My friend Fred Karger of the organization Californians Against Hate has just released official, internal "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (aka The Mormon Church) documents that detail the Church’s creation of an covert "front group" in Hawaii to fight same-sex marriage 10 years ago. Fred also shows that the Mormon church did the same thing in California during last Fall's Proposition 8 campaign, funneling funds into the group in direct violation of California campaign laws.
Fred gave an interview on Air America last evening and today has filed a revised complaint with Chairman Ross Johnson of California's Fair Political Practices Commission alleging and documenting the anti-Proposition 8 activities of the Mormon church that were in direct violation of California campaign laws.
The revised complaint can be read here on the Fred's new website:Mormongate
You can also read the highly incriminating copies of the internal church documents that show the extent of the Mormon Church's illegal involvement in Hawaii's Gay Marriage fight here: Mormongate Documents
Take a look at this one!:
Here are a few key passages from the complaint:
Re: Hawaii
They hired lobbyists, consultants, campaign managers, attorneys and had one very high ranking Mormon on the Board, Jack Hoag, the recently retired Chairman of the Church-owned First Hawaiian Bank. They were able to get money into Hawaii’s Future Today (HFT) that would go unreported (documents attached to this complaint and on our web site: Mormongate.com). These actions hid their direct involvement while creating a coalition to lead the effort.
Re: California
The Mormon Church appears to have done the identical thing in California 12 years later. The Church established the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in the summer of 2007 for the sole purpose of qualifying and passing Proposition 8.
The Mormon Church never filed a Major Donor report or an Independent Expenditure report with the California Secretary of State’s office for the period from July 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007 and the period from January 1, 2008 to June 30, 2008. If they, in fact, were active in the qualification of Proposition 8 either through NOM or directly, they would have needed to file. Since these reports were not filed, the public could have been deceived by not knowing the full extent of the Mormon Church’s involvement in the qualification and passage of Proposition 8.
This is ground-breaking research (congratulations Fred!) that calls into question larger issues such as the separation of church and state. If you are seriously interested in this issue, I hope you'll follow the links above to see how the Mormans ran their covert campaign and collaborated with both the Catholic Church and other religious organizations (including Dobson's notorious "Focus on the Family") to deny gay Americans their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Spread the word. The Mormon Church spreads hate.
Mormongate.com