We Confess: The Mormons Did It

A big ol' honk out to Rex Wockner, dean of gay journalists, for this update on his blog:

The journalist in me has been uncomfortable for days with the routine assertions that Mormons bankrolled the ubiquitous TV ads that convinced California voters to amend their constitution to re-ban same sex marriage. "How exactly do you prove that?" the trained news reporter in me kept asking.

Well, wonder no more. The folks who gave us Prop 8 admit it. From yesterday's New York Times: "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."

As Wockner notes, only 2 percent of California's population is Mormon. And your Head Trucker believes the gay population has got to be at least two or three times bigger than that.

Other very interesting points from the NYT article , "Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage":

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.” . . .

[Last June,] 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.” . . .

But now that the horse hockey has hit the fan, the article concludes,

[T]he 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 [millionaire grandson of a former LDS church president] 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.”

Yeah, and now we've seen your fruit, buddy . . . and it's left a helluva bad taste in our mouths.

What I say: Leave individuals alone; it's a free fucking country, you can believe what you want. I don't care who contributed to what. Like another big ol' queen, Elizabeth I, said during the religious upheavals of her reign, "I do not wish to open a window into men's souls." And none of us truly knows what is in someone else's heart.

But nobody should be harassed, intimidated, or lose their job for their private beliefs. Nobody. Guys, take just a second and turn it around in your mind: I'm living in homophobic small town Texas. I can be fired at any moment simply for being gay, you know? There is no law whatsoever against that in Texas. It sucks, big time.

But that's not right, and you wouldn't want that for yourself or anyone you love; and every one of us has loved ones who aren't quite on the right side of this issue, you know that. So leave individuals alone. The Golden Rule still applies, and it cuts both ways, folks. Two wrongs don't make a right, Mama always said.

Instead, it's the homophobic, intolerant, persecuting organizations - including churches - that deserve the full brunt of our peaceful protests and righteous anger.

So you church leaders want to play in the public political arena, boys? (And the vast majority of homophobic religious leaders are indeed males.) Okay, then you have to deal with the blowback, you can't hide behind the sanctimonious we-are-a-church screen anymore. Oh no. Not when you are stripping Americans of their civil rights. It just don't work that way.

(Screen shot at top from the Salt Lake Tribune video on protests at LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City.)