MORMONS, BY ILLEGALLY AND BY COHERSION YOU RAISED MONEY TO DENY GAYS THE RIGHT TO MARRY…
Let us begin by saying that all religions are nothing more than a business not different than movie theaters and circuses. They are in it for the money and the power. Religions get people in to their houses of worship on Sundays and put on a show, pass the plate and their followers are promised “SALVATION”; a very cruel joke if you ask me; or they collect or skim right off the top in what is called “tithing” or ten percent of what the church member earns.
The country we live in…as far as I know…is the United States of America where there are some very deeply rooted concepts of freedom and guarantees in the areas of freedom of religion and speech. Our SECULAR government has been very accommodating to all religions by allowing them not to pay taxes on their properties and investments as long as they remain a religious organization, not for profit (?) and not getting involved in funneling funds to influence elections or the support of a particular political candidate.
The Mormon Church has stepped beyond these boundaries and has in my opinion forfeited their privilege afforded by the US government not to pay taxes. They have done so in the most egregious and questionable ways. By raising funds through coercion of its members and channeling any way they could to hide its origins then employing it to smear gays and their right to legal marriage in California.
I still don’t understand what their beef with same sex marriage is…how does it affect them or deny them their right to practice their cult-religion, other than it does deny them the right to legally discriminate against people of GLBT characteristics. I don’t understand what it is that they gained by influencing that law in California nor do I really think that they thought about it rationally. You see, most of us, the rest of the American citizenry were just willing to allow them to practice their cult, as misguided and as askew as it was under our magnanimous concept of freedom of religion.
In America, again, a very SECULAR nation, you can worship anything you want…including GREEN UNICORNS FROM TASMANIA, WHILE HANGING UPSIDE DOWN FROM A CHANDELIER” while you are doing so. But the moment you become an active political action force and employ the questionable tactics and dirty tricks, the spreading of lies and exaggerations, then you have usurped and forfeited your privilege of tax exempt status.
America was more than willing to accept your idiosyncrasies, your deviate train of thought and your erroneous interpretations of the Scriptures. We were willing to ignore that your founder was a charlatan and a con artist, a drunk and an anti-social nut. Joseph Smith had he lived in our times would not have been any different than David Koresh of Waco infamy or Jim Jones of the Guiana massacre. We had to tolerate your inconvenient visits when you knocked our doors in our private homes and interrupted our day. We put up with all that shit and you enjoyed your freedom. But when you started to get together and systematically deny people their rights and try to encode and legalize your unjust and immoral discrimination, you lost it assholes…you have now to fight to keep your tax exempt status if you ask me.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints assembled this political machine using the research compiled by Former GOP political consultant Fred Karger, now a “specialist” in investigating political dirty tricks and founder of Californians Against Hate. As he describes meeting with a contact in Salt Lake City’s Hotel Monaco Bar, the film ('8: The Mormon Proposition': While Nobody’s Watching) shows the boxes full of documents he collected, proof that the Mormon Church deployed the same tactics used by the “Hawaii Christian Coalition” its successful 1996 campaign against same-sex marriage in that state. In both instances, the Mormon Church kept its own profile low, understanding that it would attract unwanted attention. Instead, it drew on labor and financing from Catholic and fundamentalist organizations, the result being, as one memo from 1996 attests, “The miracle of this has been that the focus on the Coalition and not at any time has our Church or the Catholics been singled out.”
In California, Karger says, the primary coalition was called the National Organization for Marriage. Founded in 2007 (that is, anticipating the California Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling), NOM named conservative writer Maggie Gallagher its president, Brian S. Brown (of the Family Institute of Connecticut) its executive director, and “high-ranking Mormon” Robert P. George its Chairman of the Board. As narrator Dustin Lance Black (an ex-Mormon) points out, the coalition quickly hired a professional signature-gathering firm to pull together the necessary petitions to get Prop 8 on the ballot in November 2008, and then set themselves to the business of getting out their vote.
This campaign was especially well organized (unlike the counter-campaign, which rather expected that Californians would support it as a matter of course) and well funded, in large part by Mormon Church members (in Utah) who responded to requests for “donations.” As an intertitle announces, “And then God spoke,” the scene cuts to a satellite dish: NOM got the word out via a savvy media campaign, TV and internet ads that proclaimed the good work of the “mighty army” against the enemy—funded, the film underlines with fanciful shots of cash flying through the air, by Mormons.
CINDY MCCAIN
a new high-profile Republican supporter: John McCain's wife, Cindy McCain. NOH8 is a photo project in which subjects are photographed wearing white, against a white background, with their mouths taped shut and "NOH8" painted on their faces.
McCain's daughter Meghan McCain -- a vocal proponent of marriage equality -- posed for NOH8 last summer.
SOURCE: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/127925-eight-the-mormon-proposition/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/20/cindy-mccain-noh8-photo-m_n_430004.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gayweddings-pg,0,5597152.photogallery