Mormonism and politics/California Proposition 8/CriticalSources

Source(s) of the criticism

• Laura Compton, "Edits to Boyd K. Packer's Talk," mormonsformarriage.com (blog post) (8 October 2010; 16h38) There were 18,000 same-sex couples legally married in California the summer of 2008.

The Church could have done in Prop 8 what it did with the Federal DOMA legislation, or Canadian Same-Sex Marriage legislation, or Argentinian Same-Sex Marriage legislation, or Amendment 3 legislation in Utah: Send out a letter from the First Presidency telling members the legislation is coming up and urge members to express their opinions on the legislation/vote to their elected representatives/neighbors. It could have even done that multiple times during the election. They could have reminded members to register to vote. I personally wouldn’t have had any problem if they’d repeated some of the things done in the Prop 8 campaign: assigned each bishop to say a special prayer the Sunday before the election, create a website and provide content for that website (so long as the website used truthful, gospel-centered messages about marriage and was not paid for by tithing funds).

What it did not need to do was pick a political committee with which to align, tell members about it, set fundraising goals for wards and stakes, call (even informally) members to supervise political campaign ZIP codes and regions, have general authorities make multiple personal fundraising conference calls to potential large donors, assign young single adults to spend specific numbers of hours blogging/texting/emailing - campaigning - each week, organize call banks and firesides for people with California connections, encourage pollwatching and precinct-walking, etc. We did not need church meetings taken over every week to discuss the evils of homosexuality and the threats to our own families if our gay neighbors wanted to create lasting pair-bonds. The only thing that kind of rhetoric did was fan the flames of fear, misunderstanding and battles, and it served to give free rein to those Mormons who felt the need to speak out derisively of GLBT people.-->