Mormon Church Aimed to Cover Tracks on Marriage Ban

Directed funds to outside organization
By Will McCahill,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 20, 2010 9:45 PM CST
Mormon Church Aimed to Cover Tracks on Marriage Ban
People protest outside the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City on Nov. 7, 2008.   (AP Photo)

The Mormon church wanted its members to support the 2008 effort to ban same-sex marriage in California, but urged they do it through an outside organization to give the leadership “plausible deniability,” according to documents released today in the Proposition 8 trial in San Francisco. The Catholic church also helped bankroll the operation, an executive says in one email, while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provided “financial, organizational and management contributions.”

Later in today’s session, a Stanford professor testified that although high-profile politicians pay lip service to homosexual issues, “Gays and lesbians do not possess a meaningful degree of political power. They are not able to protect their essential interests.” Though President Obama describes himself as a “fierce advocate” for gay causes, lack of action on the military’s ban on openly gay service members and other issues shows he “is not a reliable ally.”
(More Prop 8 trial stories.)

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