Why the Mormon Church Deserves Gay Wrath

I have done a number of posts that have focused on the extraordinary lengths that were gone to by the leadership of the Mormon Church and its homophobic followers in the quest to strip gays of civil legal rights. Now, of course, the Mormon Church is whining and spilling disingenuous crocodile tears over those "terrible mean gays" who have targeted the Mormon Church for retribution in the wake of Proposition 8. One of the best explanations I have seen as to why the Mormons deserve special treatment in terms of boycotts and other actions is one that Andrew Sullivan posted today. Here are some highlights from Andrew's excellent post:

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Religious services and practices should be scrupulously respected. But when a church, like the Mormon church, makes a concerted effort to enter the public square and strip a small minority of basic civil rights, it is simply preposterous for them then to argue that the Mormon church cannot be criticized and protested because they are a religion. . . . . I respect their right to freedom of conscience and religion. In fact, it is one of my strongest convictions. But when they use their money and power to target my family, to break it up, to demean it and marginalize it, to strip me and my husband of our civil rights, then they have started a war. And I am not a pacifist.

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I should add that I dated a Mormon man for a few months a while back. What he told me about the LDS church's psychological warfare on their gay members, the brutality and viciousness and intolerance with which they attack and hound and police the gay children of Mormon families, would make anyone shudder.

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The Mormons are not unique in this persecution of their own gay folk. My own church has recently capitulated to bigotry in its own hiring practices, even as the Vatican is run by so many psychologically scarred gay men. But the Mormons are particularly vicious homophobes. Gay people are rendered invisible, their personhood erased in this church. The cruelty the Mormon church inflicts on its gay members is matched only by the Mormons' centuries-long demonization and hatred of black people. That African-Americans would seek common cause with a church that only recently still believed they were the product of Satan shows how profound homophobia can be.

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And what we have just witnessed is a trial run for much larger ambitions. If we don't resist this now, we will not be able to resist it later.

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I agree with Andrew completely. The Mormon Church must learn that involvement in politics in order to deprive minorities of CIVIL legal rights will have strong adverse consequences and gay Americans and their allies need to inflict as much financial pain and social ostracizing upon the Mormon Church and its members as possible. Ditto for the gay-hating, homophobic Christianists.