Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage

More and more information continues to leak out and reveal just how deeply the Mormon Church was involved in the passage of Proposition 8. Hopefully, in time it will be come clear that the Mormon Church crossed the line and should lose its tax-exempt status. The New York Times is reporting on the crucial part the official Mormon Church played in stripping gay and lesbian Californians of the right to vote. Despite what the pansy ass nay sayers are whining, I believe it is very important that the Mormon Church and its mindless followers suffer severe adverse consequences. We need to make sure the drivel being put out by the Mormon leadership about democracy ends up in the toilet where it belongs. These folks want a theocracy, not a democracy. In time, I hope that it will be Mormons, not gays, who are looked at as out of the mainstream. Here are highlights from the NYT story (note the portion about the intentionally deceptive ads):

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Less than two weeks before Election Day, the chief strategist behind a ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California called an emergency meeting here. . . . The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a sharp-elbowed advertising campaign, and support for the measure was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote.

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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.

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First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign . . . . Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.

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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. . . . . 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.

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The overall sense of the voters in the beginning of the campaign, Mr. Schubert said, was “Who cares? I’m not gay.” To counter that, advertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little explanation.

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[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.