Gay Rights Protests At Mormon Churches

Former Prop. 8 opponents, and gay people and those who support gay rights in general, are protesting at Mormon churches and have been for two weeks. The idea is to point out that the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints threw its moral and political backing behind Prop. 8, urged its members to financially support the Prop. 8 effort, and urged its members to contribute time and energy into making Prop. 8 pass. So long as those protests do not interrupt or substantially impede anyone from worshipping at an LDS church, and so long as the protests do not involve violence or vandalism, I for one support, endorse, and encourage them.

I wouldn’t want anyone voting on the validity of my marriage and you wouldn’t want anyone voting on yours. I can see why they're upset.

And, a proper political protest aimed at these institutions can help the cause of equality. After all, nearly every Mormon I have ever known is a basically decent person. To change a Mormon’s mind about something, the best way I can imagine is to appeal to their sense of decency. While some will be offended by the protests, the basic arguments raised by the chants and the signs are ultimately appeals to decency.

Is it fair to target the LDS? The answer to that is, LDS isn’t the only church to get protests. Saddleback Church got a big protest. And they're not the only ones -- some Catholic churches have been protested, too. And the LDS church went further than many other religious entities in pursuing enactment of Prop. 8, so if LDS gets a special level of venom and volume in the protests against it, there is a sort of logic in that.

LDS -- the same as the RCC, and Saddleback, and others -- does not get a special “immunity from criticism” status because it is a church. LDS voluntarily entered the political fray and as a result, LDS gets to accept the consequences of doing so – which includes being criticized for its actions by the people who feel hurt by passage of the law that LDS endorsed and went out of its way to promote. No one should allow an organization that does something immoral to cloak itself with the mantle of God and claim to be ethically righteous. If you believe in God, that sort of thing ought to offend you more than it does me – I don’t believe in God, so someone saying, “God is on my side so I must be morally right” is just making a fallacious argument. If you believe in God and think God is good, then it must, or at least ought to, greatly anger you that the Devil might do something evil while wearing a mask of Biblical righteousness.

Parishioners of LDS churches who feel embarrassed about going in to churches surrounded by picket signs calling the church and its members “bigots” should feel embarrassed -- their church did promote bigotry. They ought to reconsider their affiliation with such an organization, if they are not bigots themselves. If the LDS church loses membership as a result of this, it deserves to. Now, perhaps individual parishioners think they can work from within the organization to make it better – that’s a valid and justifiable choice for them to make as opposed to leaving their church, and in a way one that makes sense if they really believe the theology that their church preaches.

Or maybe they think it’s perfectly okay to treat gays like second-class citizens – a belief that they are entitled to have, although one that I have difficulty seeing people justifying once it is called what it is.

Meanwhile, gays and people who care about gay rights have no obligation whatsoever to sit back and passively accept and tolerate other people taking away their rights, which is exactly what happened to them two weeks ago. I’m glad they’re speaking out.

But.

The moment that people cannot enter their chosen house of worship, or the moment that property is destroyed or people get hurt, then the protestors have gone too far and I’m going to take the side of the church and its parishioners. Protestors and activists who resort to criminal acts in making their political point are not protected by the First Amendment, and they should rightfully be prosecuted for the crimes they commit. It's better, for them and for their cause, if they commit no crimes at all. (However, the only violence I've heard of was done by three kids who claimed to be members of the church. See update below.)

In our society, you have nearly unlimited rights to try and persuade, but you have very limited rights to coerce and intimidate. That is the way it should be. Political expression should be lawful and peaceful and that applies to all sides of whatever issue is being debated. Equal rights are equal for everyone.

UPDATE: By e-mail, I got a link to a video that a Prop. 8 supporter suggests to me is a case of violence against Christians. Looks like some Christians went into the Castro at night and got hounded out. It doesn't look like any actual violence happened, but yes the words were quite unfriendly and some of those guys looked like they were out of control and might have started something if there hadn't been hordes of SFPD around. And I have to wonder if Christians going in to the Castro at that point in time weren't kind of asking for a confrontation. Like I say, if it turns violent, that's not the way to go.