The Mormon Church has decided that a bill in Illinois that will be considered tomorrow morning has to be defeated. Why? Because if it is voted out of committee and passes Illinois will join the ranks of the very few states that try to recognize the rights of their gay, lesbian and transgendered citizens.
And since they really don’t have a valid reason to oppose equality for all Americans, they’ve went with the same tactics they used while working to get prop 8 passed in California – fear and lies.
Here’s the email sent by the Church:
From: Kristy Combs <kristyc@mchsi.com>
Date: March 3, 2009 12:27:59 PM CST
Subject: Civil Union bill scheduled for a hearing Thursday – calls neededThis message has been authorized for sending by Bishop Church. The Civil Union Bill (HB 2234) has been scheduled for a hearing in the Youth and Family Committee this week on Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. in Springfield. If the bill is voted out of committee, it becomes eligible for a vote before the full Illinois House of Representatives.
This bill will legalize civil unions in the state of Illinois, and will treat such civil unions with the same legal obligations, responsibilities, protections and benefits as are afforded within marriage. In other words, civil unions will be different in name only from marriage. As has already been seen in Massachusetts, this will empower the public schools to begin teaching this lifestyle to our young children regardless of parental requests otherwise.
It will also create grounds for rewriting all social mores; the current push in Massachusetts is to recognize and legalize all transgender rights (An individual in Massachusetts can now change their drivers license to the gender they believe themselves to be, regardless of actual gender, which means that confused men and women are now legally entering one another’s bathrooms and locker rooms. What kind of a safety issue is this for our children?).
Furthermore, while the bill legalizes civil unions, it will be used in the courts to show discrimination and will ultimately lead to court mandated same-sex marriages.
To help defeat this bill, please call your state representative and state senator and ask that they support traditional marriage and vote against the civil unions bill. If you are unsure who your legislators are, please see the link at the end of this email.
Also, please take a moment and call the following members of the Youth and Family Committee to encourage them to vote no on this bill. We need 4 votes to keep it from passing out of the committee. And – as always, please pass this on to all who believe in protecting our families and our children.
If you are interested in attending the hearing, it will be held on Thursday, March 5th at 9:00 a.m. in Springfield in Room 122B of the Capitol Building (I can give you directions to the Capitol Building if needed).
Members of the Youth and Family Committee:
Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) (Greg Harris is also the sponsor of this bill, but he needs to hear your opposition to this bill)
Chairperson
217-782-3835Rep. LaShawn K. Ford (D-Chicago)
Vice-Chairperson
217-782-5962Rep. Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago)
Republican Spokesperson
217-782-1653Rep. William D. Burns (D-Chicago)
217-782-2023Rep. Michael P. McAuliffe (R-Chicago)
217-782-8182Rep. Al Riley (D-Matteson)
217-558-1007Rep. Dave Winters (R-Rockford)
217-782-0455Directions for identifying your legislators:
You can use the following link to identify your state legislators and their contact information: http://www.elections.il.gov/... (and enter your 9 digit zip code). If this link doesn’t work, you can use the general link www.ilga.gov and then click on ” legislator lookup” near the bottom of the page, then click on “by zip+4″. Type in your zip code, and you’ll see a list of your legislators. You want your state senator and state representative as they will be the ones voting on the bill.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.Sister Combs
Once again, the fucknuts have shown their true colours. They do not support equality – at all. They are bigots. Full stop.
ETA: This is not a joke. Mormons aren’t like other Christians and do not allow individual members to speak as sect representatives unless given permission to do so. This email was authorized by Bishop Church. You can read more about this at Box Turtle Bulletin.
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In case you hadn’t heard… It looks like it got passed the comity, and his headed for the Illinois House floor.
As a member of the LDS church I figured I could give some insight into the email in question. Box Turtle Bulletin stated, “In a private email sent out to LDS members of at least one ward in Illinois, church members are being encouraged…” I like the fact that here the author has mentioned that it is only confirmed to have been sent to members of “one ward.” An LDS ward is a local congregation of roughly anywhere between 80 and 200 (active) persons. The bishop of a ward would indeed have to authorize a member to use that feature of church website. It is essentially a ListServ; members who have a desire to receive email notifications from the congregation register their existing emails with the site. Typically this is used exclusively to remind people of upcoming events like parties, firesides, or if there is a special request (a family will be moving and wants people to come and help them pack up the truck). The use of this ListServ for political/social issues is uncharacteristic, and inappropriate.
Generally speaking the LDS church adopts a neutral stance on political issues
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/public-issues/political-neutrality
,BUT the church does reserve the right to tell its members what to do it a political/social issue is also what could be considered a moral issue. The best example of this is Prop 8 in California. However, the Prop 8 efforts which the official body of the church rallied came in the form of letters sent to the bishops to be read to the entire congregation. The Church Headquarters doesn’t use the ListServ to inform its members of anything really. I’ve never gotten an email from Salt Lake, but I have received reminders about Christmas parties. So basically, this email is isolated and represents the desires of two individuals(Sister Combs and Bishop Church).
Officially the LDS Church HQ probably would be against this bill, but that is only an assumption seeing as how the Church has no official statement on this Bill. This email is no different than a teacher using the school district ListServ to invite other teachers to vote in favor of a bill that would increase school funding. The school district hasn’t taken a stance in this example, but it could be assumed they would be in favor of something that would provide more money for education. People who opposed the bill would be wrong to attack the school district for this teacher’s independent action in sending the email.
I do see your point Stephen. In the school ananolgy though, if it comes from a teacher through a school district listserv, most people will assume it is something official from the school district. Whether accurate or not, that would be the perception; and the same can be said for this scenario. Two church officials approved the message and it was sent through the church’s listserv; at face value it sound like an official stance to me.
Mormons aren’t the only church on the warpath.
I agree the perception would seem to be official, even though it is not. That is why I figured I would attempt to explain a bit. One member (Sister Combs) and one official (Bishop Church) could make it seem as though their congregation was of that opinion, but their congregation is one of 27,827 worldwide. There are 13,193,999 members worldwide, 5,873,408 of whom live in the US and half of them probably don’t go to church on a regular basis.
So it is a bit of a stretch to say these two individuals represent the maximum potential of 2.5 million active US members who may or may not really care if this ballot issue passes or fails. On an only slightly related note: even if the Prophet or other General Authorities of the Church said “vote No” it would still be the agency of each member to choose according to their conscience.
It would be no more or less effective than bligbi.com telling its readers to “vote Yes.” In the end we still live in a democratic republic. Politicians are usually the only members of society with a vote on issues and policy, the rest of us can only threaten them with our votes in their elections.
Thanks for dropping by to explain things Stephen.
However, what the two of them did is not comparable to me doing the same. I am not registered as a 501c3 organization and thus I am not restricted from using my site for political purposes, in part or whole.
And that’s the root of the problem with the LDS church at this point – misuse of it’s tax-free status as such an organization to influence legislation. Individual Mormons may work to see that a piece of legislation is defeated, but the church itself cannot.
I love Karen’s posts, but you can’t convince me that she has as much pull telling her readers to “vote Yes” as an official of the church telling the congregation to “vote No.”
Besides the general problem and principle of church trying to influence state, there is the tax-exempt status that Karen points out. I would think after the concerns with Prop 8, the Mormon church would be walking a little more carefully when making political statements.
You have less to fear from the LDS church than you think. I understand where you are coming from, but lets look at the LDS church historically on another POLITICAL issue that was also a moral issue. Prohibition was a political issue that many religions supported and in 1933 when a large number of religious leaders, including the prophet of the LDS church, urged their followers to vote against the 21st amendment(to repeal prohibition), the State of Utah cast a historic 36th vote in favor of the amendment.
H.Con.Res.415 (7th paragraph) http://files.statesurge.com/file/806751
All churches include some sort of moral code as a part of their doctrine, and urge their followers to hold those to those values. If a church says “drinking is wrong” then faithful followers will hold that value and it will influence everything from what they do on Friday night to how they vote on alcohol laws. If a religious person believes “X is wrong” because their pastor said so and then X becomes a political issue, what should be done? Should all pastors take back what they said and say X is neither right nor wrong because it is a political issue now and I want to maintain my tax-exempt status? The fact is that the LDS church has essentially been telling its members to vote yes on prop 8 ever since 1830. It doesn’t matter what the name of the bill or proposition is, if Bill X is somehow against the doctrine of Local Church A, then followers of Local Church A have already been told implicitly to vote against Bill X, even if the pastor does not explicitly denounce Bill X.
This is the IRS text explanation for tax-exemption: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=181570,00.html
By law, organizations exempt from tax under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3) may not “participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode26/usc_sec_26_00000501—-000-.html
Admittedly the same section mentions “no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (h)),” and subsection (h) gives the general rule, but (d)(2) actually lists the exceptions. I must admit it looks bad for the church, because (d)(2)(C) could only apply if you redefine the “legislative body” to be the voting public because this vote was for the general public and not the “legislative branch” of Cal. government. Even for me that seems like a bit of a stretch. And the exception in (d)(2)(D) does not apply because of (d)(3)(B). The church did indeed “directly encourage such member[s] to urge persons other than members to” support prop 8.
I will admit there is more to the argument that my church should loose its tax-exempt status than I had thought before researching it. Ultimately it would be an argument about key terms and definitions.
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