@ Proposition 8 Opponents-Turned-Protesters: Get a life

More than 40 people demonstrated in front of a Mormon church in Seattle’s University District on Sunday morning, expressing anger at the role the national church played in the passing of Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in California.
They lined the sidewalk, chanting slogans such as “Tax the church!” and holding signs saying “Shame on the church” and “All marriages are equal.”
“I don’t tell them what to do in their religion. They shouldn’t tell me what to do in my life,” said Chris Campfield, 27, of Seattle.
Matthew Wilson, 26, of Seattle, who organized the protest, said: “We want to make it very clear to this church that Washington will not accept divisive or discriminatory actions.”
…
Doug Clark, of Seattle, who is Mormon, counterprotested at the Seattle demonstration by holding a sign saying: “9.5 million voted on Prop 8. Mormons are not alone in their opinion.”
Nobody is ever going to warm up to gay marriage because you act like asses outside Mormon churches and temples.
UPDATE: My sister-in-law’s sister has some great observations at her blog:
I might further contrast the activities of Latter-Day Saints with the temple protesters by pointing out that members of the LDS church have never assembled around courthouses en masse and physically prevent homosexual couples from getting married.
…
Furthermore, LDS voters make up about 4% of the total voting populace in California.  Even if they all voted, and voted the same way, there’s simply no way that Proposition 8 would have passed without support from a wide variety of other groups.  In fact, other churches did contribute official funds, as well as urging members to vote for Prop 8.  It’s even possible to argue that Senator Biden contributed to its passage after stating in the vice presidential debate that he and Barack Obama support civil unions but do not support the use of the term “marriage” to describe the union of a gay couple (interestingly, this is the same position the LDS church takes).  But anyone who told President-elect Obama that he had “forgotten some lessons” would be (rightfully) labeled a bigot.

Comments

@ Proposition 8 Opponents-Turned-Protesters: Get a life — 9 Comments

  1. I was actually at this stake conference, I thought the whole thing was quite humorous. I also was told that there were two members protesting who, when conference started, came up to attend church.
  2. Do these protesters realize that they’re not going to change a blessed thing by protesting outside of Mormon buildings? If anything, it’s going to make us feel like we’re more right. Deep down, we Mormons kinda like being persecuted because it justifies our cause. Something about having our ancestors chased out of four different states makes us feel like having the powers of hell combine against us means we’re doing the right thing.
  4. Mormons have a stubborn streak like you wouldn’t believe.
    Evangelical ministry folks probably know this better than most people.
  5. Have they checked the Islamic position on marriage? Why aren’t they protesting in front of mosques, too? Never mind.
  6. I live in California, so I remember when I kept hearing last month about how the Morman church officially endorsed YES to prop 8. I have no idea if any other churches were endorsing (they very well could be). I think people are mostly pissed that the church even needed to have a position on it in the first place, AND apparently was one of the biggest donors to the YES campaign. So those are a few reasons why people are picking out the Morman church from others.
    And really, as little as I know about it, seems to me that no religious group should be involved in taking away the civil liberties of any fellow human beings. It seems morally wrong to me….
  7. I like the editorial that you linked to Sommers. I’ve done a new post with my actual thoughts on gay marriage, which (I hope) will surprise you.
    It doesn’t surprise me that the LDS church would oppose Prop 8, even with polygamy in their history. From a practical standpoint, gay marriage would hurt their proselyting efforts since they would have to ask gay converts to abandon their marriages before joining. They have the same problem today when a polygamous man from a country that allows polygamy converts: they have to ask him to divorce all but one of his wives before he can join.
    I don’t think religious groups who oppose gay marriage see it as taking away the civil liberties of others. In their minds, gays have the exact same civil rights they do: the right to marry a person of the opposite sex. Anyways, my point in this post was only to point out that protesting at Mormon properties is not going to do a lick to help the gay marriage cause. Folks like me actually aren’t a lost cause in this fight, but we won’t be won over by behavior like this.
  8. Gay marriage also runs into a really sticky problem in LDS theology -
    Mother in Heaven
    The LDS view of the cosmos is not genderless, and the LDS view of God is also male AND female UNITED. We may not talk about it much, but it’s always lurking there and just because the Mormons haven’t had to deal with it yet, doesn’t mean they won’t have to confront it eventually.
    There is little place for homosexual union in that calculation of deification as a joint male-female endeavor.
  9. Reading some of the old posts :)
    Well, I agree that it was a bad idea to protest in front of a local Mormon church unless they had proof that that particular church had been collecting money to support Prop 8 (I suppose tithing money probably eventually went to prop 8 ads and truthfully anyone who gave to a tithe that supported prop 8 techniquely was supporting discrimination, but the filtering of the money is so indirect that each individual’s responsibility was incredibly watered down and protesting the local church just isn’t politically useful)
    I do, however, think that protesting in front of the office space for leaders of the church is not only appropriate but should be encouraged. In America, a person’s religion is often treated as their identity and people feel it should never be questioned. But in reality, religion is a collection of beliefs and it, like any belief, can be criticized, especially when it affects the community as support for prop 8 does. Criticizing the Mormon Church on gay marriage does not make one anti-Mormon just as criticizing the Southern Baptist’s support for slavery in 1860 doesn’t make one anti-Baptist. You can support the people while opposing the political positions.
    The protest leaders should make it clear that they are not protesting the Mormons but rather protesting the actions of the Mormon Leaders on prop 8. I’m sure there are some Mormons that even would have joined them. In any case, the goal was not to convince the Mormon Church to support gay marriage, but rather to convince everyone else that the Mormon Church leadership was promoting hate (it is undeniable that the Mormon Church pumped in a large amount of money to the prop 8 campaign) and that everyone else should personally vote in favor of gay marriage in the future to set a better example. It also served as a call that people should think twice about joining and financially supporting the Mormon Church until they change their stance on gay marriage. Now, granted, it was easier to protest in front of a Mormon church because of anti-mormonism in the community, but I believe that the protest should have been carried out in front of the office buildings of any church or any other organization that promoted prop 8 (and yes, that would include any African American organization that did so, since the support of many blacks was another reason prop 8 passed)
    Now obviously this kind of protest needs to be handled carefully and it needs to be clear that they are protesting the actions of the organization, not the people themselves. But I think that churches need to be held accountable for their mistakes as much as any other organization.
Categories:

Related Post:



0 коментарі:

Post a Comment

ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity