Anti-Gay LDS Activities     

Several dozen people have requested their names be removed from the Mormon church's membership rolls to protest the organization's support for a California initiative that would ban same-sex marriages, gay activists announced Friday.

"It is an outrage that the church has been working to control state policy on secular marriage," said Dave Ensign, who came to Salt Lake City from Boulder, Colo., to present his request to church officials in person. He was joined by a handful of other church members at a press conference at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Utah.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently sent a letter to 740,000 California members asking them "to do all you can by donating your means and time to assure a successful vote" on the March 2000 measure that would forbid gay marriages.

The church conducted similar efforts in Alaska and Hawaii last year, and members raised $1.1 million for the successful campaigns to block same-sex marriages in those states.

"This was like the last straw for people," said Kathy J. Worthington, who is coordinating the dropout campaign. She said people were saying, "I am so tired of this, I don't want to be apologizing for being a Mormon anymore, I don't want to be connected with that anymore."

Worthington said 30 to 40 letters requesting release from the rolls had been sent since the campaign started two weeks ago, and that she had promises from three dozen more. She also said she expects hundreds more as the campaign grows.

Mormon leaders were unavailable for comment Friday due to a state and church holiday to celebrate the founding of Utah.

Worthington dropped her own Mormon affiliation in the 1970s to protest the church's exclusion of blacks from church leadership - a policy since reversed. She said she hopes a drop in membership will also force the organization to question its stand on the issue.

"But of course, if it sends any kind of a message, then that achieves something," she said.

Many who made the decision to withdraw have already been inactive in the church for many years, and said their formal notice is mostly symbolic. But for others, the choice was harder.

Kathleen Griffith McGuire was raised and married in the Mormon church and remained active through the beginning of this year, though she came out as a lesbian many years ago. Two of her three children are still members; the youngest is to be baptized next year.

"My family is LDS, I was raised LDS, so it's really hard to leave that behind," she said. But she and her husband, who is bisexual and also Mormon (they have pledged to stay together despite their orientations) have asked that their names be removed from the rolls.

"We believe God loves his children, regardless of their sexual orientation," McGuire said. "But the LDS church insists on negating that love by furthering a gospel of alienation against gays, lesbians and bisexuals."

She added that church leaders should "open an honest dialogue within its ranks and within this community."

Others weren't so optimistic about a change.

"I don't care what other people do with their lives, why do you care so much what I do?" said Royal Thackrell of Salt Lake City. "You go back to your temples and pray and do whatever you want to do. Just leave me out of it."

"Has the church forgotten how persecuted they were at one time?"

California law already says marriage must be between a man and a woman. The initiative sponsored by state Sen. Pete Knight would reaffirm that only heterosexual marriages are legally binding. Defeat of the initiative would not legalize gay marriage in California.