Like lots of you, I've been thrilled and amazed by the rapid movement in the direction of marriage equality in the last year. State after state moving through legislation or ballot measures to recognize gay unions as fully equal. There's an interesting and possibly important part of the story that I have not seen much discussed.
A couple days ago, I stumbled onto this piece on Mother Jones site. It posits that one of the main reasons that things have moved so very fast on marriage equality in the last year or so is that the Mormon Church has largely abandoned its former role as a main driver of the reactionary forces on the issue. It seems there may well be something going on that is an important subplot to the story of the rapid pace of change on marriage equality. Here's a small sample:
The church, in fact, had been a crucial (if not always visible) player since the 1990s, when it helped fend off efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Hawaii and California. As far back as 1996, high-ranking LDS officials were coordinating behind the scenes and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to orchestrate what became the first state-level vote to ban gay marriage in Hawaii. Top church officials were also heavily involved in the creation of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the primary player over the last decade in the fight to outlaw gay unions.
But after the Mormon involvement in Prop. 8 was fully exposed, the backlash was severe—and apparently unexpected. The church became a target for public protests, and lost a considerable number of members who were unhappy with its involvement in a political issue that had caused individual LDS families a lot of grief. In the campaign's aftermath, a top church leader even apologized to gay church members for the pain they'd suffered.
snip
That said, the church seems to have returned to focusing on homosexuality as a personal issue rather than a political one. After years of working behind the scenes, hiring lobbyists, and mobilizing its members to fight state referendums sympathetic to same-sex marriage, it appears to have simply dropped the rope. "In the other four states last year that had marriage, you didn't see the Mormon church anywhere," says Kevin Nix, spokesman for the LGBT advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign.
I happen to know someone who is the rather unusual mix of a devout - and lifelong - Mormon with very left politics - a veritable Mormon socialist. I sent him a link to the article to see what he thought. He had some interesting comments.
Here are some excerpts from my friend's comments on the article and our ongoing discussion of it. To me, they indicate maybe even bigger movement from the Mormon hierarchy than the article might indicate.
I hadn't seen this one. Thanks for sending it to me. It's a good article but I don't think this is a temporary cease fire as the article said at the end. I think the Church has suffered so much negative p.r. and internal strife that it has simply decided to leave the fight forever. As an "insider" I can tell you, something really big has happened; there's been a real shift in attitude at "the top." There's still a long way to go on this issue, but oh my gosh, the change is dramatic for Mormons. Don't misunderstand, there's a real struggle going on internally and we might begin to see disaffection and people leaving from "the right," but like I said, there have been big changes and it's astounding how quickly they've occurred. The Church has even instituted an officially approved Church website to talk about all this called mormonsandgays.org.
snip.
While many might look at this and say, "there's still a lot of change that needs to occur," (and I would be one of them), there is at the same time, an amazing amount of change represented on the website. First is the clear message that sexual orientation is NOT a matter of choice. That change is huge. All my life I was told this WAS a matter of choice and that those "afflicted" with the so-called "sin of homosexuality" (which they no longer use), could "get help" and change. The other change demonstrated by the website is that there is clearly an effort to reach out to the LGBT community and invite them into the Church when historically that never would have been even contemplated. Historically members were excommunicated for BEING gay and now, this is no longer pursued and in fact, there are openly gay members serving in positions of leadership; e.g., Mitch Mayne, who has his own website, in a congregation in San Francisco. I'm greatly encouraged by this rapid change and hope and pray the positive changes will continue.
In my answer to him, I said this:
Your comments are fascinating. I'm sure the leadership haven't changed their beliefs, but it does seem like they may have come to the realization that this particular fight doesn't contribute to their core mission and actually gets in the way of it. Like "Our mission is to grow and maintain a church - does this fight help that or hurt it?".
And here is a portion of his answer to that:
Yeah, guys like me, from the inside, were screaming things like, "w/war, poverty, corporate abuses, etc., THIS is the big thing God wants us to worry about? Really?" I think there are many factors for this change. And yes, I would agree many leaders have not changed their views, but I do believe many of the younger ones are more realistic and some have even changed their views. My oldest daughter .... is close friends w/the grandson of one of the most prominent leaders, whom shall remain nameless for now. The grandson is gay. From what my daughter tells me, there are several examples like this among the hierarchy and I think some of them are just tired of the "damn them to hell" approach. The aforementioned leader loves his grandson very much and has had to confront the glaring contradictions of the Church's teachings on this subject. I believe he is responsible in large part, for the elimination of the doctrine "sexual orientation is a matter of choice."
So obviously, this is just one piece of a vast societal realignment around the issue of gays and marriage. But, when this story is told by the historians, I think it's possible it may turn out to be an important part of how things have moved so fast in so short a time on the legislative front: that one of the worst reactionary forces simply chose to step off the field of battle.