Mormons and Prop 8

S’up?

I was listening to NPR last night (I know, we godless infidels love our NPR) on the way home and a local station was doing a spot from the Mormon temple in West LA. Turns out there was a rather large protest going on over the passage of Proposition 8. In case you’re not from Cali or just haven’t been paying attention, Prop 8 amended the constitution of our state to define marriage as one man, one woman. Prop 8 passed with a lot of help from the Mormon church leadership who encouraged their cult* members to donate money, lots of money, to the Yes on 8 campaign. They also funded advertising that lied, but I guess that’s not a sin. It’s all very confusing.

The part that caught my attention was the interview with a woman who described herself as struggling actress who moved here from Utah. She is a Mormon and she voted for Prop 8. Nothing interesting so far. She had come out to the protest last night because she wanted to let everyone know that her religion is a religion of love and that she has no personal animosity for homosexuals. She even baked some banana bread. Awwww. I’m all misty.

She went through the typical tripe about the sanctity of marriage since god created it when he put Adam and Eve on the earth (young-earth creationist alert!), and we have no right to redefine what god created.

The interviewer, being a member of the elite liberal media, Katie Couric’d her a little. He went on the offensive and asked her (I’m paraphrasing here) if she knew that there was a separation of church and state in this country and if it was OK for the state to make clearly religious distinctions in it’s constitution. Here’s the most telling part of the interview. There was that pause that I’ve come to recognize in so many instances where this topic comes up. What she wanted to say was, “What separation?” Instead, she ignored the question altogether and said something to the effect that we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Incredible. I guess she has forgotten that her cult is only 150 years old (give or take) and that in it’s early days, everyone else thought it was a cult, too. In fact, some christian sects believed mormons to be worshippers of satan. Today, mormons are simply looked down upon by the older cults like the aristocracy would view the nouveau riche. However, her cult would not exist today if it wasn’t for that little thing called the establishment clause.

So it comes down to this, in my mind. If “marriage” is a purely religious construct, then the state has no business issuing marriage licenses. Let the state issue civil union licenses for all. If you want a marriage certificate, visit your local church, temple, synagogue, mosque, etc. Then the sects can get on with arguing over who’s marriage certificate is better, and my state can get out of the business of discrimination.

Be well,

S

*Lest you unfairly charge me with inflammatory name calling, let me give you some classic defining characteristics of a cult:

Exposes members to intense physical or emotional stress, often through group worship experiences and rituals
Offers the inductee simplistic answers to all their problems
Offers the inductee unconditional love as long as they remain faithful
Encourages ingroup and outgroup thinking
Encourages members to eliminate relationships with those not part of the ingroup, with the exception of prosthyletizing.

You can decide for yourself.