H8: The Mormon Proposition

I just finished watching The Mormon Proposition, which chronicles the Mormon’s huge financial contributions to and repugnant reactions against gay marriage.

Here’s what I don’t get: how can any group that preaches love be so blatantly hateful?  It’s truly as simple as that for me, and it makes no sense.  The reason they give over and over again is that if gays were allowed to marry, “there’d be no one left.”  No kidding!  A friend of mine from high school, a Hollywood producer who I strongly suspect is behind some of the slick Yes on 8 ads (and it sickens me to realize that), said that to me!

Seriously?  If the proposition didn’t pass, the fear was that gay people would go out and recruit straight people, and straight people would be easily recruited, until there’d be “no one left”?  That implies that I’m heterosexual because of some legal mandate and if that legal mandate were lifted, I’d instantly hightail my way to a gay relationship!

By extension, it implies that THEY would do the same!  Right?

Surely they must see the insanity behind that way of thinking?

I believe that the Mormon Church owes the gay community – especially their OWN gays (and there are plenty of them… though suicide steals far too many) – an apology, and I believe that Prop 8 should be repealed in California.  I know it’s perhaps naive and optimistic to believe that an institution full of hate like the Mormon Church could decide to embrace a community full of love like the gay community who want to marry, but can you imagine the impact it could have?  Can you imagine if they decided to teach love and acceptance instead of hate and bigotry?

I know quite a few Mormons who would welcome such a change, and who have told me as much.  (Yes, I do have Mormon friends…)  They don’t want to be perceived as hateful bigots – and as individuals, they are not hateful – but their church mandates their actions and threatens to ostracize them unless they give of their money and their time to furthering the church’s hateful philosophies.

Order The Mormon Proposition from NetFlix (or anywhere), watch it, and let me know what YOU think!