Proposition 8 Really a Loss for Mormons?

Author Frank Schaeffer at the Huffington Post has a piece that raises the argument that by undertaking a high profile role in the Proposition 8 battle, the Mormon Church has in reality suffered what will be a long term loss. Why, because with all the increased scrutiny the Mormon faith is receiving the plentiful "weirdness" of the Mormon religion will come out - as is already happening - and overall negative views of the denomination will increase. As I have said before, I am originally from a part of New York State close to where Joseph Smith allegedly had his revelation and to this day, Smith is regarded by most locals as a serious whack job - hence why he left the area. Familiarity often breeds contempt and hopefully the Mormon Church reaps some scrutiny that will convince the broader public that Mormons are NOT mainstream whatsoever. Such a result would in my view be Divine justice indeed. Here are some column highlights:

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The recent confrontation between the Mormon Church and the gay community bodes ill for Mormonism. It seems that the Mormons have begun to believe their own propaganda when it comes to seeing themselves adds "just another" evangelical group. They aren't. The evangelicals may be plenty crazy, as they have manifested themselves to be through the late great Religious Right (that is now crashing in flames following the Obama victory), but the Mormons are exponentially crazier when it comes to marriage, and gender roles.

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[T]o paraphrase the famous line from Animal Farm; some religions are weirder than others, especially when it comes to beliefs about marriage, sex and gender. One of the strangest is the Mormons.

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Here is just two of many quaint bits of Mormon "teaching" ( this first on race is no longer the official position of the church, but still...): "And if any man mingles his seed with the seed of Cane [i.e black people] the only way he could get rid of it or have salvation would be to come forward & have his head cut off & spill his blood upon the ground. It would also take the life of his Children."(Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 1852, Brigham Young's address before the legislative assembly of the Territory of Utah upon slavery)

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"Nearly all the great discoveries of man in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet... I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to be a greater age than we do, that they lived generally to near the age of 1000 years. He described the men as averaging near six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style. In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet, in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants of the sea -- to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can now behold with your eyes."(Oliver B. Huntington, Young Woman's Journal, Vol. 3, p. 263-264)

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So, okay, enough already of the "seed of Cain," moon men, on to marriage, California's Proposition 8 and the Mormons... Why pick on gay people? Here's my theory: The Mormons have assiduously pursued a policy of trying to be accepted as just one more of the thousands of Protestant splinter groups that, taken together, are often generically called "Christians" as a catchall for the born-again amongst us. That is why the Mormons jumped into this debate: make friends with the evangelical Religious Right and the more right wing Roman Catholics by joining the neighborhood Church Lady gang to beat up the gay guy.

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What is the sexual/marriage/gender teaching of the Mormons who are raising money to stop two men or women from marrying. Here's a taste: A Mormon belief is that men resurrect their wives. The Mormon man becomes a god on some uninhabited planet. As the god of his own world he will resurrect those wives who were obedient to him. They then become the goddesses of his planet.

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With their support for Proposition 8 the Mormons have more or less done what someone might do who -- in an incredibly dumb moment -- decides to call up the local IRS office and start asking the kind of questions that inevitably leads to getting audited. There is an old phrase that the Mormon leaders who launched their anti-gay crusade might have paid attention to: "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."