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 LDS Actions Against Marriage Equality
Racism and Homophobia in the Church
The Proclamation on the Family
Published Books and Articles
D. Michael Quinn |
Prelude to the National “Defense of Marriage”
Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities
Special Award for Outstanding Scholarly Research and Writing, Affirmation
Conference, Long Beach, September 2001
D. Michael Quinn1
Originally published in Dialogue:
A Journal of Mormon Thought, 33:3, pp. 1-52. Reproduced with
permission.
Introduction
AMERICA IS CURRENTLY IN THE MIDST of state-by-state political activism
and judicial appeals to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage.
In 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated one example of the related
effort to roll back laws protecting homosexuals from civil discrimination,
but this campaign moves forward on various fronts in every state of
the Union. Its organizers will certainly extend this political activism
into all states currently lacking a "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA)
which both prohibits same-sex marriage and refuses to recognize such
unions legally performed in other states or countries. In view of the
pace for this state-by-state political activism during the 1990s, the
Defense of Marriage campaign will probably continue throughout the United
States for at least another decade.2
As I have written elsewhere,3 there is a gulf of perception
between those who have experienced erotic desire for a person of their
same gender and those who have not. However, we can communicate with
each other, even across the gulf of same-sex desire.
Since I am in the minority as a homosexual and as a Mexican-American,
I want to correct in advance what might appear to be us-versus-them
dimension in my remarks about the heterosexual "white" majority. Whether
minority or majority, individuals in every group display a wide diversity
of attitudes and actions. Moreover, each of us belongs simultaneously
to both minority and majority groups. For example, I am in the non-black
majority and throughout my life have been embarrassed to discover my
own prejudices and insensitivities about race. Likewise, most blacks
are in the vast majority of persons who lack serious physical handicaps
and who (like most of us) can be prejudiced and insensitive toward disabled
persons of every skin color. While I condemn prejudice and social discrimination,
I also acknowledge my own lapses in these areas.
“While one would like to think it wasn't personal,
it's awfully difficult to really believe that anyone who put one
of those signs in their yard truly thought they were protecting
heterosexual marriage. The message they sent, whether intended
or not, was: We don't like gay people.”
--Frontiers
News-magazine |
Shortly after the March 2000 vote for California's Defense of Marriage
Act (Prop. 22), an editorial in the Los Angeles Frontiers News-magazine
for gays and lesbians stated the situation very well:
It was difficult not to take the passage of Proposition
22 personally.... While one would like to think it wasn't personal,
it's awfully difficult to really believe that anyone who put one of
those signs in their yard truly thought they were protecting heterosexual
marriage. The message they sent, whether intended or not, was: We
don't like gay people. ...Non-gay friends and acquaintances need to
know that to us it wasn't just a vote, it was personal.4
In fact, the campaign against Prop. 22 was so personally painful for
three Mormon gay males that they committed suicide in the spring of
2000, leaving letters of anguish about the LDS church's role in spearheading
this activism against same-sex marriage.5
Homophobia--A Definition
Gays, lesbians, and increasing numbers of heterosexual scholars use
the terms "heterosexism" and "homophobia" to describe the opposition
against legal protections based on sexual orientation. Two authors explain:
"Heterosexism is a reasoned system of bias regarding sexual orientation.
It denotes prejudice in favor of heterosexual people and connotes prejudice
against bisexual and, especially, homosexual people." Further, "Heterosexism
is analogous to racism and sexism. Homophobia finds appropriate analogies
in racial bigotry and misogynism [or antagonism toward females]."6
Since the root word phobia means fear, "homophobia" describes
expressions of discomfort, anxiety, or fear about homosexuality and
homosexuals.7 Just as "Negrophobia" has often involved feelings
of dislike or hatred toward African-Americans,8 homophobia
can also involve feelings of dislike or hatred toward gays, lesbians,
bisexuals, and transgender persons. However, many whites are Negrophobic
without being hateful, and many Americans are homophobic without being
hateful. Furthermore, just as there have been calmly reasoned arguments
of misogyny, racism, Negrophobia, and anti-Semitism, so are there now
calmly reasoned arguments of homophobia.9 Such homophobia
recently caused a Mormon to proclaim in Provo, Utah's newspaper: "God
is a bigot."10
Same-Sex Marriage--Its Purposes
By contrast, the Anglican Theological Review has presented
a different perspective on same-sex relationships: "In fact, homophobia
and heterosexism elicit such strong emotional responses that lesbians
and gay men are often estranged from their natal families, and thus
deprived of what is, for most other marginalized groups, a primary source
of care and nurture."11 Parental rejection is also a frequent
experience of Mormon gays and lesbians.12In a recent article
about young gay males experiencing rejection, two of the eight examples
were Utah-Mormon teenagers "thrown out of home" by their parents.13
“For a parish community to celebrate and bless
such a relationship is simply to say to the [same-sex] couple,
'We share your joy, and we see your love as a gift from a loving
Creator.'”
--The Anglican Theological Review
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The Anglican Theological Review continues:
A theology of same-sex relationship images God saying to
gay men and lesbians, as well as to their heterosexual counterparts,
"It is not good for you to be alone," and providing through a profound
relationship with a companion (most commonly called a "lover" in the
gay community) for their "mutual comfort and joy." In a gay or lesbian
relationship, as well as in a heterosexual relationship, "each may
be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort
in sorrow, and a companion in joy." For a parish community to celebrate
and bless such a relationship is simply to say to the [same-sex] couple,
"We share your joy, and we see your love as a gift from a loving Creator."14
Just as heterosexual marriage binds a couple emotionally and spiritually
far beyond sex and child-raising, so also do most homosexuals want a
same-sex relationship that combines sexual attraction with mutual respect,
love, shared goals, and even spiritual fulfillment.15 In
addition, like members of every other group, gays and lesbians believe
they deserve access to legally protected relationships.16
Likewise, the LDS father of a gay male has publicly declared that "affirming
same-sex relationships" is "the logical next step" for both church and
state.17
"Many Fine Friends"
In expressing satisfaction at the passage of California's law prohibiting
marriage for gays and lesbians, LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley insisted:
"We are not anti-gay. We are pro-family." But the two slogans are linked.
In its article on "The Pro-Family Movement," the Conservative Digest
proudly listed those who are "Anti-Homosexuals" and "Anti-Gay Rights."18
Elder Douglas L. Callister said: "We have
many fine friends that are in the gay community and do not wish
to be their adversaries." Yet for gays and lesbians, this rings
as hollow as the claim by white segregationists: "We're not anti-Negro.
We have many fine friends who are Negro." |
Others who support the Defense of Marriage laws likewise proclaim: "We
are not anti-gay. We have friends who are gay and lesbian." For example,
Douglas L. Callister (an official LDS coordinator of California's Prop.
22 campaign) told the Los Angeles Times in 1999: "We have many
fine friends that are in the gay community and do not wish to be their
adversaries."19 Yet for gays and lesbians, this rings as
hollow as the claim by white segregationists: "We're not anti-Negro.
We have many fine friends who are Negro."20 Polite feelings
for individuals cannot compensate for denying basic rights to the minority
of which those individuals are a part.
A month after the vote on Prop. 22, one of Southern California's Roman
Catholic bishops publicly apologized for the role of the Catholic Church
in promoting antagonism toward gays and lesbians. Presiding over a diocese
of more than one million Catholics, Monsignor Gerald Barnes said: "I
ask forgiveness for the members of the Church and for myself. . . .
The rhetoric and propaganda of some proponents of Proposition 22 served
to remind all of us of the fear and hatred of which we are all capable
of [sic] in the name of Christian virtue."21 Monsignor Barnes
was following the example of Pope John Paul II who referred "to Racism,
Sexism and Anti-Semitism" in the Vatican's recent "Landmark Apology
for Church Sins."22
To date, Elder Callister has issued no such apology for statements made
by LDS members during the DOMA activism in California. No similar acknowledgment
has come from LDS church headquarters, which continues to promote its
"pro-family" political campaign of fear against gays and lesbians throughout
the nation. However, Robert Rees (a former LDS bishop and mission president)
has observed: "Thus, in spite of President Hinckley's strong admonition
not to let support of Proposition 22 lead to prejudicial treatment of
homosexuals, there have been more homophobic sentiments expressed in
our [LDS] meetings in the past year than I can remember over an entire
lifetime. One only has to ask Latter-day Saint homosexuals living in
California if they feel safer today than they did a year ago to determine
how destructive these expressions have been."23 A statistical
report issued by the California Attorney General has verified that violence
against gays and lesbians increased in 1999 during the interfaith campaign
against same-sex marriage.24
For those who oppose marriage for homosexuals but insist they have no
ill feeling toward gays and lesbians, a recent book by music composer
Ned Rorem is useful. Openly gay himself, he interviewed theater critic
John Simon who had published remarks which many regarded as homophobic.
Rorem commented: "What you've said, apparently homophobically to some
people, is powerful enough to disqualify what you may say compassionately
in other contexts."25 Obviously, this also applies to what
people do homophobically.
Obedience Vs. Conscience
In the state-by-state campaigns for Defense of Marriage laws from the
1990s to the present, LDS officials have repeatedly instructed Mormons
to regard their vote as an act of obedience to leadership, rather than
an act of individual conscience. This has occurred in Utah, Hawaii,
Washington, Alaska, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Nebraska, and Texas.26
This attitude separates Mormon voters and legislators from most of the
others in the political "coalition" against same-sex marriage, which
President Hinckley publicly described: "We have worked with Jewish groups,
Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, and those of no particular religious
affiliation. . . ."27 For the current LDS leadership, lock-step
obedience to the "living prophet" is more important than the church
member's own sense of what is right and fair.28
In addition, LDS general authorities and regional leaders have tried
to conceal their role in directing this political campaign and in soliciting
monetary donations for its support. As instructed by church headquarters,
regional leaders have told local members to conceal their Mormon affiliation
when writing against same-sex marriage to newspapers or elected officials.29
Rather than being a spontaneous expression of citizenship, the thousands
of letters flooding each state's legislature have merely reflected instructions
from LDS headquarters, and sometimes even specific quotas given to local
congregations by regional LDS leaders. In previous political campaigns,
Mormons have written up to 85 percent of the letters received by legislatures
in states where they comprised less than one percent of the population.30
The current pattern of political deception and emphasis
on obedience- above-conscience dates from the LDS church's 1975-82
campaign against ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution, during which the presidency of Spencer
W. Kimball made homosexuality a major reason for this political
activism. |
As non-LDS scholar William Appleman Williams observed: "The Mormons
display a very shrewd understanding of the kind of national power that
can grow out of organizing a relatively small number of people in a
specific region."31 Americans generally do not realize that
most Mormons act like army ants whenever LDS headquarters gives instructions
about political matters.32
The current pattern of political deception and emphasis on obedience-above-conscience
dates from the LDS church's 1975-82 campaign against ratification of
the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, during
which the presidency of Spencer W. Kimball made homosexuality a major
reason for this political activism. As I wrote in 1997, Gordon B. Hinckley's
direction of the national anti-ERA campaign provided the tactics and
"blueprint for the Mormon effort to prohibit same-sex marriages and
to oppose any legislation favoring homosexuals."33
Marriage Restrictions against Despised Groups in
History
However, this essay does not emphasize the details of the campaign by
various groups against same-sex marriage. Instead, I used the musical
term "prelude" as my title's first word because the Defense of Marriage
Act in Congress and various states is simply a different verse of the
same old song for denying civil rights to feared or despised minorities.
The most direct correlation involves access to marriage. Ironically,
many who have supported laws against same-sex marriage are themselves
members of groups which were once denied the right to marry those of
their choice. While some of this might be due to selective memory, persecuted
minorities also sometimes demonstrate their assimilation by mimicking
their former persecutors.
Jews have had the longest experience with legal restrictions against
their choice of marriage partners. For a thousand years, medieval Europe
prohibited Jews from marrying Christians.34 In 1935, Nazi
Germany passed laws against intermarriage between Jews and "Germans
or kindred blood."35
In our nation's history, African-Americans suffered hundreds of years
of legal restrictions on marriage. From the colonial era onward, there
was either no legal option for slaves to marry or the laws actually
prohibited their marriage.36 Additionally, from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, nearly all states had statutes against "free Negroes"
marrying "white" persons. Some states even banned marriage with a person
of one-sixteenth "Negro blood" (in other words, having one great-great-grandparent
who was African-American).37
In 1850, California enacted its law against interracial marriage, which
remained in force until 1948 when the state supreme court overturned
it.38 Before that year, the state courts were not friendly
to the civil rights of minorities. In 1941, the California District
Court of Appeals ruled that a person with "one-eighth part or more of
Negro blood" could not legally testify against a white person, nor marry
one.39
Sixteen states still prohibited interracial marriage in 1967 when the
U.S. Supreme Court declared this unconstitutional in the landmark decision
of Loving v. Virginia.40 Ten states (including Delaware
and Montana) also refused to recognize the legitimacy of interracial
marriages legally performed elsewhere.41 This is now the
same tactic used by California, Utah, and other states toward same-sex
marriages legally performed elsewhere.42
While the groups involved are certainly different, the opposition to
gay rights has many similarities to the pattern of denying other minorities
their civil rights. Regarding marriage, the majority has often said
to the disapproved minority: "We will not allow you full access to marriage
because you are not our kind of people."
John Adams wrote that “the desires of the majority
of people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority.”
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James Madison, an author of the U.S. Constitution and the fourth U.S.
president, gave this warning: "In republics, the great danger is that
the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority."
Another of America's Founding Fathers, John Adams (the second U.S. president),
more bluntly wrote that "the desires of the majority of people are often
for injustice and inhumanity against the minority." In the 1830s, Alexis
de Tocqueville called this "the tyranny of the majority" in American
democracy.43
In historical perspective, Jews and African-Americans were not the only
groups denied free access to marriage. Such laws also targeted other
minorities. In 1901, California prohibited intermarriage with Asians.
In 1919, South Dakota specifically targeted Koreans, and in 1933, California
added Malaysians to its list of prohibited marriages.44 While
America was defending freedom during World War II, there were laws against
marrying Asians in fourteen states of the South, Midwest, and West,
including Mormon-dominated Utah.45
Chieko N. Okazaki (a Japanese-American resident of Salt Lake City since
1951 and a recent counselor in the LDS church's Relief Society general
presidency) has written: 'A Japanese person could not be sealed to a
Caucasian in the Salt Lake Temple at that time because of state law."46
Utah also prohibited marriage between Chinese and African-Americans.47
As a recent analysis observes: "State laws even interfered with the
basic family relationships of Asian Americans."48
During this time, it was also illegal for American Indians to marry
whites in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.49
As late as 1962, North Carolina prohibited a Cherokee woman from marrying
a white man. Until 1966, Maryland actively prevented Polynesians and
Filipinos from marrying whites.50
Whether targeting Jews, African-Americans, Asians, Native American tribes,
or Pacific Islanders, the proponents of these marriage restrictions
argued that such laws were necessary for racial "purity" or to protect
society.51 Only with regard to Mormons did the advocates
of repressive legislation argue that restrictions were necessary to
protect marriage itself.
Mormon Polygamy as a Threat to Traditional Marriage
As the San Francisco Chronicle recently noted,
“The most notorious sexual outlaws in American history are
not today's gay rights crusaders, but the founding fathers of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon
church.” |
In the nineteenth century, Mormon men married multiple wives with official
endorsement by the LDS church. Besides passing laws specifically aimed
at Mormon marriage and then arresting thousands of polygamists, the
U.S. government also punished the LDS church by disincorporating it
and confiscating its financial assets. Congress also disfranchised Utah's
women and prepared to deprive all LDS church members of the right to
vote, hold public office, serve on juries, immigrate to the U.S., or
become naturalized citizens.52 From the 1860s to the early
1900s, government leaders and Protestant ministers argued that they
were protecting the family and "the institution of marriage" by legally
preventing Mormons from marrying as they might choose. For example,
a Massachusetts minister said that Mormon polygamy must be prevented
because "the whole question of the family is wrapped up in it." Federal
officials claimed that this non-traditional form of marriage was a direct
attack on the family.53 As the San Francisco Chronicle
recently noted, "The most notorious sexual outlaws in American history
are not today's gay rights crusaders, but the founding fathers of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon church."54
Ironically, in the nineteenth century, Mormons argued that the traditional
marriages of the majority were not threatened by allowing a small minority
to marry differently.55 This plea was as rational then as
it is now.
Social Hysteria
Is "social hysteria" an appropriate term for the attitudes and actions
of white Americans against blacks and interracial marriage? Historians
have cited "full scale white hysteria about black male sexuality" to
explain the lynching of thousands of African-American men for merely
looking at a white woman.56
The Prophet Brigham Young publicly informed the Mormons
that if African-Americans had relations with white women, “the
penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot.”
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This was also evident in Salt Lake City, where a warning to "meddle
not with white women" was pinned to the flesh of a murdered black man
in 1866. LDS apostle Brigham Young, Jr., referred to the murdered man
as "a nigger."57 This occurred three years after his father
had publicly informed the Mormons that if African-Americans had relations
with white women, "the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the
spot."58 President Young's published sermon gave official
encouragement for Mormons to kill black men, and I believe that he was
morally responsible for this 1866 murder.
Likewise, in an 1881 sermon on Salt Lake's Temple Square, Southern States
Mission President John Morgan spoke approvingly of hanging Negro males
"to a lamp-post" for "impudence." This appeared in the officially published
Deseret News and Journal of Discourses, and Morgan
became an LDS general authority a year after a Salt Lake City mob lynched
an African-American male on a lamp-post in 1883 for killing an LDS bishop.59
Apostle Heber J. Grant wrote that "the citizens" hanged "the nigger."60
A similar kind of social hysteria propelled the popular campaign against
Mormon polygamy. For example, claiming that they were defending the
family, seven million Americans signed petitions for the U.S. House
of Representatives to exclude Brigham H. Roberts from his elected office
in 1900, solely because he was a Mormon polygamist.61 Historians
view the anti-polygamy campaign of the 1860s to the early 1900s as a
hysteric reaction of Victorian America against a tiny minority who advocated
non-traditional marriage.62
Traditional Marriage Threatened?
Would "social hysteria" also be an appropriate term to describe current
claims that the existence of heterosexual marriage is threatened by
allowing same-sex marriages? I believe so, particularly since various
non-western cultures (including more than one hundred Native American
tribes) have sanctioned same-sex marriages for centuries, and perhaps
even millennia. Anthropologists have observed that many of these cultures
have given same-sex marriages the same status as heterosexual marriages.63
Traditional marriage didn't decline in these cultures, but bigotry did.64
Likewise, during early medieval times, the Catholic Church performed
unions for same-sex friends who seemed to be given the status of marriage.
The Eastern Orthodox Church continued performing same-sex unions until
the 1500s. Heterosexual marriages neither declined nor suffered by the
coexistence of these same-sex unions in early Christianity.65
It does not make sense to blame the small number of homosexuals for
the problems of heterosexual marriage. If there are declines in the
rate and quality of heterosexual marriage, it is the fault of heterosexuals,
who comprise at least 90 percent of the population.
Nearly twenty years ago, a Roman Catholic task force astutely observed:
"In contemporary America, family has become a shibboleth of internal
national security. . . with homosexuality as the scapegoat."66
Likewise, the BYU Religious Studies Center in 1988 published a woman's
essay which commented on the lack of "legalized marriage" for "those
homosexual men and women who wish to maintain an on-going, monogamous
same-sex relationship." She then asked: "Why should an expanded definition
of family, which makes room for many more categories of persons who
are longing for closeness, be considered threatening and harmful to
family life?"67 In 1999, BYU sociology professor Tim B. Heaton
observed, "The legitimization of same-sex relationships has been viewed
by some as a major threat to the family. I have yet to see compelling
evidence for this claim."68
Marriage as a Civil Right
Is full access to marriage a civil right for American minorities? Not
according to the thirty-eight state legislatures which passed miscegenation
laws against various races and ethnic minorities prior to 1967.69
Likewise, is non-traditional marriage a civil right for a despised minority?
Not according to Congress which passed several laws against Mormon polygamy
from 1862 onward, nor according to the U.S. Supreme Court which validated
these laws from 1879 to 1890.70
“I have known racism. I have known bigotry. This
bill stinks of the same fear, hatred and intolerance. It should
not be called the Defense of Marriage Act. It should be called
the defense of mean-spirited bigots act.”
--Congressman
John Lewis |
Yet African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Polynesians, and Mormons all
clearly felt that these marriage exclusions denied them a civil right.
For this reason, Georgia's African-American congressman John Lewis made
the following observation about prohibiting same-sex marriage: "I have
known racism. I have known bigotry. This bill stinks of the same fear,
hatred and intolerance. It should not be called the Defense of Marriage
Act. It should be called the defense of mean-spirited bigots act."71
Nevertheless, in the topsy-turvy mind-set of bigotry, racial segregationists
accused African-Americans of "prejudice" and "bigotry" for condemning
segregation as "racist,"72 just as opponents of same-sex
marriage now accuse gays and lesbians of "intolerance" and "bigotry"
for condemning Defense of Marriage laws as "homophobic."73
Regarding civil discrimination generally, one author has observed: "In
cases of civilized oppression the victims may have to face not only
the suppression of protest but also dangerous misdescriptions of the
overall situation."74
For example, one argument used to incite fear against same-sex marriage
is the warning that its legalization would result in ministers being
"forced to perform same-sex marriages."75 This statement
appeared in a brochure issued in 1999 by LDS headquarters which said
that "if DOMA fails in California" an "obvious" consequence will be
"civil penalties for churches who refuse to perform gay marriages."
However, in March 1995, the Circuit Court of Hawaii ruled that this
was a false claim in the LDS church's petition to the Hawaii court.76
State licensing law permits churches to perform civil marriages but
does not require them to do so.
Both ministers and lawyers knew this for decades before the controversy
about same-sex marriage. In the years since the Supreme Court legalized
all interracial marriages in 1967, no minister has been "forced" to
perform an interracial marriage, either in the South or elsewhere. Likewise,
although interfaith marriages have always been legal in the United States,
Roman Catholic priests and orthodox Jewish rabbis have traditionally
refused to perform such marriages. LDS bishops have never been legally
required to perform a marriage for a non-Mormon. Although licensed by
the state to perform civil marriage, ministers have always had the right
to refuse any person for any reason.
The Morality Argument and Selective Memory
LDS president Hinckley proclaimed in October 1999: "Some portray legalization
of so-called same-sex marriage as a civil right. This is not a matter
of civil rights; it is a matter of morality."77 Yet "morality"
was also the principal argument of America's vast majority for legally
prohibiting polygamy, or what BYU professor Brent A. Barlow once called
Mormonism's "alternative family lifestyle."78
Public morality was also the Mormon argument in April 1836 against the
marriage of whites with African-Americans. An editorial in the official
LDS magazine at Kirtland, Ohio, proclaimed: ". . .and low indeed must
be the mind, that would consent for a moment, to see his fair daughter,
his sister, or perhaps, his bosom companion in the embrace of a NEGRO!"79
This had nothing to do with Utah Mormonism's decades-later policy of
denying priesthood ordination to African-Americans.80 In
fact, a month before this editorial, Mormon founder Joseph Smith had
authorized the ordination of free black Elijah Abel as an elder in Kirtland,
and to the priesthood office of Seventy eight months after it.81
This LDS editorial (apparently written by Associate President Oliver
Cowdery)82 simply reflected the prevailing bigotry of America.
George Santayana was only partly right when he said: "Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it."83 The African-Americans,
Asian-Americans, Jews, Mormons, Native American Indians, and Polynesian-Americans
who now oppose the legalization of same-sex unions are re-living their
persecuted past in a different way--this time as the persecutors claiming
to protect society while denying a despised minority the choice of marriage
partners. However, of all those currently promoting laws against same-sex
marriage, only the Mormons have adopted the same argument used by their
former persecutors. The target has changed to gays and lesbians, but
the pattern is the same.
The Role of Churches in Restricting Civil Rights
Because various churches have actively campaigned against the legalization
of marriage for gays and lesbians, a related question is the historic
role of churches in denying civil rights to minorities. For example,
the Protestant and Catholic churches of the South led the pro-slavery
rhetoric before the American Civil War. In fact, Protestant clergy,
Catholic priests, Catholic bishops, and members of the Jesuit order
even owned African-American slaves.84 Southern white churches
also supported racial segregation in the American South afterwards.85
During the same time, the South African Dutch Reformed Church and the
Rhodesian Anglican Church supported race-segregation by the white supremacist
governments in their respective countries, either actively or by silence.86
Likewise, the Roman Catholic Church was allied with repressive regimes
in Germany and Latin America.87 In such instances, the religious
leaders sincerely and devoutly regarded the suppression of minorities
as part of a divinely approved status quo.
Utah Mormon Discrimination against Blacks
Even after federal emancipation of America's slaves in the 1860s, LDS
church president Brigham Young referred to African-American slavery
as a religious necessity.88 Earlier, as both church president
and governor, he had instructed the Utah legislature in 1852 to legalize
the slavery of African-Americans.89 This directly contradicted
Joseph Smith's proposal in 1844 "to abolish slavery by the year 1850"
by financially compensating Southern slave-owners through the sale of
federal lands in the West.90 Utah Mormonism's reversal of
Joseph Smith's social policy toward Negroes was mirrored by the refusal
of LDS presidents after 1844 to follow the founding prophet's example
of giving the priesthood to blacks who were not slaves.91
For more than a century, Utah restricted African-Americans from patronizing
white restaurants and hotels, prohibited them from public swimming pools,
and required them to sit in the balconies of theaters.92
During World War II, African-Americans wearing their nation's uniform
had to sit in the balcony of Utah theaters, while German prisoners-of-war
sat on the main floor with white servicemen and civilians.93
Utah law also prohibited marriage between a white person and a black
(including persons only one-eighth Negro).94
Utah's racial discrimination did not occur by happenstance nor did it
continue into modern times by accident. It was promoted by the highest
leaders of the state's dominant church. As late as 1941, Counselor J.
Reuben Clark used the word "nigger" in his First Presidency office diary.95
In 1944, the First Presidency authorized local LDS leaders to join "as
individuals a civic organization whose purpose is to restrict and
control negro settlement" in Salt Lake City.96 A year later,
LDS president George Albert Smith wrote: "Talked to Pres Clark & Nicholas
[G. Smith, an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles] about
the use of [LDS] meeting houses for meetings to prevent Negroes from
becoming neighbors."97 The church president's diary did not
indicate whether he endorsed or opposed this activity, but his brother
Nicholas G. Smith described it as "race hatred."98
In 1947, when discussing the site of the future
Los Angeles temple, First Presidency Counselor J. Reuben Clark asked the LDS church's attorney
in that area "to purchase as much of that property as we can in order
to control the colored situation."
In 1947, the First Presidency wrote that “the intermarriage
of the Negro and White races, [is] a concept which has heretofore
been most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient
patriarchs till now.”
In 1953, a First Presidency secretary informed a white Mormon that
“The L.D.S. Hospital
here in Salt Lake City has a blood bank which does not contain any colored
blood.”According to presidency counselor J. Reuben Clark,
this policy of segregating African-American blood from the blood donated
by so-called “white people” was intended "to protect the purity of the
blood streams of the people of this Church.”
During this era of Utah's racial segregation, the First Presidency also
repeatedly affirmed that no African-American could stay at the LDS church-owned
Hotel Utah (which had maintained this exclusion since its opening in
1911). The LDS president was president of the hotel, and his counselors
were its senior vice-presidents. The First Presidency explained this
racial exclusion as simply “the practice of the hotel.”
When internationally renown singer Marian Anderson returned in March 1948 to participate in a concert at the LDS
church's Salt Lake Tabernacle, the First Presidency relented. America's
beloved contralto “was allowed to stay at the Hotel Utah on condition
that she use the freight elevator.” This world-famous black woman was
not allowed to use the main entrance and lobby.
Making specific reference to the desegregation controversy in Little
Rock, Arkansas, Counselor Clark in 1957 instructed Belle
Smith Spafford “that she should do what she could to keep the National
Council [of Women] from going on record in favor of what in the last
analysis would be regarded as negro equality.”
In 1965 and 1967, Apostle Ezra Taft Benson stated in televised meetings on Temple Square in Salt Lake City that
“the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is a Communist
program for revolution in America.”
In 1963, Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith told Look magazine's
editor: “'Darkies' are wonderful people, and they have their place in
our Church.”
In 1967, Apostle Benson
also approved the use of one of his talks as the forward to the overtly
racist book Black Hammer, which featured the decapitated (and
profusely bleeding) head of an African-American male on its cover.
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President Smith's counselors soon extended their support of racial segregation
to states beyond Utah. In 1947, when discussing the site of the future
Los Angeles temple, Counselor Clark asked the LDS church's attorney
in that area "to purchase as much of that property as we can in order
to control the colored situation."99 A month later, during
the meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
in the Salt Lake Temple, "President Clark called attention to the sentiment
among many people in this country to the point that we should break
down all racial lines, [and] as a result of which sentiment negro people
have acquired an assertiveness that they never before possessed and
in some cases have become impudent."100 In 1949, while criticizing
the legislative efforts in Arizona to "guarantee rights of Negroes,"
LDS presidency counselor David O. McKay said, "The South knows how to
handle them and they do not have any trouble, and the colored people
are better off down there--[but] in California they are becoming very
progressive and insolent in many cases."101 Likewise, in
1950 Counselor Clark wrote: "Race tolerance: the trend is just
terrible" (emphasis in original).102
There was no mystery about why Utah law continued to prohibit interracial
marriage. In 1947, the First Presidency wrote that "the intermarriage
of the Negro and White races, [is] a concept which has heretofore been
most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs
till now."103 In other words, the First Presidency condemned
interracial marriage as abnormal. In 1950, Counselor Clark added that
"anything that breaks down the color line leads to marriage."104
Five years later, on behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Joseph
Fielding Smith wrote to the
First Presidency about African-American members of the LDS church in
Utah and referred to the "danger of intermarriage."105
In 1953, a First Presidency secretary also informed a white Mormon about
the less-obvious extent of Utah's racial segregation: "The L.D.S. Hospital
here in Salt Lake City has a blood bank which does not contain any colored
blood."106 According to presidency counselor J. Reuben Clark,
this policy of segregating African-American blood from the blood donated
by so-called "white people" was intended "to protect the purity of the
blood streams of the people of this Church."107
During this era of Utah's racial segregation, the First Presidency also
repeatedly affirmed that no African-American could stay at the LDS church-owned
Hotel Utah (which had maintained this exclusion since its opening in
1911). The LDS president was president of the hotel, and his counselors
were its senior vice-presidents. The First Presidency explained this
racial exclusion as simply "the practice of the hotel."108
Internationally renown singer Marian Anderson endured this racial discrimination
in Utah. When she gave her first recital at the University of Utah's
Kingsbury Hall, this African-American was denied entry to any of Salt
Lake City's hotels and had to stay with one of the concert's promoters.
When she returned in March 1948 to participate in a concert at the LDS
church's Salt Lake Tabernacle, the First Presidency relented. America's
beloved contralto "was allowed to stay at the Hotel Utah on condition
that she use the freight elevator." This world-famous black woman was
not allowed to use the main entrance and lobby.109 Likewise,
invited to speak at the University of Utah, Nobel Peace Prize recipient
Ralph Bunche was allowed to stay at the LDS church's hotel in 1951 only
after this black man agreed to use the freight elevator, "have his meals
in his room and not come to the dining room."110
Due to their international fame, Anderson and Bunche were exceptions
to the Mormon rules of race. As Hotel Utah's senior vice-president,
J. Reuben Clark explained: "Since they are not entitled to the Priesthood,
the Church discourages social intercourse with the negro race... ."
Therefore, African-Americans were denied equal access to the LDS church's
hotel in order "to preserve the purity of the race that is entitled
to hold the Priesthood."111
With such beliefs, the LDS First Presidency did what it could to block
national efforts for the civil rights of African-Americans. As previously
noted, Counselor McKay in 1949 instructed an Arizona stake president
against that state's proposed legislation to "guarantee rights of Negroes."
Making specific reference to the desegregation controversy in Little
Rock, Arkansas,112 Counselor Clark in 1957 instructed Belle
Smith Spafford "that she should do what she could to keep the National
Council [of Women] from going on record in favor of what in the last
analysis would be regarded as negro equality." At that time, Spafford
was a vice-president of the National Council of Women.113
As American views began changing toward race relations from the 1940s
onward, the Mormons of Utah continued to follow the example of LDS leaders
against civil rights for African-Americans. There was widespread use
in all-white neighborhoods of Utah's Uniform Real Estate Contract, Form
30, which prohibited the purchaser of real estate and his/her heirs
from reselling the property "to any person not of the Caucasian race."114
The Salt Lake City School District prohibited blacks from being teachers
and from fulfilling student-teaching requirements of their university
training.115 In addition, 40 percent of Utah's employers
refused to hire Negroes. Employers who did hire blacks also discriminated
against them in job assignment, promotion, and salary.116
Blacks were prohibited from eating at the lunch counter of Salt Lake's
City-County Building. All of Utah's bowling alleys excluded African-Americans,
and LDS hospitals segregated black patients, sometimes requiring them
to pay for private rooms. This was also the policy at Utah's Catholic
hospitals.117
In these respects, Utah and the Mormons were representative of the rest
of America's white society until the 1960s.118 In 1961, a
survey of Salt Lake City by the NAACP showed that 12 percent of cafes,
restaurants, and taverns declined to serve blacks, while 80 percent
of the city's beauty shops and barber shops refused to do so. Likewise,
72 percent of Salt Lake City's hotels and 49 percent of its motels refused
accommodations to African-Americans that year.119
After Counselor Clark's death in 1961, Apostle Ezra Taft Benson became
the Mormon hierarchy's strident voice against the national crusade for
African-American civil rights. Benson's Negrophobic rhetoric intensified
after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 drastically changed Utah's
patterns of racial discrimination.120 In 1965 and 1967, he
stated in televised meetings on Temple Square in Salt Lake City that
"the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is a Communist
program for revolution in America."121 In 1967, Apostle Benson
also approved the use of one of his talks as the forward to the overtly
racist book Black Hammer, which featured the decapitated (and
profusely bleeding) head of an African-American male on its cover. Subtitled
White Alternatives, this book warned about the "well-defined
plans for the establishment of a Negro Soviet dictatorship in the South."122
In 1968, Apostle Benson also instructed BYU students about "black Marxists"
and "the Communists and their Black Power fanatics."123
At this time, LDS president David O. McKay had a Democrat (Hugh B. Brown)
as a counselor, who was mystified that McKay allowed Benson to endorse
the speeches and activities of nationally known segregationists. This
politically liberal counselor was unaware of the LDS church president's
private views about "insolent" African-Americans who wanted equal rights.124
In 1963, Utah ended its restrictions on interracial marriage, and Counselor
Brown officially endorsed civil rights for persons of all races that
year.125 However, until that year, every living prophet of
the LDS church since Brigham Young either actively opposed the civil
rights of African-Americans or passively endorsed the existing civil
discriminations against them in Utah.
In that same year, Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith told Look magazine's
editor: "'Darkies' are wonderful people, and they have their place in
our Church."126 At best, this revealed the racial paternalism
that governed LDS headquarters. However, this platitude was also a smoke-screen
for the worst of what Utah Mormon leaders had done against African-American
rights for the previous 116 years.
From Anti-Black to Anti-Gay
Just as President Gordon B. Hinckley has said that same-sex marriage
has no legitimate claim as a "civil right" in Utah or anywhere else,
previous First Presidencies also stated that African-Americans had no
legitimate right to unrestricted access to marriage, nor to unrestricted
blood transfusions, nor to rent a room in the LDS church's hotel, nor
to reside in Utah's white neighborhoods, nor to live near the Los Angeles
Temple, nor to be in a hospital bed next to a white patient. Just as
the First Presidency previously condemned interracial marriages as abnormal,
it has recently condemned same-sex marriages as abnormal. The LDS church's
opposition to gay rights is consistent with its historical opposition
to African-American rights.
Even when a general authority publicly apologized in September 2000
for "the actions and statements of individuals who have been insensitive
to the pain suffered by the victims of racism," he claimed that the
LDS leadership had an admirable history of race relations. Elder Alexander
B. Morrison said: "How grateful I am that The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints has from its beginnings stood strongly against
racism in any of its malignant manifestations."127 This was
a by now familiar smoke-screen for the previous behavior of Mormon prophets,
seers, and revelators. LDS headquarters has never apologized for the
legalization of Negro slavery by Brigham Young in pioneer Utah, nor
for the official LDS encouragement to lynch Negro males,128
nor for the racial segregation policies of the First Presidency until
1963, nor for Ezra Taft Benson's 1967 endorsement of a book which implied
that decapitating black males was a "White Alternative."
The
First Presidency from 1976 onward has also repeatedly published Apostle
Boyd K. Packer's talk praising a Mormon missionary for beating up his
homosexual companion.
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Furthermore, although the Utah press reported hundreds of "hate" attacks
annually against gays and lesbians,129 the First Presidency
in 1992 orchestrated the defeat of proposals to include "sexual orientation"
as a protected category in Utah's law against hate crimes.130
While President Hinckley has recently condemned hatred and violence
against "those who profess homosexual tendencies."131 The
First Presidency from 1976 onward has also repeatedly published Apostle
Boyd K. Packer's talk praising a Mormon missionary for beating up his
homosexual companion. This official church pamphlet, titled To Young
Men Only, encourages teenage boys to assault any males "who entice
young men to join them in these immoral acts."132 Yet President
Hinckley (who was a senior apostle in 1976) expresses bewilderment regarding
the literally thousands of violent attacks against gay males in Utah
during the decades since the First Presidency began publishing Apostle
Packer's talk. This endorsement of gay bashing continues to be printed
in pamphlet form and is currently distributed by LDS headquarters. From
1976 to the present, local LDS leaders have been encouraged to give
this pamphlet to young males in their teens and twenties, those most
likely to commit hate crimes against gays and lesbians.133
Because it has officially promoted this
endorsement of violence against homosexuals for twenty-five years, I
believe the First Presidency has been morally responsible whenever LDS
young men have attacked or killed homosexuals from 1976 to the present.
This includes the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998.
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LDS headquarters has never promoted a similar distribution of statements
opposing violence toward homosexuals.134 Recent public statements
by LDS leaders against gay bashing have the appearance of a smoke-screen
to conceal the ongoing private endorsement of gay bashing in Apostle
Packer's pamphlet. In fact, because it has officially promoted this
endorsement of violence against homosexuals for twenty-five years, I
believe the First Presidency has been morally responsible whenever LDS
young men have attacked or killed homosexuals from 1976 to the present.
This includes the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998.135
Moreover, by repeatedly issuing this pamphlet and other homophobic statements
since the beginning of the anti-ERA campaign in 1975, the Mormon church
has encouraged a climate of revulsion which fills most LDS families.
Therefore, I believe the First Presidency has also been morally responsible
whenever Mormon parents have rejected their children for being gay,
lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Even when the LDS church's Ensign
magazine published a statement in 1997 advising parents not "to
disown" their homosexual children, the general authority merely noted
that such tactics "do not help."136 Public-relations statements
of such timidity have little hope of undoing the spiritual damage to
families caused by decades of stridently homophobic indoctrination by
LDS headquarters.137
For example, in its official editorial against allowing Utah's high
schools to have clubs for gay and lesbian students, the Deseret News
commented in 1996: "It is still appalling that more than half the identified
hate crimes in Utah are aimed at homosexuals."138 Again,
this has the appearance of a smoke-screen to conceal the anti-gay agenda
of LDS headquarters. Four years earlier, the same newspaper had successfully
persuaded Utah's legislature not to include gays and lesbians in the
state law against hate crimes.139 Moreover, the 1996 editorial
then adopted the very attitude which propels these hate crimes it professed
to regret: "homosexual activities and practices are an abomination,
not just some 'alternative lifestyle' no better or worse than others."140
Echoing the role of LDS headquarters in preventing Utah from giving
homosexuals legal protection from hate crimes, the Deseret News
in June 2000 regretted that Utah Senator Orrin G. Hatch was "unable
to stop hate-crime legislation" in Congress.141
There is yet another example of the LDS church's official homophobia,
which subverts its public platitudes about loving those who regard themselves
as gay or lesbian. Since 1998, church headquarters has instructed all
local LDS leaders to put notations on the membership record of every
Mormon who receives church discipline for homosexual behavior. Applicable
even to teenagers, this ecclesiastical stigma will follow young men
and women into every LDS congregation for the rest of their lives.142
For persons who believe that these various actions of the LDS First
Presidency were God's will for suppressing minorities, I suggest they
rethink a passage in The Book of Mormon: "For none of these
iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the
children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children
of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his
goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond
and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are
alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile" (2 Nephi 26:33).
Counselor Clark told the general conference of April 1940
that the First Presidency "is not infallible in our judgment, and we
err." I believe this applies to the statements
and actions of several "living prophets" and First Presidencies in restricting
the civil rights of African-Americans and other minorities.
LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley has dismissed Mormonism's earlier race-based
policies as “those little tricks of history” which are irrelevant now.
However, his twenty-five years of promoting political campaigns against
the possibility of gay rights is one more example of the LDS hierarchy's
discrimination against minorities who are not its “kind of people.”
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Furthermore, Counselor Clark told the general conference of April 1940
that the First Presidency "is not infallible in our judgment, and we
err."143 He also instructed LDS educators in 1954 that "even
the President of the Church has not always spoken under the direction
of the Holy Ghost."144 I believe this applies to the statements
and actions of several "living prophets" and First Presidencies in restricting
the civil rights of African-Americans and other minorities. According
to LDS doctrine, the statements and actions of the church's president
can be wrong, even sinful,145 and historically the LDS First
Presidency has often been profoundly wrong with regard to the civil
rights of American minorities.
In fact, when an end came to the various tyrannies of the majority against
racial groups in America, LDS policies changed as well. What various
"living prophets" had defined as God's doctrine turned out to be a Mormon
social policy which reflected the majority's world view. I submit that
the same applies to the LDS church's campaign against any law which
benefits or protects gays and lesbians.
LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley has dismissed Mormonism's earlier race-based
policies as "those little tricks of history" which are irrelevant now.146
However, his twenty-five years of promoting political campaigns against
the possibility of gay rights is one more example of the LDS hierarchy's
discrimination against minorities who are not its "kind of people."147
The Sincerity of Prejudice and Civil Discrimination
LDS leaders have repeatedly opposed civil rights for blacks and gays
while denying that such action is "anti-Negro" or "racist," "anti-gay"
or "homophobic." The previous quotes show that First Presidency counselor
J. Reuben Clark, for one, defended wholesale restrictions against the
civil rights of African-Americans. Nevertheless, at the same time, he
regarded himself as compassionate toward blacks.148
In this paper I have tried to acknowledge the sincere beliefs and fears
of those who oppose same-sex marriage. However, an "Appeal to Sincerity"
is legitimate only when attempting to understand the personal motivation
for various behaviors. Sincerity cannot logically be invoked to assess
the legitimacy or ethical value of those behaviors.149
The past and present are filled with actions which most of us condemn,
despite the fact that their perpetrators claimed they acted out of their
sincere beliefs in a religion, or race, or social class, or country.
If we regard slavery as wrong, the sincerity of slave-owners is irrelevant
to the issue, even when the slave-owners were our revered national leaders,
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.150 If denial of rights
and protections for African-Americans was wrong, the sincerity of the
oppressors is irrelevant to the issue, even if we otherwise admire the
oppressors as religious leaders. Likewise, the sincerity of the heterosexual
majority's anxieties and fears is not an ethical justification for denying
rights and protections to the homosexual minority.
The recent success of the Defense of Marriage Act in California (America's
most populous state) was yet another example of the tyranny of the majority,
but there is a silver lining to this dark cloud: Thirty-nine percent
of California's electorate voted against DOMA.151 While most
gays and lesbians believe we counted for 10 percent of the vote,152
many homophobes claim that no more than one percent of humanity has
homosexual feelings.153 Therefore, LDS leaders and their
religious allies in the political sphere must acknowledge that about
a third of California's heterosexual electorate voted against
their campaign of fear, social hysteria, prejudice, and minority exclusion.
This is nearly three times higher than the percentage of white Southerners
who opposed segregation in the decades before Congress passed the Civil
Rights Act of 1964,154 yet minority rights eventually triumphed
there.
In view of the fears, prejudices, and hatreds which existed both then
and now, American society's sense of fairness is far greater today than
it was fifty years ago. As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1996 when
Romer v. Evans invalidated the LDS church's behind-the-scenes
victory against civil rights for gays and lesbians in Colorado, "a state
cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws."155
This Colorado case had nothing to do with marriage. LDS leaders and
their allies were attempting to invalidate those laws which protected
gays and lesbians from hate crimes, as well as from civil discrimination
in housing and employment.156 Gays and lesbians are the glaring
exception to President Hinckley's public-relations statement to the
LDS general conference in 1995: "We must be willing to defend the rights
of others who may become the victims of bigotry."157 With
regard to homosexuals, this is a slogan which LDS headquarters tries
to subvert in every possible way.
When the Joseph Smith Memorial Building
opened in 1993 as added office-space for the LDS bureaucracy at headquarters,
this multi-story building had two fine-dining restaurants for the general
public. The human resources director instructed the manager of these
church-owned restaurants not to hire as waiters any males who "seem
gay."
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For example, after President Hinckley's statement, Mormon leadership
successfully opposed adding sexual orientation to Salt Lake City's anti-discrimination
ordinance.158 This is understandable in light of reports
that LDS headquarters actively discriminates against gays and lesbians
in employment. With no claim of due process, this discrimination extends
to completely secular jobs and requires no proof of "inappropriate"
sexual behavior. For example, when the Joseph Smith Memorial Building
opened in 1993 as added office-space for the LDS bureaucracy at headquarters,
this multi-story building had two fine-dining restaurants for the general
public. The human resources director instructed the manager of these
church-owned restaurants not to hire as waiters any males who "seem
gay"159 Similar to visual profiling for racial discrimination,160
LDS headquarters apparently denies employment on the basis of stereotypical
views about masculine appearance and homosexual characteristics, or
stereotypical views about feminine appearance and lesbian characteristics.161
As indicated in the above example, this has nothing to do with "morality"
or the actual sexual behavior of persons who are subjected to this discrimination.
In fact, completely heterosexual persons may also be misidentified as
lesbian or gay on the basis of speech or appearance, and then suffer
employment discrimination in Utah,162 This contributes to
the climate of fear, which is why anti-discrimination laws are necessary.
The climate of homophobic antagonism in Mormon-dominated Utah creates
constant anxiety for many gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender
persons. It is historically similar to being a Christian in pagan Rome,
a Protestant Huguenot in Catholic-dominated France, a Quaker in Puritan
Massachusetts, a black in Klan-dominated Mississippi, a Jew in Nazi
Germany, a Catholic in Protestant-dominated Belfast, a Muslim in Hindu-dominated
Kashmir, or a Hindu in Muslim-dominated Islamabad. Its familiarity makes
this pattern even more tragic in cultures which claim divine approval
for exerting social oppression against their minorities.
Just as Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons once claimed righteousness
and God's blessing in denying basic rights to African-Americans and
Asian-Americans, they are now claiming righteousness and God's blessing
for denying basic rights to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender
persons. It takes a peculiar kind of blindness to currently affirm that
the majority's historical discrimination against despised racial minorities
was ethically and civilly wrong, yet argue that it is now ethically
and civilly right to discriminate against the despised minority of homosexuals
and transgender persons.
"The Right of Each Individual to Be Free"
Ironically, through its general authorities, its lesson manuals, and
its church-owned newspaper, LDS headquarters has condemned other churches
and religious leaders for limiting freedom or civil rights. During the
entire twentieth century, the LDS church has criticized leaders of the
Roman Catholic Church, of Iran's Shiite Islam, and of the Russian Orthodox
Church for limiting the civil rights of various minorities.163
“The attitude of any organization toward this principle of freedom
is a pretty good index to its nearness to the teachings of Christ
or to those of the evil one.”
--David O. McKay
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As David O. McKay instructed the general conference of April 1950:
This principle of free agency and the right of each individual
to be free[,] not only to think but also to act within bounds that
grant to every one else the same privilege, are sometimes violated
even by churches that claim to teach the doctrine of Jesus Christ.
The attitude of any organization toward this principle of freedom
is a pretty good index to its nearness to the teachings of Christ
or to those of the evil one.164
Should the LDS church and its leaders be exempt from McKay's standard
to guarantee freedom and civil rights? As discussed earlier, McKay's
public statement here actually contradicted both his private statements
as well as his actions as an executive in the racially segregated Hotel
Utah.
However, McKay's equivocation has a parallel that is faith-promoting.
When slave-owner Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence
that "all men are created equal," this also did not describe the reality
of his own life and culture.165 Yet later Americans and U.S.
presidents found inspiration in Jefferson's idealized statement, and
they struggled to change their culture in order to achieve the reality
of full civil rights for all its minorities. That struggle continues
today. Likewise, President McKay stated an ideal in 1950 that can continue
to inspire LDS members and leaders to change their culture in order
to grant full civil rights to all its minorities.
Some will claim that the historical parallel of legal discrimination
against race and religion has nothing to do with today's legal restrictions
against social protections and marriage options for gays and lesbians.
Such denial seems intended to privilege the current campaign in two
ways: First, by denying that homosexuals constitute a minority as legitimate
as the minorities of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion; and
second, by denying that legal limitations on this embattled group's
social opportunities involve "prejudice," or "discrimination," or "denial
of rights." By contrast, various authors have regarded prejudiced discrimination
as the unifying characteristic of America's negative responses toward
minorities of race, of ethnic group, of physical disability, of religion,
and even of Masonic affiliation.166 To exclude sexual orientation
from the category of embattled minorities is itself a sign of heterosexism
and homophobia.
Thus, the African-American documentary All God's Children has
stated: "African Americans were accused of seeking 'special rights'
during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Now, lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgendered (LGBT) people are accused of seeking 'special rights.'
Both populations are simply seeking equal justice under the law." With
supporting statements by African-American Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend
Cecil L. Murray, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun,
and theologian Cornel West against discrimination based on sexual orientation,
the documentary adds: "These systems of oppression are all cut from
the same cloth of dominance and power over others."167
During the 1990s, Pat Robertson's Christian
Coalition headquarters required its African-American employees to
enter through the back door and to use dining facilities separate from
white employees.
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Even more significant, the political lobbying group Christian Coalition
has demonstrated the linkage between opposing gay rights and limiting
the rights of African-Americans. Formed by southern minister Pat Robertson,
the Christian Coalition worked throughout the 1990s "at the Local Level
to Oppose Homosexual Rights." During this same period, the Christian
Coalition's headquarters required its African-American employees to
enter through the back door and to use dining facilities separate from
white employees.168
To deny any minority the full access to marriage is to deny the Declaration
of Independence statement that the purpose of government is "to secure"
the right of all its citizens to "the pursuit of Happiness." As with
the pre-1967 limits on the marriage rights of racial minorities, it
also violates the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment provision for
"equal protection of the laws" when Congress or any state has denied
marriage rights to lesbians and gay males. 169
Nevertheless, to me, the fact that 39 percent of Californians voted
against the Defense of Marriage Act in March 2000 is FAITH-promoting.
I can only HOPE that Congress and the Supreme Court will again guarantee
a minority the rights which America's majority refuses to confer. In
the meantime, I applaud the CHARITY which individual states (like Vermont)
have begun to demonstrate in guaranteeing the civil rights of gays and
lesbians.170 As the Apostle Paul wrote, "The greatest of
these is charity" (I Cor. 13:13).
This is a civil manifestation of the religious perspective expressed
in the Anglican Theological Review: "When marriage is properly
understood--as Martin Bucer argued over four centuries ago--as being
primarily for companionship, not for procreation or parenting or 'the
avoidance of fornication,' then its grace is operative equally for all
couples who wish to enter into a covenanted relationship, whether they
are a man and a woman, two women, or two men."171
The New Dictionary of Christian Ethics has also commented:
"It is particularly disturbing to find churches which intensify the
homosexual's sense of loneliness and isolation by their judgmental attitudes."
While not endorsing ministerial ceremonies for same-sex couples, this
ethical dictionary was emphatic about the denial of civil rights to
homosexuals: "Whenever men and women are victimized because of their
sexual orientation, whether formally in the law courts or less formally.
. .the Christian duty is clearly to stand alongside the oppressed minority
in their struggle for justice."172
As a gay male and Christian, I hope this kind of religious ethic will
eventually triumph for America's minority of gays, lesbians, bisexuals,
and transgender persons.
Notes
1. This essay was supported by a grant from the Institute for the Study
of Human Resources and also involved research support at ONE Institute
& Archives: The International Gay and Lesbian Heritage/Research Center,
which is affiliated with the University of Southern California. The
Internet was used to locate many of the periodical references cited
herein. I assumed that page numbers listed on Internet web sites were
the same as for print references. However, some Internet sites did not
provide page numbers.
2. As I have previously observed: "Every state has its own laws, and
each new session of a state legislature is a new opportunity for the
losing side to renew the battle over a sexual minority's civil rights
or 'special rights.' This is equally true for every county, city, and
town. ...Even a U.S. Supreme Court decision will not end the conflict
if the LDS church and its interfaith allies are on the losing side of
legalizing same-sex marriage… if pressed, the next step of the LDS interfaith
coalition will be to mount a national campaign to ratify a U.S. constitutional
amendment against 'special rights' for the small minority of Americans
who define themselves as homosexual" (D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon
Hierarchy: Extensions of Power [Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Smith
Research Associates, 1997], 405). For anti-gay claims about "special
rights," see note 167.
3. D. Michael Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century
Americans: A Mormon Example (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1996), 7.
4. "Thanks A Lot: The Personal Sting of Proposition 22," Frontiers
Newsmagazine 18 (31 March 2000): 12. For the role of the LDS church
in the mass distribution of these "Yes on Prop. 22" signs in every city
and town of California, see letter from the North America West Area
Presidency (John B. Dickson, William R. Bradford, Richard H. Winkel)
to 'All Stake Presidents and Bishops in California, to be read in Sacrament
Meeting Sunday, January 16," dated 11 Jan. 2000: "We would greatly appreciate
it if all would continue contacting friends and neighbors as directed
by the local coordinator about this issue and distribute, as well
as put on your own lawns, the provided yard signs [emphasis added]"
("News: Proposition 22 Dominates California Wards' Attention, Divides
Members," Sunstone 118 [April 2001]: 92). Official church positions
of Dickson, Bradford, and Winkel listed in "General Authorities of The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," Ensign 29 (November
1999): [57]. See also David Bruce Combe, "Proposition 22, California,
and the Mormon Church: A Chronology" in Case Reports of the Mormon
Alliance: Volume 5, 1999, eds., Lavina Fielding Anderson and Janice
Merrill Allred (Salt Lake City: Mormon Alliance, 2000).
5. The three were Henry Stuart
Matis, D. J. Thompson, and
Clay Whitmer. See "Gay
Mormon Hoped Suicide Would Help Change Church," San Francisco
Examiner, 2 March 2000; "Gay
Mormon Kills Self on Church Steps: California Man Had Expressed Anguish
over Anti-Gay-Marriage Proposition 22," Salt Lake Tribune,
3 March 2000, A-1; "Bloody Hands: Friends Blame Mormon Church's Support
of Proposition 22 for Death of Two Gay Men," Frontiers Newsmagazine
18 (31 March 2000): 20; "To
Be Gay--and Mormon," Newsweek, 8 May 2000, 38-39; Combe,
"Proposition 22, California, and the Mormon Church" (with quotations
from the pre-suicide letters of Matis and Thompson). See also Christopher
J. Alexander, "Suicidal
Behavior in Gay and Lesbian Mormons," in Peculiar People: Mormons
and Same-Sex Orientation, eds., Ron Schow, Wayne Schow, and Marybeth
Raynes (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 257-63; "No More Deaths,
No More Silence: Gay Mormons Have Higher Suicide Rate Than the Entire
Nation," Las Vegas Bugle, 12 May 2000, 18-19.
In my "Selected Chronology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 1848-1996" (Quinn, Extensions of Power, app. 5), I
noted in the June 19, 1995, entry that Utah was attempting an analysis
of its high suicide rates: "Salt Lake Tribune reports that
Utah state task force is trying to understand why suicide is second
leading cause of death for Utah's teenage males and young men, and why
Utah's suicide rate is sixth highest in the nation. Article downplays
alleged role of LDS church's 'too high expectations on young people,'
by pointing out that five states (all surrounding Utah) with higher
suicide rates have lower percentages of Mormons. However, this is a
statistical error ('ecological fallacy') because states have not identified
religious affiliation of suicides who might actually be disproportionately
Mormon. Tribune refers to U.S. Health Department's 1989 estimate
that homosexual orientation is a factor in 30 percent of teenage suicides.
Deseret News excluded that estimate from its analysis of federal
report on 21 Aug. 1989 and has said little about this current Utah task
force" (894).
6. Patricia Beattie Jung and Ralph F. Smith, Heterosexism: An Ethical
Challenge (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1993), 13, 14.
See also Beverly Wildung Harrison, "Misogyny and Homophobia: The Unexplored
Connections," in Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social
Ethics, ed. Carol S. Robb (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985); James T.
Sears and Walter L. Williams, eds., Overcoming Heterosexism and
Homophobia (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1997).
7. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged,
2nd ed., s.v. "homophobia...unreasoning fear of or antipathy
toward homosexuals and homosexuality"; see also Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., s.v. "homophobia ...
irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality
or homosexual--homophobic." However, see following discussion
and note 9 concerning these inaccurate assumptions of "unreasoning"
and "irrational," which dictionaries do not assume for Negrophobia (see
note 8).
8. Random House Dictionary, s.v. "Negrophobia...strong
fear or dislike of black people"; The American Heritage Dictionary
of the English Language, 3rd ed., s.v. "Negrophobe...one
who fears or dislikes Black people and their culture--Negrophobia."
9. Wayne R. Dynes says: "Care should be taken, therefore, to identify
homophobia as a prejudice, comparable to racism and anti-semitism, rather
than an irrational fear similar to claustrophobia or agoraphobia" (Encyclopedia
of Homosexuality, 2 vols. [New York: Garland Publishing, 1990],
1:552). Likewise, without the unnecessary assumption of irrationality,
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines
homophobia as an "aversion to gay or homosexual people or their lifestyle
or culture" (contrast this with notes 7 and 8). Given these definitions,
I disagree with John Charles Duffy, who equates homophobia with irrational
fear:
"Homophobia is not synonymous with opposition to gay rights. There are
plenty of gay rights activists who suffer from internalized homophobia.
And one can be opposed to gay rights without suffering from an irrational
fear of gay people. [emphasis added]
"Take [BYU law professor] Lynn Wardle, whom we all love to hate. Is
Wardle homophobic?
"Certainly he's 'heterosexist,' meaning he believes that heterosexuality
is better than homosexuality... .
***
"If in calling Wardle a homophobe, you're implying that he's motivated
by hysterical fear...I don't see it. [emphasis added]
"He's motivated by a set of beliefs about God's will which I believe
are gravely wrong. But that's not homophobic. Heterosexist, yes. Homophobic,
no.
"It's precisely because Wardle is not irrational that he is so dangerous....When
he speaks, legislatures listen." ("Homophobia: Calling It as It Is,"
Pillar of the Gay and Lesbian Community: Utah's True Alternative Newspaper,
May 2000, 23. See also note 156.)
While Duffy's argument encourages the Utah gay community to avoid inappropriate
name-calling, his logic would invalidate the use of "Negrophobia" to
describe white Southerners who used calmly rational arguments against
the racial integration of transportation, housing, and schools. The
"Jim Crow" South had its articulate defenders of segregation, and a
person does not need to be irrational, hateful, or violent to be fearful
concerning a minority and its perceived threats to the majority. Like
any labels, those of racism, Negrophobia, anti-Semitism, bigotry, and
homophobia can be misapplied. However, contrary to Duffy's claim that
"homophobia is not synonymous with opposition to gay rights," opposition
to gay rights is based on homophobia and Lynn Wardle would thus be homophobic.
For Wardle's recently published statements, see "Church
Delegates Attend World Congress of Families," Ensign 27
(June 1997): 75; "Families, Law Are Victims of Vermont Justices' Marriage
Ruling," Deseret News, 9 Jan. 2000; "LDS Have Right to Fight
Gay Marriage, 2 Say: But ACLU Lawyer, BYU Professor Far Apart on Ideology,"
Deseret News, 17 Feb. 2000; "3 BYU Professors Sign paper Upholding
Traditional Marriage," Deseret News, 14 July 2000.
10. Letter to the editor by Warren N. Hardy, "Even God May Be a Bigot,"
Daily Herald [Provo, UT], 24 August 1999. See also Letter to
the editor, "God Hates Gays," Daily Utah Chronicle, 27 January
1976, 2.
11. Robert Williams, "Toward a Theology for Lesbian and Gay Marriage,"
Anglican Theological Review 72 (Spring 1990): 142.
12. Concerning an unnamed teenager who committed suicide after a confrontation
with his father during the teenager's telephone call to the Gay Help
Line, see Mark A. Taylor, "The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name,"
Utah Holiday 15 (September 1986): 43. See also the narrative
of Justen Michael Bennett-Maccubbin, who took the names of his adoptive
gay fathers after his Mormon father tried to kill him when he told his
parents he was gay, in Anderson Jones and David Fields, Men Together:
Portraits of Love, Commitment, and Life (Philadelphia: Running
Press, 1997), 38-39. See also Jolynn Moore, "Life As a Mormon," Love
Makes A Family: Creating a Family Voice for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgendered People 9 (Fall/Winter 1997): 9.
13. Mike Glatze, ed., "Thrown Out," XY Magazine 22 (October-November
1999), 23, 31 (for the experiences of Jeremy, 17, and Justin, 19, both
of Salt Lake City).This article also included the experience of Steve
May: "Thrown out of the Army for being an out gay legislator: Steve
May, Phoenix, Arizona." May's experience as a Mormon gay has been mentioned
elsewhere, including: "GOP Shoots Self in Foot Over May," Arizona
Republic, 17 November 1996; "Voters' Choices Break New Ground:
Latina, Gay Republican Would Be Firsts," Arizona Republic,
9 September 1998; "Serving out Loud," The Advocate, 26 October
1999; "Gay Legislator Fighting Military: Refuses to Resign His Commission,"
Arizona Republic, 28 April 2000. For the favorable outcome
of May's case, see the following articles which did not refer to his
Mormon background: 'Army Ends Effort to Boot May: Gay Reservist Celebrates
Win," Arizona Republic, 16 January 2001 (local story); 'Army
Drops Efforts to Expel Gay Reservist," Deseret News, 16 January
2001, A-8 (wire-service story); "Army Ends Case against Gay Reservist,"
New York Times, 16 January 2001, A-16.
14. Williams, "Toward a Theology for Lesbian and Gay Marriage," 142.
See also "N.J. Episcopal diocese gives OK to gay couples," San Francisco
Examiner, 31 January 1988, A-2; "Northern California Convention:
Episcopalians Endorse Gay Marriages," San Francisco Chronicle, 26
October 1988, A-8; "New Bishop Tells of Many Blessings Uniting Gays:
Lutherans," Los Angeles Times, 28 January 1995, B-4; "Barred
once, gay couple receives blessing in Seattle cathedral," Episcopal
Life, July/August 1996, 11; "95 Ministers Risk Jobs, Bless 'Holy
Union' of Lesbian Couple--Religion: Action flouts United Methodist Church
prohibition. 'We are on the right side of history and the right side
of God,' pastor says," Los Angeles Times, 17 January 1999,
A-11; "N.Y. Presbytery Oks Gay Holy Unions," Los Angeles Times,
13 February 1999, B-7; "Reform Rabbis OK Blessing Gay Unions," Dallas
Morning News, 30 March 2000, A-5; and "Episcopalians Recognize
Unmarried Couples: No Distinction Made on Sexual Orientation," San
Francisco Chronicle, 14 July 2000. By contrast, Mormons believe
that same-sex marriage would be catastrophic for society. After my presentation
at Salt Lake City's 2000 Sunstone Symposium ("Prelude to the National
'Defense of Marriage' Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared
or Despised Minorities"), one member of the audience stated his belief
that ratification of same-sex marriage would duplicate the sin of Sodom
in the U.S., which God would then similarly destroy. Traditional Christianity,
of course, holds that Sodom was destroyed because of its homoerotic
behavior. (See Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death, and Punishment:
Attitudes toward Sex and Sexuality in Britain since the Renaissance
[London: Collins, 1990], 101.)
However, Mormonism's founding prophet apparently rejected the traditional
Christian view of Sodom's sin. In his only sermon about the matter,
Joseph Smith said that God destroyed Sodom "for rejecting the prophets,"
and he did not mention sexual conduct at all. See the following: Scott
G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 1833-1898 Typescript,
9 vols. (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books, 1983-85), 2:213 (22 January
1843); Joseph Smith, Jr., et al., History of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts, 2nd ed. rev., 7
vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1960), 5:237 (hereafter History
of the Church); Joseph Fielding Smith, ed., Teachings of the Prophet
Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1938), 271; Andrew
F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The
Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph
Smith (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young Univ., 1980),
156; Richard C. Galbraith, ed., Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet
Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1993), 6. See also
the following reference to "sodomite" in the footnote to Deut. 23:17
in The HOLY BIBLE Authorized King James Version With Explanatory
Notes and Cross References to the Standard Works (Salt Lake City:
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989): "HEB a professional
,ale or female prostitute, or cultist." Just as it rejected Joseph Smith's
intentions for African-Americans (see notes 81 and 90), so also did
the Utah Mormon leadership reject the founding prophet's view of Sodom's
destruction.
Ironically, the views of other Christians are now changing. Beginning
in the early 1900s with a scholar who was neither homosexual nor Mormon,
some Bible analysts began reinterpreting Sodom's destruction more along
the lines indicated by the Mormon prophet. George A. Barton noted that
"the wickedness which Lot is said to have anticipated that the men of
Sodom contemplated may have been no more than to give the strangers
a beating" ("Sodomy," in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 12
vols. plus index, ed. James Hastings [Edinburgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark;
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908-261 11:672). At greater length,
Derrick Sherwin Bailey argued in 1955 that the "inhospitality" of the
Sodomites toward Lot's angel-guests was the actual cause of Sodom's
destruction: "The story does not in the least demand the assumption
that the sin of Sodom was sexual let alone homosexual--indeed, there
is no evidence to show that vice of the latter kind was prevalent there."
(Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition [London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1955], 5; see also the extensive discussion
in later pages concerning the historical development of the "Homosexual
Interpretation of Sodom"). See also Victor Paul Furnish, "The Bible
and Homosexuality: Reading the Texts in Context," in Homosexuality
in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate, ed. Jeffrey S. Siker (Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 18-35, with discussion of Sodom
on 19-20.
15. "Recent polls of gays and lesbians have shown that over 80% of them
would marry if legally able to do so" (Kevin H. Lewis, "Equal Protection
after Romer v. Evans: Implications for the Defense of Marriage
Act and Other Laws," Hastings Law Journal 49 [November 19971:
22n224). For examples of recent publications about relationship-oriented
gays and lesbians, see Tina Tessina, Gay Relationships: How to Find
Them, How to Improve Them, How to Make Them Last (New York: Jeremy
P. Tarcher/Penguin, 1989); Betty Berzon, Permanent Partners: Building
Gay & Lesbian Relationships That Last (New York: Plume Book/Penguin,
1990); Charlotte J. Patterson, "Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,"
Child Development 63 (1992): 1025-42; Patterson, "Lesbian Mothers,
Gay Fathers, and Their Children," in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual
Identities over the Lifespan: Psychological Perspectives, eds.,
Anthony R. D'Augelli and Charlotte J. Patterson (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1995), 262-90; Richard A. Mackey, Bernard A. O'Brien, and Eileen
F. Mackey, Gay and Lesbian Couples: Voices from Lasting Relationships
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997); Anderson Jones and David Fields,
Men Together: Portraits of Love, Commitment, and Life (Philadelphia:
Running Press, 1997); Andrew K. T. Yip, Gay Male Christian Couples:
Life Stories (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997); Michael J. Sweet,
"Together on the Path: Gay Relationships in a Buddhist Context" and
Susan Talve, "'With This Ring You Are Made Holy unto Me According to
the Laws of Moses': Celebrating and Sanctifying Lesbian and Gay Relationships
and Families," both in Our Families, Our Values: Snapshots of Queer
Kinship, eds., Robert E. Goss and Amy Adams Squire Strongheart
(New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 115-27, 129-35; Jane Drucker,
Families of Value: Gay and Lesbian Parents and Their Children Speak
Out (New York: Insight Books/Plenum Publishing, 1998); Richard
P. Hardy, Loving Men: Gay Partners, Spirituality, and AIDS (New
York: Continuum, 1998); Ellen Lewin, Recognizing Ourselves: Ceremonies
of Lesbian and Gay Commitment (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,
1998); Janet M. Wright, Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of
Love (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1998); Hero Magazine
(1998-present.); Eric Marcus, Together Forever: Gay and Lesbian
Couples Share Their Secrets for Lasting Happiness (New York: Anchor
Books/Doubleday, 1999); Gretchen A. Stiers, From This Day Forward:
Commitment, Marriage, and Family in Lesbian and Gay Relationships
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999); Merle James Yost, ed., When
Love Lasts Forever: Male Couples Celebrate Commitment (Cleveland,
Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1999).
16. Brent Hartinger, "A Case for Gay Marriage," Commonweal, 22
November 1991; Kathryn Dean Kendell, "Principles and Prejudice: Lesbian
and Gay Civil Marriage and the Realization of Equality," Journal
of Contemporary Law 22, no. 1 (1996): 81-96; Mark Strasser, The
Challenge of Same-Sex Marriage: Federalist Principles and Constitutional
Protections (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999); Andrew Sullivan,
"Marriage: Why We Can't Wait" (keynote talk at annual meeting of Affirmation:
Gay & Lesbian Mormons, Washington, D.C., 7 October 2000). See also pro
and con arguments in Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds.,
Same-Sex Marriage: The Moral and Legal Debate (Amherst, N.Y.:
Prometheus Books, 1997); Andrew Sullivan, ed., Same-Sex Marriage,
Pro and Con: A Reader (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).
17. Gary M. Watts, "The Logical Next Step: Affirming Same-Sex Relationships,"
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 31 (Fall 1998): 49-57.
18. "Gay Marriage Ban Pleases Leader of Mormon Church," San Francisco
Chronicle, 9 March 2000, A-6; "The Pro-Family Movement," Conservative
Digest, May/June 1981, 23, 24.
19. Quoted in "No End to Dissent: Recent Events Suggest That At Least
In the Nation's Churches, the Battle over Rights For Gays and Lesbians
Is a Long Way From Being Resolved," Los Angeles Times, 3 July
1999, B-2. For Callister's role in this political campaign, see "News:
Proposition 22 Dominates California Wards' Attention, Divides members,"
Sunstone 118 (April 2001): 88; Combe, "Proposition 22, California,
and the Mormon Church." Callister was called as a general authority
after successfully coordinating California's DOMA campaign as an Area
Authority Seventy. (See "New
General Authorities Called," Ensign 30 [May 2000]:102.)
20. Brandon Brumsic, Some of My Best Friends (Westbury, N.Y.:
By the author, 1963); Some of My Best Friends: A Report on Race
Relations Attitudes (London: Reference Division, Community Relations
Commission of Great Britain, 1976); Stokely Carmichael, "Black Power,"
in The Negro in American History: Black Americans, 1928-1968, eds.,
Morton J. Adler, Charles Van Doren, and George Ducas (Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica Educational Corporation, 1969), 111. Likewise, Americans
accused of anti-Semitism have also claimed they had Jewish friends (Benjamin
R. Epstein, "Some of My Best Friends..." [New York: Farrar,
Straus, and Cudahy, 1962]).
21. "Apology: Local Catholics Hear Bishop's Letter on the Church's Shortcomings,"
Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.), 3 April 2000, A-6; quote
comes from a sidebar titled "Excerpts from Bishop Barnes' Apology."
22. "Pope Issues Landmark Apology for Church Sins: Homily Alludes to
Racism, Sexism and Anti-Semitism," San Francisco Chronicle, 13
March 2000.
23. Robert Rees, "In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See": Personal
Reflections on Homosexuality among the Mormons at the Beginning of a
New Millennium (forthcoming by Family Fellowship; see also this
issue of Dialogue).
24. "Hate Crimes in State Increase by 12%," Los Angeles Times,
28 July 2000, A-3, A-28 (with sidebar "Focus of Hate" showing that 22
percent of California's hate crimes were based on sexual orientation).
See also "Rise in Hate Crimes in California: Number of Attacks Up--Level
of Violence Appears to Be Increasing As Well," San Francisco Chronicle,
28 July 2000.
25. Ned Rorem, Other Entertainment: Collected Pieces (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1996), 151. See also p. 146 for John Simon's statement
that "homosexuals are no longer a despised minority... in my world."
26. "LDS First Presidency Opposes Legalization of Gay Marriages," Deseret
News, 14 February 1994, B-2; "First Presidency Opposes Efforts
to Legalize Same-Gender Marriage," Church News 19 February
1994, 5; "Some States Trying to Stop Gay Marriages before They Start,"
New York Times, 15 March 1995, A-18; "Same-Sex Marriage: Are
LDS Gearing Up for a Holy War?" Salt Lake Tribune, 26 March
1994, B-1, B-2; "LDS Church Opposing Gay Marriages," Deseret News,
30 March 1994, A-10; "First
Presidency Statement Opposing Same-Gender Marriages," Ensign
24 (April 1994): 80; Carolyn Campbell, "I Now Pronounce You Wife and
Wife: Same-Sex Marriages and the LDS Church," Private Eye Weekly
(Salt Lake City) 15 June 1994, 7-10; "Church Joins Hawaii Fight over
Same-Sex Marriages," Deseret News, 24 February 1995, A-2; "Lawmakers
Pass Late Measure To Not Recognize Gay Marriages," Deseret News,
2 March 1995, A-19; "Church Opposes Same-Sex Marriages," Church
News, 4 March 1995, 12; "Utah May Ignore Gay Unions: Group Threatens
Lawsuits After Governor Signs Bill," Salt Lake Tribune, 17
March 1995, C-1; "Judge Bars LDS Church From Same-Sex Lawsuit," Deseret
News, 29 March 1995, B-1; "Judge Won't Allow Mormon Church To Join
Same-Sex Trial," Salt Lake Tribune, 30 March 1995, A-4; "Utah
Right To Ban Same-Sex Marriages," Deseret News, 31 March 1995, A-15;
"Don't Permit Gay 'Marriages,'" Deseret News, 3 April 1995,
A-9; Jorge Morales, "Marriage Bans," Advocate 678 (4 April
1995, D-2; "Homosexual Union Isn't Marriage," Deseret News,
19 April 1995, A-9; "Hawaii Court Rejects LDS Request," Deseret
News, 25 January 1996, A-6; "LDS and Catholic Coalition Opposes
Hawaii Legislation," Deseret News, 21 February 1996, B-1; "Officials
Aim To Intervene in Same-Sex Case," Deseret News,
28 February 1996; 'A Mormon Church Crusade In Hawaii,"
Salt Lake Tribune, 9 June 1996, B-1, B-2; "Graham Set to Fight
Gay Marriage," Salt Lake Tribune, 8 May 1998, D-10 (in which
Utah's attorney general specifies that her LDS church membership is
a basis for using her public office to oppose the legalization of same-sex
marriage); "Same-Sex Marriage Foes Given $500,000," Anchorage Daily
News, 3 October 1998; "Emotions Run High Over Prop. 2," Anchorage
Daily News, 1 November 1998; "Mormons Send Cold Cash to Alaska
for Anti-Gay Marriage Referendum," Church and State 51 (November
1998): 18-19; "Mormons Now Target California," San Francisco Examiner,
4 July 1999; "Gays Oppose LDS California Activism," Salt Lake
Tribune, 10 July 1999, D-1, D-2; 'Activists Quit LDS Church Over
California Letter," Salt Lake Tribune, 24 July 1999, C-2; "Mormons
'Regret' Exodus Over Campaign Against Gay Marriage," Anchorage Daily
News, 25 July 1999; "Mormons Raise Funds To Stop Gay Marriage,"
San Francisco Examiner, 8 August 1999; "Protesters Target Church
Activism in California," Deseret News, 4 Oct. 1999, A-6; internet
version of MSNBC's "Gay Marriage Laws fin] New Mexico," 1999, www.msnbc.com/modules/gaymarriages/state-by-state/default.asp
("In 1999, anti-gay marriage legislation was defeated for the fourth
year in a row. The Mormon Church lobbied heavily for passage of the
legislation, sending $30,000 to supporters of the bill"); "Campaign
Initiative Asks Nevadans to Protect Marriage," Beehive (Las
Vegas), 15 December 1999-15 February 2000, 8 ("The First Presidency
feels it's an urgent matter"); "LDS Urged to Back Prop. 22," Salt
Lake Tribune, 21 January 2000; "For Some, Mormon Stance on Gay
Issue Creates a Crisis of Conscience," Salt Lake Tribune, 5
March 2000, A-1; "Pushing Morals of Marriage Issue: Man Heads Effort
to Prevent Gays From Legally Marrying in Nevada," Las Vegas Sun,
8 May 2000; 'Anti-Gay Marriage Petition Nears Filing," Las Vegas Sun,
8 June 2000; "Petition to Ban Gay Marriage Hits Ballot," Las Vegas
Sun, 8 July 2000; "Petitioners Submit Signatures," Lincoln
Journal-Star (Lincoln, Neb.), 8 July 2000; "Strong Finances, Central
Control Propel Church," Omaha World-Herald, 29 July 2000; "Nevada Delegate
Focuses on Gay Rights," Las Vegas Sun, 14 August 2000; "Coalition
Formed To Lobby For Marriage Amendment," Lincoln Journal-Star,
28 September 2000; "New Voice For 416: Original Backers Reject Funds
From Out of State," Lincoln Journal-Star, 1 October 2000 (re:
"an offer of $600,000 from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints"); Ben Fulton, "Nebraska Splits Over Mormon Money,"
Salt Lake City Weekly, 12 October 2000; "Catholics Told To Vote
Their Conscience On Marriage Ban," Las Vegas Sun, 17 October
2000 (where, in contrast to Mormons, Catholic bishops declare: 'As bishops
we do not seek the formation of a religious voting bloc"). See also
Combe, "Proposition 22, California, and the Mormon Church"; Richley
H. Crapo, "Mormon/LDS Chronology of Involvement In Same-Sex Marriage
Politics" (1997), available on the internet; Jay Bell, 'A Chronology
of the LDS (Mormon) Church's Views on Homosexuality and Gender Related
Issues from 1950-2000," dated 10 September 2000 (typescript of 100 single-spaced
pages, in my possession).
In Texas, area presidencies and/or stake presidencies have conducted
meetings in every LDS chapel from December 2000 onward for all adult
Mormons who receive the handout "Preservation of Traditional Marriage."
This includes a "Guide/Script for Direct Contact with Texas Senators
and Representatives," which specifies that Mormons are not to identify
themselves as members of the LDS church or of its lobbying group, the
Coalition for Traditional Marriage (CTM), during personal conversations
with elected officials.
Specifying that all these instructions are given by authority of the
First Presidency, LDS leaders in these meetings have encouraged all
Texas Mormons to join the CTM and have distributed enough registration
forms for every adult member of the LDS church in Texas to join this
political lobbying organization. In addition to providing LDS members
with a "sample letter" to send to newspaper editors, to state legislators,
and to members of Congress, the handout "Preservation of Traditional
Marriage" instructed these Mormons: "Mail, fax, or E-mail your letters
to as many newspapers within your state as possible" (transcription
of handout "Preservation of Traditional Marriage"; information supplied
by a Texas resident who attended one of these meetings; Jay Bell, research
file on Texas, dated 29 January 2001, copy in my possession).
27. Gordon B. Hinckley, "Why
We Do Some of the Things We Do," Ensign 29 (November 1999):
54. For discussions of the Mormon political alliance with conservative
and ultra-conservative Christians, see Richard A. Viguerie, The
New Right: We're Ready To Lead (Falls Church, VA: Viguerie Company,
1981), 131; Gabriel Fackre, The Religious Right and Christian Faith
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1982), 3; James
T. Richardson, "The 'Old Right' in Action: Mormon and Catholic Involvement
in an Equal Rights Amendment Referendum," in New Christian Politics,
eds., David Bromley and Anson Shupe (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press,
1984), 213-33; Anson Shupe and John Heinerman, "Mormonism and the New
Christian Right: An Emerging Coalition?" Review of Religious Research
27 (December 1985): 146-57; O. Kendall White, Jr., 'A Review and Commentary
of the Prospects of a Mormon-New Christian Right Coalition," Review
of Religious Research 28 (December 1986): 180-88; Matthew C. Moen,
The Transformation of the Christian Right (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of
Alabama Press, 1992), 157; George Marsden, "The Religious Right: A Historical
Overview," in No Longer Exiles: The Religious Right in America,
ed. Michael Cromartie (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy
Center, 1993), 10; Michael Lienesch, Redeeming America: Piety and
Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North
Carolina Press, 1993), 9-10, 252; "LDS and Catholic Coalition Opposes
Hawaii Legislation," Deseret News, 21 February 1996, B-1; John
Gallagher and Chris Bull, Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right,
The Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s (New York: Crown
Publishers, 1996), 206.
28. For example, see N. Eldon Tanner, "First
Presidency Message: 'The Debate Is Over,'" Ensign 9 (August
1979): 2-3. M. Russell Ballard has also said, "In the Lord's Church
there is no such thing as a 'loyal opposition"' ("Beware
of False Prophets and False Teachers," Ensign 29 [November
19991: 64). Tanner's statement was given in the context of the LDS church's
campaign against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. Ballard's statement was given in the midst of the church's
campaign for California's Prop. 22 against same-sex marriages.
29. Combe, "Proposition 22, California, and the Mormon Church." For
the same concealment and deception in the LDS church's 1975-82 national
campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, see Lisa Cronin
Wohl, "A Mormon Connection?: The Defeat of the ERA in Nevada," Ms.
6 (July 1977): 68-70, 80, 83-85; "Mormons Wage Letter-Writing Blitz
Against ERA in Va. General Assembly," Washington Star, 10 January
1979, A-4; "State Official Probes Mormon Lobbying," Reston (Virginia)
Times, 1 March 1979, 1; "Mormon Muscle: Members' Funds Fought
ERA," Sacramento Bee, 19 April 1980, A-1, A-33; "Mormon Money
Worked against Florida's ERA," Miami Herald, 20 April 1980,
A-1, A-33; "Church Orchestrated Florida Anti-ERA Drive, Report Details,"
Salt Lake Tribune, 21 April 1980, D-1; "State to Probe Mormon
Contributions," Miami Herald, 22 April 1980, sec. II, 1; "Mormon
Church Plays Key Role in Anti-ERA Fight," Sacramento Bee, 4 May 1980,
A-3, A-4; Joan S. Carver, "The Equal Rights Amendment and the Florida
Legislature," Florida Historical Quarterly 60 (April 1982):
475n62; O. Kendall White, Jr., "Mormonism and the Equal Rights Amendment,"
Journal of Church and State 31 (Spring 1989): 252, 257; Quinn,
Extensions of Power, 384 (re: instructions by Gordon B. Hinckley,
then a counselor in the First Presidency, to conceal the LDS role in
establishing statewide organizations for national political lobbying),
386-88 (re: LDS origin of these political action committees in various
states), 389-90 (re: concealment of the role of LDS headquarters and
its regional officers in coordinating monetary donations for its political
activism), 390 (re: letters to legislatures). For the same patterns
of control and deception in the LDS campaign against same-sex marriage,
see note 26.
30. Quinn, Extensions of Power, 390. See also Andrew Kopkind,
'America's New Right," New Times, 30 September 1977, 21; Ruth
Ann Alexander, "South Dakota Women Stake a Claim: A Feminist Memoir,
1964-1989," South Dakota History 19 (Winter 1989): 552; previous
note 26.
31. William Appleman Williams, "Regional Resistance: Backyard Autonomy,"
The Nation 233 (5 September 1981): 179. Williams was specifically
commenting on the controversy about the MX missile system. See also
"It's Do or Die for the ERA: Mormon Power Is the Key," Boston Globe,
30 June 1981, 2.
32. This lock-step obedience was characteristic of Mormon political
behavior from the 1830s until the LDS church disbanded its political
party in 1891 and officially abandoned theocracy. By contrast, from
1891 until the 1960s, Mormons often ignored political instructions from
LDS headquarters. From the late 1960s onward, LDS headquarters re-established
lock-step political obedience on the part of most Mormons in the United
States. For these historical patterns and their explanation, see D.
Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt
Lake City: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1994); Quinn,
Extensions of Power; and F. Reed Johnson, "The Mormon Church as
a Central Command System," Review of Social Economy 37 (April
1979): 79-94.
Furthermore, I disagree with Armand L. Mauss when he says, "Yet, as
an institution, the Mormon church has only rarely injected itself in
national political issues since Utah achieved statehood in 1896" (The
Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation [Urbana:
Univ. of Illinois Press, 1994], 109). He makes an artificial distinction
between the church acting rarely "as an institution" on the national
level and the hierarchy acting politically "officially and unofficially"
on local, state, and regional political matters since 1896. Even if
"church" political appeals had been made only to Utah voters and elected
officials, the distinction Mauss tries to make would require one to
agree that the following were not "national political issues": support
of the Spanish-American War and subsequent national conflicts since
1898; support of William H. Taft's presidential candidacy in 1912; support
of the nationwide movement for the prohibition of alcohol from 1908
to 1917; support of the right of conscientious objection to war during
U.S. conflicts from 1917 to 1955; support of the U.S. Senate's ratification
of the Versailles Treaty (with its provision for the League of Nations)
in 1919-20; opposition to immigration restrictions during the 1920s;
opposition to ending Prohibition in 1932-33; opposition to U.S. president
Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs and public "counsel" for voters
to vote against Roosevelt in 1936; opposition to congressional adoption
of universal military service in 1945-46; support of congressional adoption
of anti-union legislation in 1954; support of Richard M. Nixon's presidential
candidacy in 1960; support of racial segregation until the 1960s, support
of national civil rights legislation in 1963; opposition to the Equal
Rights Amendment from 1975 to 1982; opposition to congressional deregulation
of the airline industry in 1977; opposition to the MX missile system
and other "vast" systems of weaponry in 1981--to name only the well-known
examples. Mauss (112-19) discusses several of these examples to support
his view that "the history of Mormon political involvements in national
politics up to about 1960 provides few, if any, exceptions to dominant
national trends," which is a different matter than the one addressed
in his statement on page 109.
33. Quinn, Extensions of Power, 373-401 (re: anti-ERA campaign),
404 (for quote). Furthermore, Apostle Dallin H. Oaks acknowledges that
early Mormon leaders engaged in "lying for the Lord" when they found
themselves in difficult circumstances. Oaks also admits he could not
predict what he would do in similar circumstances ("Gospel Teachings
About Lying," Clark Memorandum [J. Reuben Clark School of Law,
Brigham Young University], Spring 1994, 16-17). Compare with "Cartoonist
Says Oaks Lied to Protect Fellow Apostle," Salt Lake Tribune, 12
Oct. 1993, B-1; story also covered in Sunstone 16 (Dec. 1993):
68-69.
34. "Disabilities" and "Intermarriage," in The Jewish Encyclopedia,
ed. Isidore Singer, 12 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1925),
4:610-12, 6:611-12.
35. "Blood, Law to Protect," in The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich,
eds., Christian Zentner and Friedemann Beduerftig, trans. Amy Hackett,
2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 1:92.
36. Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family In Slavery and Freedom,
1750-1925 (New York: Pantheon Books/Random House, 1976), 52, 556n4;
Orville Burton, In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and
Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North
Carolina Press, 1985), 292-93.
37. Irving G. Tragen, "Statutory Prohibitions against Interracial Marriages,"
California Law Review 32 (1944): 274n26; Robert J. Sickels,
Race, Marriage, and the Law (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico
Press, 1972), 64, 71.
38. Tragen, "Statutory Prohibitions Against Interracial Marriages,"
272, 272n16; W. M. McKinney, ed., New California Digest, 28+
vols. (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney, 1957-66), vol. 15-: 16-17; Sickels,
Race, Marriage, and the Law, 72.
39. Tragen, "Statutory Prohibitions against Interracial Marriages,"
273-74.
40. Sickels, Race, Marriage, and the Law, 64; Charles D. Lowery
and John F. Marszalek, eds., Encyclopedia of African-American Civil
Rights: From Emancipation to the Present (New York: Greenwood Press,
1992), 326.
41. Tragen, "Statutory Prohibitions Against Interracial Marriages,"
277n39 (2nd para.).
42. Same-sex unions have recently gained legal recognition in several
countries. For example, "Two Swedish Men Marry under New Gay Law," San
Jose Mercury News, 3 January 1995, D-1. As of 1998, Denmark, Greenland,
Hungary, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden were "Countries with National Same-Sex
Partnership Legislation," while Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic,
Finland, France, Honduras, Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovenia, Spain,
and Switzerland were "Countries Progressing toward Same-Sex Partnership
Legislation." (See Leslie Goransson, "International Trends in Same-Sex
Marriage," in On the Road To Same-Sex Marriage, eds. Robert
P. Cabaj and David W. Purcell [San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers,
1998], 167-84.) BYU's library has a copy of this book, and in 1999 the
LDS church began its Prop. 22 campaign to prevent California from accepting
these legally performed marriages. Several more countries have now legalized
same-sex unions. In September 2000, the Netherlands gave same-sex couples
the full legal status of marriage within Holland, rather than the previous
Dutch option of legally registering same-sex "partnerships." In this
regard, Robert Williams has observed: "Expanding the definition of marriage
to include same-sex couples as well as opposite sex couples is a far
better solution than creating a separate entity for the blessing of
gay/lesbian relationships. . . When the issue is one of social justice--and
given the Church's key role historically in promoting homophobia, any
issue dealing with lesbian/gay issues in the Christian church is a social
issue--we should be reminded of a lesson we hopefully learned in the
black civil rights struggles of the sixties: the notion of 'separate
but equal' inevitably creates unequal institutions" ("Toward
a Theology for Lesbian and Gay Marriage," 137). See also statements
in text quoted for note 167, as well as discussion within note 170.
43. James Madison's speech to Virginia's constitutional convention (2
December 1829); John Adams, Defence of the Constitution of the Government
of the United States (1787-88); Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America (1835); all in Political Quotations, ed. Daniel
B. Baker (Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 1990), 138 (nos. 2284, 2281),
139 (no. 2288).
44. Tragen, "Statutory Prohibitions Against Interracial Marriages,"
271, 272n16.
45. Tragen, "Statutory Prohibitions Against Interracial Marriages,"
271n9 (for Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri,
Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and
Wyoming).
46. Chieko N. Okazaki, Cat's Cradle (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft,
1993), 59. See also "Interviews with Japanese Americans in Utah: Tapes
and Transcripts, 1984-1988," Manuscripts Division, J. Willard Marriott
Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City; Ted Nagata, ed., Japanese
Americans in Utah (Salt Lake City: JA Centennial Committee, 1996).
47. "Woman of Mixed Blood Desirous of Marrying a Chinaman--License Refused,"
Deseret Evening News, 16 Sept. 1898, 2.
48. Angelo N. Ancheta, Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1998), 30.
49. Tragen, "Statutory Prohibitions Against Interracial Marriages,"
271n10.
50. Sickels, Race, Marriage, and the Law, 71, 74.
51. Sickels, Race, Marriage, and the Law; "Miscegenation and
Intermarriage," in Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and
History, eds., Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West,
5 vols. (New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA/Simon & Schuster,
1996), 4:1813-14.
52. Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History
of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1958), 353-79; Joseph H. Groberg, "The Mormon Disfranchisements
of 1882 to 1892," BYU Studies 16 (Spring 1976): 399-408; Robert
G. Dyer, "The Evolution of Social and Judicial Attitudes Toward Polygamy,"
Utah State Bar Journal 5 (Spring 1977): 35-45; Rosa Mae McClellan
Evans, "Judicial Prosecution of Prisoners for LDS Plural Marriage: Prison
Sentences, 1884-1895," master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1986;
Ken Driggs, "The Prosecutions Begin: Defining Cohabitation in 1885,"
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 21 (Spring 1988): 109-21;
Ray Jay Davis, 'Antipolygamy Legislation," in Encyclopedia of Mormonism:
The History, Scripture, Doctrine, and Procedure of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow, 5 vols. (New
York: Macmillan, 1992), 1:52-53; Tracey E. Panek, "Search and Seizure
in Utah: Recounting the Antipolygamy Raids," Utah Historical Quarterly
62 (Fall 1994): 316-34; Sarah Barringer Gordon, "'The Twin Relic of
Barbarism': A Legal History of Anti-Polygamy in Nineteenth-Century America,"
Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1994.
53. B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage
(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1992), 41, 60. See also Joan Smyth
Iversen, "A Debate On the American Home: The Anti-Polygamy Controversy,
1880-1890," Journal of the History of Sexuality 1 (Apr. 1991):
585-602.
54. "Mormon Church: The Powerful Force Behind Proposition 22." San
Francisco Chronicle, 6 February 2000.
55. Gary James Bergera, ed., The Autobiography of B. H. Roberts
(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990), 215. See also Hardy, Solemn
Covenant.
56. "Miscegenation and Intermarriage," 4:1814. Lynchings of newly emancipated
slaves began after the defeat of the South in 1865, but no statistics
were kept until 1882. From 1882 to 1968, there were 4,742 recorded lynchings,
up to 90 percent of whom were African-Americans ("Lynching," Encyclopedia
of African-American Culture and History, 3:1670).
57. Brigham Young, Jr., diary, 11 Dec. 1866, Archives, Historical Department
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City,
Utah (hereafter LDS archives); "Recent Murder," Daily Union Vedette
(Salt Lake City), 13 December 1866, 3; both quotes found in Quinn,
Extensions of Power, 256, 539n202. See also John Hope Franklin
and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African
Americans, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 296, on the "insulting"
designations of "nigger," "coon," and "darkies." Compare with uses of
"nigger" in the following: Brigham Young's statement of 29 May 1847,
quoted by Newell G. Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The
Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1981), 98; Journal of Discourses, 26 vols.
(London and Liverpool: Latter-day Saints Book Depot, 1854-86), 4:39
(B. Young/1856), 5:121 (B. Young/1857), 5:119 (J. Taylor/1857), 5:157
(J. Taylor/1857); "How to Impress Niggers," Deseret News [weekly],
22 February 1860, 403; Salt Lake stake high council minutes, 9 October
1889 ("The man was about 1/6 [sic] Nigger from his appearance"), LDS
archives; Abraham Owen Woodruff diary, 6 March 1902, LDS archives (photocopy
of this apostle's diary also in Department of Manuscripts and Special
Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo,
Utah; "SOCIAL HALL THEATRE," Deseret Evening News, 22 March
1919, sec. 3, IV (laudatory review of the play, "The Nigger"). See also
examples in Quinn, Extensions of Power, 256, 755 (app. 5, entry
for 9 August 1857), 759 (app. 5, entry for 22 February 1860), 764 (app.
5, entry for 11 December 1866), 782 (app. 5, entry for 26 August 1883),
790 (app. 5, entry for 9 October 1889), 804 (app. 5, entry for 6 March
1902), 816 (app. 5, entry for 22 March 1919). All sermons published
in Journal of Discourses (1854-86) are also available in
New Mormon Studies CD-ROM: A Comprehensive Resource Library ([San
Francisco]: Smith Research Associates, 1998), which has phrase-search
capability.
58. "REMARKS by President BRIGHAM YOUNG, Tabernacle, March 8, 1863,"
Deseret News [weekly], 18 March 1863, 298; reprinted in Journal
of Discourses, 10:110 (B. Young/1863). See also note 128.
59. Journal of Discourses, 23:43 (J. Morgan/1881), reprinted
from the Deseret News. See also Larry R. Gerlach, "Vengeance
vs. the Law: The Lynching of Sam Joe Harvey in Salt Lake City," in Community
Development in the American West: Past and Present, Nineteenth and Twentieth
Century Frontiers, eds., Jessie L. Embry and Howard A. Christy
(Provo: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University,
1985), 204-14; Quinn, Extensions of Power, 259 (for quotes
and sources about the 1883 lynching of Harvey for killing a Mormon bishop,
after which a crowd of at least 2,000 cheered those who dragged this
African-American's corpse through the streets of Salt Lake City), 675
(for biographical sketch of general authority John Morgan). See also
note 128.
60. Heber J. Grant journal, 26 August 1883, LDS archives.
61. Brigham H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1930), 6:636-68; Robert H. Malen,
B. H. Roberts: A Biography (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1966),
68-77; R. Davis Bitton, "The B. H. Roberts Case of 1898-1900," Utah
Historical Quarterly 25 (January 1957): 27-46; Alan Elmo Haynes,
"Brigham Henry Roberts and Reed Smoot: Significant Events in the Development
of American Pluralism," master's thesis, Catholic University of America,
1966, iii-38; William Griffith White, Jr., "The Feminist Campaign for
the Exclusion of Brigham Henry Roberts from the Fifty-Sixth Congress,"
Journal of the West 17 (January 1978): 45-52; Truman G. Madsen,
Defender of the Faith: The B.H. Roberts Story (Salt Lake City:
Bookcraft, 1980), 241-68; Bergera, Autobiography of B. H. Roberts, 212-19;
Davis Bitton, "The Exclusion of B. H. Roberts from Congress," in Bitton,
The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays (Urbana: Univ.
of Illinois Press, 1994), 150-70.
62. Hardy, Solemn Covenant, 39-126; M. Paul Hoslinger, "For
God and the American Home: The Attempt to Unseat Senator Reed Smoot,
1903-1907," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 60 (July 1969): 154-60;
Charles A. Cannon, "The Awesome Power of Sex: The Polemical Campaign
against Mormon Polygamy," Pacific Historical Review 43 (February
1974): 61-82; Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormon
Myths and the Construction of Heresy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1997), which adopted its title from the anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy
article by Alfred H. Lewis, "The Viper on the Hearth," Cosmopolitan
Magazine 50 (March 1911): 439-50
63. For samples from an extensive literature, see George H. Von Langsdorff,
Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World during the Years 1803,
1804, 1805, 1806, and 1807, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1813-14),
2:47-48, 64; Waldemar Bogoras, "The Chukchee," Memoirs of the American
Museum of Natural History 11 (1904-09): 449-57; A. Bernard Deacon,
Malekula: A Vanishing People in the New Hebrides (London: George
Routledge and Sons, 1934), 260-61, 267; George Devereaux, "Institutionalized
Homosexuality of the Mohave Indians," Human Biology 9 (December
1937): 498-527; Niel Gunson, "Great Women and Friendship Contract Rites
in Pre-Christian Tahiti," Journal of the Polynesian Society 73
(March 1964): 66; E.E. Evans-Pritchard, "Sexual Inversion among the
Azande," American Anthropologist, 72 (December 1970): 1428-29;
Eileen Jensen Krige, "Woman-Marriage, with Special Reference to the
Lovendu: Its Significance for the Definition of Marriage," Africa
44 (January 1974): 11-37, esp. 25, 34; Denise O'Brien, "Female Husbands
in Southern Bantu Societies," in Sexual Stratification: A Cross
Cultural View, ed. Alice Schlegal (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,
1977), 109; Regina Smith Oboler, "Is the Female Husband a Man?: Woman/Woman
Marriage among the Nandi of Kenya," Ethnology 9 (January 1980):
69-88, esp. 69; Harriet Whitehead, "The Bow and the Burden Strap: A
New Look at Institutionalized Homosexuality in Native North America,"
in Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality,
eds. Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1981), 80-115; Charles Calender and Lee M. Kochems, "The
North American Berdache," Current Anthropology 24 (August-October
1983): esp. 445 (list of 113 tribes); Andrea Sankar, "Sisters and Brothers,
Lovers and Enemies: Marriage Resistance in Southern Kwangtung," Journal
of Homosexuality 11 (Summer 1985): 69-81; Ifi Amadiume, Male
Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society
(London: Zed Books, 1987); Bret Hinsch, Passions of the Cut Sleeve:
The Male Homosexual Tradition in China (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press, 1990), 127-33; Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, eds., Boy-Wives
and Female-Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1998).
64. While it is admittedly too early to comment about long-term effects
on heterosexual marriage and on "traditional families" (allegedly the
primary concern of Americans who oppose legal unions for homosexuals),
during recent years same-sex unions have gained legal recognition in
several European countries. See note 42.
65. John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New
York: Villard/Random House, 1994), 291-336, for standardized texts of
the church's ceremonies for same-sex unions from the tenth century to
the sixteenth century.
66. Homosexuality and Social Justice: Report of the Task Force on
Gay/Lesbian Issues, July 1982 (San Francisco: Commission of Social
Justice, Archdiocese of San Francisco, 1982), 59. See also Don S. Browning,
et al., From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American
Family Debate (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997).
As an example of the Armageddon-like sense of doom with which current
Mormons regard "the family" and their belief that the LDS church is
the world's best hope for saving "traditional marriage," see the official
statement of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,
"The
Family: A Proclamation to the World," Ensign 25 (Nov. 1995).
See also Ester Rasband and Richard Wilkins, A Sacred Duty (Salt
Lake City: Bookcraft, 1999), subtitled on the dustjacket: "The true
account of a BYU law professor's journey to defend the world's families."
Gay rights and same-sex marriage are undercurrents in the LDS hierarchy's
joint "proclamation" and throughout most of Wilkins's personal narrative.
Compare with statements quoted for notes 67 and 68.
67. Letha Dawson Scanzoni, "Contemporary Challenges for Religion and
the Family from a Protestant Woman's Point of View," in The Religion
and Family Connection: Social Science Perspectives, ed. Darwin
L. Thomas (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University,
1988), 129.
68. Tim B. Heaton, "Social Forces That Imperil the Family," Dialogue:
A Journal of Mormon Thought 32 (Winter 1999):26.
69. Sickels, Race, Marriage, and the Law, 64.
70. Orma Linford, "The Mormons and the Law: The Polygamy Cases," Utah
Law Review 9 (Winter 1964/Summer 1965): 308-70, 543-91; James L.
Clayton, "The Supreme Court, Polygamy, and the Enforcement of Morals
in Nineteenth Century America: An Analysis of Reynolds v. United States,"
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12 (Winter 1979): 46-61;
Edwin B. Firmage, "The Judicial Campaign Against Polygamy and the Enduring
Legal Questions," BYU Studies 27 (Summer 1987): 91-117; Firmage
and R. Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois
Press, 1988), 160-260; Davis, 'Antipolygamy Legislation."
71. Statement made during the congressional debates about the national
Defense of Marriage Act in the Congressional Record, as quoted
in Kevin H. Lewis, "Equal Protection after Romer v. Evans,"
175n2. See also biographical sketch of Congressman John Lewis in Salzman,
Smith, and West, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History,
4:1608.
72. For example William D. Workman, Jr., The Case for the South
(New York: Devin-Adair, 1960).
73. For example Timothy R. DeBeaumont, Sr., "Don't Be Intolerant: Vote
Yes on Prop. 22," Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.), 28 February
2000, and "Opposition to 22 Based on Bigotry," Daily Bulletin,
3 March 2000. The LDS church also gave all its high school seminary
students in California a handout entitled, "Some Ideas to Help Explain
Our Support of Proposition 22," which concluded: "When they attack us
saying that we are intolerant or bigoted, ask yourself, 'Who is being
mean-spirited?' 'Who is being intolerant?' They should also be tolerant
of our values" (also referred to in Combe, "Proposition 22, California,
and the Mormon Church"). As an example of this attitude among Utah's
conservative academics, as well as among some of its "liberal" professors,
see Bryce J. Christensen, who wrote: "Even 'the love that dare not speak
its name' (Oscar Wilde's famous characterization of homosexuality) has
come out of the closet, militantly accusing all its foes of 'homophobia'"
("Love in the Ruins?: The Future of Marriage in Modern America," in
Charting A New Millennium: The Latter-day Saints in the Coming Century,
eds. Maureen Proctor and Scot Proctor [Salt Lake City: Aspen Books,
1998], 208).
74. J. Harvey, Civilized Oppression (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield,
1999), 79.
75. "As a minister, without support of Proposition 22, others and I
could, in the future, be forced to perform same-sex marriages" (DeBeaumont,
"Don't Be Intolerant: Vote Yes on Prop. 22").
76. For LDS brochure issued in California, see "Defense of Marriage
Act: An Initiative," with answers to five questions, referred to in
Combe, "Proposition 22, California, and the Mormon Church." Compare
with the same argument in "Church Joins Hawaii Fight over Same-Sex Marriages,"
Deseret News, 24 February 1995, A-2, and with contrary decision
in "Judge Bars LDS Church from Same-Sex Lawsuit," Deseret News,
29 March 1995, B-1. See also Crapo, "Mormon/LDS Chronology of Involvement
In Same-Sex Marriage Politics," entries for February/March 1995 and
March 1995.
Another example of the hysteric, misleading homophobia in publications
aimed at the LDS rank-and-file is John L. Harmer, A War We Must
Win: A Frontline Account of the Battle Against the Pornography Conspiracy
(Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1999). In his argument against legalizing
same-sex marriage on page 88, Harmer writes against the "right" of any
parent "to bring the children from a previously heterosexual union into
a homosexual one" because of "the very probable use of the
child in pedophilia, or the sexual abuse of children of either sex"
(emphasis added). This statement is not substantiated by any of Harmer's
source-citations, nor by any statistical study of children who have
been raised by lesbian couples or by gay male couples.
77. Gordon B. Hinckley, "Why We Do Some of the Things We Do," 54. Compare
with his statement quoted for note 157. See also the University of Utah
student editorial on President Hinckley's conference talk in "LDS Church
Leaders Are Hypocrites," Daily Utah Chronicle, 13 October 1999:
"Several of today's arguments against same-sex marriages and unions
('It's against God's will' or 'It's morally wrong') are startlingly
similar to ones used against interracial marriage in the late '60s when
the United States Supreme Court ruled several states' interracial marriage-ban
laws unconstitutional."
78. For anti-polygamy citations, see note 62. "Alternative lifestyle"
was the most common 1970s reference to homosexuality, but see Rosemary
Jacobson and Brent A. Barlow, "Alternative Family Lifestyles: Mormon
Polygamy," videocassette, Department of Human Development, Family Living
and Community Educational Service, University of Wisconsin-Stout, 1976,
cited in the computerized WorldCat of 40 million published titles and
archived manuscripts on the internet.
As an example of the many double-think reversals in the LDS campaign
against same-sex marriage, Barlow was one of the professors in "3 BYU
Professors Sign Paper Upholding Traditional Marriage," Deseret News,
14 July 2000.
79. "The Abolitionists," Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate
2 (April 1836), 300.
80. Manuscript versions of discourse by Brigham
Young, 5 February 1852, in Young papers, LDS archives, and in Kenney,
Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 4:97; published and quoted in Matthias
F. Cowley, Wilford Woodruff: His Life and Labors (Salt Lake
City: Deseret News Press, 1909), 351; Joseph Fielding Smith, The
Way to Perfection (Salt Lake City: Genealogical Society of Utah,
1931), 106; Daniel H. Ludlow, Latter-day Prophets Speak (Salt
Lake City: Bookcraft, 1942), 204; Lester E. Bush, Jr., "Mormonism's Negro
Doctrine: An Historical Overview," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon
Thought 8 (Spring 1973): 26; Ronald K. Esplin, "Brigham Young
and Priesthood Denial to the Blacks: An Alternative View," BYU Studies
19 (Spring 1979): 400-01; Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks,
124-25.
81. Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saints Biographical Encyclopedia,
4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News/Andrew Jenson Historical, 1901-36),
3:577; Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(1830-1972), 31 May 1879, 246 reels, microfilm, Special Collections,
Marriott Library, University of Utah; Bush, "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine,"
16-21; Newell G. Bringhurst, "Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of
Blacks Within Mormonism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
12 (Summer 1979): 23-36; Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks,
37-38; entry for "Mormons," in Salzman, Smith, and West, Encyclopedia
of African-American Culture and History, 4:1854-55.
82. Although 'Associate President" is a term unfamiliar to most current
Mormons, it is the conventional way of describing the joint role of
presiding over the LDS church (with founding prophet Joseph Smith) which
Oliver Cowdery held from 1834 to 1837 and which Hyrum Smith held from
1841 to 1844. See Joseph Fielding Smith, "The Divine Law of Witnesses,"
Deseret News Church Section, 8 April 1939, 6, 8; Bruce R. McConkie,
Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), 53; Joseph
Fielding Smith, "Forward," in Pearson H. Corbett, Hyrum Smith, Patriarch
(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1963), xiii-xv; Robert Glen Mouritsen,
"The Office of Associate President of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints," master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1972,
33-112; Richard Lloyd Anderson, "Cowdery, Oliver," in Ludlow, Encyclopedia
of Mormonism, 1:338; Quinn, Origins of Power, 44-45, 47,
52, 56, 189, 622 (app. 7, entry for 5 December 1834), 631 (app. 7, entry
for 19 January 1841), 645 (app. 7, entry for 15 June 1844).
83. James B. Simpson, Simpson's Contemporary Quotations: The Most
Notable Quotes From 1950 to the Present (New York: Harper Collins,
1997), 387, no. 7306.
84. Robert A. Baker, The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People,
1607-1972 (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1974), 158-59, 227; John
Francis Maxwell, Slavery and the Catholic Church: The History of
Catholic Teaching Concerning the Moral Legitimacy of the Institution
of Slavery (Chichester and London: Barry Rose Publishers, 1975),
110-15; Lester B. Scherer, Slavery and the Churches in Early America,
1619-1819 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1975),
31-33; Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized In Blood: The Religion of
the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1980),
4-5, 10, 102-06 (for pro-slavery rhetoric after the Civil War); A. V.
Huff, Jr., "Methodist Church," Randall M. Miller, "Roman Catholic Church
(in the South)," and Thomas Virgil Peterson, "Slavery," in Encyclopedia
of Religion in the South, ed. Samuel S. Hill (Macon, Ga.: Mercer
Univ. Press, 1984), 468, 654, 694-95; David T. Bailey, Shadow on
the Church: Southwestern Evangelical Religion and the Issue of Slavery,
1783-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985); John B. Boles,
Masters & Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the
American South, 1740-1870 (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky,
1988), 9, 68, 100, 121-22, 128-31 (for pro-slavery rhetoric and actions),
12-13, 51, 81, 83, 85, 89, 95, 135, 144, 151 (for pre-1865 segregation
within churches); Kenneth J. Zanca, comp. and ed., American Catholics
and Slavery, 1789-1866: An Anthology of Primary Documents (Lanham,
Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1994), 110-11, 127-29, 153-56, 159-62,
171, 191-99, 201-13, 217-20, 235-38.
85. Dwight W. Culver, Negro Segregation in the Methodist Church
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1953); Kenneth K. Bailey, Southern
White Protestantism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper
& Row, 1964), 4-7; I. A. Newby, Jim Crow's Defense: Anti-Negro Thought
in America, 1900-1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press,
1965), 84-109; Huff, "Methodist Church," Miller, "Roman Catholic Church
(in the South)," and Gaines M. Foster, "Segregation," in Hill, Encyclopedia
of Religion in the South, 469, 654-55, 681-84; Joel Williamson,
The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South
Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984), 278-79,
281-82; Ralph McGill, No Place to Hide: The South and Human Rights,
2 vols. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1984), 1:511-13.
86. Susan Rennie Ritner, "The Dutch Reformed Church and Apartheid,"
Journal of Contemporary History 2 (October 1967): 17-37; Alan
Paton, "Church and State in South Africa," Christianity and Crisis
34 (30 September 1974): 205-07; Leonard T. Kapungu, Rhodesia:
The Struggle for Freedom (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1974),
90; Norman E. Thomas, ed., Rise Up & Walk: The Autobiography of
Bishop Abel Tendekai Muzorewa (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1978),
44, 57, 68; Enda McDonagh, Church and Politics: From Theology to
a Case History of Zimbabwe (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame
Press, 1980), 94-95; Marjorie Hope and James Young, The South African
Churches in a Revolutionary Situation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books,
1981), 45-48; Chris Loff, "The History of a Heresy," and David Bosch,
"Nothing But a Heresy," in Apartheid Is a Heresy, eds. John
de Gruchy and Charles Villa-Vicencio (Capetown, South Africa: David
Philip, 1983; Guildford, Eng.: Lutterworth Press, 1983), 10-23, 30-35;
Brian M. DuToit, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and the Policies of
the Dutch Reformed Church," Journal of Modern African Studies 22
(December 1984): 617-20, 623-30; Zolile Mbali, The Churches and
Racism: A Black South African Perspective (London: SCM Press, 1987),
41-43, 80-91; Charles Villa-Vicencio, Trapped in Apartheid: A Socio-Theological
History of the English-Speaking Churches (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 1988; Capetown, South Africa: David Philip, 1988), 22-24, 145-50.
87. Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 37-56, 94-112, 176-242, 309-13; Emilio F.
Mignone, Witness To the Truth: The Complicity of Church and Dictatorship
in Argentina, 1976-1983, trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll, N.Y.:
Orbis Books, 1988).
88. Journal of Discourses, 10:250 (B. Young/1863). See also
Quinn, Extensions of Power, 762, for context.
89. Jack Beller, "Negro Slaves in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly
3 (October 1929): 122-26; Roldo V. Dutson, 'A Study of the Attitude
of the Latter-day Saint Church in the Territory of Utah Toward Slavery
As It Pertained to the Indian As Well As To the Negro From 1847 to 1865,"
master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1964; Dennis L. Lythgoe,
"Negro Slavery in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Winter
1971): 40-54; Ronald Gerald Coleman, 'A History of Blacks In Utah, 1825-1910,"
Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1980; Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves,
and Blacks; Ronald G. Coleman, "Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown
Legacy," in The Peoples of Utah, ed. Helen Z. Papanikolas (Salt
Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1976), 116-20; Ronald G. Coleman,
'African Americans in Utah," in Utah History Encyclopedia,
ed. Allan Kent Powell (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press, 1994), 2.
90. History of the Church, 6:205.
91. See note 81. See also First Presidency statements in John J. Stewart,
Mormonism and the Negro: An Explanation and Defense of the Doctrine
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints In Regard to Negroes
and Others of Negroid Blood (Orem, Utah: Bookmark/Community Press
Publishing, 1964).
92. Armand L. Mauss, "Mormonism and Secular Attitudes Toward Negroes,"
Pacific Sociological Review 9 (Fall 1966): 91-99; David Leslie
Brewer, "Utah Elites and Utah Racial Norms," Ph.D. diss., University
of Utah, 1966; Margaret Judy Maag, "Discrimination Against the Negro
in Utah and Institutional Efforts to Eliminate It," master's thesis,
University of Utah, 1971; Douglas Monty Trank, "A Rhetorical Analysis
of the Rhetoric Emerging from the Mormon-Black Controversy," Ph.D. diss.,
University of Utah, 1973; "Interviews with Blacks in Utah, 1982-88,"
Marriott Library, Special Collections, University of Utah.
93. "Stepping Back?: The Racial Situation in Utah's Homogenous Culture
Today Is Threatening To Minorities," Deseret News, 23 February
1997, B-1.
94. Wallace R. Bennett, "The Negro in Utah," Utah Law Review 3
(Spring 1953): 340-41, 347; Utah, Utah Code Annotated (1953),
Replacement Volume 3, Title 30-1-2.2.
95. J. Reuben Clark office diary, 5 November 1941, Clark papers, Lee
Library, Brigham Young University.
96. J. Reuben Clark office diary, 30 August 1944, emphasis in original.
97. George Albert Smith diary, 16 June 1945, George A. Smith Family
papers, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
98. Nicholas G. Smith diary, 16 June 1945, microfilm, LDS archives (non-restricted).
Nicholas also did not indicate whether President George Albert Smith:
a) approved of using LDS chapels for meetings to promote residential
segregation; or b) approved of residential segregation, but disapproved
of using LDS meeting houses to promote it; or c) disapproved of any
efforts to segregate African-Americans residentially. The latter option
is not likely, since (as indicated in following quote) two years later
George Albert Smith's first counselor, J. Reuben Clark, was trying to
prevent "colored" people from living near the site of the Los Angeles
Temple.
99. J. Reuben Clark to Preston D. Richards at Los Angeles, 16 September
1947, folder 17, box 376, Clark papers.
100. Minutes of Council Meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of
the Twelve Apostles, Salt Lake Temple, 9 October 1947, folder 7, box
78, George A. Smith Family papers, Marriott Library; also in folder
15, box 5, H. Michael Marquardt papers, Marriott Library. A similar
document (with entries into the 1950s) was in the Adam S. Bennion papers
donated by his family to BYU's library shortly after his death in 1958.
This document remained available to researchers until shortly after
Lester E. Bush quoted from these minutes in his 1973 publication (see
note 80). Bush has recently written: 'A few months later I heard from
the special collections staffer at BYU that 'Some time after your statement
that you used the Bennion papers at the University, the Library was
contacted in behalf of the First Presidency stating that we should not
have copies of the councils' minutes and requested [that the library]
send them up...'" (Lester Bush, "Writing 'Mormonism's Negro Doctrine:
An Historical Overview' [1973]: Context and Reflections, 1998," Journal
of Mormon History 25 [Spring 1999]: 260). However, a transcription
of this document remains available at BYU in Bush's "Compilation on
the Negro in Mormonism," photocopied typescript of 386 pages (catalog
number: Americana BX 8643.622/C738/1970z), Special Collections, Lee
Library.
101. David O. McKay office diary, 25 Feb. 1949, LDS archives; also quoted
in Quinn, Extensions of Power, 97, 835. As late as 1967, Fawn
McKay Brodie wrote that "bigotry is endemic in the Church" and commented
about her uncle David O. McKay: "I know... something of his private
prejudices and would be astonished to see him abandon them at this late
date" (Brodie to Stewart L. Udall, 4 Apr. 1967, folder 3, box 209, Udall
papers, Archives, University of Arizona, Tucson, quoted in F. Ross Peterson,
"'Do Not Lecture the Brethren': Stewart L. Udall's Pro-Civil Rights
Stance, 1967," Journal of Mormon History 25 [Spring 1999]:
279).
Concerning African-Americans, David O. McKay apparently said whatever
he thought his listener wanted to hear. In contrast with his 1949 statement
to the Arizona segregationist, he wrote the following in a 1947 letter
to a Mormon who was disturbed about the LDS church's denial of priesthood
to those of black African ancestry: "This is a perplexing question,
particularly in the light of the present trend of civilization to grant
equality to all men irrespective of race, creed, or color. . . .George
Washington Carver was one of the noblest souls that ever came to earth.
He held a close kinship with his heavenly Father, and rendered a service
to his fellowmen such as few have ever excelled. For every righteous
endeavor, for every noble impulse, for every good deed performed in
his useful life George Washington Carver will be rewarded, and so will
every man be he red, white, black or yellow, for God is no respector
of persons." In the first sentence of this same letter, David O. McKay
referred in a noncommittal way to the current "trend of civilization
to grant equality" to blacks, thus allowing his reader to think McKay
agreed with it. However, the 1949 entry from his office diary showed
that he actually opposed such efforts to "guarantee rights of Negroes."
The full text of the 1947 letter is found in Llewelyn R. McKay,
Home Memories of President David O. McKay (Salt Lake City: Deseret
Book, 1956), 226-31.
102. J. Reuben Clark office diary, 8 September 1950, emphasis in original.
103. First Presidency to Lowry Nelson, 17 July 1947, quoted in Stewart,
Mormonism and the Negro, 47, with citation information on 55n20.
104. J. Reuben Clark office diary, 24 October 1950.
105. Joseph Fielding Smith (on behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles)
to "President David O. McKay and Counselors," 30 March 1955, Joseph
Fielding Smith folder, CR 1/46, LDS archives.
106. Rowena J. Miller (secretary to J. Reuben Clark in the First Presidency's
Office) to 0. Boyd Mathias, 3 March 1953, folder 2, box 389, Clark papers;
also quoted in Quinn, Extensions of Power, 839.
107. J. Reuben Clark to Dr. G. Albin Matson (director of Blood Grouping
Laboratory, Department of Bacteriology, University of Utah), 12 April
1948, folder 1, box 378, Clark papers; also quoted in Quinn, Extensions
of Power, 839. For the background of this blood-segregation, see
D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years (Provo:
Brigham Young Univ. Press, 1983), 229-32.
108. Harold B. Lee diary, 29 November 1949, private possession. For
members of the First Presidency as the hotel's senior officers, see
Leonard J. Arrington and Heidi S. Swinton, The Hotel: Salt Lake's
Classy Lady: The Hotel Utah, 1911-1986 (Salt Lake City: Publishers
Press/Westin Hotel, 1986), 96-97.
109. For Marian Anderson's exclusion from all of Salt Lake City's hotels
during her first concert at the University of Utah's Kingsbury Hall,
see "Famous Contralto Had to Use Freight Lift in Hotel Utah," Salt
Lake Tribune, 9 April 1993, A-3, as related by Elva Plummer, widow
of Gail Plummer, manager of Kingsbury Hall. Mrs. Plummer remembered
Anderson's initial visit as being in 1937, but the first concert was
apparently in 1943, as described in the university's student newspaper,
"Contralto Singer Impresses With Voice, Sincerity," Daily Utah Chronicle,
4 March 1943, 1. Mrs. Plummer accurately remembered that the second
concert, involving the restricted stay at the LDS church's hotel, occurred
in 1948 ("'Ave Maria' Will Be an Encore," Salt Lake Tribune,
19 March 1948, 18, which referred to "the Hotel Utah suite housing Marian
Anderson," but did not mention the freight elevator). See also Salzman,
Smith, and West, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History,
1:133-34. Furthermore, when Mick Duncan, founder of Utah's chapter of
the ACLU, learned that "the black diva was forced to take the freight
elevator to her room in the Hotel Utah," he unsuccessfully lobbied the
Utah legislature to outlaw racial discrimination by hotels. He claimed
this occurred in 1955, which was actually seven years after Marian Anderson
was required to use the freight elevator during her first stay at the
Hotel Utah ("Mormon's Mission Led Him to Fight for Civil Rights," (Salt
Lake Tribune, 19 April 1993, B-1).
110. David H. Oliver, A Negro on Mormonism (Salt Lake City:
By author, 1963), 23, in which this Salt Lake lawyer inaccurately dated
this visit as "during World War II." Compare with "UN Mediator, Nobel
Winner to View 'Peace Prospects,'" Daily Utah Chronicle, 25
April 1951, 1; also Salzman, Smith, and West, Encyclopedia of African-American
Culture and History, 1:469-71.
When I researched the office diaries of J. Reuben Clark and David O.
McKay, I did not realize the significance of the visits by Anderson
and Bunche, so I overlooked the references in their First Presidency
office diaries at the time. However, as the senior executive officers
for the Hotel Utah, McKay and Clark must have approved these exceptions
to the policy against allowing African-Americans to stay there.
111. Rowena J. Miller (secretary to J. Reuben Clark in the First Presidency's
Office) to Mrs. Guy B. Rose, 20 September 1949, folder 8, box 380, Clark
papers. See also Clark office diary, 29 November 1949: "Pres. Clark
read to him (Apostle Harold B. Lee) the letter he wrote to Mrs. Rose
in New York about the negro question."
112. Tom Cowan and Jack Maguire, Timelines of African-American History:
500 Years of Black Achievement (New York: Roundtable/Perigee, 1994),
230; Charles M. Christian and Sari J. Bennett, Black Saga: The African
American Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 395; Roy
Reed, Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal (Fayette:
Univ. of Arkansas Press, 1997), 205-32.
113. J. Reuben Clark office diary, 2 Dec. 1957. For Spafford's election
to the National Council of Women, see Quinn, Extensions of Power,
834.
114. Elmer R. Smith, The Status of the Negro in Utah (Salt
Lake City: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
1956), 12.
115. Bennett, "Negro in Utah," 341.
116. Utah Legislature, Report of Senate Committee to Investigate
Discrimination Against Minorities in Utah, 27th Sess. (1947), Senate
Journal, 66.
117. James Boyd Christensen, "A Social Survey of the Negro Population
of Salt Lake City, Utah," master's thesis, University of Utah, 1948,
51, 53-55; Bennett, "Negro in Utah," 341-43; Smith, Status of the
Negro in Utah, 6-7; Trank, "Rhetorical Analysis"; Bringhurst, Saints,
Slaves, and Blacks, 167-69; "Interviews with Blacks in Utah, 1982-88";
Coleman, 'African Americans in Utah," in Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia,
2; "Utah," in Salzman, Smith, and West, Encyclopedia of African-American
Culture and History, 5:2729.
118. See various entries and articles in Lester A. Sobel, ed., Civil
Rights, 1960-66, 2 vols. (New York: Facts on File, 1967). See also photographs
of "Jim Crow Signs," in Langston Hughes, Milton Meltzer, and C. Eric
Lincoln, A Pictorial History of African Americans, 4th rev.
ed. (New York: Crown, 1973), 298-99; C. Vann Woodward, The Strange
Career of Jim Crow, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1974); Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 147-48,
238, 280, 296-97, 314-15, 379, 420-21. For comparison of LDS and non-LDS
American attitudes, see Mauss, "Mormonism and Secular Attitudes Toward
Negroes," 91-99; and Mauss, Angel and the Beehive, 52-53.
119. Maag, "Discrimination Against the Negro in Utah," 34.
120. However, it would be an overstatement to say Utah's racial discrimination
"ended" at this time. For example, see "Mormon Decision to End Ban on
Blacks in Priesthood to Have Wide Impact on Utah," New York Times,
18 June 1978, 49 (African-American "Marvin Davis, however, waits for
a revelation about equal hiring for jobs. Look around [Utah]. No black
firemen, no blacks in the Sheriff's department, no city, state, or county
black division heads"); "Stepping Back?: The Racial Situation in Utah's
Homogenous Culture Today Is Threatening to Minorities," Deseret
News, 23 February 1997, B-1; "Utah Is Unwelcoming to Blacks, NAACP
Says," Deseret News, 10 December 2000, B-4. For context of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, see The Encyclopedia Americana: International
Edition, 30 vols. (Danbury, Conn.: Grolier, 2000), 6:778-79. For
Civil Rights Act text and provisions, see Anthony J. Cooper, ed.,
The Black Experience, 1865-1978: A Documentary Reader (Dartford,
Eng.: Greenwich Univ. Press, 1995), 254-55.
121. "Mormon Leaders Heard by 25,000," New York Times, 2 October
1967, 52. See also "Elder Benson Links Reds to [Civil] Rights Furor,"
Deseret News, 14 December 1963, B-5; "Benson Ties Rights Issue
to Reds in Mormon Rift," Washington Post, 13 April 1965, A-5.
These statements were softened in their official publication in Improvement
Era 70 (December 1967): 35, and in Ezra Taft Benson, Civil
Rights: Tool of Communist Deception (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book,
1968), 3.
122. Wes Andrews and Clyde Dalton, The Black Hammer: A Study of
Black Power, Red Influence and White Alternatives (Oakland, Calif.:
Desco Press, 1967). See especially the front cover (for illustration
of decapitated head of an African-American male), dedication page (to
"all the Elders of the California North Mission for their interest and
prayers"), 13 (for statement that Ezra Taft Benson "has generously offered
this address as the basis for the introductory remarks to 'The Black
Hammer"'), 35 ("well-defined plans for the establishment of a Negro
Soviet dictatorship in the South"). For the political context of Apostle
Benson's participation in this racist publication (e.g., the ultra-conservative
John Birch Society's effort to put him on the U.S. presidential ticket
with racial segregationist Strom Thurmond as vice-presidential candidate),
and for Benson's own interest in becoming vice-presidential running
mate of George C. Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, see
Quinn, Extensions of Power, 98-99.
123. Ezra Taft Benson, "The Book of Mormon Warns America," address at
BYU devotional, 21 May 1968, transcript, 5, 6, Vertical File, Special
Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah. See also "Road to
Anarchy: Benson Blisters Supreme Court," Standard-Examiner
(Ogden, Utah), 22 May 1968, A-11; "Benson Warns on Commies in Talk at
BYU Assembly," Daily Herald (Provo, Utah), 22 May 1968, 24.
124. David O. McKay office diary, 25 February 1949. For the Benson-McKay-Brown
situation, see also Quinn, Extensions of Power, 96-101.
125. Coleman, "History of Blacks in Utah," 197-98; "Stepping Back?:
The Racial Situation in Utah's Homogenous Culture Today Is Threatening
To Minorities," Deseret News, 23 February 1997, B-1; "Give
Full Civil Equality to All, LDS Counselor Brown Asks," Salt Lake
Tribune, 7 October 1963, 1; Hugh B. Brown, "The Fight Between Good
and Evil," Improvement Era 66 (December 1963): 1058; Bush,
"Mormonism's Negro Doctrine," 44-45; Eugene E. Campbell and Richard
D. Poll, Hugh B. Brown: His Life and Thought (Salt Lake City:
Bookcraft, 1975), 256; Sterling M. McMurrin, "A Note on the 1963 Civil
Rights Statement," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12
(Summer 1979): 60-63.
126. Joseph Fielding Smith statement to managing editor William B. Arthur
during an interview at Smith's "office in the Mormon Church's office
building in Salt Lake City," as quoted in "Editor's Note," Look,
22 October 1963, unnumbered page 78 or 80. Lester Bush quoted this statement
differently (i.e., a paraphrase which maintained the original meaning)
and called it "a notorious Joseph Fielding Smith quotation" ("Writing
'Mormonism's Negro Doctrine,'" 268). Like other white Americans raised
in the nineteenth century, Apostle Smith in the 1960s still regarded
"darkies" as an affectionate reference to Negroes. However, see Franklin
and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, for the fact that twentieth-century
African-Americans regarded "darkies" as an "insulting" description which
perpetuated the paternalism of slave-owners who regarded their slaves
as childlike.
127. Alexander B. Morrison, "'No
More Strangers': Racism is an offense against God and a tool in the
devil's hands," Ensign 30 (September 2000): 16. Morrison 's statement
begins: "In common with other Christians, members of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints regret the actions and statements of individuals
who have been insensitive to the pain suffered by the victims of racism
and ask forgiveness for those guilty of this grievous sin." This reflected
his personal view and ministry as demonstrated in Alexander B. Morrison,
The Dawning of a Brighter Day: The Church in Black Africa (Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book, 1990).
128. Some may claim that LDS headquarters did not "officially" encourage
Negro lynchings but merely published the sermons of those who did. However,
LDS president Brigham Young did nothing to avoid the possibility of
some fanatic carrying out his 1863 statement that the "law of God" required
"death on the spot" for Negro males who associated with white women.
By publishing his statement in the Deseret News, the church
president officially encouraged its implementation. The same holds true
for LDS president John Taylor, who allowed the Deseret News to
publish John Morgan's 1881 endorsement of lynching. As a comparison,
I doubt that today's Mormons would hold guiltless a Catholic cardinal
who gave a sermon in Dublin, Ireland (where Catholics are the 90-percent
majority) praising the assassination of Irish Protestants. Nor would
they regard the publication of such a sermon in the official Catholic
newspaper of Dublin as a matter of little consequence. They would also
not accept the excuse that it was "mere coincidence" when Protestants
were assassinated in Ireland after such a sermon and its official publication.
Likewise, for the physical assaults and murders of homosexuals by Mormons
after the repeated publication of an LDS apostle's praise for beating
up a homosexual, see discussion in text.
129. "Utah Group Notes 377 Assaults on Gays," Deseret News,
22 January 1991, B-10; "377 Anti-Gay/Lesbian Acts of Violence in Utah,"
The Signpost (Ogden, Utah), 29 January 1992, 8-9; "5 Murders, 11
Attempted Murders, 18 Rapes, 31 Acts of Vandalism, 35 Chasings, 43 Death
Threats by Mail or Telephone, 104 Beatings, 195 Acts of Verbal Harassment
[during one year]," in Christian P. Brown, 'Anti-Gay and Lesbian Violence,"
Pillar of the Gay and Lesbian Community for Utah (Salt Lake City),
October 1993, 7; Anti-Violence Project Newsletter (Salt Lake
City), 1994-present. For news coverage of violence by Utah's young men
against those they suspected of being homosexual, see "Gays Claim Lack
of Protection," Salt Lake Tribune, 14 December 1978, B-6; "Murder
Suspect in Mental Ward: Alarms Gays," Salt Lake Tribune, 15
December 1978, B-4; "Violence Charges Mostly Paranoia," Deseret
News, 15 January 1979, A-5; "'Gay Bashing?': Utahn Guilty of Assault,"
Salt Lake Tribune, 24 November 1988, B-3; "Two Men Get Zero-Five
Years for Near Fatal Beating," Deseret News, 28 December 1988,
D-5; "Death of Hitchhiker in Utah Is Linked to a Similar Slaying in
Pennsylvania," Deseret News, 9 December 1989, B-5; "Hatch Criticized
in Hate-Crimes Bill," Deseret News, 11 February 1990, B-12;
"Jury Finds Wood Guilty of 1988 Torture-Slaying," Salt Lake Tribune,
11 March 1990, B-1; "Police Accused of Failing to Aid Gay Crimes Victims,"
Deseret News, 21 March 1990, B-1; "Hate Crimes Prompt Gays
to Form Patrols," Salt Lake Tribune, 10 April 1990, B-1; "Jury
Acquits Salt Lake Men in Slaying," Deseret News, 14 April 1990,
G-5; "Three Face Assault Charges in 'Gay-Bashing' Incidents," Deseret
News, 1 August 1990, B-3; "Gay, Lesbian Leaders at U. of U. Receiving
Anonymous Threats," Salt Lake Tribune, 2 November 1990, B-1;
"Three Supremacists Sentenced, Fined," Deseret News, 14 January
1991, D-6; "Democratic Leader Wants State to Keep Track of Hate Crimes,"
Salt Lake Tribune, 22 January 1991, A-4; "Inmate Gets Probation
in '88 Beating," Deseret News, 25 January 1991, B-10; "S.L.
Policeman May Be Linked to Gay-Bashing," Deseret News, 14 March
1991, B-1, B-2; "Gay Bashing?: Lawman on Suspension: Police Chief, Officer
Offer Apologies," Salt Lake Tribune, 29 March 1991, B-1; "Hate
Crimes Do Occur on WSU's Campus," The Signpost (Ogden, Utah),
29 January 1992, 7, 9; "Was Slaying in Park City a Hate Crime?: Sources
Close to Probe Say Killer May Have Believed Victim Was Gay," Deseret
News, 27 August 1993, B-1, B-2; "Gang Rapes of 2 Men Spark S.L.
Fears of Gay-Bashing Attacks," Salt Lake Tribune, 28 August
1993, B-1; "Incidents of Hate Crime Cast Shadow over Salt Lake,"
Deseret News, 28 August 1993, B-3; "Was August Shooting a Hate
Crime?" Deseret News, 12 September 1993, B-6; "Violence Against
Gays Hinders Effort For Civil Rights, Speaker Claims," Daily Utah
Chronicle, 15 October 1993, 1, 3; "Boy, 16, Will Stand Trial for
Capital Murder in Shooting," Salt Lake Tribune, 16 October
1993, D-3; Mark Jensen, "Gordon," Sunstone 17 (June 1994):
20; "Killer's Sentence Too Light, Says Family of Gay Victim," Salt
Lake Tribune, 16 August 1994, C-1; "Judge Draws Protests After
Cutting Sentence of Gay Man's Killer," New York Times, 17 August
1994, A-15; "Driver Gets Probation for Role in Park City Slaying," Salt
Lake Tribune, 23 August 1994, C-1; "Utah Hate-Crimes Law Sees Its
First Case: S.L. Man Who Admits Beating Women Says Lifestyle Wasn't
Issue," Salt Lake Tribune, 23 October 1994, B-1; "Man Averts
Hate-Crime Prosecution For Assault," Salt Lake Tribune, 13
December 1994, C-1; "Suspect May Face Charge of Hate Crime In Beating,"
Deseret News, 22 April 1995, B-1; "Questions Linger After Store
Fire: St. George Police Say Arson Caused Blaze; Was It a Hate Crime?"
Salt Lake Tribune, 25 September 1995, B-2; 'Attackers on Skateboards
Targeting Gays," Salt Lake Tribune, 4 October 1995, B-2.
130. "Hate-Crime Bill Opponents Lash Out at Homosexuality during Capitol
Hill Debate," Deseret News, 29 January 1992, B-12; "Hate-Crimes
Bill Now Excludes Gays," Salt Lake Tribune, 1 February 1992,
B-11; "Reason Falls by Wayside in Fight over Hate Crimes," Deseret
News, 2 February 1992, A-1; "Pass Utah 'Hate Crimes' Bills," editorial
in Deseret News, 2 February 1992, A-14 (asking support for
the downgraded protections of gays and lesbians); "Diluted Hate-Crimes
Bill Will Condone Violence against Gays, Say Activists," Salt Lake
Tribune, 3 February 1992, B-1. See also discussion preceding note
139 and citations in note 156.
For decades LDS headquarters has used editorials in the church-owned
Deseret News to orchestrate votes by Mormons (Quinn, Extensions
of Power, 358, 362, 369, 377). The most dramatic example of this
tactic's success occurred in 1975 when an editorial in the Deseret News
gave the first indication that LDS headquarters opposed the proposed
Equal Rights Amendment for women. In response, the sponsor of the bill
for Utah to ratify the ERA reversed himself and voted (with the other
Mormon legislators) to defeat his own bill. Referring to the editorial,
this Utah legislator explained: "It is my church and as a bishop, I'm
not going to vote against its wishes" (M. Byron Fisher statement in
"ERA Effort Fails to Take Hold," Salt Lake Tribune, 22 January
1975, A-4, referring to editorial, "Equal Rights Amendment" Deseret
News "Church News," 11 January 1975, 16).
131. Gordon B. Hinckley, "Why We Do Some of the Things We Do," 54.
132. This pamphlet was reprinted from a talk given at the general priesthood
meeting for all LDS males from age twelve and older, broadcast by close-circuit
to the assembled Mormon males in every congregation of the United States
and Canada. Since it discussed masturbation as an abuse of a young man's
"little factory," the talk was not printed in the official conference
report in the November 1976 Ensign, possibly due to concern
at headquarters that LDS girls might read it (Conference of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, October 1, 2, 3, 1976,
with Report of Discourses [Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, 1976], 100-01). For the actual pamphlet, see Boyd
K. Packer, To Young Men Only (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1976), 9-10, reprinted by the LDS church
in 1980 and thereafter into the 1990s (see following note). For his
continued public emphasis on homosexuals as a danger, see 'Apostle Packer
Says 'So-Called' Scholars, Gays, Feminists Are Leading LDS Astray,"
Salt Lake Tribune, 24 July 1993, B-1; "Packer Keeps Tough Stance
against Homosexuality," Standard-Examiner (Ogden, Utah), 9
October 2000.
133. "Mormon Pamphlets on Gays Criticized," Salt Lake Tribune,
6 August 2000, B-2; Mac Madsen presentation, "Homosexuality
and the Church: Perspectives of an LDS Father," Sunstone Symposium,
Salt Lake City, 5 Aug. 2000, in which Madsen describes seeing this pamphlet
on sale recently in the LDS church's central distribution center in
Salt Lake City. See also "Parents of Gay Children Call LDS Pamphlets
'Insensitive,'" Salt Lake Tribune, 7 Oct. 2000, in which an
LDS spokesman acknowledges that Apostle Packer's pamphlet is still available,
implies that it is still being distributed to LDS young men, and denies
that it encourages violence against homosexuals. For analysis and statistical
profiles of those involved in such hate crimes, see Gary David Comstock,
Violence against Lesbians and Gay Men (New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1991).
134. In addition to the previously quoted statement of Gordon B. Hinckley
in "Why We Do Some of the Things We Do," Dallin H. Oaks also made the
following statement in "Same-Gender
Attraction," Ensign 25 (October 1995): 8: "Our doctrines
obviously condemn those who engage in so-called 'gay bashing'--physical
or verbal attacks on persons thought to be involved in homosexual or
lesbian behavior." Nevertheless, until LDS headquarters instructs local
bishops to distribute such statements to all teenage boys, it will never
overcome their indoctrination for violence against gay males which has
occurred through the intensive distribution of To Young Men Only since
1976.
135. See note 129 for Utah attacks. See also "S.F. Killing of Gay: Suspect's
Mother Talks," San Francisco Chronicle, 10 August 1984 (in
which the suspect's mother says: "Homosexuals are excommunicated according
to Mormon religion"); "Mormon Hate," Bay Area Reporter, 23
August 1984; "Man Pleads Guilty to Killing Gay Student," Dallas
Morning News, 6 April 1999, A-3 (describing the Mormon background
of one of the young men who murdered Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998);
JoAnn Wypijewski, 'A Boy's Life: For Matthew Shepard's Killers, What
Does It Take to Pass As a Man?" XY Magazine 22 (October-November
1999), 67 (the murderer "was prayerful in the Mormon tradition").
136. John K. Carmack, "When
Our Children Go Astray," Ensign 27 (February 1997): 10.
137. See for example, "Crime against Nature" in Spencer W. Kimball,
The Miracle of Forgiveness (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1969),
77-89; "Mormon President Kimball Demands Homosexuals Avoid Their Obscene
Past and Conform to Church," Vanguard, Portland State University
31 (28 October 1975): 3; "Hotel Utah Cancels Homosexual Parley," Salt
Lake Tribune, 9 June 1977, A-13; "Relief Society Leader Hails Anita
Bryant's Homosexuality Stand," Salt Lake Tribune, 11 June 1977,
B-3; "Salt Lake: Sister Smith Praises Anti-Gay Effort," Church News,
18 June 1977, 5, 11; Editorial, "Unnatural, without Excuse," Church
News, 9 July 1977, 16; "LDS Leader Hails Anti-Gay Stand [of Anita
Bryant]," Salt Lake Tribune, 5 November 1977, D-3; Editorial,
"Calling the Kettle Clean," Church News, 18 March 1978, 16;
"Store for Gays Denied License," Deseret News, 22 July 1978,
B-1; Editorial, "Is It a Menace?" Church News, 29 July 1978,
16; "Church Leaders Reaffirm ERA Stand," Church News, 26 August
1978, 2-3; "First
Presidency Re-affirms Opposition to ERA," Ensign 8 (October
1978): 63; Editorial, "Sin Is No Excuse," Church News, 16 December
1978, 16; "Mormons Excommunicate Editor of ADVOCATE," Advocate 273
(9 August 1979): 10-11; "Brigham Young U. Admits Stakeouts on Homosexuals,"
New York Times, 27 September 1979, A-16; "Hunted Down by LDS
Church, Gays Say," San Francisco Examiner, 22 October 1979;
"Mormons rapped for purge of gays," Chicago Sun-Times, 26 October
1979, 36; The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: A
Moral Issue (Salt Lake City: Ensign Magazine, 1980), 9; "Mormon
Church Elder Calls Homosexuality an Addiction," New York Times,
6 April 1981, A-12; "Mormons Call Homosexuality a Detestable Sin," Daily
Utah Chronicle, 9 January 1985, 1, 5; "Mormons Excommunicate Repentant
AIDS Victim: He Is Asked Not to Attend Church," Salt Lake Tribune,
10 January 1986, B-1; 'Apostle Reaffirms Church's Position on Homosexuality,"
Church News, 14 February 1987, 10, 12; Ronald C. Kershaw, 'AIDS,
Leprosy, and Disease: The Christian Response," Sunstone 12
(May 1988): 6-7 (for statement at LDS stake conference in Davis, California,
by general authority John H. Groberg concerning a Mormon male who died
of AIDS: "Of course, many of us would say he got what he deserved");
"Schools to See True Picture of Holocaust?: Officials Say Exhibit Can't
Mention Gays," Salt Lake Tribune, 11 March 1990, B-1, B-4;
"Exhibit Packet Won't Exclude Material on Nazis' Gay Victims," Deseret
News, 13 March 1990, B-1, B-2; "Going Straight?: New Therapy May
Help Gay Men and Women Alter Sexual Orientation but It Faces a Wave
of Opposition," Deseret News, 3 May 1990, C-l; "Gay Community
Speaks Out against 'Reorientation Therapy' [of] Evergreen Conference:
Homosexuals Call the Approach Unscientific and Potentially Dangerous,"
Deseret News, 5 May 1990, B-1, B-2; "S.L. Club That Was Accused
of Catering to Homosexuals Will Appeal Shutdown," Deseret News,
23 October 1990, B-3; "The LDS Church Is Committed to Changing
Homosexuals," Salt Lake Tribune, 12 January 1992, A-8; 'Apostle
Packer Says 'So-Called' Scholars, Gays, Feminists Are Leading LDS Astray,"
Salt Lake Tribune, 24 July 1993, B-1; "Top Court Throws Out
Efforts to Preserve U.S. Sexual Mores," Deseret News, 22 May
1996, A-10; "Packer Keeps Tough Stance against Homosexuality," Standard-Examiner
(Ogden, Utah), 9 October 2000.
138. Editorial, "Clubs for Homosexuals Are No Clubs at All," Deseret
News, 11 February 1996, AA-2.
139. See note 130.
140. Editorial, "Clubs for Homosexuals." See also "Editorial Blasts
Proposed Gay Club," Salt Lake Tribune, 14 February 1996, B-2.
141. "Hatch Unable to Stop Hate-Crime Legislation," Deseret News,
21 June 2000. With such clear signals from LDS headquarters, the Utah
legislature, which is usually more than 85 percent Mormon, has steamrolled
over every effort to introduce such bills. See "Hate-Crime Bill Is Back
Again," Deseret News, 18 January 2001, A-17; 'A Blow to Hate
Crimes Efforts: HB 50 Rejected; Suazo Delays Vote in Senate," Deseret
News, 26 January 2001, B-1.
142. Handbook of Instructions (Salt Lake City: The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1998), 129.
143. April 1940 Conference Report of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, 1940), 14. All sermons in Conference Reports
(1897-1970) are available in New Mormon Studies CD-ROM, which has phrase-search
capability.
144. "President Clark's Lecture: When Are Church Leader's Words Entitled
to Claim of Scripture?" Church News, 31 July 1954, 11. This
sermon was reprinted in all of the following: When Are Church Leader's
Words Entitled to Claim of Scripture? (Provo: Department of Seminaries
and Institutes, 1966); Melchizedek Priesthood Course of Study, 1969-1970:
Immortality and Eternal Life (Salt Lake City: First Presidency
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1969), 215-25; Dialogue:
A Journal of Mormon Thought 12 (Summer 1979): 68-81; David H. Yarn,
Jr., ed., J. Reuben Clark: Selected Papers on Religion, Education,
and Youth (Provo: Brigham Young Univ. Press, 1984), 95-112.
145. In discussing the revelation published as D&C 43:3-4, the 1951
revision of Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Apostles Joseph
Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, and Marion G. Romney referred to the
possibility that the LDS president, who is "the living prophet" in Mormon
doctrine, could be in a "fallen condition" due to "apostasy." See Hyrum
M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl, Doctrine and Covenants Commentary,
rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1951), 241. Another revelation
(D&C 107:82-84) provided for the trial and excommunication of the LDS
president in such a circumstance. Of this, the church's official centennial
history stated: "Therefore if the time should ever come that the church
should be so unfortunate as to be presided over by a man who transgressed
the laws of God and became unrighteous, a means in the church system
of government is provided for deposing him without destroying the church,
without revolution, or even disorder" (Roberts, Comprehensive History,
2:376). In other words, Joseph Smith's revelations maintain that there
are no limits on the ability of the LDS president and prophet to be
in error and to commit sin.
146. "Hinckley Takes LDS Case to the Nation," Salt Lake Tribune,
8 April 1996, D-1.
147. After he began directing the LDS church's anti-ERA campaign nationally
in 1977 (see note 29), Gordon B. Hinckley was also on the executive
committee of Seattle radio station KIRO when it supported anti-gay Initiative
13, which would have revoked Seattle's city ordinance protecting gays
and lesbians from civil discrimination in housing and employment. The
co-sponsor of this ballot initiative was a Mormon policeman, who said
he and his John Birch Society partner-policeman had launched the anti-gay
petition for it because a "homosexual applied for a job as a King County
police officer." (See "The Cops Who Lead the Fight Against the Gays,"
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6 August 1978.) The Blade
(Washington, D.C.), October 1978, 9, also commented: "KIRO, the Mormon-owned
station, continues to broadcast anti-Gay ads, and the local station
manager has editorialized against Gays, even calling for Gays to be
placed in 'concentration camps,' according to a source in the Seattle
mayor's office." After voters defeated the anti-gay initiative by a
two-to-one margin, "Initiative 13 loses big," Seattle Times,
8 November 1978, B-5, referred to "Pro-13 editorials broadcast by KIRO's
president, Lloyd Cooney." For Hinckley's role as KIRO director and member
of its executive committee, see also Sheri Dew, Go forward With
Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret
Book, 1996), 304. For a similar effort in Colorado after Hinckley became
counselor and subsequently LDS president, see discussion and sources
in note 156.
148. "He [J. Reuben Clark] repeated he did not think they should make
fun of them. He said that he had a deep sympathy for the negroes, but
that did not mean he would want one of his children to marry one, and
he did not want them to dance with them, and he did not approve of the
breaking down of the color line because anything that breaks down the
color line leads to marriage" (J. Reuben Clark office diary, 24 October
1950, Clark papers). Also, "President Clark said that his heart bleeds
for the negroes, that he had had them in his home and some of them were
very fine people, that he felt we should give them every right and blessing
to which they are entitled" (Minutes of Council Meeting of the First
Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Salt Lake Temple, 9 October
1947, folder 7, box 78, Smith Family papers; also in folder 15, box
5, Marquardt papers, both collections in Marriott Library).
149. What I call "The Appeal to Sincerity" is a combination of the "fallacy
of Emotional Appeals" and the "fallacy of Argumentum ad Populum,"
(or "the fact that so many people believe C isn't decisively relevant
to the truth or falsity of C"). See Francis Watanabe Dauer, Critical
Thinking: An Introduction to Reasoning (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1989), 82, 80.
150. James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1974), 54, 385-94; Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch:
George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1993), 27, 148-49; Lucia C. Stanton, "'Those Who Labor for
My Happiness': Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves," in Jeffersonian
Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia,
1993), 147-80; Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings:
An American Controversy (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia,
1997.
151. "Those Opposed to 2 Initiatives Had Little Chance from Start,"
New York Times, 9 March 2000, A-27), for 38.6 percent voting
against California's Prop. 22.
152. For example, surveys during a twenty-year period showed that 10
percent of BYU's male students admitted to homoerotic experiences. See
Wilford E. Smith, "Mormon Sex Standards on College Campuses, Or Deal
Us Out of the Sexual Revolution" Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
10 (Autumn 1976): 77. This was the finding of questionnaires distributed
by Professor Smith from the 1950s to 1970s to BYU sociology students
whom he identified on page 77 as "Mormons in a large church university."
While I was enrolled in a BYU sociology course during the 1962-63 school
year, I took this survey (which was identified as Wilford E. Smith's
questionnaire on the day my class received it). I was one of those homosexually
inclined persons who had remained celibate when I took this survey,
but I did not answer "Yes" when this survey asked if I had homosexual
feelings without homoerotic experience. I also talked with other males
who declined to report on such surveys the fact that they'd actually
had homoerotic experiences. Therefore, Smith's article under-reported
the percentage of those who privately regarded themselves as homosexual
(even if celibate) and under-reported those BYU students who had had
homoerotic experiences.
Compare this 10-percent finding with "Homosexual Sheep?" Parade
Magazine (March 1992): 10, concerning a four-year study of the
sexual behavior of male sheep by the U.S. Sheep Experiment Sation at
Dubois, Idaho: "The study showed that about 8.5% of the rams under observation
were homosexuals--close to the estimate of 10% for homosexuals in the
U.S. male population." However, because 10 percent of the population
are "different" does not mean they should be considered "abnormal."
The exceptional in nature is still "natural," such as the homosexual
orientation of erotic desire in humans and other animals. It does not
occur to blue-eyed people who label homosexuality as "abnormal" and
"unnatural" to think of themselves as "unnatural," or "abnormal," or
"mistakes of nature" merely because blue eyes occur in less than 10
percent of the world's population. Such selective use of "abnormal"
and "unnatural" would also apply to left-handed people.
153. See for example Richard G. Howe, Homosexuality in America:
Exposing the Myths (Tupelo, Miss.: American Family Association,
1994), 9-10. Even if homosexuals did constitute only one percent of
the population, we would still deserve civil rights. Christians constitute
less than one percent of the population in most countries of Asia, Africa,
and the Near East, yet they condemn any limits on their civil rights
in these countries. For 1500 years, this self-serving hypocrisy has
characterized the Christian tradition of denying civil rights to various
minorities living in Christian countries. In Europe, these legally repressed
minorities included Jews, Muslims, and "Gypsies" (Roma), as well as
minority Christians in the political domain of a dominant Christian
church. Aside from my discussion of the Christian suppression of civil
rights for African-Americans and Mormons in the United States, most
states (even after the affirmation of freedom in the Declaration of
Independence and the Bill of Rights) also had legal restrictions against
Jews, Muslims, and atheists until the late nineteenth century. See Anson
Phelps Stokes, Church and State In the United States, 3 vols.
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), esp. 1: 601, 621, 788, 874-77,
878, 3: 873; Daniel R. Ernst, "Church-State Issues and the Law, 1607-1870,"
in John F. Wilson, ed., Church and State in America: A Bibliographical
Guide, The Colonial and Early National Periods (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1986), esp. 338.
154. See note 120. According to Gallup polls, from 1948 to 1949 only
12-14 percent of white Southerners said that Negroes "should not be
required to occupy a separate part of a train or bus when traveling
from one state to another"; in 1955 only 16 percent of white Southerners
approved of laws that "all children, no matter what their race, must
be allowed to go to the same school"; in 1955 only 19 percent of white
Southerners approved of laws ending "racial segregation on trains, buses,
and in public waiting rooms"; in 1963 only 12 percent of white Southerners
approved of laws "which would give all persons--Negro as well as white--the
right to be served in public places such as hotels, restaurants, theaters,
and similar establishments" (George H. Gallup, ed., The Gallup Poll:
Public Opinion, 1935-1971, 3 vols. [New York: Random House, 1972],
1:748, 2:810, 2:1401, 2:1402, 3:1827).
155. Concluding sentence of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in A.
Roy Romer, Governor of Colorado v. Richard G. Evans, et al, 116 S. Ct.
1620 (1996), printed fully in Jay S. Sigler, Civil Rights in America:
1500 to the Present (Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 1998), 655-59; also
"Gay Rights Get Major Legal Boost," Deseret News, 20 May 1996,
A-1 (for same quote).
156. At issue was Colorado's Amendment 2, which invalidated municipal
laws protecting gays and lesbians from various forms of civil discrimination.
(See "The Christian Right versus Gay Rights in Colorado, 1992-1996,"
in Didi Herman, The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian
Right [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997], 137-69.) In an action
that required specific approval from the First Presidency and Quorum
of the Twelve Apostles (and probably per their instructions),
BYU president Rex E. Lee submitted an amicus brief to the U.S.
Supreme Court in support of Colorado's anti-gay Amendment 2. See "Colorado
Petitions Supreme Court to Let Amendment 2 Go Into Effect as Trial Proceeds
in Denver," Lesbian/Gay Law Notes (November 1993): 80 ("former
U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee, who has apparently been retained
by the state to argue this case in the U.S. Supreme Court"); "Gays and
Lesbians Are Coming Out Into Controversy: Decision in Colorado Case
Could Threaten Civil Rights of Utahns," Salt Lake Tribune, 12
October 1995, D-2; "Supreme Court to Rule on Anti-Gay Rights Law in
Colorado," New York Times, 22 February 1995, A-17; "High Court
Breaks Silence: Steps Into Gay-Rights Arena," Denver Post,
22 February 1995, A-14; 'Amendment 2 Arguments Filed: U.S. High Court
Sets Oct. Hearings," Denver Post, 22 April 1995, A-11; Vera
Titunik, "Sidley Braces for Fallout from Colorado Case," American
Lawyer, September 1995, 13; Lewis, "Equal Protection after Romer
v. Evans," 175-224; Stephen M. Rich, "Ruling by Numbers: Political
Restructuring and the Reconsideration of Democratic Commitments after
Romer v. Evans," Yale Law Review 109 (December 1999): 587-626;
Evan Gerstmann, The Constitutional Underclass: Gays, Lesbians, and
the Failure of Class-Based Equal Protection (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1999), 91-139 (discussion of Colorado's Amendment 2 and
the resulting decision of the Supreme Court). Lewis, Rich, and Gerstmann
did not cite Lee's amicus brief, but did cite the arguments
of BYU law professor Lynn Wardle in support of Colorado's anti-gay Amendment
2, although they inaccurately assumed that Wardle is a woman. Internet
websites are not as permanent as print publications, but Lee's opening
brief was posted at www.clam.rutgers.edu/remarks/romerpetitioner.html
and his responding brief was posted at www.clam.rutgers.edu/remarks/romerrepl.html.
For other comments on Wardle, see note 9. For the LDS church's opposition
to including gays and lesbians in Utah's anti-discrimination laws, see
the sources in note 130 and following discussion.
157. Gordon B. Hinckley, "This
Is the Work of the Master," Ensign 25 (May 1995): 71.
158. Editorial, "S.L. Should Protect All Equally," Deseret News,
8 December 1997, A-10 (despite the title, this spoke out against Salt
Lake City Council's proposal to protect gays and lesbians from civil
discrimination); Editorial, "Don't Repeal Gay Ordinance," Salt Lake
Tribune, 11 January 1998, AA-1; "LDS Leader Urges Attendance at
Meeting," Salt Lake Tribune, 13 January 1998, B-6 (requesting
local Mormons to express their opposition to including gays and lesbians
in the city's anti-discrimination ordinance); "Anti-Gay Bias Ordinance
Has A Short Life," Deseret News, 14 January 1998; John Harrington,
"Morality Plays: Repealing Salt Lake City's Gay-Protection Ordinance
Is an Outcome of Mormon Politics," Salt Lake City Weekly, 15
January 1998, 6-7; Editorial, "Bringing Sense Back to City Hall," Deseret
News, 17 January 1998, A-8 (congratulating the Salt Lake City council
for removing sexual orientation from the city's anti-discrimination
law).
159. My telephone interview on 4 September 2000 with a person who has
asked to remain anonymous, but who had direct knowledge of the hiring
practices in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building's new Roof Restaurant
and Garden Restaurant in 1993.
160. David Harris, Driving While Black: Racial Profiling on Our
Nation's Highways (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 1999).
161. For example, as part of a proposed remedy for male homosexuality,
an LDS physician recommended practicing "manly" behaviors. See Victor
L. Brown, Jr., Fred's Story (Sacramento, Calif.: H.R. Associates,
1985). This is reminiscent of the American psychiatrist's approach toward
homosexuality in E. M. Forster's decades-earlier novel Maurice.
162. A recent example from Salt Lake City is "Trouble for the Towel
Boy" (Salt Lake City Weekly, 14 May 1998, 8-9) concerning the
University of Utah's student newspaper which printed a hate-filled letter
identifying a student as homosexual because he "spoke in a high voice,
painted his fingernails purple, and wore an earring." The letter-to-the-editor
said this student should be fired from his job in the school's gym:
"I would argue that just the sight of a homosexual working in the locker
room is suggestive to the point of making an offensive environment."
After the university's newspaper published this, the City Weekly
interviewed the towel-boy: "The irony of it all is that Clayton, in
fact, is not gay. So much for appearances."
163. James E. Talmage, THE GREAT APOSTASY, Considered in the Light
of Scriptural and Secular History (Salt Lake City: Deseret News,
1909), 155-56; Joseph Fielding Smith, The Progress of Man (Salt
Lake City: Genealogical Society of Utah/Deseret News Press, 1936), 239-40,
246-48; James L. Barker, The Divine Church Down through Change,
Apostasy therefrom, and Restoration: Being a course of study for the
Melchizedek Priesthood Quorums for the year 1952, 3 vols. (Salt
Lake City: Council of the Twelve Apostles, Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, 1951), 3:186-87; T. Edgar Lyon, Apostasy to Restoration:
Course of Study for the MELCHIZEDEK PRIESTHOOD QUORUMS OF THE CHURCH
OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book,
1960), 25-26, 89, 252; "Dark Ages," in Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon
Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966), 178. See also
the following editorials in the church-owned Deseret News about
religiously-motivated suppression of freedom: "How Not to Fight an Offensive
Book" (16 February 1989); "Stop Human Rights Abuses" (31 March 1991);
"In Iran Ruthlessness Still is Status Quo" (31 March 1992); "Russia
Takes A Wrong Turn on the Road To Freedom" (16 July 1993); "Uphold Religious
Freedom in Russia" (24 January 1997); "Iran and Desires For Freedom"
(29 May 1997).
164. April 1950 Conference Report of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, 1950), 36; Improvement Era 53 (May 1950):
367; Gospel Ideals: Selections From the Discourses of David O. McKay,
Ninth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt
Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953), 303.
165. Paul Finkelman, "Jefferson and Slavery: 'Treason against the Hopes
of the World,'" in Onuf, Jeffersonian Legacies, 181-211. See
also discussion in note 153 regarding restrictions against religious
minorities in the U.S.
166. George Eaton Simpson and J. Milton Yinger, Racial and Cultural
Minorities: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination (New York:
Harper, 1953); David Brion Davis, "Some Themes in Counter Subversion:
An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic and Anti-Mormon Literature,"
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 57 (September 1960): 205-24;
Mark W. Cannon, "The Crusades Against the Masons, Catholics, and Mormons:
Separate Waves of Common Current," BYU Studies 3 (Winter 1961):
23-40; F. James Davis, Minority-Dominant Relations: A Sociological
Analysis (Arlington Heights, Ill.: AHM Publishing, 1978); Virginia
R. Brooks, Minority Stress and Lesbian Women (Lexington, Mass.:
Lexington Books, 1981); Leslie W. Dunbar, ed., Minority Report:
What Has Happened to Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and Other
Minorities in the Eighties (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984); Richard
D. Mohr, "Invisible Minorities, Civil Rights, Democracy: Three Arguments
For Gay Rights," Philosophical Forum 17 (Fall 1985) 1-24; Donald
R. Atkinson and Gail Hackett, eds., Counseling Non-Ethnic American
Minorities (Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, 1988); Ruth Colker, Hybrid:
Bisexuals, Multiracials, and Other Misfits Under American Law (New
York: New York Univ. Press, 1996); Mary B. Harris, ed., School Experiences
of Gay and Lesbian Youth: The Invisible Minority (New York: Harrington
Park Press, 1997); Anita Silvers, David Wasserman, and Mary B. Mahowald,
Disability, Difference, Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice
in Bioethics and Public Policy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,
1998); Janet K. Swim and Charles Stangor, eds., Prejudice: The Target's
Perspective (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1998); Eric Brandt,
ed., Dangerous Liaisons: Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality
(New York: New Press/Norton, 1999).
167. Sylvia Rhue and Linda Alband, 1996 Best Documentary, National
Black Arts Festival: All God's Children, A Discussion Guide (San
Francisco: Woman Vision, 1998), 3, 9. Besides ignoring their own religion's
historical suppression of African-American civil rights, Mormons also
overlook their own duplicity when they complain that gays and lesbians
are seeking "special rights" in society. (For example, see Clayton Bret
Pope, "Gays Gave up Their Right to Be Married," letter to the editor,
Daily Herald [Provo, Utah], 23 July 1999, B-6: "I believe that
by allowing gay people to marry would somehow be granting them a 'special'
right.") By contrast, Mormons applaud professional LDS athletes who
break their legal contracts by refusing to play sports on Sunday, clearly
a "special right" for violating contract law. Mormons also expect the
military to grant them the "special right" of wearing the LDS temple
undergarment during basic training, while all other military recruits
must wear military-issued undergarments. Although religious beliefs
and practices are adopted (not inborn), Mormons routinely expect society
to make special exceptions to accommodate religious orientation.
168. "Christian Right Maps Route to Power in Efforts At the Local Level
to Oppose Homosexual Rights," Wall Street Journal, 25 November
1992, A-16 (for quote); "$621 Million Racial Bias Suit Against Christian
Coalition," San Jose Mercury News, 3 March 2001 (for story
about lawsuit in 2001).
169. Encyclopedia Americana, 8:591 (Declaration of Independence);
Encyclopedia Americana, 7:670 (Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution).
See also Michael Nava and Robert Dawidoff, Created Equal: Why Gay
Rights Matter to America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).
170. "Gays Achieve Breakthrough In Vermont: Legislation Recognizes Same-Sex
Civil Unions," Washington Post, 17 March 2000, A-1; "Once Conservative
Vermont Now Leads in Giving Gays Equal Rights," Salt Lake Tribune, 2
April 2000, A-10; "Vermont Domestic Partnership Bill Stoking Anti-Gay-Union
Fire," Salt Lake Tribune, 8 April 2000, E-1; "Gay-Rights Law
Goes Into Effect in Vermont: Scores Are Expected to Make Unions Official,"
Salt Lake Tribune, 1 July 2000. Vermont's law provides for legal registration
of same-sex partnerships, which still lack the technical status of marriage.
This was also the status of same-sex unions in Holland until recently;
in September 2000 the Netherlands authorized same-sex couples to apply
for the full status of marriage (see note 42).
171. Williams, "Toward a Theology for Lesbian and Gay Marriage," 157.
See also sources in note 14.
172. David J. Atkinson and David H. Field, eds., New Dictionary
of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 1995), 453.
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