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Despite LDS Crusade, Senate Rejects Ban on Gay Marriage “The Church got sucked into the jets of cynical GOP political strategy”
June 2006 The U.S. Senate rejected on June 7 a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, despite a carefully orchestrated political campaign in which the LDS Church joined a right-wing religious coalition and urged Mormon congregations to help pass the bill. If passed, the measure would have started the process of writing discrimination against gay and lesbian couples into the Constitution. Mormon senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Bob Bennett, R-Utah, Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, voted for the so called "Marriage Protection Act," while Mormon Senator and minority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted against it. "For me it is clear the reason for this debate is to divide our society, to pit one against another," Reid wrote on his website. "This is another one of the President's efforts to frighten, to distort, to distract, and to confuse America. It is this Administration's way of avoiding the tough, real problems that American citizens are confronted with each and every day." Columnist Holly Mullen critiqued the role of the LDS Church in the stunt. "On the amendment matter — whether intentional or not — the [LDS] church got sucked into the jets of cynical GOP political strategy," Mullen wrote June 8 in The Salt Lake Tribune. "Bush took a desperate dive to shore up his lagging approval and his party by pushing a plan destined to fail from the first. For LDS leaders to align themselves personally with this transparent political ploy seems beneath its public reputation for repudiating hands-on political involvement, and frankly, for trying to do good." "The president failed this time," Mullen added. "As did the church."
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www.affirmation.org