The Salt Lake City Tribune reports over $2.7 milliion in support for Prop H8 from Utah Mormons, the next biggest state involvement to California.
Utahns and the LDS Church spent significantly more than previously reported on last-minute efforts to push passage of California's ban of same-sex marriage, newly filed financial disclosures show. ....More than half the Utah donations poured in during the final three weeks before the Nov. 4 election, totaling about $2.5 million.
Officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also have filed new disclosures detailing at least $134,774 in previously unreported nonmonetary expenditures to help Prop. 8 proponents, much of it in staff time by church employees. Only $55,000 in LDS Church donations had been reported before, by California-based ProtectMarriage.com, the main pro-Prop. 8 group.
Between them, the filings add new dimensions to Utah's heavy involvement in California's same-sex-marriage ban, which carried 52 percent of the vote and now is being challenged in state courts. Encouraged by church leaders, Mormons across the country gave money to the campaign...
Along the same lines, the Bay Area Reporter has discovered(H/T my friend James)
two 11-year-old documents authored by Utah State University professor Richley Crapo, Ph.D., which describe the genesis of the church's HLM (defined by Crapo as "Homosexual Lesbian Marriage") strategy.
....
Crapo's timeline begins in 1988 when the LDS, under then-President Gordon B. Hinckley, hired the marketing firm Hill and Knowlton to "monitor and promote the church's stance on gay issues in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress."
....
Crapo also described how the LDS first reached out to Catholics at the genesis of its HLM strategy in Hawaii, inviting then-Honolulu Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo to vacation with Hinckley at the palatial LDS estate on the island. This was the beginning of a dialogue that eventually recruited the U.S. Catholic bishops to the LDS cause, according to Crapo, whose chronology calls into question the recent assertion by San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer that he invited the Mormons to become involved in the Yes on 8 fight.
So, a few questions.
- Was it the Catholics who co-opted the Mormons, or vice versa?
- Why are out-of-state Mormons providing funding for California constitutional issues?
- If a church can instruct its followers to donate money to a cause, is that a religious issue, or a political one?
By the way, the "no-on-8" donation lists are also public. You haven't heard of people trying to hide their donations for equality. As we've discussed before here, the Yes-on-H8 folks tried to blackmail the opposition back in October, presuming they'd be ashamed of their contributions. THe response was "publish and be damned". Telling, that, don't you think?