by Karen on March 4, 2009
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.
[click to continue…]
by Karen on February 2, 2009
Now that it’s facing an investigation into it’s behaviour prior to the passage of Prop 8, it looks like the Mormon church has decided to fess up:
The Mormon church has revealed in a campaign filing that the church spent nearly $190,000 to help pass Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California.
The disclosure comes amid an investigation by the state’s campaign watchdog agency into whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints violated state laws by not fully disclosing its involvement during the campaign.
While many church members had donated directly to the Yes on 8 campaign – some estimates of Mormon giving range as high as $20 million – the church itself had previously reported little direct campaign activity.
But in the filing made Friday, the Mormon church reported thousands in travel expenses, such as airline tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals for the campaign. The church also reported $96,849.31 worth of “compensated staff time” – hours that church employees spent working to pass the same-sex marriage ban.
This filing is, of course, in direct opposition to Scott Trotter, a spokesman for the sect, who stated that the allegations made against the church were false. The allegations?
That the church was lying about it’s involvement and that it had used it’s money as well as it employees to support the drive to pass Prop 8 into law.
by Karen on December 4, 2008
Not long after the passage of Prop 8 I wrote this post about boycotting pro Prop 8 businesses. Since then I’ve been accused of being anti-Mormon and told that my support for such boycotts is, in effect, a hate crime.
Bullshit.
Mormon owned businesses that supported Prop 8 are not being boycotted because they believe that Joseph Smith was visited by angels, God and Jesus who told him every other religion was corrupt and that if he translated the writing on golden plates he’d restore Christianity to it’s original form.
To put it more bluntly, Mormon owned businesses who gave money to the pro Prop 8 groups are not being boycotted because of their Mormon beliefs.
Mormon owned businesses are being boycotted because they contributed money to the passage of a bigoted law that stripped gay Californians of their civil right to have their unions recognized in the same manner that non-gay people have their unions recognized by the state of California.
It is not “anti-Mormon” nor a hate crime to support a boycott of such businesses. Just as [conservative] Christians and other theists have a right to boycott businesses that have policies they disagree with and/or contribute to causes they disagree with, so to do the rest of us.
No business is entitled to the $$$ of any one for any reason and if a company decides to participate in something that can come back and bite them on the ass? Well, they should act like big boys and girls and not whine when they do, in fact, get bit on the ass.
Because that’s exactly what’s happening. These companies are getting bit on the ass because they openly supported discrimination against a minority group. There are consequences to such behaviour and for these companies that consequence is less $$$ and more bad public relations.
Maybe they can get Washington to bail their asses out, eh?
