Mormonism and the Limits of Political Neutrality

Before proceeding, it is important to offer clarification on terms that are common to Mormon culture, yet not part of the broader American vernacular. To start, “ward” is the word used by members of the LDS faith to describe their groupings of people who gather weekly for services in meetinghouses that are open to all. The bishop is the man in charge of each ward. There are different types of wards, including family wards, YSA (Young Single Adult) wards, and mid-singles wards. Like Catholic parishes, they are location-based. Unlike parishes, your place of worship is determined as much by your stage in life as it is by your location. An LDS family with young children can live right next door to an LDS young single man, yet they would not attend services together. A “stake” is a group of wards with a president of its own. Temples are spaces that only card-carrying (your “temple recommend” is a card given to indicate that someone is living a life that makes them worthy of entering the building) members can enter to participate in religious ceremonies.[1] A member of the “priesthood” is someone with power to act in God’s name. This person is always male and over the age of twelve, and the majority of male members are “priesthood holders.” The nature of the doctrine of the priesthood requires that those in significant leadership positions within the LDS Church be male. The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, along with the President of the organization, are the most significant of the leaders. Members of the LDS faith see them as prophets who offer continuing revelation in the modern day (ergo the “Latter Day” portion of the name of the church). This revelation is seen to continue in the tradition of significant figures in the Judeo-Christian tradition. They are wide-ranging enough to include Moses and Paul.

[1] Liu, Joseph. “Glossary.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. January 12, 2012. Accessed February 06, 2017. http://www.pewforum.org/2012/01/12/mormons-in-america-glossary/.

Officially named The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormonism is a uniquely American religion. Founded during the Second Great Awakening by Joseph Smith after a transcendent experience in the woods, Mormonism has a rich history of resilience. With the passage of time, Smith’s small band of misfits eventually grew into a corporate institution and global religion.

In the present day, the institutional LDS Church claims to be politically neutral. As I later prove, these claims are false. When the LDS Church does take political action, it cites morality as the reason in an attempt to skirt the political neutrality claims. However, I argue that the real reason for political intervention runs much deeper, rooted in a longing for belonging in the broader political and cultural landscape of the United States.

From its early days, Mormonism necessarily intertwined with politics. From Joseph Smith’s run for President of the United States to the polygamy controversy, Mormonism has always been a religion riddled with political controversy. In order to look at the political nature of Mormonism during the first two-thirds of its existence, it is important to first understand prevailing attitudes toward Mormons in the United States. In the 1800s, the U.S. stood a primarily Protestant nation. Pluralism, especially religious pluralism, was not typical of this time period. Catholics were viewed with suspicion, as were other minority groups, including the Mormons. Preserving religious liberty was synonymous with preserving America’s Protestant identity. In 1878, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case regarding polygamy, thereby testing this standard.

The dominance of this Protestant hegemony is a major reason why, in Reynolds v. United States (1878), the court deemed First Amendment insufficient to protect the practice of polygamy within Mormonism. In it, the Supreme Court ruled that people are allowed to believe whatever they want, but that does not mean that they can act on all their beliefs. In other words, not all religious practice experiences protection under the First Amendment. For example, one is free to believe in cannibalism, but one is not free to go out and engage in cannibalistic practices. Therefore, the very existence of a group of people like the Mormons was a political statement in and of itself. While the practice of polygamy was eventually outlawed as part of the conditions for Utah’s admittance as a state into the Union, the Mormon Church continued and developed into a global religion in the 20^th Century.

Today, the LDS Church’s official statement on political neutrality stipulates political neutrality. In this statement, the LDS Church claims not to “endorse, promote or oppose political parties, candidates or platforms,” “allow its church buildings, membership lists or other resources to be used for partisan political purposes,” tell members who to vote for, or tell current government officials what to do. Notably, the Church “reserve(s) the right as an institution to address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interests of the Church.”[1] However, the Church uses this this qualification to offer itself wide latitude to integrate politics with the LDS religious experience.

Further, one of the sacred texts of the Mormon faith, the Doctrine and Covenants, seems to have inspired these policies of institutional political neutrality. Section 134 verse 9 of this text states, “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.”[2] However, as I will suggest, adherence by the institutional LDS Church to the policies they set forth and to the scripture that inspired them is not so clear. While its very existence no longer is political, some actions taken by the institution most certainly are. The cases of the Equal Rights Amendment and Proposition 8, as well as recent revelations released by MormonLeaks, make it apparent that though the institutional LDS Church claims to value political neutrality, it is not as often upheld in practice.

[1] “The LDS Church Believes in Political Neutrality.” Www.mormonnewsroom.org. Accessed February 06, 2017. http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/official-statement/political-neutrality.

[2] “Doctrine and Covenants 134.” Doctrine and Covenants 134. Accessed February 06, 2017. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/134?lang=eng.

It is also crucial to mark a key distinction between the LDS Church and its members. When I refer to the LDS Church in this paper, in general I am referring to the institutional church and not necessarily to its members. This distinction is important because no mandate exists requiring political neutrality of individual members. This stipulation is only a matter of doctrine and policy for the institution as a whole and the individuals at its helm.

I also want to distinguish between the LDS Church in the United States and the global Mormon Church abroad. The primary focus of this paper is on the influence of the LDS Church on public policy in the US, and not worldwide. This is primarily due to the geographic tendencies of the intermountain west, especially the states of Utah, Idaho, and Arizona, to be enclaves of Mormonism. States with a relatively high concentration of Mormons present a greater potential for political influence of the LDS Church in local and state governmental processes. However, as evident in the case of Proposition 8, its influence expands into other states and regions as well.

I chose Mormonism to study over groups that are arguably more influential in American politics, such as evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, or Judaism, because it satisfies key requirements: (1) relative doctrinal uniformity among the faithful, and (2) a centralized institution at the helm with influence on its membership. Among active members of the LDS Church in the U.S. doctrinal uniformity in combination with a central institutional authority remains unparalleled. Of course, a few members do not toe the party line, but they tend to either be so outspoken that we know them by name, are inactive, or do not speak of their concerns in order to keep their families intact. In Judaism and Catholicism, one’s cultural identity associated with the religion can remain strong even if not all practices are followed. Among Mormons, there is very much a “you’re in or you’re out” mentality that more strongly parallels evangelicalism. However, evangelicals do not have as much universal cultural capital as the LDS faith does. No matter where two Mormons might be from, they automatically share common cultural ground. While two evangelical Christians may share the same basic beliefs (and they might not even agree on that), Mormons share similar church and life experiences. They grew up singing the exact same songs in Primary (LDS Sunday school) and experienced the exact same rites of passage as teens and young adults. Generally speaking, members accept the doctrine passed on to them by the institution. This makes for a relatively uniform “Mormon culture” to study as a proxy for understanding the political influence of religion in American life. If we understand how personal beliefs influence public policy, then we can become more readily aware of these biases both in others and in ourselves when crafting policy.

The following section approaches the case of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and considers the influence of the LDS Church on its ultimate failure to be ratified by the required 38 states by the initial 1982 deadline.[1] A ratification map [2] shows three missing states needed to make the amendment part of the constitution. Two blocks, the south and Nevada, Utah, and Arizona present themselves. Did the LDS Church have any bearing on whether the ERA was ratified in these three states? If so, how? I argue that the LDS Church influenced the outcome of the ERA so strongly that if it had supported its passage, it would have been ratified. Further, I argue the reason that the desire for Mormon acceptance as a part of mainstream Christianity compelled them to exert such influence.

In order to understand how the LDS Church influenced the ratification process for states with large LDS populations, let us first examine the historical context surrounding the ERA and some key arguments in favor of its ratification. Representative Martha Griffiths of Michigan initially introduced the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. House of Representatives using a discharge petition on August 10, 1970.[3] The text of this proposed 27^th amendment was:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Though it failed to pass through Congress on the first attempt, it eventually passed both houses on March 22, 1972, giving it seven years to become ratified by three-fourths of the states.[4] The amendment ultimately came close to full ratification, but as I mentioned earlier, fell three states short.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg explains the rationale for amending the Constitution to give men and women equal rights and responsibilities as citizens in her paper, “The Need for the Equal Rights Amendment.”[5] She refutes the “four horribles” commonly cited by opponents, like Phyllis Schafly, who stood in opposition to the ratification of the ERA. These were that women would lose protection under labor laws, that wives would lose financial support, that women would be forced to serve in the military, and that there would no longer be separate men’s and women’s public restrooms. Ginsburg argued that, considering judicial precedent, full equality was unlikely to be reached without a constitutional amendment. Another of her arguments attacked the idea that women were biologically inferior to men by nature – that if women were indeed the intellectual peers of men, they would have shared the same prominence in intellectual circles as men one hundred years ago. She refuted this, writing that this inequality resulted from unfavorable historical circumstances, and not any biological factor or inability to match male intellectual prowess. The significance of this argument here is that the LDS Church rejected it. Despite solid argumentation, it is worth noting that neither a lack of understanding or refutation of the arguments characterized the anti-ERA camp, but rather they completely rejected the premises. The complementarian doctrinal stance of the LDS Church meant an inevitable rejection of the premises.[6]

Traditionalists were not the only people who stood in opposition to the ERA. Another group, the protectionists, did not think, as the traditionalists did, that the roles of women should be confined to those of wife and mother. Instead, their rationale for opposing the ERA back when it was first proposed in the 1920s was that it would remove the labor protections that progressives fought for, including child labor laws.[7] As such, the circumstances surrounding the ERA became quite complicated.

The current prevailing narrative about why the ERA failed to become part of the constitution blames the disenfranchisement of Southern women voters. Kyle Goyette’s 2014 paper, “Southern discomfort: The Equal Rights Amendment, the new right, and the southernization of American politics” derives from this camp, but challenges the notion that women did not have agency.[8] He contends that the final proverbial nail in the ERA’s coffin became the prevalence of political conservatism in the American South in response to civil rights. He argues that the South in the 1970s simultaneously existed in a space culturally behind the rest of the country, yet also predictive of the rise of conservatism in the 1980s. According to Goyette, the region’s conservatism set fire to the later conservative resurgence.

I disagree with the Southern disenfranchisement narrative. One concern with this argument is that Texas did ratify (without later rescinding) the amendment. Perhaps this could be explained by a difference of culture between the Deep South and Texas. However, I am not convinced that in the 1970s there was as discernable a political difference between conservatives in Texas versus those living in the rest of the South, as Goyette assumes.[9] Matthew Dowd’s statements on the matter explain how Texas’s shift from preference for conservative Democratic candidates to Republican candidates were predictive of what would happen in the rest of the South. For this reason, I am not convinced that one can be certain that the conservative South bears exclusive responsibility for the failure of the ERA to achieve full ratification.

However, Goyette’s gender explanation is persuasive. He suggests that Southern conservatives ultimately rejected the ERA out of concerns that ratifying it would destroy traditional gender roles. It is worth noting how this is identical to the main concern of the LDS Church regarding the ERA – that it would radically alter the roles of women.

Goyette overemphasizes the distinctiveness of the South. He states, “Nowhere in America was the ERA more detested than in the South, which resisted the amendment on religious, social, and cultural grounds.” While that may be true, my research suggests that certain parts of the Wasatch front region rivaled the South in its resistance. The main difference lies in the fact that the Southern resistance to ratification was a grassroots effort. In the case of the other states, where it failed to pass with large LDS populations (Utah, Arizona, and Nevada), responsibility laid in a centralized effort on the part of the LDS Church. That these areas do end up both rejecting the amendment makes sense, especially since they both prized traditionalism. Nonetheless, I argue that their reasons for prizing traditionalism differed, especially since the Mormon sphere of influence historically departed from “traditional” by society, especially with regard to marriage.

Other narratives compete with the Southern disenfranchisement model, including one that I favor, which considers the possibility that the LDS Church played a much larger role in preventing the ultimate ratification of the ERA than typically considered. Overwhelming evidence indicates that the LDS Church had direct involvement in telling its members what to do, extending to the LDS women attending the Utah International Women’s Year conference. These women systematically shut down every proposal made at the conference, even ones they agreed with in principle. The Church sent them to do it and they obeyed (Quinn, 116). Historian Neil Young argues that the women complied out of a desire to prove their value in the LDS Church beyond the prescribed gender roles that predominated in the mid-20^th century.[10] As I will argue later and as the literature supports, this actually makes sense given the history of the LDS Church and the relative freedom Mormon women experienced in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries compared to women living elsewhere in the United States.

Even though the LDS Church actively campaigned against the ERA, other LDS individuals campaigned just as actively for its passage. In December 1979, the Mormon Church excommunicated Sonia Johnson, the founder of the group, “Mormons for the Equal Rights Amendment.” In Johnson’s opinion, in an effort to defeat the ERA, Church leaders turned “Church meetings into precinct meetings” (Quinn, 88).[11] Nor was she the only one in favor of the amendment. Popular opinion in Utah actually supported the ERA up until the 1960s[12] even as the Church leaders became increasingly wary of it and increasingly public in that wariness (Quinn, 105). When the Church initially came out against it, no true Mormon monolith existed with respect to the ERA. Despite sharing the same doctrinal beliefs, the division over the amendment occurred primarily along political party lines at first.

The LDS Church justified involvement in blocking the ERA because they viewed it as a threat to the broader moral issue of gender relations. Church leaders felt they could remain politically neutral while engaging in the political sphere because they understood the roles of men and women in society to be a moral issue. This means that officially, resistance to the ratification of the ERA was not political, but based on moral principles. This excuse however, obscured what I see as the real reason for rejecting the ERA – the desire to gain a seat at the table of national political power through acceptance by mainstream Christianity.[13]

Can an institution that makes a concerted effort to systematically resist something claim political neutrality if the effort was made under the banner of morality? I think not. When evangelical leaders and organizations organized into the “moral majority” during the conservative resurgence of the 1980s, they did not take a stance of political neutrality. Even if they rooted their motivations in issues they considered moral, like abortion and same sex marriage, they nevertheless openly acted politically. Further, I doubt evangelical leaders at the time would have contested that reality. Therefore, while morality certainly can be a justification for acting politically, it is not grounds for claiming political neutrality. Logically speaking, one cannot both be politically involved and politically neutral at the same time. The question of morality is irrelevant because the argument itself, while technically valid, is simply not sound.[14]

The rest of Quinn’s paper casts doubt on the political neutrality narrative offered by the LDS Church today. He argues that the early Church never really operated in a politically neutral manner. As such, a lack of neutrality on issues like the ERA does not exist in aberration. Political action instead, he argues, fit in the plan from the very beginning. In August of 1833, Joseph Smith received a revelation that proclaimed Mormonism a separate and fully sovereign entity within the United States. This meant that Joseph Smith remained effectively in charge of the Mormons because he was the prophet (a divine mandate to rule). In doing so, he successfully built a theocracy within the United States. Quinn argues that even when Mormons moved to Utah, LDS Church leaders actively endorsed candidates, who usually won (95). Even after the Utah territory became a state, the general authorities[15] of the Church retained an outsized influence in the politics of the region.

This ultimately leaves us with the question of whether political neutrality stays an accurate phrase to use when describing the institutional LDS Church’s approach in the context of the ERA’s ratification process. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the answer is no. Even previous co-sponsors of the ERA, like Bryon Fisher, changed their tune when the Church came out against it, saying, “‘It is my church and as a bishop, I’m not going to vote against its wishes’” (Quinn, 107). The significance of this statement, aside from the obvious shift in point of view, is that a legislator said on public record that his religious leaders had changed his mind. For this reason, it is impossible to say that Church and State were separated in Utah in 1975 during the ratification process of the ERA.

Even as we accept that political neutrality never really belonged in the tapestry of LDS history, a paradox emerges when we view the Church’s stance on the ERA as a “moral issue” for the preservation of gender roles. Up until the mid-20^th century, the actions of the Church did not indicate that they necessarily favored traditional gender roles. In fact, reality was often to the contrary. Up until the 1920s, Mormon women enjoyed freedoms unavailable to women from the rest of the United States. They were afforded suffrage, equal access to higher education (including professional degrees to become doctors and lawyers), the opportunity to successfully run for state offices, no-fault divorce and the legal ability to successfully file for it, and the ability to do what they were best at in the domestic sphere (including handling finances) instead of what gender roles of the time prescribed (Quinn, 99). Because of polygamy in the Utah territory, women were not held to Blackstone’s common law marriage ideal of “coverture.”[16] Women were also generally allowed to speak about issues of significance to them without suffering repercussions. There was general disdain for traditional Victorian ideals of family (possibly left over from the condemnation of polygamy that emerged from Victorian sensibilities), and when Emmaline Wells publicly renounced these ideals in support of equal partnership in marriage; she was duly rewarded with the Relief Society Presidency (100).[17] However, from the 1920s onward, the LDS Church’s leadership came to adopt the Victorian ideals they once despised as their own. The question is, why?

I propose that the reasons the LDS Church leadership came to reject the ERA and its supporters had little to do with any sort of “moral issue” at all, but rather belonged as part of an attempt to achieve long-desired acceptance as part of the Protestant in-group and thereby achieve acceptance in American society at large. While the present cultural narrative generally accepts the notion of a relatively strict separation of church and state, this idea has not always predominated. In the 19^th century, when Mormonism emerged, a different narrative prevailed. Back then, the majority of U.S. inhabitants and those in power understood the United States to be a fundamentally white and Protestant nation. The narrative of cultural diversity was to be found in few places.[18] This cultural narrative shaped the environment in which Mormonism expanded, and Mormons, like Catholics, were vilified as outsiders, if not even more so. Early Mormons were not accepted as fully white, so converts experienced “racial demotion” as well as religious discrimination in American society at the time.[19] Clues to this disdain can be found in the landmark polygamy case Reynolds v. United States (1878). The argument of the Supreme Court ruling against it was that people could believe whatever they wanted, but that the First Amendment did not protect all religious practice. Polygamy was one of the non-protected religious practices. However, the court approached the case with a worldview that had a cultural understanding of Protestant dominance. They assumed that anything other than the Protestant hegemonic ideal of monogamy would be morally inferior, if not outright harmful (not because it was inherently harmful to women, but because it was not monogamy).

Given this history of stigmatization, it makes sense for LDS Church leaders to want their religion to belong at the proverbial table by gaining relevance in American society. The reasons behind opposition to the ERA, despite earlier relative rejection of traditional gender roles, had less to do with morality than with adopting the ideals of the rest of Protestant Christianity at the time. In a quest for long-awaited legitimacy in the eyes of outsiders, there was a need to abandon some of the things that made Mormonism so distinctly “different.” Political involvement in an issue so important on the national stage had more to do with joining the Protestant club than with moral conviction, regardless of whether the leaders themselves were aware of it at the time.

Even if we accept that the rejection of the ERA was part of a subconscious campaign for acceptance as part of American Protestantism, this does not answer whether and why the LDS Church interfered politically later on, well after they achieved legitimacy[20] as a modern global religion. In the next section, I explore this issue through the lens of the case of Proposition 8 in 2008 in California and examine how the “I’m a Mormon” campaign offers clues to the answer.[21]

[1] Article V of the U.S. Constitution states that three-fourths of all states must ratify am amendment in order for it to become part of the constitution, which in this case means 38 states.

[2] See appendix

[3] “The Equal Rights Amendment.” US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. Accessed March 02, 2017. http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/The-Equal-Rights-Amendment/.

[4] “History.” ERA: History. Accessed March 02, 2017. http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/history.htm.

[5] Ginsburg, Ruth Bader. “The Need for the Equal Rights Amendment.” American Bar Association Journal (September, 1973) 59, no. 9 (September 1973): 1013-019. Accessed March 2, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25726416.

[6] Complementarianism is a theology that men and women are equal, but have different roles. This stands in opposition to the doctrine of egalitarianism, which states that men and women are equal and do not have any prescribed roles based on gender.

[7] Kyvig, David E. Historical Misunderstandings and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. University of California Press on behalf of the National Council on Public History. The Public Historian, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Winter, 1996), pp. 45-63

[8] Goyette, Kyle T. Southern discomfort: The Equal Rights Amendment, the new right, and the southernization of American politics. University of Houston, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2014.

[9] “How Texas Became a “Red” State.” PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/texas/realignment.html.

[10] Young, Neil J. “The ERA Is a Moral Issue”: The Mormon Church, LDS Women, and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment.” Johns Hopkins University Press: American Quarterly. Volume 59, Number 3, September 2007. pp. 623-644 |

[11] Quinn, D. Michael. The LDS Church’s Campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment. University of Illinois Press. Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 85-155

[12] The ERA grew from the passage of the 19^th amendment in the 1920s, when it became topic of debate among suffragettes, some of whom opposed it out of concern that it would undo their efforts to unionize for better working conditions and abolish child labor.

[13] I am not using this term in the sense that Hall and colleagues used it in their 2012 psychological paper, Lifting the veil of morality: Choice Blindness and Attitude Reversals on a Self-Transforming Survey. I am instead trying to use a concise phrase to get at a broader concept of using morality to justify decisions when it is perhaps unclear that morality is truly the motivation.

[14] For our purposes, a logically sound argument has all true premises. Technically, it is a valid argument to affirm that from the premises “the cat is orange” and “the cat is not orange” one can conclude, “all cats are red” because logically anything follows from a contradiction. However, since this is not a practical argument in the real world because in the real world something cannot realistically be both true and false when the truth-values of their premises are known with certainty (the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment is for another day and is far beyond the scope of this paper).

[15] The term “general authority” is an LDS-specific way to refer to a member of Church leadership.

[16] Coverture laws were quite restrictive, to the point where women were essentially the property of their husbands.

[17] The highest office a woman in the LDS Church can hold.

[18] One such place is the writings of William James, who wrote often on the importance of tolerance. However, his views were an aberration.

[19] Reeve, Paul W. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 2015.

[20] By legitimacy, I mean it is not perceived as a cult, but as one of the world religions. There are still many Protestants who for doctrinal reasons do not accept Mormons as Christians, but the overall American culture does not view the LDS faith as a cult in the same way that they might view the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Scientology.

[21] The advertising campaign launched in 2011 based on research conducted in 2009.

Another case when the LDS Church systematically acted in a political manner while claiming political neutrality occurred in 2008, when it campaigned in favor of the passage of Proposition 8. The intent of this ballot proposition was to effectively make gay marriage illegal in California for perpetuity by affirming marriage as something exclusive to heterosexual couples. This case further reinforces the belonging narrative that I argued for in the case of the Equal Rights Amendment.

There is evidence from several major news outlets that the LDS Church invested significant financial resources in ensuring the passage of the proposition. According to the New York Times, members of LDS Church were decisive in mobilizing in support of Proposition 8, both financially and with boots on the ground.[1] A donation from Alan Ashton, grandson of former Church President David O. McKay, reached $1 million in size. That money, in concert with $5 million in other donations they so quickly raised, dealt the final blow to the effort to resist Proposition 8. The Mormons were not the only group involved in this effort, only the last to step into the ring where Catholics and Evangelicals were already standing. This fresh blood was enough to tip the scale in the ban’s favor.

Articles from the Atlantic suggest that the scope of the LDS Church’s financial involvement in passing Proposition 8 extends far beyond the $6 million that the New York Times mentioned as donations to the Protect Marriage coalition with other religious groups. The editors of the Atlantic claim that anywhere from 40% to 77% of all funding toward the Proposition 8 effort came from the Mormons.[2] Karger of the group Californians Against Hate arrived at a 77% figure from comparing Church records with people’s names.[3] The Wall Street Journal offers a more conservative estimate, reporting that between 30 and 40% of the $22.5 million in donations to the Protect Marriage coalition came from Mormons.[4] This all suggests that the donations were not limited to Church leaders. Ordinary members donated time and money to secure the proposition’s passage.

Further, according to this same article the institutional LDS Church funded an “advertising blitz.” In this action political neutrality is necessarily lost. Purchasing billboards advocating for the passage of a specific ballot proposition is not politically neutral. Mobilizing the LDS membership from the top-down, while not illegal, is not politically neutral either.[5]

Karger, an advocate for LGBT+ people and outsider to Mormonism, is struck by the extent to which the effort seemed to be driven by acceptance. This is so impressed upon him that he says, “the surge in support has been an attempt to boost the church’s social standing among the greater religious community…. ‘For whatever reason, they’re trying to get some respect from other religions….they’ve always been looked down upon by the Christians, the Catholics, and evangelicals.’ Success with the marriage amendment would give the church credibility.”’ That an outsider noticed evidence of the belonging narrative I argue for is significant; it seems so obvious that even someone with relatively little experience with Mormonism observed it. Though this short comment, of course, cannot capture the nuance of my argument, it does suggest that I am not theonly person to see this in Mormonism.

Given the historical analysis I provided of the motivations behind the resistance to the Equal Rights Amendment, Karger’s argument makes sense. Evangelical and Catholic groups with strong political power engaged in the political fight to pass Proposition 8 long before the LDS Church stepped in. The preservation of “traditional” marriage motivated all of these groups, yet the Mormons were the only group with a century-ago history of nonconformity to the bounds of “traditional” marriage. They were also the only group that had not yet garnered full acceptance into political power.[6]

They also had not yet gained social acceptance into mainstream American society beyond the Wasatch front, as evidenced by the later launch of LDS Church’s massive “I’m a Mormon” public relations campaign.[7] This campaign, launched in 2011, attempted to change the image of the LDS Church to reflect its global nature, but also to normalize its public perception. Public perception then, and still now to some extent, was shaped by television programs like Big Love that did not reflect the lives of members of the LDS faith. Ultimately, the goal of this campaign went beyond seeking normalization to wanting acceptance from the broader culture. The overall message of the campaign was that Mormons are no different from anyone else. In the videos, their professions include, professional swimmer, aerial dancer, comedian, doctor, researcher, and flight nurse. People in the videos come from countries including the United States, Costa Rica, Ukraine, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and Japan, among other places. In addition to the Internet videos, the campaign involved the placement of billboards all over the country, including in places as prominent as Times Square in New York City (see figure 2).

Further, there exists primary source evidence, leaked by MormonLeaks, of a push by the LDS Church to mobilize church members in California to campaign for Proposition 8. I analyzed two of these sources, a PowerPoint presentation and a handout. These documents delineate how the LDS Church mobilized members in California to convince voters to pass Proposition 8 with a 52% majority.

Since the documents I discuss are such recent releases, questions naturally arise surrounding the source and the credibility of the documents. Ryan McNight and Scott K. Fausett founded MormonLeaks in 2016 with the goal of increasing transparency within the LDS Church.[8] The evidence for the documents’ authenticity is strong given that the LDS Church sent a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to McNight and Fausett.[9] If the documents were inauthentic, it is highly unlikely that a high profile organization like the LDS Church would address them in any way. Further, by sending a DMCA notice, the LDS Church claimed the materials as their own under copyright law, thereby authenticating the MormonLeaks and establishing credibility.

A look at the “Proposition 8 Volunteer Outline” document offers critical insight into some of the rationale for a Proposition 8 mobilization effort. The statement, “We are being asked to canvass the neighborhoods and telephone voters; Not to persuade or convert, but only to determine how they will be voting. This approach is non-confrontational,” is tellingly contradictory. The very purpose of canvassing is to persuade people of something, usually political in nature. A face-to-face approach, like the one they describe, is inherently political because asking someone how they intend to vote is a political confrontation. The document offers figures as precedent for the passage of a bill like proposition 8. Further, it argues that, “a ‘Yes’ vote on Proposition 8 reinstates the democratic voice of the people.” The problem with this argument is that it implies the will of the people cannot change.

As we get further down the page, indicators of the belonging narrative begin to emerge. Among them is the claim that, “We will be outspent in the media by at least two to one, but we have the volunteer advantage,” a strongly “us vs. them” statement. They also argue the issue at hand is not the existence of same-sex couples. They instead object to applying the word “marriage” to same-sex relationships. The rest of the document is addled with fallacious arguments, including the slippery slope fallacy.

Finally, that the volunteers are acting politically seems to be a given in this document. No attempt is made in any of the statements on the handout to explain that these actions are not politically neutral or to otherwise rationalize this coordination of volunteers to canvass, a decidedly political action. The volunteers are also acting religiously, as the inclusion of a quote from Boyd K. Packer, then-President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.[10]

Overall, the wording of this documents bears key similarities to texts produced by evangelical groups. Carey Britney from the University of Hawaii analyzed materials released by conservative evangelical Christian groups, including Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Family Research Institute, and The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).[11] Carey’s analysis of the “Issues” section of the Family Research Council’s website as of 2010 notes the use of scare quotes around the word “marriage.” She argues that this choice of punctuation is significant in that it seeks to delegitimize same-sex marriage, mocking it as something that can never be equivalent in legitimacy to heterosexual marriage. The “Proposition 8 Volunteer Outline” released by the LDS Church uses the same tactic in the last statement on the page, where the organization placed the phrase “same-sex marriage” within quotation marks. The parallelism has similar implications here, that a marriage between members of the same sex could never be a “real” (i.e. “traditional,” heterosexual) marriage.

The other document I examine, a PowerPoint presentation, is much more explicit in its intentions than the “Volunteer Outline” handout. The title slide refers to the mobilization effort as a “grassroots program.”[12] Obviously, this effort is not grassroots at all in that it was a centralized, top-down effort (the very opposite of grassroots). Although it involved the local membership, that alone does not a grassroots campaign make. The idea for this mobilization needed to originate at the local level to be considered grassroots, and it did not. Beyond that point, the statements on the “Our Goals” page lay out the group’s intentions to convince voters to vote for the proposition’s passage quite clearly. It also references the core of their methodology saying, “It is not our goal in this campaign to attack the homosexual lifestyle or to convince gays and lesbians that their behavior is wrong. The less we refer to homosexuality, the better. We are pro-marriage, not anti-gay.” The language used in this passage is loaded with assumptions. First, in the words “lifestyle” and “behavior” imply that homosexuality is a choice. At the same time, the wording here concedes that the voters in California no longer see homosexuality that way. If they did, there would be no reason to avoid referring to the existence of LGBT people, as people would simply agree with them. Another purpose of the presentation is to describe ways to assuage the fears of people who are uncomfortable with the process of canvassing by addressing specific concerns, including embarrassment, performance, and commitment. Under the “fear of performance” section, the following statement is made: “Explain that they do not have to persuade, only explain what Proposition 8 is and identify the voter’s position.” This segment contradicts one of specific the main goals of the campaign, to persuade. Perhaps this means indicated that the individual making the call did not have to act persuasively (even if persuasion is the goal of the campaign).

The PowerPoint also clarifies methods for attempting to convince voters to vote in favor of Proposition 8. The organizational charts explaining the interplay between the LDS Church hierarchy and that of the Protect Marriage Coalition combine with a detailed list of volunteer roles to describe exactly how they intend to achieve this goal. These roles include identifiers, messengers, closers, trackers, walkers (knockers and stickers), schedulers, recorders, emailers, networkers, monitors (of media, blogs, or polling places), distributors, speakers, writers, diplomats, and registrars. Each of these roles is accompanied by a description of what type of person would be best suited for each. Finally, scripts are offered for conversations to put volunteers at ease. The content of these scripts are interesting to dissect. They read like choose-your-own adventure stories, where each answer has its own designated response. The twenty-third slide contains responses that might point to the success of the campaign. These are:

[If definitely Yes and voter is married, ask]: Does your spouse agree with you?

[If definitely Yes, ask]: Would you be interested in helping with the campaign, such as displaying a yard sign, or making a few phone calls?

I am struck by the outward focus of these two questions. They extend beyond the individual with whom the canvasser speaks. If they can elicit a positive response to either of these questions, they open the door to reaching a potentially exponential people tree, especially if someone agrees to the second request.

Some components of the two documents I analyzed here contradict one another. One occurrence crops up on the second slide, titled “Our Goals.” Here, campaigners are told to “Persuade our potential voters.” This phrase stands in contrast to the language of the handout, which claims that that they are, as I quoted earlier, “not there to persuade or convert.” There are a few possible reasons for this discrepancy. One is simply that different people wrote it and poor internal communication prevented consistency in this arena. Another explanation is that the difference was intentional, made with awareness that the handouts would be more broadly circulated. This meant that a handout could possibly be picked up by external sources and therefore might be more subject to scrutiny than an internal PowerPoint presentation. For this reason, I am inclined to find the information gleaned from the PowerPoint to more closely mirror the actual thoughts of the people running this campaign than the handout.

Regardless of why the documents differ, some persuasive intention was clearly evident in the LDS Church’s pro-Proposition 8 effort. In addition to the explicit reference to persuasion I mentioned earlier, the entire presentation is structured to offer a role in this campaign to every person within the LDS Church in California. Even if someone did not feel comfortable walking up to people and convincing them, they had a place providing support for those who did by providing for their physical needs (food, etc.) or taking care of documentation. This extended as far as trying to convince nonmembers of the LDS Church to join them in this process. Every effort, no matter how small, played a role in bringing more people to vote in favor of the ballot proposition.

The LDS Church’s mirroring of evangelical language serves as a means to the end of achieving in-group status and political position within the influential power structures of evangelical Christianity. There is an apparent desire to achieve that status to gain political power and influence in the United States to affect global policy. One suggestive is that Gordon Smith, a former Oregonian U.S. senator, claimed in leaked footage to have voted in favor of the Iraq war because political stability was a precursor to sending Mormon missionaries into Iraq.[13] In other words, he voted for the war for religious reasons. Surely, this is not acting in a politically neutral manner. Further, this decision process is something that Oregonian citizens might care to know. While it is not fair to assume that every elected official of faith, LDS or otherwise, makes decisions for explicitly faith-based reasons, it does shed light on the reality that religion does often affect political decision-making in the United States without explicit discussions about its role in the public sphere.

[1] Mckinley, Jesse, and Kirk Johnson. “Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage.” The New York Times. November 14, 2008. Accessed April 28, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html?ref=oembed&_r=0.

[2] Dish, The Daily. “The Mormon Church vs Civil Marriage Equality.” The Atlantic. October 22, 2008. Accessed May 12, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/10/the-mormon-church-vs-civil-marriage-equality/209810/.

[3] Dish, The Daily. “The Mormon Money Behind Proposition 8.” The Atlantic. October 23, 2008. Accessed April 28, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/10/the-mormon-money-behind-proposition-8/209748/.

[4] Carlton, Jim. “Gay Marriage in Peril in California.” The Wall Street Journal. October 22, 2008. Accessed April 28, 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122463078466356397.

[5] As per the Johnson Amendment

[6] Anyone in dispute of that can look to the suspicion of Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election among other religious groups.

[7] The videos can be found at https://www.mormonchannel.org/watch/series/im-a-mormon

[8] MormonLeaks™ – Home. https://mormonleaks.io/#about.

[9] “2017 03 01 DMCA Notice_Mormonleaks_final.pdf.” DocDroid. https://www.docdroid.net/Go946j5/2017-03-01-dmca-notice-mormonleaks-final.pdf.html.

[10] a high-ranking position within the LDS Church

[11] Carey, Britney. “The Language of Homophobia: Word Choice in Anti-Gay Propaganda.”

[12] “Proposition 8 Grassroots Program.” March 23, 2017. https://mormonleaks.io/wiki/documents/e/ed/Proposition_8_Grassroots_Program.pdf.

[13] In Which They Discuss Politics With Senator Gordon Smith. YouTube. October 02, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FPVZH8fIg.

The LDS Church emphatically claims political neutrality, but the case studies of the Equal Rights Amendment and Proposition 8 call it into question. While the LDS Church sanctioned political activity under the banner of morality, to accept that explanation misses the broader narrative. The “veil of morality” argument for political neutrality rests on two premises: (1) that the LDS Church is politically neutral, and (2) that when the LDS Church is not acting in a politically neutral manner, it is a moral intervention, not a political one. The conclusion is then that they can claim political neutrality after all. There are two problems with this line of logic. First, the first premise is included in the conclusion, which is fallacious.[1] Second, the second premise is patently false. All political action is political. One can offer moral reasons for said political action, but that does not make it any less political. For example, people who picket abortion clinics do so for moral reasons, but it is a political action nevertheless. Further, evangelical and Catholic groups that engage in such picketing do not deny that this action is political, rather the tendency is to embrace political action as part of their duty as Christians (acknowledging all the while that it is political).

Strong political involvement against causes shared with conservative evangelical and Catholic groups served to separate the LDS Church from the specter of its history and enjoin it to mainstream Christian culture. In turn, the LDS Church itself became mainstream as members of this faith became increasingly visible in culture and politics. This culminated in the so-called “Mormon moment” surrounding Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.[2] It is this striving for acceptance that I posit led to an increase in ostracization of church members who go against the grain, by being intellectuals who question church doctrine, feminists, or members of the LGBT+ community.

The challenges surrounding LDS political neutrality are critical to understanding the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. Nearly every elected official at the federal level professes some sort of faith or religious practice.[3] Everyone enters a political situation with their own worldview and their own set of biases derived from that worldview. This explains the increasing demonization of viewpoints different from our own. We are not merely disagreeing, but disagreeing on touchy subjects that cut to the core of someone’s worldview, which fundamentally shapes someone’s identity and most deeply held values. Without making a sincere attempt to openly discuss how these worldviews and values affect the policymaking process, we will continue to be left without nuance in our understanding of U.S. politics. The elephant has always been in the room. It’s about time we discuss its presence.

[1] a logical fallacy often referred to as the affirmation of the consequent

[2] by the news media, anyway

[3] 0.2% of Congress is religiously unaffiliated, as per NPR. Kurtzleben, Danielle. “Nonreligious Americans Remain Far Underrepresented In Congress.” NPR. January 03, 2017. http://www.npr.org/2017/01/03/508037656/non-religious-americans-remain-far-underrepresented-in-congress.