Is that what anyone who criticizes the Mormon church’s involvement with politics is?

Somebody’s civil marriage performed by a justice of the peace is not a moral issue, but an issue of status. It doesn’t affect the Mormon church at all. Mormons don’t want gays in stable relationships because it undermines they lies they have told over the years about gays.

My fear is when April conference is held at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. What are we to expect? Both from the Mormons and the Anti-Mormons. I fear further entrenchment. The emotions on both sides of this issue are still rather raw and on the surface.

I don’t expect changes in dogma and any sort of gay-tolerance to happen instantly in the near future but there is hope for some basic understanding and respect in the long haul if we can have a dialog like this with people on both sides.

Thanks for some very wise words.

Seth,

Of course they believe the talking points of “Yes on Prop 8.” They wrote them. They funded them. They put them out on the airways. They made the signs (even importing them from overseas). They managed the campaign. Every Prop 8 lie was directly authorized and paid for by the LDS leadership.

I appreciate your views and support for liberty, but I am taking you up on the issue of going after the LDS church and it’s leadership. I couldn’t care less about theology, but I sure as hell do care about my rights.

Having served as an Executive Secretary to an LDS Bishop for a couple years, I can tell you this is simply inaccurate. A decision to send out a ward email would have zero paperwork, and probably little discussion with higher-up leadership. Bishops in the LDS Church are actually given a lot more autonomy to handle ward matters than you’d think.

Most of the paperwork in an LDS congregation is solely for the purpose of membership records, keeping track of charitable donations, and budgeting for ward activities.

An action from a bishop like sending out this email would probably have been accompanied by zero paperwork and I doubt the bishop in question ever discussed the issue with regional or churchwide leadership. The most he probably did was mention it informally to his Stake President (kind of the equivalent of a “bishop” in the Catholic Church).

By the way, I’m deliberately staying quiet about a lot of the anger toward the LDS Church because, frankly, I think the LDS Church actually deserves some of it. I think the Prop 8 campaign was a mistake. I also think it was inappropriately handled – not from a tax standpoint, but just as a member of this Church. I don’t like seeing my Sunday services appropriated for campaign purposes.

I also resent how conservative elements in the LDS Church automatically assume EVERYONE in the congregation must be in agreement with them and that it is therefore OK to spout off right-wing rhetoric in church. There are plenty of liberals in the LDS Church and we get really annoyed when our worship services are co-opted for partisan stances on issues that, frankly, Mormon DOCTRINE is silent about.

I also don’t disagree with all the comments about the LDS Church being secretive and less than forthcoming. It’s a tendency that I have observed in my church and it does exasperate me on occasion.

I do think the LDS leadership really do believe the talking points of the “yes on Prop 8″ campaign. They really do think that gay marriage will have the impact on society and religious liberty that Yes on 8 claimed it would.

I also think the calls for the LDS Church to lose its tax-exempt status are rather silly. It’s been a while since I took those two years of Tax Law in law school (and Constitutional Law), but I don’t think this argument has any legs. Churches are allowed to campaign on moral issues. Most of the restrictions on tax-exempt status refer to explicitly endorsing a CANDIDATE for political office. And even here churches are allowed a lot of leeway (black churches in Chicago and elsewhere do it all the time).

The calls for loss of exempt status are going nowhere, and, whether the people calling for it are aware or not, constitute quite a serious infraction on free speech themselves. Liberals can’t just be in favor of free speech only on “hip” issues. You have to extend it to unpopular ones as well.

Honestly, I think a lot of the resentment here on the tax-exempt status is merely liberal anger that conservative groups tend to be better at cooperative action than liberals are. I know people here would love to even the playing field by forcing religious conservatives to act just as organizationally dysfunctional as liberals do. But I doubt that’s an argument that’s going to sway many judges.

But actually, I do think the LDS Church deserves a lot of the criticism it’s getting right now. Hopefully it does prompt some reflection in the top leadership of the Church. I don’t want to see the Church promoting a Prop 8 campaign here in Colorado. We had an anti-gay marriage issue on the ballot here a couple years ago. I heard absolutely nothing about it at Church. I may have heard a few Mormons in private conversation mention it once or twice, but there was nothing from Salt Lake City other than the standard yearly letter encouraging us to vote and participate in political processes, but to keep partisanship out of church (we get those each year around election time).

So my wife and I went out and voted against the proposal to restrict gay unions. Which we did BECAUSE of our religious views, not in spite of them. I take a libertarian view on gay marriage, and find right-wing attempts to fight it to be wrong-headed, and ultimately damaging to religious marriages in the long run.

So if you want to have a go at the current LDS structure or leadership, be my guest. But if you start attacking my religion, well, I’m going to object to that. Too often discussions criticizing Mormon involvement in Prop 8 devolve into discussions of “how stupid Mormonism is.”

I don’t think this serves gay interests very well actually. It just makes you look anti-religion. And I have to break it to you – atheists are probably one of the smallest and least agreed with minorities in the United States. Wedding the gay cause with militant atheism is not going to do you guys any favors.

Suggestion: when talking to Mormons, why not appeal to their own religious beliefs? I’m a believer, and I’ve found plenty of reasons in Mormon doctrine and scripture to oppose Prop 8.

I think this approach will go over much better than calling someone a “bigoted religious fruitcake.”

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 134:4 Joseph Smith writes, “We believe that religion is instituted of God; and that men are amenable to him, and to him only, for the exercise of it, unless their religious opinions prompt them to infringe upon the rights and liberties of other; but we do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion; that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul.”

And I strongly support civil unions and/or marriages for same-sex couples.

Funny how during the Prop 8 campaign, the mormon church was expousing the idea that they had no problem with civil unions, but just marriage. They claimed they have no problem with rights for gays, just its against their moral beliefs.

So in Utah, the gay political organization, decided to put that to a test and asked for civil unions as well as other basic rights. No surprise here: Civil Union ban is now a dead piece of legislation and probably all the rest of the legislation package known as Common Ground.

I think what gets most people, Stephen, about the website in question is this: many churches have websites where they communicate information to their members; many of these websites have email addresses of their members– Mormons seem to be the only ones that have made that privilaged information.

“Let’s face it, homosexuals dislike the LDS church because of its views on homosexuality, it has nothing to do with “tax exempt status.” ”

Homosexuals could have cared less about the LDS church until they found out that this church organized a majority of the funding of Prop 8 as well as lied on their financial reporting to the state. Your church brought all the scrutiny on itself when it inserted itself into the political process. As many other posters have said, you made your bed, now lie in it.

I understand that you are pissed off. Don’t let the anger turn YOU into a bigot that stereotypes people. I am not asking that you “take the higher road” I am asking that you don’t drive off the road we are all on into a big pile of mud.

History contradicts your beliefs. I trust you show your contempt for history by removing your children out of those classes, just like some Mormons show contempt for reality by shielding their children from the truth about sexual orientation. It is ironic, you must admit, that studies demonstrate the more males a mother carries, the more likely it is the next male child will be gay. I just love the irony in that as it relates to LDS beliefs.

Unfortunately, you use your beliefs to discriminate against your own children and others. That’s not love, for the record, that’s bigotry.

Given that the LDS church has entered the realm of politics, it has made its beliefs about history fair game. I, for one, now educate my students on those beliefs and how history thoroughly and utterly disproves them.