Via Mother Jones: “It’s remarkable what has happened in the marriage fight since the Mormons decided to abandon it.” Moreover:
The pullback of the LDS church may also have the unexpected effect of allowing more Republican elected officials to back marriage equality without fear of suffering at the polls. (Mormons are among the country’s most reliable Republican voters.) Republicans in Rhode Island and Delaware were a key factor in marriage advocates’ success, says HRC’s Nix.
Another sign of the times.
15 Comments for “Mormons Begin to See the Light”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The LDS leadership got a lot of blowback from within the Church and without over their Prop 8 activities, little return for all the money and effort, and a black eye — protestors outside their temples and the whole works — just when one of their own was running for President.
All that had a cumulative effect. You’ll recall that the LDS tried to keep the Church’s involvement in the Prop 8 fight quiet, and it blew up in their faces. Given that the Church is run like a business by businessmen who are lay religious leaders, the withdrawal is not surprising.
But this is not news — the pullback started in earnest in 2009-2010, in the immediate aftermath of Prop 8, which turned out to be a debacle for the Church.
posted by Houndentenor on
I have a friend in southern California who is LDS. In early 2008 he was being pressured to donate to Prop 8. Seriously pressured. Every Sunday. I hear from other Mormons that this didn’t happen in all their churches but it happened in far too many. There was a lot of pushback and I’m sure quite a few lost friends and business contacts over Prop 8. As Mormons and Catholics provided nearly all the funding for Prop 8 ads, I’d say they deserve everything that came at them for the last two years. (Catholics even more so since who the hell are they kidding talking about sexual morality?)
posted by Tom Scharbach on
One of my closest friends is a Mormon, straight, three kids, from a prominent Mormon family, and active in the LDS. I watched him sit at my kitchen table and write a serious — and I do mean serious — check to defeat Prop 8. I have no idea what he said to anyone within the LDS, but I imagine that he made his views about the LDS using church funds and resources to further discrimination known to people who count. It was Mormons like him that got the attention of the leadership, I suspect.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The pullback of the LDS church may also have the unexpected effect of allowing more Republican elected officials to back marriage equality without fear of suffering at the polls. (Mormons are among the country’s most reliable Republican voters.)
A few quick notes on this observation:
(1) The LDS has not changed its opposition to marriage equality, which remains steadfast. Church teaching has not changed. What has changed is that the Church is no longer contributing significant resources (money and member volunteer time) to the anti-marriage initiatives. But don’t expect the Church or members to embrace equality any time soon. I think that it will be a long time before Mormon members of Congress or state legislatures find it in themselves to vote with us.
(2) While it is true that Mormons are reliable and consistent Republican voters, they are, as a percentage of the population, miniscule outside the inter-mountain West. Scroll around the linked map, for example, and you’ll find it hard to come up with a county where Mormons constitute more than 1% of the population.
(3) Taking those two factors together, I have a hard time figuring out how the LDS withdrawal from NOM will “have the unexpected effect of allowing more Republican elected officials to back marriage equality without fear of suffering at the polls”. How will the Mormon withdrawl change things in Republican primaries in Texas, or Wisconsin?
Don’t get me wrong. I think that the LDS withdrawal from NOM was a great development, a development that cripples NOM. As the article points out, the anti-marriage amendment needs tons of money and thousands of volunteers to mount a meaningful anti-marriage campaign, and the LDS, which was supplying both, no longer is doing so.
But I don’t think that the change is going to change things. The LDS has always influenced its members toward social conservative values, but done so quietly. The Church’s active involvement in the Prop 8 fight, which it tried to keep quiet by couldn’t, was an anamoly, and the Church got burned by the blowback, so it backed out. Backing out screws up NOM, but it doesn’t translate into pro-equality votes in Republican primaries.
posted by Houndentenor on
It’s none of my concern what the LDS church teaches about anything. I’m not LDS. I can’t imagine why anyone who knows anything about Joseph Smith believes that nonsense, but that’s their business. It’s their right to believe whatever they want. It’s NOT their right to impose their big bag of 19th-century con-artist fiction on me or anyone else who doesn’t belong to their church. That’s exactly what they did with Prop 8. We need to be very clear that our concern is them imposing their beliefs on the rest of the country. They still have a 1st amendment right to believe whatever they want. So does everyone else.
posted by Jim Michaud on
I agree with you Tom. The Mormon withdrawal is a major blow to NOM. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at NOM headquarters right now. It must be mystifying to them. They had the conservative world in their hands just a few years ago.
posted by kosh iii on
Good riddance. Maybe they look through their pantheon and find a different “god” to run things here. Clearly the Jesus/Satan deities dropped the ball. Or maybe we just have more holy undies. 🙂
posted by Mike in Houston on
The biggest blow to NOM with the LDS stand-down is that their carefully crafted mask hiding the Catholic Church as their owners has been stripped away.
posted by Lori Heine on
Our society is morally rotten to the core. But “homosexuality” is not the problem. Greed, selfishness, materialism and callousness in the face of human suffering is the problem.
“Homosexuality” has been such a convenient distraction for social conservatives that if it didn’t exist, they’d need to invent it. It’s a useful screen onto which people who don’t want to look at their own sins can project all their rottenness.
A sheer accident of birth — heterosexuality — can be trumpeted as a moral virtue. How nice that must be!
Pressure must continue to be brought to bear on the Mormon Church, the Catholic Church and all other reactionary religious organizations to expose what’s really going on here. If they want some genuine sin to sniff out and piss on, it certainly isn’t as if it’s lacking in the real world.
posted by Houndentenor on
It’s part of a larger pattern of a judgmental religious culture. It’s so easy to be a hypocrite that people don’t even realizing they are doing it. When men who are on their third wife and who committed adultery while married to at least one of them can publicly denounce gay marriage, you know we have passed into the absurd. I respect people who live according to their own beliefs. I so rarely meet such people that I’m somewhat in awe of them. What I mostly meet are people so involved in their own cognitive dissonance that they can’t see their own bullshit. They denounce government spending while spending an entire career working for government contractors. They denounce health care proposals while screaming that someone might cut their federal health care benefits. Need I go on? Pretty much the whole country is like this in one form or another. It’s fine to be for or against one thing or another, but the sheer lunacy of the comments that people make on a daily basis are baffling. And it’s been like this my whole life.
But most of all, people think that their own interpretation of a very old book has to be followed by everyone, including people who don’t follow that book or their interpretation of it. Never mind that they themselves ignore the inconvenient passages in the same book. Bankers are all going to hell for charging interest on loans according to that book. I’ve never in my life heard a sermon condemning the folks who work for banks that issue credit cards that charge 29% or more interest. And I’m not going to. But denouncing homosexuality goes on all the time. And never mind that many of those preachers are having the gay sex themselves. It’s sickening. It’s no wonder young people are turning away from religion. The only surprise is that it took this long for it to happen.
posted by Steve on
You realize you’re being a judgmental hypocrite, right?
posted by Houndentenor on
LOL. I was raised Southern Baptist. I’m far less judgmental and hypocritical than I was raised to be, but it’s an ongoing process. One day at a time.
posted by Mario on
I doubt the LDS Church has a much clout as some might like, both within and outside of Mormon circles. And as far as Republicans in RI and DE jumping on the gay marriage bang wagon, Republicans in Northeastern states tend to be more libertarian leaning–liberal on social issues–than even some of their Democrat friends, especially those who are minorities. Many Republicans are simply for limited government and many Mormons could care less who gets married. And not all Democrats are saints who love and care. Not everything is black and white, or red and blue, as the case may be.
posted by Houndentenor on
1. The LDS church has a lot of money. No, they aren’t that influential outside the mountain states but they had a huge impact on Prop 8, mostly in funding the damn thing. They do have a lot of money.
2. Yes, there are a lot of socially liberally Republicans in the Northeast. That’s why Republicans occasionally win in those blue states. Watch how quickly people like Romney and Giuliani turn anti-gay when they decide to run for president though.
3. No one claimed that Democrats were perfect, nor that there aren’t plenty of awful people in the party. No one claimed that ever. It’s a strawman. The only reason Democrats look so good is that Republicans are so repugnant on so many issues. Then Stephen and other homocons want to blame the GOP’s horrendous record on gay rights on the Democrats. It’s nonsense. Do they just not teach critical thinking in school any more?
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
Frankly, most of the socially conservative, Christian religious groups and leaders seem to be very pro-business/corporatist on economic issues. They are not really worried about the plight of the poor and disadvantaged (beyond obligatory messages about charity) and that is probably why anything negative about charging high interest rates will be ignored.