Under relentless pressure from the Courage Campaign and NO activists, the Mormon Church has closed its Utah call centers they were using to lie to Californians about Prop 8.
Estimates of donations by Mormons to Prop 8 are now up to $10 million, funding all of those lies and distortions on our airwaves. They have been fueling their volunteer base from here in California and across the country, using their church organizing networks to turn out volunteers to phone bank and knock doors.
And Mark Jansson, a "Yes on 8" Executive Committee member and self-described LDS member, was one of four signers to the blackmail letter sent to Equality California donors. The Mormon Church is heart of the Prop 8 campaign, but for a long time the scope of their involvement was not known.
Well, now that it is out in the open and attention is being paid to it, the Mormon Church is squirming and at least in one case, backing down. They are simply not enjoying this attention.
The Sacramento Bee provides these details:
The Mormon church, whose members have emerged as the leading backers of a ballot measure to end same-sex marriage in California, is scaling back its Utah campaign operation but will continue to support the initiative.
Church members will no longer be making phone calls from Utah to California voters, Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in a prepared statement Friday.
The Courage Campaign says that the pressure is working. And there will be more!
The lesson we should take from all of this is to keep it up. Keep up the focus on the Mormons. Keep exposing their lies and blackmail. Keep pointing out the hypocrisy of a religion funding lies and distortions.
We can respect their freedom to choose not to conduct same-sex marriages, we only ask that they respect Californians to make up our own minds on whether we should take away the rights of loving couples to marry.
And if you haven’t already, go sign the letter to the President-Prophet. We are going to deliver it on Tuesday and invite the press. The more names we have with us the better.
Help stop Prop 8. Let’s keep the pressure on. Let’s show the religious extremists that America won’t stand for them interfering in the civic affairs of the state of California.
49 Comments
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About The Seminal
Advanced search
Please Digg this post right here if you like it!
Thanks
Awesome.
We have them on the run — let’s keep the pressure up!
YAY Teddy, you are relentless.
So glad for this BIG success, I can’t wait until we all understand our needs and desires are universal, no matter what our sexual identification is.
Great work by the Courage Campaign! Way to go.
Marginalizing Prop 8 is really important right now — Californians need to understand they are being lied to in messages funded by out-of-state extremists. What rights will they decide to take away from Californians next year if they are successful getting Prop 8 passed this year?
Help stop Prop 8.
Hey Teddy,
Great job, I was just coming over to see if you had the link to sign the letter posted, which you do. I thought that you would.
Amen, Brother Teddy.
BTW, Mormons are not acknowledged as Christians by some other Christian Organizations.
They are some other kind of folks who think they have the authority to tell other people what to do.
Unfortunately, they do have some dough.
Mormons were lying? Bah hahahahahaha! Good thing McCain didn’t pick Romney and instead settled for the lying Alaskan Princess.
I was at a soccer tournament today in what is probably one of the few republican strongholds in the Bay Area: San Ramon (the Land of Chevron). There were people at an intersection waving “Yes on 8″ placards. They became aware of my disapproval.
PS…not going all religious here. Lots of creepy people out there, afraid of other people.
It’s just a damn shame when they have deep pockets.
just what we need… carpet bagging extremists buying a California vote. there ought to be a state law banning this type of thing… like making out of state political “not for profits” pay CA taxes if they behave like a lobbyist instate.
My cousin and his partner are getting married on Monday after 30 years together and I hope that it will stand for many years.
Great news, Teddy.
And much appreciation to you, for your courage, steadfast sensibilities, devastating humor, and capacity to enlighten.
It is the fundamental Civil Rights of all peoples, everywhere, whom your efforts serve, Teddy, and we, all of us, owe you a continuing debt of gratitude.
Thank you, for all that you do.
good news!
This is so true. There are signs all over the place here. I can’t even count how many people have asked me about the school thing. We had several thousand people keep their kids home from school for 2 days because the California Teachers Association donated to the No on 8 campaign. It’s no time for marginalizing.
Anybody else see this leaked 527 spot?
http://digg.com/2008_us_electi…..ar_Itself/
That’s also fairly creepy.
Where do you live?
TOTALLY dugg!
When government can tell us who we can love, who we can marry, who we can be with or have sex with, The Great American Experiment IS JUST OVER…….
and that’s a CALL TO ACTION.
this is RIDICULOUS.
it’s not like there aren’t other things to address these days. and if i were one to ‘JUDGE’ other’s belief systems, Mormons would be on the TOP of the list!
but I am not,
and they need to do what they wish, stay in their own back yards, and leave the rest of us the HELL alone!
PRO MARRIAGE BETWEEN 2 OR MORE PEOPLE WHOEVER THEY ARE, WHATEVER BODY PARTS THEY POSSESS…,.
can I be clearer here?
good God!
as a fan of Flamethrower:
“the killin goes on and on and on,…….
we have BIGGER FISH TO FRY????!!!~!!!!
S
It’s a shame that despite having faced persecution for their beliefs and lifestyles during their early history, many Mormons appear determined to do the same thing to others.
In the San Joaquin Valley.
Leaked?
Rather pathetic, but no doubt it would ‘appeal’ to the ‘less better’ angels of some ‘real’ Americans …
Where did you see this?
The list of its ’sponsors’ should be the most important aspect for those whose angels are better ‘aligned’. They bear watching. Perhaps by a more sane American Government?
I agree. It is a shame.
Lots of folks lash out. Sometimes even people we know who see to have the best intentions.
Lots of shame.
It’s a Boy!
Outstanding news.
Twain @ 13. Excellent.
dr kirk has eat shit and die up at the mothership
Teddy this report is for you.
A few days ago, I was exiting an off ramp here in socal and saw one of those Yes on * signs but someone had taken a lil artistic license with it. They took a black sharpie and had coloured in a large ‘H’ in front of the number 8, so that the sign read:
Yes on H8 (yes on hate)
it was beautiful. I brought my camera along today to take a pic of it but someone had removed the sign. So doing my DFH duty, I brought along my own sharpie and um ‘corrected’ a few of the signs that were on public property.
At least some of those sign-wavers are LDS. There’s one on the train I come home on, and she was telling someone about it on her cellphone. (One of those people who gets louder when she talks on it; I guess she thinks that smaller phones mean less sound volume.)
I haven’t figured out whether the letter comes up with my name on it for everyone, or just for me. So — be sure to put your own name in when you sign the letter!
It should be a wonderful press conference in front of the LA Mormon Temple on Tuesday.
And if anyone in the Bay Area wants to protest tomorrow, the atheists are demonstrating in front of the Oakland LDS Temple starting at 9am.
What a good girl you are.
There have been altercations at intersections all over the state. People’s feelings are really at a boil over this; I guess that’s what happens when the mega-preacher rails on about sin from the pulpit.
Why, thank you, that’s very kind of you to say.
People don’t understand a lot about the Mormons, and their reaction to their persecution — the victimhood created by it — is one small part of that misunderstanding.
For instance, did you know that polygamy wasn’t abandoned? It was actually only suspended, and will return to earth with Jesus, in the LDS belief system, as will Mormons’ dominion over earth. So, they really haven’t given up their plural wives, they’ve just decided to obey the interim laws of the country they are occupying.
But that will all revert to the Lord’s way when Jesus returns.
great report!
Just be cautious, though — tempers are high, people are angry, I don’t want you hurt.
But a wonderful story.
Teddy,bravo for what you’re doing on this. Maybe this can be the watershed election year when all these hate-based agendas can be stomped into the dustbin of history.
We have a ton of yes on eight signs in our neighborhood. We also have pairs of young men riding bikes and talking to the neighbors about Jeebus. (They stopped me once and I told them I was a buddhist and told them about Jeebus’ connection to that philosophy. They cycled away madly.) I suspect they are responsible for the signs.
I will be cautious and you are so right, tempers are running way high. But what is to be expected when the other side is lying their asses off about what 8 truly represents…hate
off to a halloween party
have fun pups
Too many people focused on some imaginary endgame making life miserable for real people living in the present.
Damn well said.
Teddy – I didn’t have a camera with me today, but a major intersection on the Peninsula had obviously paid “Yes on 8″ protesters on 3 corners. They were hooting and partying boisterously, strutting sighs like “Obama-Biden ‘08/Freedom of Speech-Yes on 8″. Big time lies. They could have been arrested for all the noise they were making.
I have a more, um, creative approach to the dark-pantsed and skinny-tied pairs of young men who board SF buses seeking recruits. I explain to them that I am also a member of an organization that recruits — the homosexual agenda. Since they almost always split up when they board the bus, it’s fun to monopolize one and tell him all about the things we do to new recruits.
These raucous street screamers seem to me to be liable to do more harm than good. I suppose since the Prop 8 campaign has almost thirty million dollars, they have to spend it somewhere, but I wouldn’t be convinced by a bunch of young people hollering at me in my car.
Separation of church and state
And the Mormon church still has tax-exempt status, because….?
I hope the Mormons learns something about Religious/Sexual/Racial tolerance Someday it is all related we either all have rights or none of us do.
I’m straight BUT not narrow. IMO, Prop. 8 is so un-American it offends me. And that is all that should matter to Californians.
Mormons? Arent those the guys that made up their own book of the Bible? LOL, thats too funny.
Jiff
What is the matter with you Americans. You portray yourselves to be so ahead and leading the way for the rest of the world to follow and yet again you chose the wrong path. When you chose to suppress a group of people – do you really wonder why the world no longer looks at you as leaders. This HATE of homosexuals and their right to marry is just another futile misguided exercise in a great self-delusion of “being on God’s side”.
Come to Europe where for more than 15 years the Nederlands (Holland), Belgium, Spain and even your closest neighbour to the north, Canada, has allowed homosexuals to marry. Ask any heterosexual in any one of those countries if they feel that their marriage or rights are threatened. Ask them if their children are being exposed to homosexual sex or churches are forced to marry them. You silly, silly small-minded Americans. Honestly, the only thing the world should fear more than Homo-Love is your “American-Style of Hate”.
When this moment in time is written about – future generations of Americans will look back on these days as another great embarrassment. No less than a futile exercise of supression of the Jews by Nazis, Indian Independence by Great Britain or the Civil Rights of the American Negro.
This is a futile war where the odds are against you. In the end you will not win. Perhaps you may win this small battle in California but in the end it will be lost. Why? The answer is simple. Love cannot be defeated – it may be suppressed for a time by hate but in the end … Love Never Loses.
The LDS are worried about losing their tax-exempt status over this.
What’s really odd about this is that it’s the Mormons complaining about non-standard marriages. Mormons! The ones who only (fairly) recently and incompletely gave up polygamy. Have they forgotten that already? Or are they going to be pushing for polygamy in California next?