Gays vs Mormons

10 Nov 2008 11:39 am

Dale Carpenter finds the marriage equality protests misguided:

Here's my advice to righteously furious gay-marriage supporters: Stop the focus on the Mormon Church. Stop it now. We just lost a ballot fight in which we were falsely but effectively portrayed as attacking religion. So now some of us attack a religion? People were warned that churches would lose their tax-exempt status, which was untrue. So now we have (frivolous) calls for the Mormon Church to lose its tax-exempt status? It's rather selective indignation, anyway, since lots of demographic groups gave us Prop 8 in different ways — some with money and others with votes. I understand the frustration, but this particular expression of it is wrong and counter-productive.

He has another proposal:

If a more intense physical expression of anger and frustration is needed, why not have sit-ins at marriage-license bureaus in California? It could be modeled on the sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the 1960s. The demonstrations would be targeted at government buildings — rather than at churches. And after all, it's government policy we're legitimately protesting, not religious doctrine. Let people get arrested as they sing "We Shall Overcome." The protesters themselves — gay and straight, single and married, black and white, Mormon and Catholic, Republicans and Democrats, moms and dads raising kids — would suffer and accept the legal consequences of their acts. Rather than instilling fear and resentment in others, rather than dividing people on religious and racial lines, they would literally be putting their own bodies on the line for the good of their relationships, their families, their friends, and for a just cause whose time has come. We've had enough of lawyers, courts, focus groups, and media handlers. Let peaceful protesters by the thousands be dragged away just because they want to marry. It would be good old-fashioned civil disobedience, an American protest tradition.

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