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Last October, shortly before the Vermont Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Freedom-to-Marry case, GLAAD and the Vermont Freedom-to-Marry Task Force held a fundraiser in St. Albans. At the meeting, a GLAAD representative mentioned that the Mormon Church had just channeled half a million dollars into efforts to ban same-sex marriage in Alaska.
At the time, attendees could only speculate on its political impact. However, in light of the November 1998 elections in both Alaska and Hawaii, it is now obvious that Mormon contributions may play a huge role in the struggle to legalize same-sex marriage, and may even have severe ramifications within the state of Vermont.
That the Mormon Church would take such a stance on this issue is intriguing, given its own unique past within American society. A review of Mormon history reveals the story of a persecuted minority routinely accused of being 'un-Christian' and almost bankrupted by Republicans over polygamy, the big 19th-century 'freedom-to-marry' controversy.
As one might imagine, this did not go over well with his parents. Nor was he a big hit with local ministers when he started sharing his revelations. He wrote, "I soon found...that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion...and though I was an obscure boy....men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me...and this was common among all the sects — all united to persecute me." Nonetheless, he continued to receive visions and record them in what later became the Book of Mormon.
On April 6, 1830, in Fayette, New York, Smith officially founded the Church of the Latter-day Saints ("Jesus Christ" was added to the name in 1838). At the time, the church had only six members. However, even then, non-Mormons already viewed the church as "a threat to democratic self-government."
Initially, the most controversial aspect of the Mormon teachings was the belief in continuing divine revelation, and the idea that Mormons had been called upon by God to create a just society called New Jerusalem or Zion.
In 1831, Mormons began gathering in Ohio, designating Jackson, County, Missouri, as Zion. Citizens of Ohio and Missouri immediately banded together to remove the Mormons, "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." Between 1833 and 1847, Mormons were driven from town to town and jostled between Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, before finally settling in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, where the vast majority of Mormons still reside today.
Many Mormon theologians have since concluded that God "condemns plural marriage when the practice is used to gratify lustful desires for sensuality," but will sometimes issue a specific divine commandment to "raise up seed unto God."
As early as the 1840s, Mormons within the church, then headquartered in Nauvoo, Illinois, began agitating for official introduction of plural marriage. At that time, many US states had laws inherited from England prohibiting plural marriage. However, when the Mormons began settling in Utah, the area was not yet a state. In 1852, the LDS Church officially avowed plural marriage.
This set off a public backlash, which the Republican Party exploited to its benefit in the 1856 election. "Popular sovereignty" was, at that time, the main platform of the Democratic Party; it felt it should be the guiding political principle governing slavery in the new territories. The Republicans, on the other hand, wished to prevent the spread of slavery into the territories and declared war on both slavery and polygamy as "twin relics of barbarism." They argued that "popular sovereignty" would lead to the legalization of both these evils.
By 1862, Congress had enacted the Morrill Act, making bigamy in a territory a crime. It turned out to be too difficult to prosecute, so in 1882 Congress enacted the Edmunds Act, making "bigamous cohabitation" a misdemeanor. Within the next decade, more than 1300 Mormons were jailed as "cohabs."
Then, in 1887, Congress disincorporated the church and began seizing its funds on the ground that the church "fostered polygamy." An 1885 test oath was used to ban all Mormons from voting because of the church's position on polygamy. By 1890, it had become clear that polygamy was leading toward the total destruction of the church; at that time, LDS President Wilford Woodruff formally withdrew the requirement for worthy males to take multiple wives. This ended the confrontation between the church and the US government; today, the church remains officially against polygamy, even though it is still unofficially practiced in small numbers.
Last spring, Nebraska and about 10 other states decided to submit a brief to the Vermont Supreme Court, as 'friends of the court,' opposing the legalization of gay marriage. Lynn Wardle, an influential law professor at Brigham Young University, helped draft Nebraska's brief, and was therefore outraged when Utah's attorney general, Jan Graham (the only elected Democrat in the state), declined to sign onto the brief on behalf of Utah.
Professor Wardle angrily reported this to Governor Mike Leavitt; he and GOP leaders in the state legislature began leaning on Graham to sign the brief. They argued that legalization of same-sex marriages in Vermont would 'threaten' Utah's laws against them, forcing Utah to recognize Vermont marriages under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution.
Graham stubbornly refused, publicly accusing Leavitt of playing politics with her office and catering to the whims of the Eagle Forum, an ultra-conservative organization currently headed by Phyllis Schafly.
Utah did not sign onto the brief. Graham eventually got herself off the hook by publicly stating her opposition to same-sex marriage. She explained that she felt the brief implied the unconstitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and undermined her "legal strategy" to "defend Utah's law." She said that, if Utah ever faced a challenge to its law against same-sex marriage, she would make the Defense of Marriage Act her first line of defense.
In the meantime, the LDS Church was already beginning to urge its members to fight same-sex marriage at all levels of government, and to "promote legislation that will ensure traditional marriage."
In October, at its semiannual conference, LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley reiterated the church's opposition to polygamy and issued a somewhat new statement about homosexuality. He declared that the church "loves" gays and lesbians "as sons and daughters of God," but that Mormons with homosexual inclinations were bound, just as heterosexuals, to obey the "law of chastity" and the "moral standards of the church." The church could not compromise its commitment to marriage, which is "ordained of God for procreation and for eternity."
Some gay and lesbian Mormons initially welcomed the statement as "a positive step," since "it recognizes that homosexuals really do exist." However, only a few weeks after the conference, Hinckley approved the $500,000 check to the Alaska Family Coalition to aid in efforts to ban same-sex marriage.
Until then, each side of the debate in Alaska, the Alaska Family Coalition and the No On 2 Campaign, had each raised only about $100,000 in their political battle with each other. Another check for $600,000 was sent to the "Save Traditional Marriage" campaign in Hawaii.
These contributions turned out to be critical in both states. In the November 3 elections, constitutional amendments were approved in both places that severely hinder efforts to legalize same-sex marriages there. The Hawaii amendment gives the legislature power to outlaw same-sex marriage, while the Alaska amendment defines marriage as involving one man and one woman. Said a spokeswoman from the Hawaii Family Forum, "All those who support traditional marriage owe a big 'mahalo' to the LDS Church — that means 'thank you.'"
Why are they doing this? Professor Eben Moglen, who teaches law and history at Columbia University, believes that opposition to same-sex marriage arises from the Church's commitment to patriarchy, a stance that has never won LDS many friends within the feminist movement.
As Moglen explains, "the male-headedness of LDS society, which also caused the Church to commit itself heavily against the Equal Rights Amendment, militates absolutely against acceptance of marriage forms that don't involve patriarchy."
In addition, Vermont is symbolically important to Mormons. Brigham Young was a Vermonter, as were many other early Mormons who joined the Church when it was still based in western New York.
An LDS spokesman quickly reaffirmed the church's stance, but also emphasized that Mormons like Johnson had the right to follow their political convictions, whether or not they match those of the church.
A group called Affirmation, which consists of GLBT Mormons, has held annual conferences for the past 20 years. Scholars there present papers on such topics as "Ethics for Same-Sex Marriage" and "Nazis and Jews, Mormons and Gays: Simmering Hate Crimes in the Croc Proc."
If you have friends who are Mormons, ask them how they feel about this issue. Ask them if they know how much money their church is spending to defeat same-sex marriage, and why LDS seems to be so interested in doing to the gay community what was once done to them.
If they find that they disagree with their church's official stance, ask them to voice their opposition within their church — maybe even write a letter to Hinckley, or send a contribution to Affirmation.
But don't be nasty, and don't attack your Mormon friends. Let's show them more respect for their beliefs and lifestyles than their Church is currently showing for ours.
