Here come the LDS Church vs. gay rights stories again.Â
Liberal magazine Mother Jones is the first out of the gate with an article about how the Church is actively trying to kill a same-sex marriage bill in Hawaii.Â
Last month a letter was read from the pulpit urging churchgoers to contact their elected officials about the bill.
Cynics have suggested that the Hawaii campaign is evidence that the church was only temporarily backing away from the marriage fight to help Romney. Among those cynics is Fred Karger, a former California GOP political consultant who came out publicly at age 54, and became a same-sex marriage advocate. During the Prop 8 battle, Karger helped publicize the fact that the Mormon church was directing millions of dollars into the campaign for the measure and attempting to hide its involvement.
Karger thinks what’s happening in Hawaii now is standard operating procedure for the church. Hawaii has a large Mormon population, and the church operates a large campus of Brigham Young University there. After Hawaii’s supreme court ruled in 1993 that a ban on same-sex marriage likely violated the state’s constitution, the LDS church got to work and organized a major lobbying campaign that was instrumental in the passage of a state constitutional amendment that allowed Hawaii’s legislature to ban gay marriage, which it did, in 1998.
