I'm missing Salt Lake City's Pride Day today.
Today's Tib features two op-eds written by Mormons who oppose the federal marriage amendment even though the LDS Chuch officially endorses it.
The second article cites arguments used during Church's vocal opposition to the ERA. (The Equal Rights Amendment, a work of optimistic 70's feminism which might have very well been blocked by Mormon intervention-it was within three states of passage. I count Utah, Idaho, and maybe Washington, but our solidarity with the religious right has never warmed evangelical hearts toward Mormons.) He has a good point, and one that adds to the monumental list of ironies about the Mormon position on gay marriage. What's the biggest irony? This passage:Certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth...than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement. - US Supreme Court, Davis v. Beason, 1890
Except for punctuation, this could have been written by today's marriage amendment proponents. Davis v. Beason is the first time that marriage was explicitly defined by the US Supreme Court.
Pop quiz: Followers of which religion were disenfranchised by this ruling? Which church would become disincorporated because of it? Luckily, Latter-day Saints could just quit being polygamists. Homosexuality seems to be a little more compulsory.
The second article cites arguments used during Church's vocal opposition to the ERA. (The Equal Rights Amendment, a work of optimistic 70's feminism which might have very well been blocked by Mormon intervention-it was within three states of passage. I count Utah, Idaho, and maybe Washington, but our solidarity with the religious right has never warmed evangelical hearts toward Mormons.) He has a good point, and one that adds to the monumental list of ironies about the Mormon position on gay marriage. What's the biggest irony? This passage:Certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth...than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement. - US Supreme Court, Davis v. Beason, 1890
Except for punctuation, this could have been written by today's marriage amendment proponents. Davis v. Beason is the first time that marriage was explicitly defined by the US Supreme Court.
Pop quiz: Followers of which religion were disenfranchised by this ruling? Which church would become disincorporated because of it? Luckily, Latter-day Saints could just quit being polygamists. Homosexuality seems to be a little more compulsory.