3,500 people gathered to give voice and action to the outrage that countless of us feel over what the Mormon church has done. 3 openly gay Utah State Legislatures spoke. Former mayor Rocky Anderson spoke. My friend Troy Williams spoke. And the message, from all of them, was loud and clear. Shame on you. The large crowd wrapped around the block surrounding Temple Square cheering and chanting. Cars drove by all night honking and waving flags in support. Cars with elderly couples drove by giving us big thumbs up. A car circled the block blasting Cher.
The only arrest I was aware of was a Mormon guy who jumped out of his car and started running towards a young gay man. And the only real confrontation was with a group of LDS men that stood with their signs on temple property.
One of these men started screaming at my friend Jeff, the Iraq war veteran who was carrying an American flag, that he, "Didn't deserve to carry that flag!" Jeff got in his face and several police stepped up to get him to back off. I pointed at Jeff and yelled, "He is a goddamn Marine!" and the police instantly stepped back and stood silently - allowing Jeff to say whatever the hell he wanted to. That was the only ugly moment. But I gotta say that it was actually amusing to see this ridiculous short little guy screaming until his face was so red that I though he was going to have an aneurysm, in a foreign accent so thick it was almost hard to understand him, that a United States Marine didn't have the right to carry the flag because he just happened to be gay. Wow.There were great signs:
Keep Your Doctrine out of my Covenants
I Served a 2 Year Mission and The Church Approved My Male Companion
Joseph Smith Had 34 Wives... I Only Want 1 Husband
No More Mr. Nice Gay
Let's Keep Intolerance Inside The Church, Shall We?
Internetland, I have vivid memories of marching with my gay father and gay friends in rallies on Castro St. in the 80's. With drag queens and men that were so weak with AIDS that they could hardly hold their signs. I was a fifteen year old girl then and understood and appreciated it as much as I could. But, last night, I stood as a forty year old woman who has been through it and understands the painful clash between the Mormon church and the gay community better than most. I stood with the memory of my father and those men, all of whom are long gone, in my heart and wept - not on Castro St. but at Temple Square in freaking Salt Lake City, Utah!!!
It was a miracle. One that I will carry with me forever. One that the Mormon church itself created for me.
And, for that, I say THANK YOU.
17 comments:
I'm not trying to be a smart ass or stir up trouble but... it doesn't make sense that 50 million people voted for Prop. 8 just because they hate gay people. This has been on my mind for the last couple of days and Em, I figured this would be a good place to throw this out there. It's much more complicated than just "Mormons hate Gays." I believe both sides need to stop freaking out and take some time to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
does that photo have a true fact? 20M on Prop8?
How heartening to see this happen in Utah. Maybe someday things will change...
Oh, and to little lucy - the thing is, I don't think 50 million people in California hate gays. Some of them do, yes. Some are misguided.
All of them are wrong.
You're right, it is more complicated. There is fear and ignorance as well as political and financial issues.
And, yes, there were many other religions that pushed voted and passed the hateful law. But the Mormons led them.
Did I say 50 million? I meant to say "50% of the voters." (Yikes, I know California is crowded but...) Okay, here's my next question. If Prop. 8 is defeated, what would stop polygamists from demanding their rights? I realize that this has been thrown out there over and over but no one has yet to give me a good answer. Polygamy, legal? That is just creepy!
Love the pic of you with the sign and the flag. A 40 year old activist - protestor - hottie.
The vote on Prop 8 was about 5 million on either side (the population of California is less than 40 million).
Regarding the main point of the discussion, I tend to agree that it is often incorrect and unhelpful to accuse supporters of the proposition of hatred. "Hate" implies an intensity of emotion that I think many who voted yes do not actually experience. A more accurate description of the state of mind of some might be cold-hearted superiority and contempt, or in other cases a casual indifference that allowed the universal human tendency to want to feel right in one's opinions to take precedence over other considerations--considerations including the harm inflicted on gay citizens of California, and the propriety of establishing one religious viewpoint as constitutional law.
However, the Mormon church as an institution cannot so easily be acquitted of hatred. As a teenage Mormon, I heard myself described using terms such as "pervert" (cf. Spencer W. Kimball, Miracle of Forgiveness, chapter 6) over the pulpit before I even knew I was gay. At that time, the church's position was that even feeling sexual attraction to my own sex was a sin. After quoting Old Testament passages imposing the death penalty for same-sex relations, Kimball said "The law is less severe now, and so regrettably is the community's attitude to these grave sins."
In his 1965 address "Make Honor Your Standard," BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson told students with homosexual "inclinations" that they should leave the university because "We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence." Boyd K. Packer in "To the One" (1978) "diagnosed" homosexuality as the result of "a very typical form of selfishness," continuing to demand that gay Mormons (whose existence he oddly refused to admit) must repent and "return" to heterosexuality. During this period the church supported the use of "aversion therapy," tantamount to physical torture, to turn gay members straight.
Over the succeeding decades, I think it is fair to say that the church's position has softened. After many years of dismissing as lies the nearly universal experience of gay members and nonmembers, the church in the new century seems to have grudgingly acknowledged that gay members cannot (at least in general) simply turn straight by "repentance". Gay Mormons are no longer urged to marry the opposite sex and "forget about" their homosexuality, as I understand happened with our host Emily's parents, from my foggy recollection of her mother's book. The church's statement that it did not oppose civil unions in California is, as far as I know, a departure from its position in every past comparable election, but it reflects the realities of California politics. Certainly in Utah there has been no evidence that the church supports any civil recognition of gay partnerships.
Viewed in the light of this history, I find it impossible to take seriously the church's assertion that its participation in the prop 8 campaign was not anti-gay. The church has been nothing but anti-gay during my entire lifetime, and now do they expect me to believe that right now, in 2008, none of that history is relevant, and their support for depriving gay Californians of the right to marry has no connection to the past? I doubt it. This is merely a propaganda point with the goal of deflecting some criticism and not alienating voters who do not share the church's animus toward gay people.
Perhaps one day it will be possible for the LDS church to claim credibly that it does not hate its gay members, and (even more) gay non-members, but that time has not yet arrived.
the slippery slope argument (i.e., this could lead to polygamy, marrying your clock radio, etc.)has been trooped out as a scare tactic over and over again. It hasn't happened in Europe, in Canada, in Massachusetts. I don't think there is a reasonable argument of why it would happen.
Great post! I understand people are upset that we are "picking" on the Mormons, but this is a fight we can fight in our own backyard. The church needs to know that discrimination is never okay. It wasn't long ago that their marriages didn't fit the mold and to this day they still claim persecution over it. Thanks for writing it, it's always nice to hear about others in this state who are open minded and willing to stand up for what it right!
I was there too. It was beyond amazing.
My sign was the one that read "Keep your doctrine out of our covenants". Glad you liked it :)
It was amazingly cathartic to be able to march around the symbol of all mormondom and say, "Enough. No More. We are done."
Thank you to all of you who aren't gay or lesbian, bi or transgendered, but who recognise that we are being treated shamefully. Wr need you. We can't do this by ourselves.
At this point, if my clock radio had health benefits, I would marry it! So, no on Prop 8 and let those flood gates open!
"Keep your Doctrine..." I have to admit, that is funny. I remember seeing a few gay rallies at general conference when I was a teenager (early '90's). Very eye opening for me back then.
Yes, the figure is accurate. A total of $22.88 million was raised in support of Prop 8. Since August, 59,000 LDS families raised $17.67 million - 77% of the money raised - and the entire coalition was led by an LDS couple. In addition, the LDS church raised $6.9 million to pass a similar law, Prop 102, in Arizona.
My friend Michael, who works for the Equality Federation, educated me on this. As the LDS church is set up, they are allowed to raise “educational” money around any issue as long as it pertains to their mission. They are allowed to use up to 20% of their money on lobbying and ballot initiatives that pertain to their missions. But the church didn’t give any money itself. What it did was ask, demand, and, on several occasions, even strong arm their members into giving it personally (out of retirement funds, college funds, vacation funds, family savings…) so it didn’t count against its 20%.
To date, not one dime was given by any of the Presidency, the apostles or other general authorities.
Melinda, I LOVE the picture of you and baby that appears when you leave comments on my blog. It makes my heart happy.
BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE.
Lucy, the "marrying your clock radio for health benefits" comment made me laugh out loud. Thank you for that little bit of humor today!
In 1967, the US Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that marrying the person of our choice (consenting adults, of course) is a fundamental right. That case, of course, was about interracial marriage, but the same arguments that were used then against allowing people of different races to marry are being used today to keep people of the same sex from marrying, most of them biblically based. (While conservatives like to say that our system of law is based on the Bible, it is in fact based only on Judeo-Christian principles, not actual biblical law. If it were, you'd be thrown in jail or stoned for eating pork or shrimp or wearing clothes made of two different threads -- such as wool and cotton, and be forced to decamp to a tent for the several days on either side of your period because you were "unclean." Seriously).
The only thing we have to do to allow two consenting adults of the same-sex to marry is to remove the law that forbids it. In order to allow polygamy, we would need to change scores -- if not hundreds -- of laws around property, inheritance, child custody, etc.
Allowing two consenting adults to marry, regardless of their sex, does not change the fundamental structure of marriage. It does, of course, change who is allowed the marriage license given by the state. The court decisions around the country that have opened the recognition of same-sex marriages by the state were based in the concept of equal protection for all citizens, not just some. Remember, it's not the walking down the aisle in the $1500 dress and having the clergy of your choice say the magic words that gives you the 1200+ rights and responsibilities of marriage; it's the going down to the county clerk and plopping down your $75 that does.
One of the BIG lies propogated by the Yes on 8 folks -- funded in the millions by LDS folks -- was that churches would lose their tax status if they didn't allow people of the same sex to marry in their churches. NEWS FLASH: There are churches who marry gay people now and there are churches who never will. That's their perogative. I attend a wonderful, inclusive church in NYC that does religious marriages for gay folk; believe me, there's no power on earth that would compel me to force the LDS Church to conduct my hoped-for marriage. And there's no law I know of -- on the books or proposed -- that would give me grounds to use laws of the state to do such a thing. Indeed, I would fight any push to force churches to perform marriages they feel go against their beliefs.
Finally, for those who say it's just about the word "marriage," I have a proposition: how about we say that all couples who are consenting adults can receive a civil union from the state and get their religious marriages solemnized by their clergy, understanding that it's not the latter that gives the rights and responsiblities of marriage. My guess is there would be a huge outcry.
This whole fight is about religious folks exercising undue influence on secular institutions -- and on other religions who support same-sex marriages. The arguments for restricting marriage to opposite sex couples are not logical or rational and are based in centuries of fear and stubborn misinformation and, yes, religious belief. I'm not saying you shouldn't have religious belief. I am saying that if your religious belief gets in the way of my civil rights, is outright harmful to a big subset of your community or is just plain mean, I have a real problem with that. And may just have to carry a sign saying that in front of your place of worship.
(Sorry for the really long comment... it's making me realize I should just get my own blog. Or at the very least, my own clock radio with benefits.)
I love you Michael!!!
I am with you. The Mormon Church has every right to believe and teach whatever the hell it wants to and I would also fight a push to force them, or any church, to have to marry anyone they didn't want to.
This is about freedom and equal rights, for everyone. Even the Mormon Church.
Great post Em.
Thought this might be what you were doing when you said you might be going to get arrested!
Glad to hear you are well and busy.
To little lucy: the truest thing in your comment? "It doesn't make sense that 50 million people voted for Prop. 8". Even if the correct number was 5 million it doesn't make sense. Whatever the reason, it doesn't make sense.
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