Source: Associated Press, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Salt Lake Tribune
A California elections commission will investigate participation by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- the Mormons -- in the campaign for Proposition 8, Associated Press reports.
Responding to a complaint filed by gay-rights advocate Fred Karger, the California Fair Political Practices Commission said Monday it will investigate whether the Mormon church accurately described its role in a campaign.
It's the latest bit of attention that the church, which has long been a dominant political and cultural force in Utah and neighboring states, has gotten after the aggressive role it played in the expensive California ballot campaign.
Several post-election articles have sought to shed more light on the Salt Lake City-based church's role in the campaign and its aftermath. Both Washington Post and Boston Globe print analyses of the church's response to the campaign this week. Meanwhile, Salt Lake Tribune pored over public financial from the California secretary of state's office to show the financial bump the campaign received from Utah residents.
Since the election and the protests it engendered, the church has sought to downplay its role, according to the Post article by Stephen Stromberg. Michael Otterson, a church spokesman, recently told the Associated Press that he was "puzzled" by the protesters' targeting of Mormons.
"This was a very broad-based coalition that defended traditional marriage in a free and democratic election," he said. "It's a little disturbing to see these protesters singling out the Mormon Church."
As Otterson suggests, it's true that the Mormon church joined with a broad coalition of politically active religious groups to promote the measure. Although the measure was spurred initially by evangelicals preachers centered mostly in San Diego County, it grew to include Catholics and Mormons.
But Mormons became both the financial and organizational backbone of the campaign.
The Salt Lake Tribune's analysis of campaign data shows how important LDS support became.
As the Tribune points out, the church urged members in a variety of ways to support the measure with their time and money. While Catholic and Evangelical churches and affiliated groups gave cash directly to support Prop 8, official Mormon involvement centered on non-monetary and organizational aid, in addition to rallying church members, documents show, according to Salt Lake Tribune.
Mormon support for anti-gay Prop. 8 campaign shines unwanted spotlight on the church [contd.]
''Mormon members were instrumental in the campaign, there's no question,'' said Fred Schubert told Salt Lake Tribune. He's chief strategist and a spokesman for ProtectMarriage.com, by far the biggest official fundraising group in favor of Proposition 8. ''They donated far in excess of their representation in the population,'' Schubert said, according to the Tribune.
As Stamberg writes in the Post, "[T]hey were probably the most organized and consequential force behind the measure's passage. But in the face of post-election protests outside its temples, the church doesn't seem to want to take much credit."
Contributions to both sides of the successful ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage have already topped a total of $75.2 million, according to disclosures filed with the California secretary of state. And almost 5 cents of every dollar came from Utah, Salt Lake Tribune reports.
''It was the most expensive social issue on a ballot anywhere,'' Schubert told the Tribune.
''I believe it simply reflects the passions people have surrounding the issue of marriage, on both sides,'' Schubert said from his Sacramento office. .
Utah residents donated $3.6 to the California campaigns. Fully 70 percent of Utah donations, or $2.58 million, went in support of the same-sex marriage ban, while $1.1 million -- most of it from one man -- was given to oppose it, according to Salt Lake Tribune.
Utah ranked second only to California itself for total donations in support, while it ranked sixth for opposing donations, behind California and such heavily populated states as New York, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, according to the Tribune's analysis.
Both Stromberg in the Post and Michael Paulson, writing for Boston Globe, report that many church members have been taken aback by the strong post-election response to their church's involvement in the campaign.
Stromberg writes,
This is new and awkward territory for many Mormons. Members of a virulent anti-Mormon fringe have protested at LDS churches and temples for years. The church, meanwhile, has always had a difficult relationship with gay men and lesbians. But now it has drawn the focused attention of that large, vocal and organized segment of America, with which huge swaths of the country sympathize. Boycotts of some Mormon-owned businesses are underway. One Californian spelled out an obscene insult to Mormons in large, block letters on his hillside balcony.
This attention presents the church and its members with some big decisions. They have gotten a taste, sweet and bitter, of what this remarkable organization of souls can do -- and the reactions it can provoke -- in the rough world of American politics. After Proposition 8's passage, the church's reputation will likely be on the upswing among religious conservatives, some of whom have typically been the most ardent anti-Mormons. For many of these people, the most important vote Nov. 4 was on Proposition 8, not Barack Obama.
But Paulson reports in the Globe that the more extreme protests at Mormon places of worship "has helped rally a denomination with a long history of persecution."
He quotes a Massachusetts Mormon who is upset by the more extreme protests, which have been highlighted through official church organs.
"I would not have voted in support of Prop. 8, but it does grieve me to see anybody being called bigoted for voting in an election and expressing their viewpoints," said Julie Berry, 34, of Maynard. "I support the right to protest, but vandalism and damage to church buildings - that hurts . . . and I wish we could see a little more defense of Mormons' right to exist as citizens and vote how they wish to vote. I'm sad to think that some of the social and political good will we've gained in the last 15 years may be set back."
Paulson reports that the protests, and the church's emphasis on on the more extreme elements may be helping repair a rift within Mormonism caused by the campaign.
Both Paulson and Stromberg point out that a small but vocal group of Mormons opposed their church's stance in favor of Prop. 8.
Stromberg writes,
There are Mormons who fought hard against the measure, drawing attention to the extent of Mormon involvement by outing fellow members on donor lists. There are Mormons so upset they're thinking of renouncing their church membership as well as Mormons who wholeheartedly supported the initiative. And then there are those who gave money out of obedience to their leaders, without much thought to the policy it was being used to support. Regardless of where they fall on this spectrum, many probably feel a bit like Otterson: uneasy with all the attention.
The Salt Lake Tribune analysis of campaign donations reveals the rift. Utah's numbers were pushed dramatically skyward by a public-giving duel between former Word Perfect executives Bruce Bastian and Alan Ashton, estranged friends on opposite sides of the issue who each threw $1 million into the fray.
Bastian, of Orem, Utah, is gay and has given to similar causes in the past. Ashton, a Lindon, Utah resident, is an active member of the LDS Church, former mission president and grandson of the late LDS Church President David O. McKay, Salt Lake Tribune reports.
After initially giving $5,000 to the anti-Prop 8 Human Rights Campaign in May, Bastian gave $1 million in July. Ashton countered with a $1 million donation to ProtectMarriage.com in October.
''I gave my money because I was fearful, when the church stepped in, of what would happen, and it happened,'' Bastian said. ''And I think other people like me were trying to counter what they saw the church doing.''
But not all of the blowback from the Prop. 8 campaign has been negative for the church.
The campaign probably had the side-effect of helping the political career of Mitt Romney, a Mormon whose 2008 campaign "brought to the surface a deep strain of anti-Mormonism in American culture," as Paulson put it in the Globe.
But political analysts contacted last week by Salt Lake Tribune say Mormon support for the anti-gay effort would probably help Romney if he decides to run again for President in 2008.
They say Mormon support for the anti-gay measure might have helped convince the fundamentalists who have been important in GOP primaries that a Mormon like Romney really might be on their side.
"What the LDS Church just did in California and elsewhere, should help [Romney] because it sends a signal to evangelical Protestants that while we differ religiously, politically we are first cousins," Charles Dunn, dean of the School of Government at Regent University, told the Tribune. Regent was founded by evangelical leader Pat Robertson.
Others, however, say the LDS campaign could make it harder for him to convince voters he'd be independent of the church.
John Green, a professor at the University of Akron and a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, told the Tribune that the high-profile criticism aimed at the LDS Church over the Proposition 8 battle could endear some evangelicals. But the next presidential election is more than four years away.
"It depends on how well-remembered the involvement of Mormons in Proposition 8 is," Green says. "It depends on how long-lived this criticism of Mormons is."
Kirk Jowers, a Romney friend who heads the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, says once the initial sting of criticism over the church's involvement ebbs, the action shouldn't really affect future Mormon candidates.
However, he added, "It may bring to the forefront again the question of whether some of the far-right base of the Republican Party have taken for granted a strong Mormon-Republican tie but see Mormons as merely useful rather than acceptable."
In his Washington Post analysis, Stromberg puts it this way: "If Mitt Romney runs for president again, Americans will address, with renewed passion, the question of whether he would be a puppet of Salt Lake City in the Oval Office. And with all the old narratives about Mormons floating around -- that they are secretive, rich, excessively traditional and theologically odd -- it will be hard for the church to stay comfortably out of the political spotlight."
Source: California to investigate Mormon aid to Prop 8 | Associated Press
Gay-marriage debate roils, unites Mormons | Boston Globe
Mormons' Uneasy Victory | Washington Post
Utah money helped push Prop 8 spending to historic levels | Salt Lake Tribune
LDS political activism on gay marriage could impact Romney future | Salt Lake Tribune