Proposition 8

I did business with a guy about a year ago. He's definitely one of the more right leaning people I've dealt with, and although he's a nice guy, he gets a little carried away with the right wing propaganda machine. It's not that he's not intelligent, it's just that he doesn't think things through clearly.

I saw him about 6 months ago, and he brought up the evils of Gay Marriage. I'm a proponent of Gay Marriage for a number of reasons, so I asked him my standard questions. How exactly would allowing Gay Marriage affect you, and if you're worried about marriage losing it's sanctity, why aren't you protesting Brittany Spears and all the other heterosexual people in the world who have absolutely no respect for marriage. He saw my point, but apparently it didn't go very deep. I'm on his email list, but I'm not sure if he's happy about it, since most of his emails end up being returned by me with the respective references to snopes and other comments pointing out the flaws in logic.

Today I received this gem:

Subject: PROTEST AT THE OAKLAND TEMPLE

Dear family and friends,

I had a very disturbing experience yesterday that I would like to share with those of you that live outside of California (or outside of the San Francisco Bay Area).

This weekend we have stake conference. Our stake conference always begins with a stake temple session on Friday or Thursday night. Early Friday morning I received a call from the second counselor in our bishopric to let me know that there would be numerous protesters outside the temple, and to remind everyone to
stay calm and to drive carefully. The beautiful Oakland Temple is located right across the bay from San Francisco, very close to the city of Berkeley.

Apparently the opposition to proposition 8, the amendment that seeks to make marriage in CA between a man and a woman again, has realized the deep involvement of the church and begun to protest right outside of the temple and harass temple patrons. The fastest way to get to the temple from our house is to take the
680 freeway, but the exit is a bit tricky. The off ramp is extremely short and straight uphill. You then make an almost blind left turn, an immediate right and another left into the parking lot. As we approached the off ramp, I realized there would be trouble. There was a backup onto the freeway from cars stalled on the off ramp. As we moved forward inches at a time, we realized this was due to a large group of loud protesters who were standing on both sides of the street, yelling, screaming and waving signs. When we got to the top of the offramp, ready to make our turn, one protester jumped out right in front of our car. It took my husband all his self control to carefully maneuver around him to the left and proceed to the temple. I tried not to listen to all they were shouting at us, but I was shaking as I got to the temple front door. Several of the sisters, especially the ones driving on their own, were crying (which made me snap out of it and go into RS President mode to comfort them).

Later, as I was sitting in the perfect quiet of the chapel, I couldn't help but think of Lehi's dream, and the people who mocked the Saints from the big spacious building but we heeded them not.' It was a truly surreal experience, I'd never thought that I would have to go through an angry crowd to get to the temple. As we left late at night, the protesters had dispersed, temple security (who all looked very large and Tongan) stood by the gates. I never saw a single policeman.

Please pray for those of us in California fighting for prop 8--it's getting kind of scary out here!

Susanne

I don't even know if this crap is worth responding too. First of all, I'm not sure if it is actually true, since many members of the LDS Church believe that it is OK to lie if it promotes the work of God. OK....

Suzanne, if I may respond... Perhaps if the Church that you belonged to did not concern itself with civil and political matters, this wouldn't be an issue.

I have a lot of thoughts on this whole thing, but generally I'm just pissed off about the fear mongering, the lack of respect and the intolerance.

Mormons have a long history of doing weird things that mainstream people don't necessarily agree with, but they have had the freedom to practice those things, because we live in a free society. As I mentioned in my last post, when you give freedom so people can excel, you also need to give people the freedom to fail.

If you want the freedom to have your own unique beliefs and rituals, you need to allow that right to others.

I am a very happy heterosexual male. I'm happily married to a heterosexual female. If gay marriage is allowed, I'm not sure there would be any affect on me or my family. If anything, it would reassure me that I live in a free country, and perhaps the institution of marriage might even be strengthened by those who have fought long and hard for it.

I'm likely going to post some more on this in the next few days. I've been sitting on some material for the last few months, and I think now may be a very opportune time to share it with the world.