Proposition 8 and the Mormons

Captain Ed decries the protests against the Mormon church by opponents of Proposition 8 in California:

...From profane billboards to violent protests, the anti-8 demonstrators have focused their ire on Mormons, and now two envelopes of white powder have turned up in the mail at the Mormon Temples in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City... [it was a hoax- DP]

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It was depressingly predictable that the fringe of the protestors would eventually move towards terrorism. They’ve assaulted old ladies and threatened more violence, all because they lost on a ballot proposition. In fact, they lost by over 500,000 votes and almost five percentage points, 52.2% to 47.7%. Of California’s 58 counties, only 16 of them carried a majority of voters opposing it. It wasn’t just the old ladies and Mormons who opposed Proposition 8.

Maybe not, but the LDS Church took a very public political stand on this issue, and supporters of same-sex marriage have every right to protest in response. The Mormons can't have it both ways. That said, I think Dale Carpenter has a point about whether protesting Mormon institutions will work:

Leaders of the Mormon Church urged their followers to contribute to a constitutional ban on marriage for gay families, a call that apparently resulted in the bulk of the donations to that effort in California. Religious leaders and their adherents are of course free to oppose gay marriage. But when you enter the political fray, you are not exempt from public criticism and protest just because you are a religion or have religious reasons for your advocacy. It's not anti-religious bigotry to call attention, loudly and angrily, to what you have done.

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Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable with pickets directed at specific places of worship like the Mormon church in Los Angeles. It's too easy for such protests to degenerate into the kinds of ugly religious intolerance this country has long endured. Mormons, in particular, have historically suffered rank prejudice and even violence. Epithets and taunts directed at individuals are especially abhorrent. Individual Mormons (and blacks and others) bravely and publicly opposed Prop 8. Even those who supported Prop 8 are not all anti-gay bigots, though I saw plenty of anti-gay bigotry when I was in California last week. As I've repeatedly argued, there are genuine concerns about making a change like this to an important social institution. Those concerns are misplaced and overwrought, but they are not necessarily bigoted.

Here's my advice to righteously furious gay-marriage supporters: Stop the focus on the Mormon Church. Stop it now. We just lost a ballot fight in which we were falsely but effectively portrayed as attacking religion. So now some of us attack a religion? People were warned that churches would lose their tax-exempt status, which was untrue. So now we have (frivolous) calls for the Mormon Church to lose its tax-exempt status? It's rather selective indignation, anyway, since lots of demographic groups gave us Prop 8 in different ways — some with money and others with votes. I understand the frustration, but this particular expression of it is wrong and counter-productive.

Ironically, one of the more radical gay groups which seemingly came out of nowhere since Proposition 8 passed - "Bash Back," which carried out a particularly vulgar protest against an evangelical church in Michigan - doesn't really support same-sex marriage in the first place:

We are fierce as f**k radical queers, transfolk, and feminists who are not concerned with gaining access to oppressive, state-run institutions such as marriage, the military, or obtaining upward economic mobility. We want liberation, nothing less.

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1. Fight for liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. State recognition in the form of oppressive institutions such as marriage and militarism are not steps toward liberation but rather towards heteronormative assimilation.

Lovely folks. Dirty Harry, meanwhile, wonders why Hollywood is suddenly so quiet about people losing their jobs in the entertainment industry, just because they took a controversial political stand.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at November 15, 2008 08:51 PM