Mormon Church feels the heat over Proposition 8

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SALT LAKE CITY: A Proposition 8 protest outside Mormon headquarters. The church said demonstrators were trying to intimidate not just Mormons but all religious people who voted their conscience by backing the California initiative.

The church, which has long sought to be seen as mainstream, joins other religious organizations to back California’s gay-marriage ban. But now it has become a political target.

By Nicholas Riccardi
November 17, 2008

Reporting from Salt Lake City — In June, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a fateful decision. They called on California Mormons to donate their time and money to the campaign for Proposition 8, which would overturn a state Supreme Court ruling that permitted gay marriage.

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FOR THE RECORD: An article in Monday’s A section about the Mormon Church’s backing of the California proposition to ban gay marriages identified Melissa Proctor, who said: “It’s disconcerting to Latter-day Saints that Mormonism is still the religious tradition that everybody loves to hate,” as teaching at Harvard Divinity School. Proctor is a fellow at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religion and is a visiting instructor at the College of the Holy Cross.

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Prop. 8 protesters target Mormon…

That push helped the initiative win narrow passage on election day. And it has made the Mormon Church, which for years has striven to be seen as part of the American mainstream, a political target.

Protesters have massed outside Mormon temples nationwide. For every donation to a fund to overturn Proposition 8, a postcard is sent to the president of the Mormon Church. Supporters of gay marriage have proposed a boycott of Utah businesses, and someone burned a Book of Mormon outside a temple near Denver.

“It’s disconcerting to Latter-day Saints that Mormonism is still the religious tradition that everybody loves to hate,” said Melissa Proctor, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School.

As an indication of how seriously the Mormon leadership takes the recent criticism, the council that runs the church — the First Presidency — released a statement Friday decrying what it portrayed as a campaign not just against Mormons but all religious people who voted their conscience.

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