In California at least, to view the Church as all powerful and the gay lobby has having no power is contrary to the facts. Many in the gay lobby would like to inflict has much damage on the Church as they can. They have a strong voice in the media and in Hollywood, and one of the strongest lobbies in the state. They have great wealth at their disposal. (More out of state donations and more total donations were raise against Prop 8 than were raised for Prop 8.) They call those who disagree with them hateful, bigoted, and un-American. They boycott business and circulate blacklists. They call for investigations. They put addresses to target on a map and post it on the internet. They try to shame people. They deface property. They shout at you “go back to Utah.” They have inflicted real financial losses on their targets, not all of whom are LDS. They have cost people their jobs. This IS real power being exercised over its victims and inflicting real losses and designed to be intimidating to those who would exercise their free speech rights and their right to participate in the political process.

They have made it clear that if you support anything less than redefining marriage, they will not be appeased and you will still be considered a hateful bigot. Even democracy itself, the just consent of the governed, is considered no bar to their agenda. Nevertheless, I support in general rights for domestic partners and have no problem with the strong domestic partnership laws in California.

I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination….this, too, is part of America’s promise, the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

From President-elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver.

Becky,

Try this link.

I am surprised you didn’t know this.

Shane,

You left off an important phrase in your quotation from the Declaration of Independence. The phrase you conveniently omitted was “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The signers of the Declaration of Independence might be surprised that the definition of marriage that has universally prevailed until recently must be changed. They wouldn’t be surprised, however, to find special interests were desperate to avoid democracy. In California the right of the people to amend the constitution is not granted to the people. It is reserved by the people.

Disagreeing on what is a right is very American. Take, for example, the right to life and the definition of when life begins. I am pro-life, but I don’t call my opponents un-American, and I respect their point of view.

Free speech is very American. Voting is very American. Participating in the political process is very American. In every state where the definition of marriage has been put to a direct vote of the people, the traditional definition has prevailed. National polls show similar views. The current Supreme Court would likely agree. I wonder how it can be said that most Americans are so un-American.

As for the war, President Bush, etc., let me say that I voted with the majority of Americans in November.

Tom hanks has called 75% of black voters in California African-UnAmericans. He owes the black community and all LDS people an apology. Speaking your mind and standing for something is as American as apple pie. What is un-American is to attempt to destroy the lives and livelihoods of political opponents. People have been forced to resign their jobs for supporting Prop 8.

Seeing that Tom Hanks is the executive producer for Big Love it makes me question his motivation for his involvement with the show. Could the main purposes of the show be an attack against the LDS Church by erroneously perpetuating an association with polygamist groups? This kind of religious persecution is truly un-American.

Becky,

Now I am going to ask you for a link. Please provide a source that Mormon Church raised some $20 million. The Church as a legal entity raised very little money. The members of the Church did contribute a lot, but those donations are estimates based on many individual contributions. Like the Obama campaign, the Prop 8 donors were exceedingly numerous. They were overwhelming the state’s computer lists. I know of Evangelical churches that were encouraging fasts to make contributions. Big Evangelical mega-churches were very involved. Historically Black churches were very involved, providing a lot of votes, but presumably not a lot of money. The Catholic hierarchy was strongly supportive of Prop 8. The Knights of Columbus made very large contributions, as was their constitutional right. I went to a GOP “town hall” meeting on the subject, and it was clear that it was a far bigger turnout than they usually get at such meetings. The LDS clearly didn’t provide anywhere near the majority of votes. Money in the end didn’t move the opinion meter all that much from what it was before the election. If money determined the outcome, Prop 8 would have failed. Money determines elections if one side can overwhelm the other, but that was not the case with Prop 8.

As for having a moderate position, I support California’s partnership rights, which are very strong. This effectively is a go-along, get along solution. One “right” this solution leaves out is a particular legal lever for gay Californians to sue to overturn the marriage laws of every other state and to overturn federal laws. Those are the real targets. California already provides every other benefit a state can give. Gays in California are not an oppressed minority like blacks in the Jim Crow South. They are not fleeing California for Massachusetts and Connecticut the way Blacks left the South for the North. Prop 8 was not just about California, it was about the definition of marriage in every state and about the federal definition. It was about judicial activism to redefine marriage in every state based on a narrow 4-3 vote in one state by an activist court with stinging dissents from the justices who disagreed, even when they personally favored same sex marriage. In contrast Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous and a national decision. One of the big arguments for Prop 8 is that it merely re-established the results of Prop 22, which the people overwhelmingly passed. Mayor Newsom famously said gay marriage was coming “whether you like it or not.” In a state where issues are decided by referendum, that was a red flag. (Barack Obama, in San Francisco for a 2004 fund-raiser for his Senate race, asked not to have his picture taken with Newsom, doubtless aware of the Mayor’s primary issue.) There is also the self-esteem issue, but people can have all the pride and self-esteem they want without the government. Self-esteem should not require government endorsement, and judicial fiats against the will of the people cannot confer true societal endorsement. In contrast, it is clear that the gay lobby will use every legal and political weapon they can to stigmatize supporters of traditional marriage. I don’t call those who disagree with me un-American or hateful or bigoted. I understand that people can legitimately disagree over what is a constitutional right and what should be the proper definition of marriage. I don’t boycott the businesses of those who disagree with me, blacklist them, or try to them fired. I am not suing to overturn the election results. I suppose that calling someone un-American is very American, but at least since Joe McCarthy, the accusation usually reflects more on the accuser than the accused.

Becky,

It is true that the Church does have members who follow its counsel. The Catholics also have a central organization, and the Catholic hierarchy made their views very clear and were on the front lines of the contest, and many Catholics are faithful to their leaders. Catholic voters far outnumber LDS voters in California. See also this link. I see nothing wrong with any of that.

On the other side, the gay lobby has its own network of papers, websites, organizations, and so forth. Their lobby in California is very strong, and any local politician crosses them at their peril. Each side has a legal right to get their views out, and I don’t object to the money that was raised on the other side.

Surely you don’t believe that only one side has a right to raise money.

How was the $20 million figure “reported in the news” calculated? Where did the money on the other side come from?

Finally, as NRO noted:

Anti-Mormon bigotry is unfortunately common, and gay-rights activists are cynically exploiting that fact.

Note that the films starts out by casting the Prop 8 vote as razor thin, though the margin was not much less than Obama’s national margin, which was hailed as a solid win. That is the first clue that this is a slickly produced propaganda effort. If Prop 8 had lost by the same margin, it would have been hailed by the gays as their solid and irreversible victory.

Note that the visual styles the pro-8 commercials as lies, but it is typical for the gay lobby to brand disagreement as lies and any opposition as hatred. An anti-8 commercial showed fictional Mormons breaking into peoples’ homes. If a pro-8 commercial had shown gays breaking into homes, the gay lobby would have gone ballistic. Instead the pro-8 commercials featured none other than Mayor Newsom in a video clip.

That individual Mormons gave time and money at the strong urging of their leaders, I do not doubt. That this seriously crosses an acceptable line, I totally disagree with.

It is easy to see how Mormons are treated much differently from Jews or other religious groups. Can you imagine the video you posted being seen as anything other than anti-Semitic propaganda by the main stream media if it was written around Jewish support for a pro-Israel foreign policy? Threatening investigations of synagogues or Jewish religious associations or the implication that their participation in a public cause dear to their hearts is somehow inappropriate would be widely condemned and rightly so. Can you imagine a video calling for pulling the tax exemptions of synagogues for their strong public support of Israel getting much traction?

If Tom Hanks called Jewish voters or AIPAC un-American for support of Israel, his Hollywood career would be over. When he calls Mormon un-American, his Hollywood career is boosted.

California government institutions ask, “How high?” when the gay lobby asks them to jump. Who in California government dares say gays have ever crossed any line, despite vandalism, harassment, blacklisting, etc.? The Governor? Our Senators? The Mayor of San Francisco? I know people in California who dare not speak their mind in public and people who have publicly spoken out whose email in-boxes are filled with hate-filled threats from the gay lobby. Mormons are just another target of the gay lobby.

Becky and Ken, Churches have been involved in politics from the beginning in the USA. They were involved in the Revolution, in the antislavery movement, prohibition, etc. They were involved, no doubt, in trying to exclude Utah from the union. I don’t doubt they’re on both sides of this issue. As far as taxes, I don’t think this would necessarily violate the church-state separation, as I understand it this means state sponsorship of one religion or another.
Churches, as well as other nonprofit organizations, also benefit from public services such as roads, utilities, locations, etc. Churches and other nonprofit organizations (no doubt both “progressive” and “conservative”) are often very heavily involved in real estate, and benefit financially from the rise in location values of land created by the community.
Some would argue, myself included, that they as well as other corporate and private entities and persons, owe a return to the community for these speculative gains. Untaxing production, while taxing privilege, including unearned, community-created real estate location values of “nonprofit” as well as private enterprise, is a proposal of many in geonomic circles (http://www.progress.org/geonomy).

Thanks, Becky. It supposedly end the boom-bust cycles generated by real estate bubbles. But that’s another subject.