How The Mormon Church Almost Did Something Ridiculously Awesome

For a very brief time on Friday night, The Church of Latter-Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, supported state-wide reform of policies discriminating against LGBT persons in housing and employment.

A statement on?their website, mormonsandgays.org, read on Friday night:

?The Church website mormonsandgays.org details sincere outreach by the Church within the gay community, including support in Utah for nondiscrimination protections of employment and housing. There is room for compassion, common ground, and shared humanity among people who disagree, and Church leaders eagerly pursue these ideals, both inside and outside the Church.?

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However, this was changed Saturday?to support only local reform, not state-wide,?and read:

“The Church website mormonsandgays.org details sincere outreach by the Church within the gay community, including support in Salt Lake City in 2009 for nondiscrimination protections of employment and housing.”

Eric Hawkins, Senior Manager for Media Relations at the LDS,?issued?the following?statement:

?The reference to non-discrimination ordinances was meant to reflect the church’s support for the 2009 Salt Lake ordinance and is not an announcement of any kind.?The Church has been clear that its support of this specific ordinance was due to language that attempted to balance issues of non-discrimination and religious freedom.?This clarification has now been made to the page in question.”

Why This Matters

The LDS has had a significant influence in political arenas in the struggle for same-sex marriage equality.?On June 2, 2008, California?Secretary of State announced that petitions had submitted with enough signatures to place Proposition 8 on the November 4th ballot. Proposition 8?asked to change the language in California’s state constitution in order “to define marriage as a union ‘between a man and a woman’ and undo the California Supreme Court ruling allowing gay?marriages.” In the November election, Proposition 8 passed with “about 52% of the vote.” How that happened, though, was greatly influenced by the Mormon Church.

The campaign to pass Prop 8 mobilized Mormoms like never before. News outlets reported that “Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts” to?raise money and urge people to vote. Members of the church contributed more than $22 million?(the dollar amounts reported vary widely) to fund the campaign.

A documentary entitled 8: The Mormon Proposition?claims that members were informed by the church that, based on what the church knew of a member’s income, that member was encouraged to donate a specific amount of money or face losing their membership. It further claims that, although Mormon’s make up only 2% of California’s state-wide population, they accounted for 71% of the contributions.

Advertisements for the Mormon Church’s “Yes Campaign” focused on the dire consequences of same-sex marriage, which included video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher’s same-sex wedding, including the typical “they’re trying to indoctrinate your children!” message.

Backlash directed at the church by protesters in the wake of Prop 8’s passing has led to a softening of these views by the LDS.

What the Retraction Tells Us

For a moment, it seemed as if that backlash had a greater influence than previously thought. The withdrawal of Mormon support in the fight?against LGBT?equality could have had a significant impact on groups opposing these freedoms. More importantly, the withdrawal of Mormon money funding these campaigns could have greatly influenced success in?fighting for the civil rights of LGBT people.

Exactly how great?that impact would have been, sadly, we’ll never know.

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Carissa is a proud feminist and self-described nerdy chick and pop culture junkie. She graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Louisville and is currently completing her master’s degree. Her previous work experience is in social justice along with two full-time AmeriCorps terms as a language tutor for immigrant children. In her spare time, Carissa enjoys reading, heavy metal music, and being the Crazy Aunt to her nieces and nephews.