I just read the announcement in the New York Times—the Mormons and Prop 8 got married!
Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage
Not really married, just pretend-married...
But who will be able to think about Mormons now without thinking about gay marriage? I sure won't!
Lots of ugly new revelations, but here's the paragraph which stuck out for me personally:
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.
So 80-90% of the people going door to door were Mormons?
I don't have the energy to describe the trauma of people coming on to my property, ringing my doorbell, and attempting to convince me to vote away my own rights. (That the Yes-on-8 campaign succeeded by broadcasting monstrous lies about children and teachers continues to offend me.)
To all you Mormons out there reading this: I hope it never happens to you.
As LDS Church members, you will NEVER know what discrimination feels like — no matter how much you cultivate a sense of injured innocence — until someone does come to your door, and to your neighbor's door, petitioning to take away your rights. And succeeding.
The LDS Church, we find out, was careful not to break the more obvious IRS laws:
Leaders were also acutely conscious of not crossing the line from being a church-based volunteer effort to an actual political organization.
"No work will take place at the church, including no meeting there to hand out precinct walking assignments so as to not even give the appearance of politicking at the church," one of the documents said.
Yeah, right. But it's obvious they crossed the line, if they had to set up rules like this about appearances... And get this:
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.
Actually more like 70%, according to some estimates... But hey, 50%? 70%? The point is that Mormons made all the difference. So who's counting? The Mormons own Prop 8.
I hear many California Mormons are complaining about informal boycotts and lost business. As if anyone had to persuade me to stop patronizing my local Mormon-owned, Yes-on-8 donating market...
(Frankly, I simply can't stomach the idea of shopping there again, and many if not most of my friends feel the same way. So all you business-owners understand, it's not a boycott, really—it's revulsion.)
Even with the Mormons’ contributions and the strong support of other religious groups, Proposition 8 strategists said they had taken pains to distance themselves from what Mr. Flint called "more extreme elements" opposed to rights for gay men and lesbians.
The LDS Church didn't ally themselves with the "more extreme" elements? the clear implication is that they didn't need to, the LDS Church being "extreme" enough.
Read the article and decide for yourself.
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UPDATE Nov. 15th: Pam Spaulding weighs in with her take.