Traditional Marriage Amendment A Religious Conspiracy

Many of us in California have wondered who really exercised the gumption to pass Proposition 8, the traditional marriage amendment. And we needed to know who all those homophobes who voted for it were. And at last, the New York Times has provided the answers. It was those horrible Mormons. Without them, gays and lesbians would be living in marital bliss.

It wasn't even a hardworking Times news reporter who finally dug up the truth. It was the movie critic, Stephen Holden. He did so in his review of the new documentary by gay marriage zealots called 8: The Mormon Proposition. Like anti-American leftist movies and phony documentaries such as Michael Moore's, Holden found nothing to criticize in this pure gay marriage screed. His most serious jab was to call it "highly emotional."

Although Holden's review doesn't stand up well against such great works as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, nevertheless it shares the depiction of a religious belief as the source of all evil. This time, instead of the Jews, it's the Mormons. Although Holden in the past has criticized movies which depicted Muslims as anything more dangerous and doctrinaire than hummus merchants, he seems to have no problem at all in applauding the distortions in the documentary surrounding the Mormons and their support of Prop 8.

Produced by gay activist Reed Cowan and narrated by the screenwriter for Milk, the documentary is almost pure agitprop. Cowan has a particular agenda, since he is both gay and the child of a Mormon family which disapproved of his sexual proclivities. Like all good propaganda, the film contains certain important elements of truth. The Mormon Church did provide considerable funds to the Prop 8 campaign, and individual Mormons were active in promoting the measure. The film also argues that in the final weeks of the campaign, Mormons in Utah contributed $3 million to the campaign. That figure is in dispute, but it's probably not very far from right.

But then Holden goes into full attack mode. "The reason Utah's suicide rate is the highest of any state, the movie suggests, is the Mormon church's absolute rejection of homosexuality, which one church elder calls 'contrary to God's plan.' Chris Buttars, a proudly homophobic Utah state senator, compared male coupling to bestiality. The movie shows the depth of religion-based loathing of homosexuality, like that of abortion, to be primal."

Note the buzzword that has crept into common usage--"homophobic." That suggests a fear of homosexuals (although technically it means a fear of man). But the opponents of gay marriage aren't expressing fear of homosexuals, just disapproval of homosexual acts. That debate is the major theme, with gay marriage as a sidebar.

For emphasis, I'll place the opinion words in the remainder of the review in italics, since they are either outright lies or half-truths. "The film dives angrily into the fray. It uncovers the classified church documents and the largely concealed money trail of Mormon contributions that paid for a high-powered campaign to pass Proposition 8. The Mormon involvement, the film persuasively argues, tilted the vote toward passage by 52 percent to 48 percent in its final weeks."

"That involvement was concealed under the facade of a coalition with Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians [finally, he got to them] called the National Organization for Marriage. The money financed a sophisticated media barrage that involved blogs, Twitter and YouTube videos, as well as scary television ads, and an aggressive door-to-door campaign whose foot soldiers were instructed on how not to appear Mormon."

First of all, not trumpeting your involvement in a campaign is not tantamount to "concealing" it. The coalition was not a facade, it was a well-organized group of people whose religious views oppose gay marriage. Some of what I have described about homosexual activity in San Francisco in my Diary would be "scary" to many average people. And I'm waiting to find out how one "appears not to be Mormon."

As a good liberal, Holden had to leave out a major fact because it would tar a victim group with the same label as the white bigots he so despises. The African-American voters supported the measure at the voting booth by 70 percent to 30 percent, the highest anti-gay marriage vote of any group. Now that, Al Gore, is an inconvenient truth. Though many other liberal film critics had some favorable things to say, most were honest enough to admit that the "documentary" was entirely one-sided. Not Holden.

The same critic who can find nothing to criticize in movies depicting Muslims as innocents who never practice female circumcision, oppression of women, mass murder in support of their religious evangelism, and dishonesty toward everyone who does not subscribe to Islam, finds a great deal to hate in Mormons. It's been over a hundred years since any Mormon sect acted violently toward anyone with differing views, but to listen to Holden, you'd think a gay pogrom was about to occur any day now. In fact, all the Mormons did in this matter was to spend time, money and effort to oppose an institution that is opposed throughout most of the world, and is treated as a capital offense in his much-beloved Muslim lands.