As a public relations opportunity, the LDS Church’s statement before the Salt Lake City Council may assuage the minds and soften the hearts of advocates of “gay rights” in Utah. As a policy statement, it is problematic. The approved ordinances before the Salt Lake City Council are unsound in principle, clarity, and effect.
We, once again, call on the Utah State Legislature to overturn these local ordinances on the basis of sound public policy.
Guest post by MJBY(The author teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University and has written extensively about blacks in the American West).
Marshall, Missouri — I’ve known the name of the town for a decade now, since I teamed with Darius Gray to write three books and produce two documentaries on blacks in the Old West — black Mormons, to be specific — a subject which causes most to raise a skeptical brow. The usual response is, “You mean there were some?” Or “I thought you all didn’t let Blacks join your church until — what — 1980?” Or this one, which we heard at a Los Angeles book fair: “Didn’t you Mormons consider blacks one slim notch above monkeys until, like, last year?”
Why are my people doing this? I just read “The Lucifer Effect” by Philip Zimbardo. He ran the original Stanford Prison Experiment where students assigned to be guards quickly increased the abuse that they heaped on students assigned to be prisoners such that after a single week (and after the guards had discovered sexual humiliation) the experiment was stopped. He chillingly details how almost all of us will be evil given the right circumstances. We all are good, but in the right circumstances, we all are bad.
Dr. Reed Quinn is both a cardiologist and a Stake President for the Mormon Church. This means he is the ecclesiastical leader for, in this case, 12 Mormon congregations. As a cardiologist he has undoubtedly saved the lives of many people. His wife, Eileen Quinn (or at least someone of that name who lives at the sameaddress) is the CEO of the PAC Maine4Marriage.org, which has a spiffy website here. It’s slogan? “Marriage. One Man. One Woman.” That’s pretty amusing—even funnier since the authors don’t get the joke. You can point and snicker all you want.
That used to be an invisible link to NOM’s 2008 return. It’s dead now.
But it was live when I first posted it, and soon after I did, NOM (finally) posted their 2007 and 2008 returns in plain sight on their own website.
Interestingly enough, the 2007 return they’ve posted there differs from the 2007 return I previously received from the IRS. For example, they have removed Common Sense America from the list of hired contractors in this latest version of their 2007 return.
What happened? Did they suddenly realize (in 2009!) that they hadn’t actually paid Common Sense America $166,000 back in 2007 as previously reported?
BEFORE WRITING THIS column, I sat and stared at my computer screen for what seemed like ages trying to figure out a way to make the topic of IRS regulations seem a bit more interesting.
Let’s face it, most people just don’t want to read about a subject as dry as tax law. Unfortunately, one of the only ways to detect questionable practices by organizations like the National Organization for Marriage is to first acquire the group’s tax return, research it in detail, and make public the findings. Not surprisingly, NOM’s initial return generated more questions than answers.
This past May, I caught up with documentary filmmaker Reed Cowan, who didn’t shy away from answering some pointed (and personal) questions about 8: The Mormon Proposition. As the first NYU grad in my family’s six generations of Mormons, go figure that I’d be personally interested in both Mormonism and film (nevermind Mormons on film!). In other words, since that initial interview with Reed, I’ve been anxiously hoping that he’d keep me in the loop as the film progressed. After bugging Reed for an update, he’s now brought me up to speed:
CB: Since we last spoke, I’ve heard through the grapevine that a certain Dustin Lance Black provided the narration for 8:TMP, and Bruce Bastian is now on board as Executive Producer. How did that happen?
Karen Ocamb is a SoCal journalist who covered last summer’s Prop 8 fight. If past is prologue, her recapping of that contest may serve as a useful reminder of what’s in store as the Question 1 contest heats up in Maine.
The Religious Right is Swiftboating Same Sex Marriage in Maine
By Karen Ocamb
News editor, Frontiers in LA
“God has no grandchildren,” the evangelical ex-Marine father of my late friend Chip Howe said, explaining how he surrendered judgment and came to accept Chip’s homosexuality. Chip, a Lieutenant in the Navy during the Vietnam War, was supposed to get married and provide his parents with grandchildren. Chip’s father thought being gay meant that would never happen.
That was in 1990, before there was any real hope for marriage rights for same sex couples. Though Chip had known love before he died, he never got to experience the fruition of his constitutional right to pursue happiness - marriage and a family of his own.
The story is instructive because Religious Right professionals have succeeded in making it appear as if all people of faith are antigay and anti-marriage equality. Worse yet, they are using religion as an excuse to perpetrate lies and deception - to swiftboat same sex couples in the name of God, when in fact they are just advancing another end-justifies-the-means political scheme.
That’s what happened in California and that’s what is now underway in Maine as opponents of same sex marriage fight to prevent Maine’s marriage equality law from taking effect though a referendum on the Nov. 3 ballot.
State Sen. Larry Bliss (D-South Portland) got to the heart of the issue in his Sept. 8 op-ed response to Rev. Bob Emrich’s Aug. 26 Maine Voices column advocating passage of the anti-gay Question 1.
Bliss wrote:
“Do we want a Maine where Rev. Emrich and his supporters tell the rest of us who can be a family and who can love whom?
Marriage equality upholds traditional Maine values of personal freedom and equality by respecting the right of every Mainer to marry the person he or she loves.
That’s the Maine I live in. Those are the values I hold dear.”
I know it’s the Internet. Threads littered with hateful comments are part of the terrain almost everywhere. But KSL.com is not just anywhere. It is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As KSL’s warning to commenters notes:
… KSL strives to be a family-friendly web site, so please keep the language clean when you add your comments. We reserve the right to accept or reject any message. Thanks.
But 385 comments later, dozens of hateful, sickening messages have been accepted and posted under this story. Where are the moderators? They are no doubt Mormon. Do they not understand the disservice they’re doing their LDS-owned employer by giving free rein to homophobia and hate at KSL.com?
“So, for example, if a pedophile were to attack - I say ‘attack’ - approach a child in a church or in an employment situation or public school situation and you or I were to pull that pedophile off the child and say something to that pedophile about his poor behavior, that pedophile could actually file suit against you for having committed a hate crime against them for what you verbalized.”
According to the latest from NOM’s Maggie Gallagher: ” … there is no connection between NOM and the [LDS] church except that a Mormon serves on NOM’s board.”
In that same article, Kim Farah, spokeswoman for the LDS church in Salt Lake City, insists that the church “did not establish the National Organization for Marriage … [but fails to] respond to a question about whether the Mormon church has been active in the campaigns to defeat gay marriage in New England and New York.”
Sorry, I needed that laugh. The original post continues below …
I’ve just finished watching a fascinating documentary on DVD that attempts to tell the story of black Mormons, who - according to the liner notes - “have been a continuous presence in the LDS church from its earliest days.” The creators bring an insider’s POV - but don’t flinch from grappling with Mormonism’s racist past - and I applaud their effort and welcome the Mormon conversation it has engendered.
That said, it wasn’t the film’s treatment of historical injustice that provoked me to write this post, but rather what the clip below reveals about an ongoing and very present cause for concern.
First, a quick synopsis to set up the clip:
00:00:00 - Faithful young Mormon couple, parents of nine
00:00:55 - Their encounter with racism inside the Salt Lake Temple
00:01:13 - “You speak such good English!”
00:01:25 - This worthy Mormon family is apparently not appropriate for LDS church media? Good enough to tithe, to attend the Mormon Temple, but not good enough for Mormon magazine covers? What is it with the Mormon church and its addiction to artifice and actors?
For the record, I have no association with the folks who created Nobody Knows.
I’m too busy with my own documentary project (and I could probably use some help with the title, because it seems a bit long) …
“Everybody Knows Except the Mormons Who Never Got Told: Why a religion so rigid that until today it’s still grappling with the meaning of interracial marriage in its own church culture decided to bankroll a nationwide campaign to define marriage for the rest of the country.”
