hated by a majority of the population. As Mormons, we will never be loved by all and don’t want to be. But this debate is helping the LDS whether or not you support them. The more evil you speak of them the more people will wonder what they think and what their message is. The more attention is drawn the more their name is known. Mormons don’t care whether you like them as they are used to being hated. They don’t care about heat and attention, bring it on.
Mormons believe they will be persecuted in the future and will stand up for their beliefs even if they will be belittled, persecuted or pushed. They were pushed out of NY, OH, MO, IL and finally to SLC. All of that ill will did little to sway their beliefs, in fact it made them stronger and more resolute and more vocal.
Mormons will stand up for Marriage between one man and one woman even if you threaten their lives because it is so central to their beliefs. Beliefs that teach that All people gay or straight are Children of a living God. Sent to Earth to be given bodies so they can learn to control them despite what inclinations they were born with. That they were born into families to give them a glimpse of the society that will exist in Eternity. To see if they will follow Gods will over their bodies desires. Not the temptations they suffered but the actions they chose. Because they believe all will stand accountable before God for the Decisions they made in this life. Whether they spoke and acted for good despite the opposition.
They aren’t crying about getting too much heat, they want more heat & more attention because it draws a line in the sand.
“I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right. ”
George M. Cohan
Jack E- Glad to see that you’re above turning the other cheek. It just proves my point that you don’t give a rip about law and order, just about fulfilling your own selfish wants. Fu– anyone in your way. Do you have a little mustache? (under your nose). You are exactly the kind of guy who will take this thing to blows, cross the line and break the law. Just the sort that would vandalize buildings and push women and children out into the snow. Great example you set for your side. Great things will happen because of people like you. Sarcasm intended

Mormons and Proposition 8–
Defining the chance to marry the person you want to marry as a “right” is problematic. The first four items you listed are individual rights. These are much easier to define and defend. Proposition 8 does not have anything to do with individual rights. It does not take away a gay person’s right to equal pay, vote, ride the bus, or even get into their own sex lives. Remember, proposition 8 does not make sodomy a crime, it simply says the government should not recognize as marriage a specific kind of union. If marrying whom you choose is a right, then it is every polygamist’s right to marry more than one person. Taking it a step further into the absurd, but what I still believe illustrates my point, if I had a right to marry whom I wanted, I would have married my high school crush.
Your analogy is weak. Gay marriage is not a fundamental human right. It is a convenience and a nicety. Whether or not we should recognize it is up to legitimate debate, but it does not make anyone opposed to it a bigot,
And getting back to the original thread, anyone comparing almost anyone to Hitler obviously has not thought their statement all the way through.

Casey Bowen:
It is unclear how I am “speaking evil” of the Mormons or the LDS (Mormon) Church. The fact that I state history will likely not judge the LDS Church kindly regarding the strong support of Proposition 8 is not “speaking evil” of the LDS Church. In the end, it will be up to the historians for the final take on how they characterize that suppor (even though I have a strong idea of what that characterization will be.)
As to past discrimination against the Mormons in New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, you are talking about events that happened in the early to mid 1800s! It is, however, somewhat ironic that the persecuted have become the persecutors (i.e., the Mormons supporting taking away the rights of gays and lesbians to marry in California). I leave you with a great column from a Salt Lake Tribune columnists published just after Proposition 8 passed:
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LDS stand on Prop. 8 oozes irony
By Rebecca Walsh, Tribune Columnist
Mormons understand a little bit about getting picked on for being different.
Tales of Haun’s Mill, Reed Smoot and Mitt Romney fill Sunday School and Family Home Evening lessons. Years of violence and lampooning and soft bigotry drive The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ historical narrative. Persecution is in the psyche of the people.
But now the victims seem to have turned into the aggressors – and over, of all things, an alternative definition of marriage.
“This is a church that has been persecuted for its flavor of Christianity, for its past marriage practices, for its past religious practices. And here they are turning around and persecuting another group of people,” says Jay Redd, a gay lapsed-Mormon movie director whose San Francisco marriage ceremony was featured last week in Salon. “I feel like it’s very shortsighted, and it’s not a very Christian way of treating people.”
In a four-month offensive, the LDS Church has deployed its faithful as partisans for California’s Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that would ban gay marriage – the largest mobilization since the faith fought the Equal Rights Amendment three decades ago. In June, members were asked to “do all you can.” And they have.
As a result, the Salt Lake City-based church gets the credit and the blame for leading the cause. According to Californians Against Hate, Mormons have donated more than $19 million to the cause – nearly four out of five dollars raised.
At the same time, wards are splitting as members’ beliefs about gay rights become a litmus test of righteousness. Families are also divided between the �ber-faithful and the conflicted.
Church leaders insist there is a higher cause: “Freedom of religion is at risk,” says L. Whitney Clayton, a member of the LDS Presidency of the Seventy.
The irony is thick here. But it seems lost on church leaders and many members.
More than 150 years ago, Mormon settlers were driven from their homes and their prophet was killed, in part, because of their polygamous definition of marriage. After years of isolation and marginalization in the desert, the church abandoned the practice to achieve statehood, political legitimacy and validation in American society.
Now, Mormons are using the same words that were used against their ancestors. It’s not completely inconsistent with a history and doctrine centered on procreation.
“I don’t think the church ever compromised on its sense that marriage is the institution through which families are formed and people are saved,” says Sarah Barringer Gordon, a scholar of the law of church and state who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.
Comparing polygamy to gay marriage, she says, “in many church members’ eyes is comparing apples and oranges. You can’t compare gay marriage to polygamy.”
Still, in this electrified climate, the church can’t escape legitimate reminders of its muddled history. Officially, Mormon polygamy is now a quandary for heaven. But California bloggers speculate that the church’s support is really a ploy to legalize polygamy. After all, the thinking goes, the initiative language says “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” But what about one man and two women?
On the other side, a whisper campaign speculates that if the initiative fails, church elders will be forced to marry gay couples in the temples. Others bring up the faith’s embarrassingly tardy decision to give black men the priesthood and marry interracial couples. This scrutiny is the price of leading the campaign against gay marriage.
Apostle Dallin H. Oaks rejects the notion that the church’s history of polygamy conflicts with its judgment of homosexuality. Many 19th century Mormons, he says in a 2006 interview on the church’s Web site, were reluctant to live polygamy.
When a new revelation ended the practice, “I think the majority were greatly relieved and glad to get back into the mainstream of Western civilization,” Oaks says. “If you start with the assumption of continuing revelation, on which this church is founded, then you can understand that there is no irony in this.”
But that still seems to leave the door open. If polygamy can end with a revelation, wonders Washington Post columnist David Waters, what about Mormon opposition to gay marriage?
Given the LDS Church’s reliance on procreation theology – the role of the traditional family in salvation – Gordon says that’s unlikely.
“There’s an awful lot of theology involved – the centrality of the family and the ways families are created and perpetuated,” she says. “It seems a significant hurdle.”
If anything, the church may be left behind as other conservative congregations soften and adapt.
Affirmation assistant executive director David Melson says the church has done damage to its own members and its reputation. “Win or lose, the actions of the church over the past 90 days will result in damage to the LDS Church in California and beyond from which it may take a generation or longer to recover,” he says.
The ERA failed. But feminists still went to work.
Salt Lake City Tribune, November 2, 2008

Casey Bowen:
After reading your rambling comment, I thought that the readers of this blog should be exposed to a clearly written and clear comments from a Mormon — Lola Van Wagenen — who indicates that “Of all people, Mormons should be sensitive to those seeking nontraditional unions”. The article is included below.
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Mormons and Proposition 8
Of all people, Mormons should be sensitive to those seeking nontraditional unions.
By Lola Van Wagenen
Reports that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a big supporter of Proposition 8 should sadden all Mormons. Based on the unique history of Mormons, there is no religious group in our country that should be more tolerant of “nontraditional” forms of marriage than those of us whose ancestors were polygamist Mormons, who were persecuted because of their “nontraditional” marriages.
Have today’s Latter-day Saints forgotten that in the 19th century, our ancestors were violently and relentlessly attacked for their “peculiar institution”? Have they forgotten that they pleaded for understanding and tried in vain to prove that they were good parents? Have they forgotten that Utah territory gave our great-great-grandmothers the right to vote in part to prove that they were not downtrodden, and that these ancestors prayed to the Lord for the protection of “celestial marriage” against the hatred directed at Mormons?
Our polygamous ancestors were accused of being incapable of providing loving homes for their children. Who knows better than we do that this was untrue? Who can deny that our “nontraditional” ancestors left a heritage of hardworking, high-achieving progeny. And yet the fallacy that “nontraditional” marriages erode and destroy family values is one of the main attacks being used against gay and lesbian couples by LDS proponents of Proposition 8.
Most Mormons today would concede that much of the continuing prejudice against the LDS church persists because of our history of “nontraditional” marriage, even though 118 years have passed since the church abandoned polygamy. Still, what religious group has known more hatred and persecution in America than our families? And it lingers. Have today’s Mormons not learned to fight against prejudice and the vilification of people who happen to be different?
Returning to my Mormon roots as a historian has deepened my appreciation for, and gratitude to, my ancestors — for their struggles and their sacrifices that living in “nontraditional” marriages demanded. My great-great-grandfather was jailed for his marriage, a history that I share with so many practicing Mormons. Given the Mormon experience, why are today’s Latter-day Saints not in the vanguard of pleading for acceptance, equal rights and compassion for all Americans? They should be standing up in opposition to Proposition 8, knowing that loving homes and good parenting can come equally from “nontraditional” or “traditional” marriages.
Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2008

I obviously cut and pasted part of Casey’s posting into mine so that I could draft a proper response. The full posting is to read:
“Casey Bowen:
Actually, Casey, I and other gays and lesbians who lost the right to marry didn’t “pick our adversary” — the LDS (Mormon) Church and its members started this one.
It is unclear how citations to your holy writings have anything to do with whether Mormons were persecuted or not and our discussion regarding Proposition 8. I have never stated that Mormons were not persecuted in the past (mainly in the 1800s). If you had read my prior postings (and the article posted in one fo the postings) you would have read the following quote:
“More than 150 years ago, Mormon settlers were driven from their homes and their prophet was killed, in part, because of their polygamous definition of marriage. After years of isolation and marginalization in the desert, the church abandoned the practice to achieve statehood, political legitimacy and validation in American society. Now, Mormons are using the same words that were used against their ancestors. It’s not completely inconsistent with a history and doctrine centered on procreation.”
The real issue is what the LDS (Mormon) Church and its members did regarding Proposition 8 — and the impact of their involvement in taking away the rights of others. That is the bottom line here.”

Let me boil this down to some very simple points. LGBT and their supporters are pin heads. It’s okay for them to speak their mind, and as long as you agree with them, it’s okay for you to speak your mind. But if you don’t agree with them, then you are evil, wrong and your tax exempt status should be challenged? I don’t think so. I have pondered this plight of LGBTs, and for a long time I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but no more. They have shown their true colors by vandalizing and terrorizing those who disagree with them. And they get away with it? So aside from the psycho-social rationale to complete reject their lifestyle, I’m done giving them the benefit of the doubt because of their behavior. Next I will be called a gay-hater. Wrong. I do not hate gays. I do not condone their behavior. I do not agree with their lifestyle. Lack of agreement does not suggest hate. Grow up.

CORRECTION: The last sentence in my posting immediately above should read, “…difference between real persecution such as the Jews expereinced under Hitler and we LDS experienced under American mobs in the 19th century versus the current dust-up between LDS and our opponents on this issue.”

Peter Smith:
Aren’t you painting LGBT’s with a rather broad stroke: “They have shown their true colors by vandalizing and terrorizing those who disagree with them.” Are you staying that ALL LGBT’s have been vandalizing and terrorizing those that disagree with them? Do you have ANY conclusive evidence that any member of the LGBT community vandalized Mormon property or mailed the white powder? (I am unaware of any prosecutions or convictions demonstrating such.)
As to so-called “terrorizing”, if you call a legal boycott “terrorizing”, then so be it — boycotts are a well-established technique used in the civil rights movement. I think many Proposition 8 contributors are “terrorized” because they are concerned that people will think of them as bigots if it is learned that they made a big contribution to Proposition 8; these contributors are now ashamed of how the contribution will look to other more-progressive members of the community. Does a contribution to Proposition 8 make anyone a bigot? Of course not…however, it is a factor that some people may consider when formulating their opinion of a person or business.
I now end by response with your truly adult opener — “LGBT and their supporters are pin heads.” Now, Peter, that is a mature comment…When you run out of good arguments, call the minority group and their supporters people names…Good job.

Jack E- don’t be such a victim. You cry discrimination when there is none. You have no fewer rights today than you did ten years ago.you have no fewer rights than I do. I’m sorry that feel feel frustrated when trying to speak eloquently so you resort to the vocaulary you used as a 12 year old taunting a smaller child.you’ve lost nothing.
You can love another person of the same sex no less than you love them now. You can be named executor of their living will. Hell you can even buy property and adopt children together now the same as before. You can put them on your insurance. But you can’t change the laws of nature on a whim. Defiling the definition of marriage by joining two magnets of the same polarity does not make it acceptable nor does it comply with the science of darwinism you so desperatley cling to. It will not take away your emptiness. It is not a marriage even if you vote it that way. Voting to change the sky to green doesn’t make it so. The gay population of california outnumbers mormons significantly. If you want to blame someone blame your own movement for its apathy. If this was so important to your group then why not be as dedicated towards it as mormons are against it. Are you supporting 4 and 5 kids? Does you significant other stay home raising the kids? Gay couples typically have more disposable income than any mormon does. Why didn’t you donate more to your cause before the vote? Instead you blame others for your failure because you aren’t man enough to stand for a cause when the time calls for it. Be a man and admit you failed to put your money where your foul mouth is.

Hey Jack.
Thanks for once again proving the maturity and depth of your arguments. You may not be eloquent but no doubt you get an “A” for effort. Keep up the good work. The more you comment the more you paint your team with broad ignorant and offensive strokes. I repeat again, great things will be done because of your example. I will no doubt take your advice and communicate your warm regards to both my mother and my sister. They will undoubtedly be grateful for your concern.
You claim that we are poking a hornets nest and cry when we get stung.. but doesn’t the reality of the election point to just the opposite. Was it not the LGBT movement that rattled the nest of the Deseret, the hebrew word for honey bee, and Synonym for Mormon. The state of Utah has a bee hive as a symbol of the industriousness, diligence and hard work of the LDS pioneers. The Mormon people wanted to name their state Deseret until they were forced to name it Utah. A Navajo word Meaning Top of the Mountains. (I may be casting pearls before swine with this, but this actually fulfilled a prophesy of Isaiah when the mormons built their Temple or Mountain of the Lord. See Isaiah 2:2 https://scriptures.lds.org/isa/2/2#2 )
But I digress.
You argue that Mormons took away your rights, when none ever existed in the first place. Sure the Californication courts overturned the previous marriage vote, but they don’t legislate (or at least aren’t supposed to). That’s why this came to a vote before the people, to remind the California supreme court exactly who is in charge. WE THE PEOPLE! the people spoke…
Your side LOST. Why? Because those darn mormons hate you so much? not so. We love our gay brothers and sisters and hope that one day you will take the hand of Mercy your Savior Jesus offers you. But He requires you to have faith in Him and Obey the Commandments, repent and Be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. & if you endure to the end you shall have eternal life. we love you and would like for you to have all that Heavenly Father Offers you. Thats why we are willing to let you despise us.
Here is the Real Bottom Line. The reason you lost has a lot to do with your level of commitment. Lets examine at a few facts shall we:
1-Gay and Lesbian couples have a lot more disposable income than say a mormon couple raising 5 or 6 kids
2-Gays and Lesbians have at least equal numbers if not greater numbers throughout California and the United States. Mormons only have about 5 Million in the US, more than half of those are children between 8- and 18
3-Your political party (Democratic) swept the elections and influenced the vote throughout the country in not one but two consecutive elections.
4-The Last Election showed how not only Democrats hate and despise Mormons, but also that the Republican Establishment also despises and Hates Mormons. Please reference comments made by Mike Huckleberry and John McGoober.
You had all these things in your favor and you still lost. Here’s why;
1-although you had higher numbers and were more well funded, you lacked the unity and urgency to work like hell to get people to your side.
2-Tolerance is a Two way street. Although you are quick to preach tolerance and acceptance, your actions speak that you are only seeking tolerance of your views and have no respect for those of others. (Please reference you earlier comments for an example of this one.) you can also reference the vandalism of temples, anthrax threats and white suburban vandalism. Although I don’t have fingerprints, even a simpleton can put two and two together and assume it wasn’t mike Huckabee. But since this isn’t a court of law I don’t have to prove anything, just as your allegations lack proof of our wrong doing.
3-Your own party bailed on you, really making you mad. You can’t retaliate against them because they are the only ones who at least pretend to care about you. Even Bill Clinton bailed on you after he was elected. Our party bailed on us too. So we do have a few things in common.
4- You’re group simply loves the Victim mentality that so easily comes with being a Democrat. Someone else is always to blame. If you really want to win so bad why didn’t your group raise enough money, get out the vote. How much money did you donate to your cause and Lifestyle? Where were you when your beliefs were challenged. Did you bet your life savings on this, or did you squander them in riotous and high living? You claim that we took your marriages away from you, but you can’t even look in the mirror and acknowledge that you could have and should have done more to stand up for your beliefs. But now with nowhere else to look, you want to blame the mormons.
You should really take serious pause here. Step up and be a man. Acknowledge that you didn’t stand up for your beliefs when the opportunity came, you just complained about losing it when it left. You didn’t put your money where your foul mouth is. There is where your shame lies. Don’t come crying to me. This is like a basketball game where the loser blames the winner for scoring more points, the only problem is your team sat on the bench for half the game.

The’ Dallas Voice’ is obviously seriously bent on distorting the facts against the Mormons. Yeah, I would say the comparison between Hitlers Propaganda and the Dallas Voice is a good one. The people voted with their feet. If it was wrong to pass Prop 8 then where where was the Gay and Lesbian community on the day of the VOTE? Give me a break! Next time get out and vote instead of watching the latest TV sitcrap. Absolutely ridiculous. At the least the Mormons are responsible citizens and get up and use our Democracy, how can you fault that Dallas Voice? This 190k is pennies compared to the millions spent by the voters in favor of Prop 8. Fire your writers.

I am actually mormon and am dissapointed at the way my church handled things. I feel like a hypocrite that my religion, which not only practiced polygamy but said we stopped and continued practicing it in secret, is trying to say someone else’s marriage is wrong.
150 years ago the people in my church were persecuted. However, that is not the case any longer. The church itself talks about being the fastest growing church in the world. That is not the sign of a hated church.In my opinion the leaders of the church are used to being to able to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Their members follow them without question. I think being questioned on their actions is so new to them they don’t know what to do. I think the general members felt they were doing God’s will and therefor would be “protected” by following the prophet’s to give everything they could to defeat same sex marriage.
Members of the church didn’t expect people to care about what they did. However, even people who oppose same sex marriage are upset that one religion could pull that much power to fight politically (also, I believe, why there will never be a mormon president of the US). As a child at church I was told I needed to take accoutability for my actions. It is time for the mormons to practice what they preach.

John Adams:
Your so-called “evidence” would not hold up in a court of law. The fact that supporters of Proposition 8 received a white powder does not mean that it was sent by anti-Proposition 8 supporters. Anyone could have sent the white powder. It is even possible that pro-Proposition 8 groups have sent themselves the infamous “white powder” or even vandalized their own institutions in an effort to draw attention from the fact that they helped take away the right to marry from gays and lesbians in California.
That being said, I and the vast majority of opponents of Proposition 8 do not support ANY actions that vandalize a church or any building or the sending white powder–that is clearly inappropriate. Anyone who is convicted of such an act should receive the appropriate criminal penalty.
In closing however, let’s get back to the real issue here — the LDS (Mormon) Church extorted its members to strongly support Proposition 8 and Mormons gave more than $20,000,000 (more than 1/2 of the total pro-8 contribution) to take away the existing right of gays and lesbians to marry in California.
Are you really surprised that gays and lesbians going to be more than a little irritated at Mormons, the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic organization) and Focus on the Family for their strong support of Proposition 8 that took away their rights? While gays and lesbians most likely won’t be talking about Proposition 8 more than 150 years later like some of the Mormons on this blog have about persecution that occurred in the 1800s, we won’t forgot.

In response to two posters:
1. “Dallasdolts” — While the Mormon Church admitted to $190,000 of in-kind contributions, the MEMBERS of the Mormon Church gave more than $20,000,000 to the prop-Prop. 8 campaign — as requested by the Church’s leaders. But for the strong Mormon support of Proposition 8 (more than half of the contributions), it is unlikely that the message would have passed. That is not pennies under any stretch of the imagination.
2. “Casey Bowen” — Your comments to Jack E. are way of line. Gay and lesbians in California DO have fewer rights than you do (if you were a hetrosexual resident of California). Right now, I don’t have the right to marry the one consenting adult that I choose — another male adult. Assuming that you are hetrosexual, you have the right to marry the person that you select–if you haven’t already done so. While you may retort that I have the right to marry a woman, that is as hollow as if you only had the right to marry a man and you were a hetrosexual — not a right at all.
As to putting our money where our mouth is, I can’t speak for “Jack E”, but I–and many and other gays and lesbians and their friends–did make substantial contributions of time and money to stop the discriminatory Proposition 8.
Proposition 8 DID take away a right that I had. While it is true this was a right given by the California Supreme Court, the United States and California has a long history of judicial intervention to ensure that minority groups have rights. Indeed, part of the American system is the checks and balances of the judiciary to ensure that the majority does not trample on the rights of majority. Hopefully, the California Supreme Court will overturn the discrimination engendered in Proposition 8.

Mormons and Prop 8-
In regards to your comments to dallasdolts – you prove you are not capable of making a rational argument. I have three points to make on your comments.
1-The IRS 501(c)(3) rules allow for lobbying by organizations such as the church, they would lose their status if they spent a significant amount of their energy and money on lobbying or if they supported a particular candidate. They did neither of these.
2-You are really reaching when you say that the LDS chuch donated 20 million by proxy through their members, because they told them to do it. Our church is one of complete free will. They’ve been asking my father for 10% for years and he’s never given even a single penny to them. The members of the church support the church through donations and just as they support prop 8 through donations. The LDS church gave a few thousand dollars in Cash, and gave the equivilent of 190k in like contributions, phone service, building uses etc. The individuals who donated to the cause of Prop 8 are not paid by the church and are therefore not employees. The church only has to account for its donations not its members donations. The acounting term is Like-kind. You are grasping at straws if you are hoping the IRS will revoke the Tax-exempt status of the Church. They wont do it because 190k is an extremely small percentage of what their budget and operations entail. I will once again reference the article by PageOneQ already admitting defeat in this area. This is your Harry Ried “the war is lost” moment of the Gay Marriage movement. https://pageoneq.com/news/2009/mormon011309.html
3-You say the the proposition 8 would not have passed if the mormons hadn’t donated money. So you must assume that money bought the votes. By that logic you would have to assume that if money buys votes, the person with more money must win more votes and thus election. However your group had more money and couldn’t buy the votes and didn’t win. Therefore it wasn’t money that swayed this vote, it was your message so eloquently spoken by Jack E, that your movement only cares about itself. Your message doesn’t resonate with members of your own party and once again people like Jack offend people who are in the middle of the road by not acknowledging the merit of the other sides points.
If you doubt we don’t consider your side please read the comments on same-gender attraction by one of our Apostles – https://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/public-issues/same-gender-attraction

Correction -Abomination to Gods plan not abomination of God

enough food for this troll. he has reached a point where he on contradicting himself into a corner. the comment about how often he makes love to his wife is the exact quote that ted haggard was using in various pubic forums and media outlets.
talking about protesting too much…….he may turn out to be a bigger homo than me.
jack

Well “Chris”:
At least you point quotes around your posting. A quick Google search shows that it was posted on the hotair[dot]com website on January 16. Very well named….
As to the facts, I am just asking for the right to marry the one consent adult (a man) that I love…not two people, not three people, not five people, but the ONE consenting adult that I love. How can that make it a special right? It clearly doesn’t.
I like the statement made by Mormons and Proposition 8 (at 1:21 p.m.) on this blog:
“Assuming that you are hetrosexual, you have the right to marry the person that you select–if you haven’t already done so. While you may retort that I have the right to marry a woman, that is as hollow as if you only had the right to marry a man and you were a hetrosexual — not a right at all.”

My apologies for the double post…computer issues.

“probably on church computers” ???
What kind of statement is that? Members have their own computers. This blog is a joke. Do some research.

Casey Bowen:
You stated: “Think of all the people the 45 million the anti prop 8 could have fed.”
You are absolutely right; the contributions to the anti-Prop 8 campaign could have fed a lot of people — however, such contributions would not have been necessary but for those who originally brought the initiative to take away the rights of gays/lesbians to marry.
I also note that the pro-Proposition 8 campaign raised around $40,000,000 (per Wikipedia), with more than 1/2 of that amount contributed by Mormons. Those contributions could have fed a lot of people or done a lot of good somewhere else.
Per Wikipedia, the campaigns for and against Proposition 8 was the highest-funded campaign on any state ballot in November 2009–surpassing every campaign in the country in spending except the presidential contest. Taking away people’s rights (and fighting to stop such actions) is a costly affair.

Thank you Jennifer for your response. I was merely responding to Bruce Murray’s comments about feeding the poor. It seems hypocritical to point to the church and say that it should focus a majority of its efforts on feeding the poor when the LDS church does a more efficient job than any government on the earth does. And because i believe Bruce, You and Jack may be simply uninformed I will take this opportunity you’ve given me to defend the actions of the Church. It actually opens up a good point about what the Majority of Church funds and activities do. I agree that I would much rather fund feeding the poor and needy that fighting a battle over the common sense notion that marriage is between a man and a woman. But as the Homosexual marriage movement has already infringed on the Freedom of Religion in other countries we simply cannot stand by and allow this perverse debate influence the rights of children to be raised in a balanced environment by heterosexual couples the way God designed.
Members of the Church have donated more than 1 billion dollars/equipment to the betterment of the poor and needy through out the world. although it would take me quite a long time to list every donation the church has done, I will keep it brief by providing a few bullet points so as not to Bore Jack E to the point of annoyance. we’ve got to try to steer him back to the High road where true happiness lies
* The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides relief and development projects for humanitarian purposes in countries all over the world. Projects operate without regard to the nationality or religion of the recipients.
* Humanitarian service may include emergency response to natural disasters, such as an earthquake or a tsunami, or man-made disasters, such as the effects of war and famine. It may also be part of a longer-term effort to meet serious and more entrenched human needs, such as the need to alleviate disease.
* Within hours of a disaster, the Church works with local government officials to determine what supplies and food are needed. Materials are then immediately sent to the area.
* After urgent needs are met, the Church looks for additional ways to help with the long-term needs of the community. The Church’s approach is to help people become self-reliant by teaching skills and providing resources for a self-sustained life.
* Donations, principally from Church members but also from people around the world, are used to make relief projects possible. One hundred percent of the donations given to the Church’s humanitarian services are used for relief efforts. The Church absorbs its own overhead costs.
* The humanitarian services arm of the Church sponsors five ongoing global projects to help people become more self-reliant. Initiatives include neonatal resuscitation training, clean water projects, wheelchair distribution, vision treatment and measles vaccinations.

Casey Bowen:
You are missing the point.
The point was that the $20,000,000 plus in contributions to Proposition 8 by the Mormon Church and its members could have been put to better use. Period.
Has the Mormon Church and its members done good things? You betcha. Have other churches, religious organizations, non-sectarian and non-profit groups done good things too? Of course. However, good deeds–whether $1 worth or 1 billion dollars worth–cannot purchase an “indulgence” (Google “Martin Luther” and “indulgence” for the historical reference) to forgive or negate bad or wrong actions or bad choices. Each action by a person or organization needs to be considered independently to determine if it is right or appropriate.

Casey Bowen:
Hmmmmm. I think you protest too much on behalf of yourself and your church.
Let’s recap the action so far:
1. I made no reference that the action of contributing to Proposition 8 were “evil”. The only people who referenced “evil” in this thread were the Mormons posting on this blog. What I said that there were better ways to spend the $20,000,000 plus that Mormons and their church spent in support of Proposition 8. Is there concern in the Mormon community regarding the negative reaction to the Mormon support of Proposition 8? It sure looks like it.
2. As for discussion regarding indulgences (the kind Martin Luther opposed in the 1500s), in your prior posts, you were trying to argue that the 1 billion dollars you indicate that Mormons have given to help others so far outweighs the amount that the Mormon Church directly contributed in support of Proposition 8 to render the contributions de minimis (i.e., lacking significance or importance). My response was: “Each action by a person or organization needs to be considered independently to determine if it is right or appropriate.” Stated another way, a poor choice (whatever it may be) can outweigh substantial positive actions in the past.
3. Did I say that I or any other organization should get to approve what donations that you or any other member of your church make? Of course not. Your arguments quickly spin into hyperbole. As outlined above, reasonable people can, will and should look at whether the actions of a person, organization or group are appropriate. That does not however–as you claim–mean that these reasonable people are now dictating to you and the members of your church how you will contribute.

Casey, my lover, you are still here which proves that you do love me.
Okay, now that it out of the way. Gays have gaydars. Those that spend as much time on this blog instead of making hot passionate hetero sex to that gal(?) of yours, is clearly wanting, begging, and groveling to come out.
So I suggest that we go ahead and give Casey his toaster over. Let him play with it a while and see how comfortable with it he is. While most Mormazoids have closet gay sex fast and furious and thus spread HIV to thieir wives/sister/mother and little brothers, we are offering you one free pass at the Dallas Baths so you can chill, take a sauna, get your poon plowed in a safe, yet sort of rough manner, and then spend some time in the tanning booth (PLEASE without the magic underwear). Once that poon hole of yours is loosened up, give Daddy Jack a call, and I will come in a close the deal, leaving you with a gold plated poon tail and you will be the envy of everyone at your compound.
See how loving we can be, when we are not beating the sit out of hundreds of thousands.
Most of the Morms, I have plowed have been power bossy bottoms, but that’s nothing that a new bottle of Rush want take care of.
Your lover of lovers,
Jack E. Jett

Also, read this great editorial from the Salt Lake Tribune about Utah Senate bad boy Chris Buttars’ battle with foot-in-mouth disease continues regarding his comments regarding gays…
“Buttarsaurus; Dinosaur still walking, talking
Tribune Editorial
Less than a year after his racially charged “black baby” comments, Utah Senate bad boy Chris Buttars’ battle with foot-in-mouth disease continues, with no cure in sight.
Same-sex relationships are “abominations,” the West Jordan Republican told an interviewer filming a documentary about the activism surrounding the LDS Church-backed Proposition 8, a gay-marriage ban that was approved by California voters last fall.
The gay-rights movement, Buttars said, is “probably the greatest threat to America.” He likened gay activists to Muslim “radicals.” The lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community, he said, seeks “superiority,” not equality.
We could, with ease, debunk Buttars’ statements. But they’re too ridiculous to warrant a direct response.
And we could join in the call by a gay-rights advocacy group for his resignation. But Buttars won’t resign. His re-election last fall, at least in his mind, vindicates his bigotry.
Or we could urge the Senate to discipline its wayward son. But Senate President Michael Waddoups has already defended Buttars, ridiculously portraying him as the victim of an unscrupulous filmmaker. Besides, Buttars has said equally hateful things in the past without censure.
Or we could demand that the senator apologize. But even if he did, one would have to question his sincerity.
And we could encourage Buttars to change his ways. But that’s like asking him to sing odes to Charles Darwin.
Buttars is what he is: an embarrassment to the state of Utah, and, increasingly, a dinosaur.
When Buttars opens his mouth, it turns heads. It also changes minds, driving some conservatives toward the middle and some moderates to the left. He is, in our opinion, the best spokesperson that Utah’s LGBT community has ever had, galvanizing their righteous efforts to achieve not superiority, but equality.
Those efforts are gaining traction. It’s evident in the opinion polls that show the public favored a package of gay rights bills defeated in the Legislature, everything from protections against discrimination in housing and employment to rights of inheritance and medical visitation. And you can see it at the governor’s mansion, where Gov. Jon Huntsman endorsed civil unions and his public approval ratings didn’t budge. And at LDS Church headquarters, where officials are not opposed to certain rights for same-sex couples.
Buttars will never change. But Utah will. It’s already happening. And the momentum will grow, as small-minded men like Chris Buttars help move things along.
Salt Lake Tribune, February 19, 2009″

Money, Manipulation, and Mormons: How Schubert and Flint Passed Proposition 8
Read a very interesting piece from the two men who lead the “Yes On 8” Campaign.
Here are excerpts:
“Schubert Flint Public Affairs signed onto the Yes on Prop 8 campaign right before the first of what would eventually total 18,000 gay weddings took place after the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. We immediately faced our first important strategic challenge: How to respond to the marriages? We decided to withhold criticism of the same-sex couples who were getting married (after all, they were simply taking advantage of the rights the Court had granted them)…
Over the next three months, sympathetic news articles and television reports appeared daily across the state. Traditional marriage supporters were routinely portrayed as right-wingers holding onto outdated, bigoted ideas. …
We needed to convince voters that gay marriage was not simply “live and let live”—that there would be consequences if gay marriage were to be permanently legalized. … We made one of the key strategic decisions in the campaign, to apply the principles of running a “No” campaign—raising doubts and pointing to potential problems—in seeking a “Yes” vote. As far as we know, this strategic approach has never before been used by a Yes campaign. …
We probed long and hard in countless focus groups and surveys to explore reactions to a variety of consequences our issue experts identifed. The California Supreme Court ruling put gay couples in a protected legal class on the basis of sexual orientation, and then found that gay couples had a fundamental constitutional right to marriage. This decision signifcantly changed the legal landscape. …
We settled on three broad areas where this conflict of rights was most likely to occur: in the area of religious freedom, in the area of individual freedom of expression, and in how this new “fundamental right” would be inculcated in young children through the public schools. …
Our ability to organize a massive volunteer effort through religious denominations gave us a huge advantage…
We built a campaign volunteer structure around both time-honored campaign grassroots tactics of organizing in churches, with a ground-up structure of church captains, precinct captains, zip code supervisors and area directors; and the latest Internet and web-based grassroots tools. …
We held the campaign’s first statewide precinct walk the weekend of Aug. 16. … This intense commitment to distributing materials throughout the state was the result of another key strategic decision. Supporting traditional marriage is not considered to be “politically correct.” We wanted voters who supported our position to know that they were not alone and so we made sure they saw our signs in their neighborhoods and our campaign materials at their church. And if they were part of an ethnic minority, all these were in their native language.
The final phase of the volunteer campaign, GOTV, was really a month-long operation. California allows early voting, starting 29 days ahead of Election Day. From Day 1 of this period, we tracked voters who either appeared on the permanent absentee voter list, or had applied for a vote-by-mail ballot. Those who were identified as persuadable received additional volunteer and direct mail contacts. Definite Yes on 8 voters were reminded to return their ballots as early as possible. The effort paid off…
By this time, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had endorsed Prop 8 and joined the campaign executive committee. Even though the LDS were the last major denomination to join the campaign, their members were immensely helpful in early fundraising, providing much-needed contributions while we were busy organizing Catholic and Evangelical fundraising efforts.
Ultimately, we raised $22 million from July through September with upwards of 40 percent coming from members of the LDS Church. … Our initial television ad began airing on Sept. 29, a week after the other side began its campaign ads… We knew that this initial ad needed to be a home run—and boy was it!
Our campaign’s general counsel had alerted us to a press conference San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom held following the Supreme Court’s marriage decision in May. Like Howard Dean once did, Newsom got increasingly excited the longer he addressed the crowd until, with a smirk on his face and his arms fully extended, he exclaimed, “This door’s wide open now. It’s gonna happen—whether you like it or not.” …
We then segued into potential consequences by featuring a prominent law school professor warning about implications for religious freedom and freedom of expression, and letting voters know that as a result of the court’s decision, gay marriage would be taught in the public schools. The “Whether You Like It or Not” television ad immediately solidified (and excited) our base and captured the attention of voters across the state. We invested heavily in airing this television ad and a companion radio spot. …
The gay community sounded the alarm… This emergency cry for contributions was incredibly effective. Whereas they had raised $15 million in the previous nine months, they raised another $25 million in the ensuing seven weeks of the campaign. But their failure to respond to the “consequences” messages (especially the education message) in a timely fashion ultimately led to their downfall. After blanketing the state with “Whether You Like It or Not,” we focused our message on education. …
The response to our ads from the No on 8 campaign was slow and ineffectual. They enlisted their allies in the education system to claim that we were lying. They held press conferences with education leaders to dismiss our claims. They got newspaper editorial boards to condemn the ads as false. What they never did do, because they couldn’t do, was contest the accuracy of what had happened in Massachusetts.
Finally, three weeks after the Yes on 8 campaign had introduced education as a message, the No on 8 campaign responded with what would be their best ad of the campaign. It featured State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell claiming that Prop 8 had nothing to do with education and that our use of children in our ads was “shameful.” This in-your-face response, much delayed but very effective, foretold the final period of the campaign—it would be largely about education. …
Our strategy had anticipated that the No on 8 campaign would label as “shameful lies” any claim that gay marriage had anything to do with schools, so we went to great lengths to document our ads. … But then we got the break of the election. In what may prove to be the most ill-considered publicity stunt ever mounted in an initiative campaign, a public school in San Francisco took a class of first graders to City Hall to witness the wedding of their lesbian teacher. And they brought along the media.
Now we not only had an example of something that had happened in California (as opposed to might happen), we had video footage to prove it. Within 24 hours of the No side airing their best ad, the one featuring O’Connell claiming that Prop 8 had nothing to do with schools, we were on statewide TV showing bewildered six-year-olds at a lesbian wedding courtesy of their local public school.
There were multiple skirmishes in the press over the education issue during the final days of the campaign. The other side claimed the wedding episode wasn’t really as we described it, while we defended the ad as accurate…
After several days of dueling ads featuring Jack O’Connell and kids at the lesbian wedding, the No side effectively conceded they had lost the education debate. They pulled the O’Connell ad and went in a new direction in the final few days—attempting to equate a Yes vote with racial discrimination. …
We decided to not respond to this line of attack, confident that it would backfire. The basic message that supporters of traditional marriage are bigots, guilty of discrimination, had never worked in focus groups. …
As the campaign headed into the final days, we launched a “Google surge.” We spent more than a half-million dollars to place ads on every single website that had advertising controlled by Google. Whenever anyone in California went online, they saw one of our ads in the final two days of the election. …”
Try to ignore Schubert and Flint’s typically nasty smugness as you read the rest — but do read the rest.

Rolly: Hurtful comments based on ignorance can run both ways
Paul Rolly
When Mitt Romney ran for president last year, his Mormon religion became a lightning rod for critics from both the left and the right who characterized the LDS Church as an anti-Christian cult and a threat to the fabric of America.
Florida evangelist Bill Keller claimed a vote for Romney “is a vote for Satan.” Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, told journalists at the Religion Newswriters Association annual meeting that Romney was not a Christian, but a member of a cult. “I believe we should always support a Christian over a non-Christian,” he said.
Jacob Weisberg of the online magazine Slate wrote that he “wouldn’t vote for someone who truly believed in the founding whoppers of Mormonism.”
Religion writer Ken Woodward, in a New York Times op-ed piece, said that Romney had to publicly explain why Mormons are so clannish and secretive, and why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has “the soul of a corporation.”
Mike Huckabee, a Romney opponent for the Republican nomination, had the press scrambling to explain arcane theological differences when, with a smirk, he asked a New York Times reporter if Mormons believed that Jesus and Satan were brothers.
To Mormons, Huckabee, a Southern Baptist pastor whose church has labeled Mormonism a non-Christian cult, was taking an element of the church’s theology out of context to mislead the public into thinking Mormons are devil worshippers.
Huckabee’s remarks prompted several of my Republican acquaintances to tell me that if Huckabee ended up on the GOP ticket, for president or vice president, they would vote for the Democrat. They said they were hurt by anti-Mormon rhetoric that betrayed an ignorance of what their religion is all about. Throughout the campaign, Republican Mormons in Utah complained about vicious remarks from people who knew nothing about the LDS community.
All of the above illustrates why it’s a shame that many of these same acquaintances who complained of being victimized by ignorant zealots are saying now that they agree with many of the hateful comments that state Sen. Chris Buttars made the other day about gays and lesbians.
Like the anti-Mormons, Buttars, in his ignorance, was condemning a community he knows little about with the invective of a political and religious zealot. The gay-rights movement, he said, is “probably the greatest threat to America,” gay activists are akin to Muslim radicals and same-sex relationships are “abominations.”
The LDS Church permits gay members full fellowship if they remain celibate. The church and its members strongly supported California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage, but the church said its “position has always been to engage in civil and respectful dialogue on this issue. Senator Buttars does not speak for the church.”
Gays and Mormons, then, have this in common: Both have been demonized by a large swath of folks who have no understanding of who and what they are. Unfortunately, many Mormons who were hurt by the cruel rhetoric aimed at their church last year apparently don’t get that they are doing the same to a community of people that far outnumbers Mormons in this country.
I wrote last week about Evan Twede and Gary Watts, who once shared the beliefs that Buttars espouses but since have broken with the LDS Church and the Republican Party over gay rights.
Twede and Watts both have children who are gay and that, they said, is what opened their eyes to the humanity of the people they formerly thought were inhuman.
The Salt Lake Tribune, Posted: 02/28/200

Another interesting column about the unintended consequences of Proposition 8….
Are ceremonies so sacred, or are Mormons insecure?

By Robert Kirby, Tribune Columnist
A bunch of us were in Bammer’s garage when we learned that an upcoming “Big Love” episode would feature elements of the LDS temple ceremony. His only wife came out and read it to us from the newspaper.
She showed us the photo the newspaper had published of an actress dressed in Mormon temple clothing. After a withering look at the only Tribune employee present, she went back inside.
Because everyone in the garage was “go-to-church” Mormon, the reaction was interesting. It ranged from a simmering annoyance to nuclear outrage. How could television presume to display something Mormons consider so sacred that even a lot of Mormons aren’t allowed see it?
Me, I thought, “Wow, now I know exactly how Catholics felt when the movie ‘Disco Demons IV’ showed a priest performing a jive exorcism on a possessed mirror ball.”
OK, I didn’t really think that until just now. At the time I was too busy actually wondering what had taken Hollywood so long. It’s not like what happens in the temple is a secret. You can find it on the Internet.
I’m not bothered by “Big Love’s” perceived insensitivity. Probably because I don’t need HBO’s respect or validation for what I consider sacred. Furthermore, I totally get the interest.
Mormons are, frankly, a big draw right now thanks to fundamentalist polygamy, Proposition 8, liquor laws and “Big Love.” So it’s only natural that people are going to be curious.
Also, this is America in the Information Age. Telling people something is sacred/secret only makes them more curious. Insist that it’s none of their business and they’ll find a way to prove it is.
Still, it raises the question about how far other people can poke around in what you consider sacred before you have a right to get mad. Even more to the point is how much they should care when you do.
Should the media refrain from exploring anything that might offend a religious group? We kicked the crap out of the FLDS and everyone (except the FLDS) seemed to think it was fascinating. Hollywood has featured American Indian rituals and even displayed their mummified dead. Meanwhile, Jews don’t have a secret left.
What can Hollywood legitimately portray regarding Mormon ritual? I wouldn’t ask Mormons. Just about everything is “sacred” to us if it isn’t portrayed in a utterly positive light. When Richard Dutcher’s film “Brigham City” showed the sacrament being passed in an LDS ward, he got lots of angry responses from Mormons.
It seems a bit hypocritical to behave like this and then presume you’re an unbiased anthropologist when examining the inner workings of other faiths the media routinely pry into.
What viewers of these programs might regard as quaint, silly, delusional or even potentially dangerous is considered by those groups to be utterly sacred.
Afterward we feel enlightened and perhaps even a bit superior to such silly behavior. Meanwhile, they feel violated.
Maybe that’s what bothers Mormons the most: That the rest of the world will peek inside the temple and see us exactly the way we see them.
Salt Lake Tribune, March 13, 2009

An interesting article from the Bay Area Report analyzing the Catholic Church’s involvement with Proposition 8 — including their alliance with other groups (including the Mormons):
“It appears that several factors were at work in Prop 8’s passage: the alliance between the financial contributions of the Mormon and Catholic churches, as well as evangelical James Dobson benefactor Howard Ahmanson and the pastoral messages of California’s Catholic bishops and priests to perhaps as many as one-third of the state’s voters the Sunday before the election.”
The full article is below:
Catholic bishops revealed as key in marriage battle

by Dan Aiello

From California to Maine, Catholic bishops are increasingly taking on public roles on behalf of what LGBT activists call a “politicized” U.S. Catholic Church. Aiding the faith leaders in their campaign against same-sex marriage is the Knights of Columbus, a tax-exempt fraternal beneficiary society known as the church’s “strong right arm.”
And nowhere is the full impact of the Knights of Columbus’ efforts felt than in the fight against awarding same-sex couples marriage rights.
In what turned out to be the largest total contribution from a single organization, $1.4 million of the Yes on 8 campaign’s coffers came from the tax-exempt Knights of Columbus, based in New Haven, Connecticut. The Catholic Church operates its legislative efforts through the little understood entity, of which nearly all Catholic bishops and priests are members.
But the church’s involvement in repealing same-sex marriage rights in California has been largely obscured by the intense public and media attention Mormon leaders received last year for their efforts to pass Proposition 8. After voters passed the anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendment in November, LGBT protesters rallied outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ temples throughout the state rather than Catholic churches.
Campaign finance reports indicate that while California’s Conference of Catholic Bishops, as an organization, did not contribute to Prop 8, money did come nationally from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which contributed $200,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. The minuscule amount belies the fact that Catholic officials played just as a substantial role as their Mormon counterparts in the anti-gay campaign.
The executive director of Dignity USA, an organization for LGBT Catholics, questioned why the church was working against same-sex marriage.
“The core of our faith is love,” Marianne Duddy-Burke told the Bay Area Reporter. “When you start from the point that wherever there is love there is God, for the bishops of the church to be working so hard against some love, forcing our relationships to face challenges and obstacles that other kinds of love don’t face, that is totally opposite to what we believe Jesus Christ came to live.”
Harry Knox, the religion and faith program director for the Human Rights Campaign, said the community must engage in dialogue with representatives from the Knights of Columbus.
“The Knights of Columbus do a great deal of good in the name of Jesus Christ, but in this particular case, they were foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression,” Knox told the B.A.R. , referring to its role in the Prop 8 campaign.
Knox noted that the Knights of Columbus “followed discredited leaders,” including bishops and Pope Benedict XVI. “A pope who literally today said condoms don’t help in control of AIDS,” Knox said Tuesday, shortly after the pope’s comments were released.
Catholic officials, however, have deliberately cloaked their actions in opposing marriage equality from public view.
Case in point, San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, who quietly reached out last summer to Mormon leaders he had met while stationed in Salt Lake City to ask them to become involved in the Prop 8 campaign. It wasn’t until after the election that the archbishop’s letter surfaced.
On November 9 the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Niederauer’s June correspondence “drew in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and proved to be a critical move in building a multi-religious coalition.”
One result of Niederauer’s overtures to Mormon leaders – as much as 70 percent of contributions to Prop 8 were from Mormons, claim marriage equality activists. San Francisco Archdiocese spokesman Maurice Healy denies there is any connection between the Mormon money and his boss’ letter.
“The archbishop never has contended that he was responsible for Mormon involvement in the Prop 8 campaign,” Healy wrote in an e-mail to the B.A.R. “He contacted and encouraged the LDS Church leaders to become involved in the Prop 8 campaign – and that information was clearly and openly explained in his December 5 column.”
In the pastoral message last December, Niederauer wrote that he invited the Mormon Church to participate at the bequest of the California Catholic Conference of Bishops.
“I was asked to contact leaders of the LDS Church whom I had come to know during my 11 years as bishop of Salt Lake City, to ask them to cooperate again, in this election cycle,” read Niederauer’s message.
At the same time, the archbishop continued to downplay his churches’ involvement in the anti-gay campaign, stating that the San Francisco archdiocese’s monetary contribution in support of the initiative was nominal. While the archbishop’s assertion was correct, it belied the significant role, not of Catholics in general, but of Catholic organizations, in eliminating marriage rights for California’s same-sex couples.
California Conference of Catholic Bishops spokeswoman Carol Hogan also downplayed the significance of the decision to invite the Mormons to become involved in the Prop 8 fight.
“They were involved with Prop 22 [in 2000] so I don’t think we were responsible for their involvement, but what did the archbishop say? I’m not going to contradict him. If he said, whatever he said, that’s obviously the truth,” she said.

Role and effect

No on Prop 8 campaign manager Steve Smith believes Niederauer and the other Catholic bishops’ real influence in Prop 8’s passage lay more in the pastoral messages exhorted from pulpits within Catholic churches than from Niederauer’s experience in Utah, where he befriended Mormon leaders.
“I think they had significant impact from the pulpit, but I doubt broader impacts than that,” Smith told the B.A.R.
But Smith might be wrong.
Despite the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ messages calling for reconciliation with gay Catholics, it has continued to fight efforts to award rights to same-sex couples. On January 19, the conference’s attorney, James F. Sweeney, submitted an amicus brief to the state Supreme Court on behalf of the U.S. Catholic Church reasoning Prop 8 is valid and asking the court to uphold the amendment.
And, while both Niederauer and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony called for reconciliation with the LGBT community and gay Catholics following passage of Prop 8, bishops in Hawaii, New Mexico, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maine, Rhode Island, and other states continued to franchise a “pastoral message” – too similar to be coincidental – opposing not only same-sex marriage, but civil unions and domestic partnerships.
The lesbian-oriented Web site, https://www.lezgetreal.com, called the uniform message a change in church position handed down “straight from the Vatican and the pope himself,” in an article explaining how the Catholic Church in New Mexico was pivotal in killing the state’s domestic partnership bill SB 12 on February 25. The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper also claimed “Catholic bishops were instrumental” in killing the domestic partner bill.
It appears that several factors were at work in Prop 8’s passage: the alliance between the financial contributions of the Mormon and Catholic churches, as well as evangelical James Dobson benefactor Howard Ahmanson and the pastoral messages of California’s Catholic bishops and priests to perhaps as many as one-third of the state’s voters the Sunday before the election.
Duddy-Burke was critical of bishops’ actions just days prior to the election.
“The Catholic faith is the single largest denomination in the country, nearly 24 percent,” she noted. “The bishops have enormous resources at their disposal. They had fliers at every parish and messages from every pulpit in the state the Sunday before the election. They also worked really hard to silence voices, like Father Geoffrey Farrow, who came out [as gay] in opposition to Prop 8. He not only lost his parish, he lost his candidacy for another position.”
The Catholic and Mormon churches have built an effective alliance that has been present in all 31 state battles, leaders noted, and will no doubt be present in any future campaign.
A key component of the Catholic Church’s strategy has been the Knights of Columbus.

Obscure Catholic group
On its Web site the group proclaims itself as “the strong right arm of the Catholic Church.”
To LGBT activist Jerry Sloan, the group is “an obscure and uniquely tax-exempt insurance company acting under the guise of a fraternal order.”
Classified by a 19th century IRS code as a 501(c)8, the fraternal beneficiary society is able to operate as a tax-exempt organization providing “$70 billion in force” worth of life insurance to its members, according to Patrick Korten, vice president of communications and past grand knight of the organization.
According to the IRS Web site, a 501(c)8 is unlike other 501(c) nonprofit organizations. It is not required to abide by the non-discrimination clause required by Congress for other nonprofits.
Rather, one IRS qualifier for the tax-exempt code states, “membership must be limited.” Like the priesthood, the Knights of Columbus membership is restricted to Catholic men. Among those men are “almost every, if not all, bishops and most priests,” explained Korten.
Besides providing life insurance to members, Korten told the B.A.R. that the purpose of the organization is to promote and lobby for the social issues important to the Catholic Church, including opposition to stem cell research, abortion, gay rights, and assisted suicide.
“We’re outside the church but very supportive of the church,” he said, using Prop 8 as an example. “We were certainly in touch with the bishops of California throughout the campaign.”
Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and director of the organization’s national marriage project, told the B.A.R., “the heart of the matter is that many Americans misunderstand the rules of political contributions by religious groups, including many in our own community, who are appalled when they see these large faith-based organizations wield so much influence in the political process.”
Among the IRS rules for tax-exempt organizations, religious organizations cannot endorse specific candidates and their support of initiatives, referendums, and legislation must not constitute “a significant percentage” of the organization’s overall budget, according to the IRS Web site. However, “a 501(c)(8) may engage in an unlimited amount of lobbying activities, provided that the lobbying is related to the organization’s exempt purpose,” wrote one IRS official, when contacted by the B.A.R.
The Knights of Columbus’ $1.4 million contribution to Prop 8 falls well short of qualifying as a significant percentage of its multi-million dollar budget.
“If it’s a large national organization with a large budget then it’s probably going to be allowed large political expenditures,” explained Pizer. “When we’re talking about state elections, these large organizations can exert a tremendous amount of political influence.”
“In most cases, it’s not unlawful, it’s just appalling,” Pizer added. “To many of us, it seems particularly appalling when these large religious organizations use that disproportionate power to impose their religious views on everybody else. I think some people find it particularly disturbing to see wealth and political power used by religions that themselves were victims of discrimination. That’s a matter of disturbing irony, but not legality.”
The Knights of Columbus’ efforts to prevent same-sex couples from marrying or enjoying the benefits of civil unions is based upon the church belief that there should be no same-sex couples, no practicing homosexuals, no family models other than the ideal, no sex other than for procreation, and no marriage that does not result in procreation – evidenced in 1996 when the Vatican forbade a marriage involving a paraplegic man because intercourse was not possible for the couple.
In addition to the Knights of Columbus’ large contribution, many local and state levels of the organization made contributions to Prop 8 that totaled in the tens of thousands of dollars. But through the creation of its special fund, the Knights of Columbus allowed its members to contribute while avoiding the state’s reporting requirements.
Korten explained that the contribution to Prop 8 – three donations totaling $1.4 million – came from “a special culture of life fund we established,” which he claimed was funded “mostly” by members. Korten did not provide the amount his organization contributed, the names of the contributors to the fund, or the amounts contributed by individuals to the fund.
But Korten was proud of the influence of the Knights of Columbus in the outcomes of the same-sex ballot battles throughout the country.
“I think it is fair to say the Knights of Columbus have been involved in virtually every one of the 31 states that have had referendums,” on same-sex marriage, Korten said.
Korten also said the organization opposes civil unions.
“We support the church on that,” Korten said. “And quite simply because the [heterosexual] family is the most important fundamental unit of society. A mother and a father is unquestionably the ideal. The purpose of the church is to provide the optimal environment in the begetting, raising, and education of children.”
Being homosexual is not the sin, explained Korten, but any homosexual act, and by nature same-sex couples imply the commission of those acts, is sinful.
“As you know, there is absolutely nothing inherently sinful about having a same-sex attraction, but the church also teaches that behavior is what you are held accountable for,” Korten said.
Pizer noted that protection from religion is important.
“This is a diverse, pluralistic society,” she said. “Protection from religion is just as important as protection of religion. These religious institutions are using fear to impose their dogma on society.”
Pizer said that what is often lost in the debate is that many in the LGBT community come from religious families and are practicing Christians who are poorly served by religious leaders.
“We have turned a corner in our movement and I think it’s appropriate for us at this point to say that we are good people. We have loving family relationships, we contribute to society. We are good, moral people,” Pizer said. “And it’s wrong for religious leaders to condemn us and to incite bigotry against us. Those who demonize us are fear mongering and its wrong and they should stop.”
She added that in states where there are laws to protect LGBTs in employment, housing, and families, people should speak up whenever possible “against the defamatory statements about [the LGBT community] that are false and damaging.”
Pizer also said that the LGBT community must bring forth religious leaders who will represent compassionate values of faith and the true representation of the LGBT community “as the loving and just – and for many – religious people we are.”
Catholic Church vs. Catholic voters
In a San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece, Field poll director Mark DiCamillo indicated that the Sunday before the November election – where religious leaders of several faiths called for support of Prop 8 – may have been a determining factor in the Tuesday election outcome.
Some LGBT leaders agreed with that assessment.
“There’s always something to be said about having an election only two days after Sunday services,” said Andrea Shorter, who was just hired by Equality California to help strengthen coalitions, including in the faith community. “I think it’s something that we’ve been aware of and it’s something that we have to consider in any strategy.”
“Certainly we’re moving forward with the understanding that the Catholic collective, not only singularly as in the Knights of Columbus, but collectively, they’re clearly well resourced and that’s something that we have to work against,” added Shorter. “But let’s be very careful that we recognize that people of faith include many in the LGBT community. Let’s also not forget we’re only a few points away from winning. The numbers are moving our way and I think that people of faith are among those.”
According to the Field poll, Catholics currently comprise 25 percent of registered California voters, a number that is increasing along with the Latino population, which is predominantly Catholic. Half of California’s Catholics are Latino, according to the survey.
Exit polls conducted November 4 indicated Catholic votes were as much as 30 percent of the total number of votes cast, and of that, one third of total votes or 64 percent supported Prop 8, while 36 percent opposed it.
Shorter said that exit polls can be skewed when non-practicing Catholics, for example, are asked religious affiliation.
“But, no matter what the numbers are, it’s clear that we need to have a refined strategy to reach out to the Latino communities as well as reaching out to the other communities of color,” she said.
Shorter told the B.A.R. that any strategy must include reaching out to Catholics as well.
Calls to Father Joe Healy at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro were not returned, but the B.A.R. did speak to a Catholic priest in Modesto, Father Joseph Illo, about his Sunday service prior to the election. Illo said that he “absolutely supported” Prop 8, and his parish had worked to pass it, but he also told his parishioners if they voted for Barack Obama or Congressman Dennis Cardoza (D-California), both pro-choice candidates, they should go to confession for the sin of their vote. He did not ask parishioners to do the same for Prop 8.
“Some issues are weightier than others,” he said. Supporting the war and supporting Prop 8 were not as big an issue as supporting pro-choice candidates, he explained.
Bay Area Reporter, March 19, 2009
See https://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=3805

Walsh: LDS elders showed seasoned political savvy on California’s Prop. 8
Rebecca Walsh
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 03/25/2009 07:23:45 PM MDT
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
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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.