Year: 2009

Late on Friday, the Mormon Church in Utah dumped a report that showed that it had hidden nearly $200,000 in expenditures on the campaign for Proposition 8, the California amendment that repealed gay people’s right to marry. This spending was not included in an earlier report, and failure to disclose campaign spending is illegal.

If the news dump on the Friday night before the Super Bowl was timed to suppress coverage of the church’s apparently illegal activities, it was successful. The story was reported in newspapers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, but not on cable or broadcast news.

But while the church allegedly illegally meddled in California politics last year, it more recently signaled its support of the Common Ground Initiative, a set of bills that would offer a modicum of protection for gays’ rights in its home state of Utah.

Currently, in Utah and other states, gays can be fired or evicted simply because of their status as sinners based on obscure references in the Christian Bible. This is unfair on its face because no corresponding laws or traditions countenance the eviction and firing of adulterers or unmarried heterosexuals who have sex, which the Bible calls “fornication” — nor are there any laws that prevent cheating spouses and unmarried sexually active couples from marrying — because of their status as sinners.

Now — despite a poll released two weeks ago showing that 63 percent of Utah residents are in favor of protecting the basic rights of gay people — and despite outreach by gays toward leaders of the state’s homophobia agenda — the church is doing nothing while its representatives in the legislature are effectively killing the Common Ground Initiative.

Here is commentary on the actions by Republicans in the Legislature from the Salt Lake City Tribune:

[…]

In a classic Friday night news dump, the Mormon Church released a report late yesterday that reveals at least $190,000 in previously unreported expenditures in the Proposition 8 campaign to repeal gays’ right to marry in California. Failure to disclose campaign expenses is illegal, and these expenditures were not reported in an earlier filing.

The report was released in response to a complaint filed in November by Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate. In the sworn complaint, Karger contended that “the Mormon Church organized phone banks from Utah and Idaho, sent direct mail to voters, transported people to California over several weekends, used the LDS NewsRoom to send out news releases to promote their activities, walked precincts, ran a speakers bureau, distributed thousands of lawn signs and other campaign material, organized a ‘surge to election day,’ had church leaders travel to California, set up very elaborate web sites, produced at least nine commercials and four other video broadcasts and conducted at least two satellite simulcasts over five Western states.”

Karger’s complaint underscored that these activities were targeted, not at church members, but at the general public, which classifies the communications as political propaganda. Churches risk losing their nonprofit status if they engage in partisan politicking.

The document filed late on Friday appeared to bolster Karger’s allegations:

The report … listed a variety of California travel expenses for high-ranking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and included $20,575 for use of facilities and equipment at the church’s Salt Lake City headquarters and a $96,849 charge for “compensated staff time” for church employees who worked on matters pertaining to Prop 8.

“This is exactly what we were talking about when we filed the suit,” said [Karger].

“They said they reported all their travel … now, when there is a [complaint filed] they disclose 25 Southwest tickets just in October,” Karger said, in a Los Angeles Times report. “They were required to report this,” he said.

Church spokesmen have not yet responded to reporters’ questions about the report, which has prompted speculation that the church has something to hide.

[…]