Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons

Anti-Gay LDS Activities
LDS Church Opposes Marriage Equality in Argentina
The letter has a coded message: Attend and support the Catholic demonstration to be held this Tuesday

by Seba Martínez
July 10, 2010

LDS leaders have a new target in their war against marriage equality: Argentina, where the Senate is debating a law that could legalize same-sex marriage. In a letter that will be read tomorrow from the pulpit of every Argentine ward and branch in the Buenos Aires area, the First Presidency asserts that “Marriage is between a man and a woman and is ordained of God.”

Read original letter and English translation

Although the letter doesn’t explicitly ask members to lobby their legislators, the timing of the letter is no accident: It is to be read 48 hours before a massive anti-equality demonstration staged by Argentina's Catholic hierarchy. Many believe the letter, sent only to Buenos Aires units, therefore has a coded message: Attend and support the Catholic demonstration to be held this Tuesday.

As Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn once wrote, “For the current LDS leadership, lock-step obedience to the ‘living prophet’ is more important than the church member's own sense of what is right and fair.”

Since 1996 the LDS Church has been part of a worldwide coalition which actively fights against women’s equal rights and opposes LGBT families. In 2005, British reporter Brian Whitaker wrote that the coalition includes Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a controversial Islamic scholar who approves of wife-beating; Alfonso Trujillo, a Catholic cardinal who campaigns against condoms; and Mahathir Mohamad, the dictatorial former prime minister of Malaysia.

Since the 1990s the LDS Church has aggressively campaigned against LGBT families in Utah, Hawaii, Washington, Alaska, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Nebraska, Texas, and other states. In California alone, the LDS Church made Mormons contribute $30 million of the $42 million total raised in support of Proposition 8.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission recently determined the LDS Church violated the state’s political contributions law in its aggressive campaigning against marriage equality.