The event comes after gay couples here and in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, were arrested, cited for trespassing or harassed by police for publicly kissing. In Utah, the July 9 trespassing incident occurred after a couple were observed by security guards on a downtown park-like plaza owned by the 13 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The court case was dismissed, but the kiss sparked a community backlash and criticism of the church.

“I don’t think that kiss would have turned out to be the kiss heard round the world if it were not for Proposition 8,” said Ash Johnsdottir, organizer of the Salt Lake City Kiss-In.

Atali Staffler, a Brigham Young University graduate student from Geneva, Switzerland, said she joined the 200 or so people who filled a downtown amphitheater for the event because she has watched her gay father and many gay friends struggle to find their place.

The 31-year-old, who was raised Mormon but is not active in the church, said the church shouldn’t be involved in Prop. 8.

“I encourage them to promote the values they believe in and to defend their religious principles in advertisements, but civil rights have nothing to do with religious principles,” she said.

Twenty-two people, many of them strangers to one another, gathered under the scorching sun on Washington’s National Mall to participate in the national smooch. They were gay and straight, couples and singles of all ages, with placards that read “Equal Opportunity Kisser” and “A Kiss is a Not a Crime.”

“This is America. A kiss on the cheek is OK,” said Ian Thomas, 26, of Leesburg, Va., who organized the Washington Kiss-In. “It’s got to be OK. If not, we’re in serious trouble.”

About 50 people, mostly gay and lesbian couples, gathered at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta and kissed for about five minutes.

“You think that America is evolving into a gay-friendly nation,” said Randal Smith, 42, “but what happened in Texas and Utah show us it’s still a long way off.”

National organizers say Saturday’s broadly held gay rights demonstrations were not aimed specifically at the Mormon church. But observers say the church’s heavy-handed intervention into California politics will linger and has left the faith’s image tarnished.

“What I hear from my community and from straight progressive individuals is that they now see the church as a force for evil and as an enemy of fairness and equality,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights. Kendell grew up Mormon in Utah. “To have the church’s very deep and noble history telescoped down into this very nasty little image is as painful for me as for any faithful Mormon.”

Troy Williams, who is gay and grew up Mormon, said ending the tension between gays and the church requires mutual acceptance and understanding.

“For both sides to peaceably coexist, we’re all going to have to engage in some very deep soul searching,” said Williams, a Salt Lake City-area activist and host of a liberal radio talk show.

Church insiders say Prop. 8 has bred dissent among members and left families divided. Some members have quit or stopped attending services, while others have appealed to leadership to stay out of the same-sex marriage fight.

But church spokeswoman Kim Farah said Friday that Mormon support for traditional marriage has nothing to do with public relations.

“It’s too easy for those whose agenda is to change societal standards to claim there are great difficulties inside the Church because of its decision to support traditional marriage,” Kim Farah said. “In reality the Church has received enormous support for its defense of marriage.”

Mormonism teaches that homosexual sex is considered a sin, but gays are welcome in church and can maintain church callings and membership if they remain celibate.

The church has actively fought marriage equality legislation across the U.S. since the early 1990s and joined other faiths in asking Congress for a marriage amendment to the Constitution in 2006.

Last year at the urging of church leaders, Mormons donated tens of millions of dollars to the “Yes on 8″ campaign and were among the most vigorous volunteers. The institutional church gave nearly $190,000 to the campaign – contributions now being investigated by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

After the vote, many gay rights advocates turned their anger toward the church in protests and marches outside temples that singled out Mormons as the key culprits in restricting the rights of gay couples.

That constituted a setback for the faith, argued Jan Shipps, a professor of religious history and a Mormon expert from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Mormonism, Shipps said, has struggled with its image since its western New York founding in 1830 for a host of reasons, including polygamy.

Leading up to Salt Lake City’s 2002 Olympic Winter Games, the faith worked hard to craft a modern, mainstream image, touting its unique American history, culture and worldwide humanitarian work to thousands of reporters.

“This really undercut the Mormon image that had been so carefully nurtured during the Olympics,” Shipps said.

Church representatives don’t discuss public relations strategies or challenges publicly, but at a semiannual conference in April, church President Thomas S. Monson seemed to be clearly feeling a post-Prop. 8 sting.

In an era of “shifting moral footings,” Monson said, “those who attempt to safeguard those footings are often ridiculed, picketed and persecuted.”

That argument doesn’t wash for Linda Stay, whose ancestors were early Mormon converts. Stay said she was doubly transformed by Prop. 8. She and her husband, Steve, finally quit the church – along with 18 other family members and a few close friends – and became gay right activists.

The St. George woman’s family, which includes two gay children, will play a central role in a documentary film, “8: The Mormon Proposition” currently in production. Stay’s son, Tyler Barrick, married his boyfriend in San Francisco on June 17, 2008, the first day gay marriage was legal in California.

Miami-area filmmaker Reed Cowan said the Stays’ story is a painful representative of many Latter-day Saint families, including his own, that needed to be told.

“It used to be that I could defend my church and my heritage, but what they did here, they crossed the line and they made it very hard to defend their actions,” said Cowan, whose family has cut him off since he began work on the film.

With the gay rights fight far from over, some believe Prop. 8 could continue to frustrate the church’s image for years to come, much like polygamy – the church’s own one-time alternative form of marriage – and a policy on keeping black men out of the priesthood, issues that have lingered years after the practices were abandoned.

“The church is certainly going to survive and thrive, there’s no question about that,” said the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Kendell, who is raising three kids in California with her partner of 16 years. “The issue is, what will be its image in the average American mindset.”

To see the church characterized, because of its own actions, as one in a group of anti-gay religions and as a religion that forces members to choose faith over family is “a tragedy of generational proportion,” she said. “And it seems to me, that it was entirely unnecessary.”

The conservative evangelical Focus on the Family, which fights LGBT issues across the country, gave $657,000 in money and services.

The amounts vastly surpass the $189,000 in direct cash and compensated staff time from the Mormon church.

The new figures were turned over to the state weeks into an investigation by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission that institutional donors to ProtectMarriage, the umbrella group behind Proposition 8, had not reported the value of workers salaries and other expenses.

In November, Californians Against Hate filed a complaint with the Commission accusing the Church of Latter Day Saints of failing to report the value of work it did to support Prop 8. An investigation began in late November into the Mormon contributions and those of other groups.

Proposition 8 was approved by 52 percent of voters. Following passage of the proposition the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the vote.  They were joined by additional suits by the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court said it would hear oral arguments in the case on March 5.

The lawsuits charge that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone, by eliminating a fundamental right from just one group – lesbian and gay Californians.

They also say that Proposition 8 improperly attempts to prevent the courts from exercising their essential constitutional role of protecting the equal protection rights of minorities. The suits say that under the California Constitution, such radical changes to the organizing principles of state government cannot be made by simple majority vote through the initiative process, but instead must, at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown is also asking the Court to invalidate Proposition 8 on the ground that certain fundamental rights, including the right to marry, are inalienable and can not be put up for a popular vote.

A story ran in the LA Times yesterday that detailed the efforts of gay rights activists to vilify the Mormon Church.

Since the push by Mormon organizations in partnership with many evangelical groups to bolster the Yes on 8 campaign, the Mormon church has been receiving hate mail, faced protests and even witnessed the burning of the Book of Mormon.  Now they are, “amazed to think there was such bigotry in the country.”

Even a Harvard professor muses that Mormonism is the religion everyone loves to hate.

Well, I’m not a proponent of hate. But I’m pretty sure that Mormons hate, if not a large group of people, then the actions of many of the writers and readers here on 365gay. Why else would they spend countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars to deny LGBT people equal constitutional protection?

Some insiders suggest that the Mormon Church worked so hard on the Proposition 8 campaign in order to solidify relationships with mainstream religious organizations. Which just goes to show that we never really leave high school: the proverbial loser in the back of the class will always throw spitballs at the geek in the corner just so the jocks will think he is cool.

Whatever the reason, the distrust and anger directed at the Mormon Church is justified.

This is not an instance of a group of people freely acting upon their faith. This is a moment where one group of people actively campaigned to relegate another group of people to second class status. That is not faith, it is not the word of God and it is definitely not acceptable behavior.

This country has been through a long line of struggles where fundamental rights were denied a group of citizens. Those who opposed that progress have been painted as villains in the American story. Why are the Mormons so surprised that they are now hated as much as slave owners in the South?

His crime: opposing a call by Mormon leaders to support a proposed constitutional amendment in California to ban same-sex marriage.

A letter from Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was read from the pulpit in church congregations in June, calling on church members in California to support Proposition 8. Church members in other areas of the country were urged to send money to the effort.

The position rankled Callahan, who set up a Web site to voice opposition.

“Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been taught, ‘We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government …’” the Web site says.

It urges other Mormons to sign a petition opposing the church’s stand on gay marriage.

This week, Callahan said he has received a letter from his bishop saying “I have participated in conduct unbecoming of a member of the church” and ordering him to a hearing on Friday.

“I believe in standing up for what I believe in and I guess, unfortunately I am not supposed to stand up for what I believe in if I disagree with them and I do,” Callahan told KHAS-television.

The case is being closely watched by other Mormons who oppose the church view on same-sex marriage.

The LDS church has fought same-sex marriage legislation throughout the country since the 1990s.

In 2000, a letter from the pulpit asked members to give time and money in support of Proposition 22, a ballot measure prohibiting California from legally recognizing gay marriages performed outside the state. It passed but was later struck down by the courts.

In May, the California Supreme court ruled it was unconstitutional to bar same-sex couples from marrying. In 2006, church leaders sent a letter to Congress seeking an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

For gay Mormons, the church position is particularly troubling.

Affirmation, an organization for gay Mormons, has been seeking a meeting with church leaders for several years.

LDS President Thomas S. Monson agreed to the meeting in April and asked Fred Riley, commissioner of Family Services for the LDS, and Harold C. Brown, the agency’s past commissioner to arrange it.

It was to have taken place August 11, but at the last minute Riley postponed it, saying he was preparing to leave his position and that the meeting would best be handled by his successor who has not yet been named.

It is estimated that as much as 40 percent of the money raised to support the California amendment has come from Mormons.

“We need a place where people can have a discussion and get information,” said Laura Compton, a contributor at MormonsforMarriage.com. “And people need to know that it’s not coming from an anti-Mormon place, or a gay Castro district place. It’s coming from a faithful place.”

MormonsforMarriage is one of a handful of Web sites to spring up since June, when top Mormon leaders distributed a letter to be read from California pulpits to call the faith’s 750,000-plus members there to contribute money and time to help pass Proposition 8.

The Nov. 4 ballot initiative would amend California’s constitution to recognize marriage as only between a man and a woman. A state Supreme Court ruling in May legalized marriage for gay men and women.

“When I heard and saw the letter that the church leaders had read in sacrament meetings, I was appalled,” said Carolyn Ball, a lesbian who was excommunicated in 2002 for refusing to choose the church over her partner. “So I said, ‘That’s it.’ I want Mormons to know that there are gay people in their congregations, every Sunday.”

In an interview on ldshomosexuality.com, Ball, who taught at the church-owned Brigham Young University and its Missionary Training Center, recalls two failed marriages to men and a series of humiliating conversations with her local church leaders.

“I really just want people to try and understand and see the pain they are causing gay members of the church who are struggling,” said Ball, 44, who now teaches at William Woods University in Fulton, Mo.

Besides personal stories and comments, most of the pro-gay marriage sites include statements that outline the principles that have fostered their support of gay unions. Contributors stress that they consider themselves to be faithful Mormons.

Lds4gaymarriage.org quotes legal decisions and LDS scripture from the Doctrine & Covenants, which states that religious freedom doesn’t “provide license to infringe or impose upon the rights and liberties of others.”

Mormons are taught that gay sex is a sin, but celibate gays can remain active in the church.

Church leaders see marriage as a moral issue and since the 1990s have been active in efforts to defeat gay marriage legislation nationwide. In 2000, church members supported and helped pass California Proposition 22, which prohibited state recognition of same-sex unions that were legal elsewhere.

Back then there was no place for a Mormon with liberal leanings about marriage to turn.

“If there would have been a site like this, it would have been really helpful,” said Lisa Fahey, a San Francisco graphic designer and MormonsforMarriage contributor.

“Last time, during Prop. 22, all I did was vote no. This time I wanted to stand up and be heard … even though it’s hard,” she said. “There is a lot of anxiety and stress over being conflicted, being an active Mormon and being for gay marriage.”

Compton, a lifetime church member and mother of two from Cupertino, Calif., believes some Mormons fear voicing opinions that contradict church leaders and lead to them being ostracized in their congregations, called wards.

“That’s part of the reason we wanted to do the site,” said the mother of two from Cupertino, Calif. “… If you think you are the only person in your ward that feels that way and the rhetoric is really loud, it’s painful.”

In an e-mail, site managers at lds4gaymarriage declined to be identified for this story, saying no one was willing to give their names “because of the fear of retribution by the church.”

Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the 13 million-member Salt Lake City-based church, said church leaders are satisfied that a majority of members understand the teachings that surround the gay marriage issue and overwhelmingly support Proposition 8.

“The Church, of course, recognizes and accepts that some among its very large membership may view the issue differently,” Farah said in a statement. But members who engage in clear opposition to church doctrine may cause local leaders to consider church disciplinary action, Farah said.

“The issues surrounding same-gender attraction deserve careful attention, not public posturing,” said Scott Trotter, spokesperson for the LDS Church in a statement.

The rebuke followed a news conference on Monday where members of Affirmation – an organization for LGBT members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – expressed exasperation over the Church’s delay of a face to face meeting.

Mormon church officials agreed in April to meet with leaders of Affirmation. The meeting was to have been with Fred Riley, commissioner of Family Services for the LDS, and Harold C. Brown, the agency’s past commissioner.

Affirmation had sought such a meeting for several years. 

LDS President Thomas S. Monson agreed to the meeting in April and asked Riley to arrange it. It was to have taken place August 11.

But in a letter late last month to Affirmation Assistant Executive Director David Melson, Riley called off the discussion, noting he was preparing to leave his position and that the meeting would best be handled by his successor who has not yet been named.

With the face-to-face meeting in limbo Affirmation went to the news media to outline problems facing LDS gays.

“Gay members do not always feel safe in an LDS Church environment,” Melson told reporters citing high suicide rates and among LGBT Mormons.

“There are many that still believe that it would be better to be dead than a homosexual,” he said.

Melson also said there is a high rate of homelessness among gay members of Church are often shunned by their families.

In a terse rebuttal issued by Trotter the Church said that it had not cancelled the meeting with gay members of the denomination.

“It has always been the intent of the Church to engage in an open and honest discussion with Affirmation leaders to listen to their concerns,” the statement from Trotter said.

“When the Church was originally approached by Affirmation, Church officials offered a much earlier meeting date. The meeting was put on hold until August at Affirmation’s request. The Church asked for the same courtesy as it hires a new director of Family Services, a position crucial to this conversation.”

©365Gay.com 2008

At the end of the primary season, there was one Republican candidate left standing: John McCain, now the putative Republican presidential nominee.

And there was one candidate whom everyone was fairly sure the nominee would never invite to join him on the ticket: Mitt Romney.

Of all McCain’s rivals for the Republican nomination, none was more aggressive in attacking him than Romney, though the front runner beat back all of those attacks fairly easily, winning enough delegates to sew up the Republican nomination on March 5 with wins in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont — a full three months before Barack Obama was able to wrap up the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The bad blood between the senior senator from Arizona and the former governor of Massachusetts was so bad that it even prompted the headline “John McCain hates Mitt Romney” on Salon.com on Feb. 5. It is widely believed that McCain despises Romney, and some have thought a McCain/Romney ticket impossible.

With that notorious antagonism in mind, it may seem surprising that Romney has now emerged as the leading candidate for vice-presidential nominee in the speculation veepstakes.

When asked, “Who will be John McCain’s vice presidential running mate?,” participants in the on-line ABC7 Futures Market put Romney in first place at $22.13 (as of August 1), with Tim Pawlenty a close second at $22.12.

At the end of July, Pawlenty trailed Romney at $16.02 to Romney’s $43.57. But while the two are now virtually tied in that little veepstakes speculation, just as at the end of last month, no one comes close to either Romney or Pawlenty; ‘other’ comes in a distant third at $9.36 and Bobby Jindal trails in fourth place at $8.81.

What accounts for the smart money now being put on Romney as the most likely nominee? First, Romney’s performance in the primary season: Romney did manage to win 272 pledged delegates, just behind Mike Huckabee’s 282, even if neither came even close to McCain’s 1,563.

While hardly barn-burning, Romney’s performance in the primary season compares favorably to that of libertarian Republican Ron Paul — who won a total of 29 delegates — not to mention Rudy Giuliani, who managed to win only one delegate. And compared with Fred Thompson — who proved a massive flop — Romney’s performance was positively impressive.

Second, Romney’s money. Romney’s $350 million fortune could prove a formidable asset to the cash-strapped McCain, whom Obama has out-fundraised by a long shot.

Third, while Romney is not entirely trusted by movement conservatives, he has greater credibility with them than McCain. In August 2007, the right-wing Club for Growth issued a presidential white paper on Romney, concluding that, “given his overall record as governor and the strong pro-growth positions he has taken on the campaign trail, we are reasonably optimistic that, as President, Mitt Romney would generally advocate a pro-growth agenda.”

Despite McCain’s record as a reliable right-wing Republican on all but a handful of issues, he is despised by the base of the Republican Party. You need only listen to right-wing radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Laura Ingraham to get a sense of the disdain that they have for the senator from Arizona. While he made no official endorsement, Limbaugh was actively promoting Romney as an alternative to McCain during the primary season.

Fourth, Romney’s age and looks. At 61, Romney is still relatively youthful looking and 11 years younger than McCain and he is — at least int he view of some — movie-star handsome.

If Obama were to choose the 53-year-old Evan Bayh, for example, there would be only an eight-year age difference between the vice-presidential nominees — considerably less than the 25-year-old difference between the presidential nominees.

Fifth, Romney has business experience that McCain lacks. Not only did Romney build up an enormous fortune through business acumen — unlike McCain or even George W. Bush, for that matter, who was an abject failure as a businessman — and can claim to have played a pivotal role in turning around the scandal-plagued 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games.

And last but not least, Romney has the executive experience as a governor that McCain lacks. Romney claims to have steered the state of Massachusetts through a huge fiscal crisis, though the true story is somewhat more complicated.

In any case, with the economy emerging as the leading issue in the 2008 presidential election, Romney’s business and economic management experience constitute to my mind perhaps the biggest asset that he woiuld bring to the ticket if McCain were to choose him as his running mate.

For all of these advantages, there is a huge downside to the choice of Romney as running mate, should McCain choose to invite him onto the ticket.

First, Romney’s Mormon faith. Many Americans are suspicious and distrustful of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — and that includes not only the secular left, but also evangelical Protestants, many of whon regard Mormonism as a non-Christian cult. Whether the suspicion is well-founded or simply another prejudice, there is no doubt that Romney’s Mormonism would become an issue in the election should McCain make him his running mate.

Second, Romney’s experience as governor of Massachusetts is not an unmixed blessing for the Republican ticket, should he be added to it. Romney has been accused by many of having exaggerated his success as governor.

“Romney’s success in steering the state through the fiscal maelstrom was one of his key achievements, but in the retelling he and his aides often overstate the accomplishment and understate the side-effects: big fee increases and pressure on local property taxes,” the Boston Globe concluded in a full-length examination of his career. The same appears true of Romney’s boasting about his universal health care plan.

“The healthcare campaign became the signature accomplishment of Romney’s four years in office, showcasing the governor in all his complexity,” the Globe declared.

“It exhibited his strengths – a willingness to challenge convention by attacking an intractable problem in a creative way; but it also, critics say, revealed his shortcomings – taking too much credit for achievements and subordinating compromise for the sake of his own political prospects, the Boston daily added.

With the perspective of time, the plan that Romney pushed through the Massachusetts state legislature looks less like a solution to the national health care crisis than an expensive experiment that is a cautionary tale for the next president who wishes to reform the national health care system through federal legislation.

Third, and probably most important among the disadvantages to a choice of Romney as vice-presidential nominee, is the former governor’s image problem. Romney has developed an unfortunate reputation for a decided lack of firm commitment to any principle other than the advancement of his own political career.

In this regard, even his exceptionally well-coiffed hair contributes to the narrative of the former governor of Massachusetts as a big fake.

Romney’s abrupt reversal on LGBT rights is a case in point.

“For some voters it might be enough for me to simply match my opponent’s record [on gay rights],” Romney wrote the Log Cabin Republicans while campaigning to outst Ted Kennedy in 1994. “But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern. My opponent cannot do this. I can and will.”

After having tried to run to the left of Ted Kennedy in 1994 and losing that Senate race, Romney won election as governor in 2002 by presenting himself to the people of Massachusetts as a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Romney won the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans by promising to pursue an aggressive gay rights agenda but then betrayed the LGBT community by attempting to block same-sex marriage in the state after he decided to run for president as a conservative Republican.

Romney’s betrayal of the community prompted outrage both in Massachusetts and throughout the country. Many accused him of hypocrisy, one website even claiming that Mitt Romney is gay.

That website, “dedicated to exposing the hypocrisy of the Republican Party’s homosexual identity crisis,” offers no evidence for the contention that Romney is a friend of Dorothy’s, its rather grand claims notwithstanding. Instead, the website simply invites visitors to e-mail the webmaster if they have had sex with Romney.

“Anyone out there who has had sex with Mitt Romney needs to speak up now and put an end to this hypocrisy,” the website insists. “Have you had sex with Mitt Romney? Let us know.”

Next to a photo of Romney — with the letters ‘G-A-Y’ superimposed on his face — are photos of Larry Craig, Mark Foley, and — somewhat incredibly — Fred Thompson.

The abrupt reversal on LGBT rights says more about Mitt Romney’s character than perhaps anything else in his record as governor. But it is not only members of the LGBT community who have serious doubts about Romney’s character; from all accounts, John McCain almost certainly shares those doubts himself.

And if McCain does pick him as his running mate, the character of the Republican vice-presidential nominee may well become a major issue in the 2008 election.