Review of 8: The Mormon Proposition (2010) by Edith N — 24 Jan 2011

More Broad Than Its Title.

What I find amusing and disheartening all at once is the strident Mormon woman (I don't remember her name) who insists that the Constitution guarantees protection for freedom of religion--certainly true--but doesn't protect gays because they choose to be gay. I suppose it's always possible that she believes in predestination. God decided that she would be a Mormon. On the other hand, I find that contradictory with a stance that being gay is a choice. If it's predetermined, surely sexual preference is equally important to God as making sure that some people are just of the Elect, as the Calvinists call it. Either way, determinism is a matter of faith, not of law. In the eyes of the law, your religion is a choice. Certainly a lot of the other things protected by the Constitution are choices, too!

Broadly, this documentary is about the involvement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon) in the battle to pass California Proposition 8, which would amend the California State Constitution to limit marriage to that between a man and a woman. However, it paints with a much wider brush. Admittedly, it mostly only brings up polygamy because one of the people interviewed is the descendant of one of the three wives of a major Mormon figure from more than a hundred years ago, in the days when the Church was in its own struggle with the government to protect what it considered its God-given right to a way of life. (The resemblance between ancestor and descendant is eerie.) It does cover much more of the Church's treatment of gays than just its politics in this one particular battle.

One issue it does cover, which I think is of more import than most people give it, is whether a church which pours so much money into political campaigns--in violation of the IRS code, according to how I read it--should be allowed to retain its tax-exempt status. The Church pressured its believers to the point of blackmail to contribute time and money to the campaign. Millions of dollars poured into the political fund direct from Utah. The Church then almost certainly lied to the IRS about how much, exactly, it spent. Broadly, I have no problem with tax-exempt status for religions--depending on what they do with their tithings. Paying salaries of church officials? Hospitals, schools, and orphanages? Fine. But putting money into political campaigns should lose them tax-exempt status and make them just as scrutinized as any other political group.

This documentary isn't going to change anyone's mind. I doubt anyone already opposed to gay marriage would sit down and watch it, and if they did, they wouldn't be convinced by any arguments presented here. They would also, rightly, point out that the Mormons were a significant factor in passage of the initiative but could not have succeeded alone. The film itself acknowledges that only about 2% of the California population identifies as Mormon--including one of my great aunts--but that 52% of the population voted in favour of Proposition 8. The issues, then, are far more complicated. The film also does not present a compelling reason to come out in favour of gay marriage. It's true that a lot of the Church's treatment of gays is shown to be abominable. No arguments, however, are refuted, and that treatment strays far afield of Prop 8.

The fate is now left to the courts. Again. [i]Perry v. Schwarzenegger[/i] holds that Prop 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it denies equal protection under the law to gays. I would argue that it violates the First Amendment, in that it is imposing religious values on the state, especially given that the main reason given for why marriage should remain between a man and a woman tends to have "sin" or "abomination" somewhere in there or else be on demonstrably false reasoning. But anyway. Both governor and attorney general of California have declined to pursue the case in the courts, which leads to discussion of standing of those who are. I believe that permitting gay marriage is as much of a historical inevitability as abolishing miscegenation laws was. I also find it the height of hypocrisy that a Church which held so long to its own "alternate marriage practices" should use those same practices as a threat of what doors will be opened if gays are permitted to marry, especially given it's a primary feature of their afterlife.