Free Republic

BOSTON - Gay rights supporters waving rainbow colors marched, chanted and danced in cities coast to coast Saturday to protest the vote that banned gay marriage in California and to urge supporters not to quit the fight for the right to wed. Crowds gathered near public buildings in cities large and small, including Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Fargo, to vent their frustrations, celebrate gay relationships and renew calls for change. "Civil marriages are a civil right, and we're going to keep fighting until we get the rights we deserve as American citizens," said Karen Amico, one of several hundred...

SACRAMENTO — Less than two weeks before Election Day, the chief strategist behind a ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California called an emergency meeting here. “We’re going to lose this campaign if we don’t get more money,” the strategist, Frank Schubert, recalled telling leaders of Protect Marriage, the main group behind the ban. The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a sharp-elbowed...

A prominent theatrical director in California, a Mormon, has resigned under pressure because of his support for Prop 8. Excerpt: Marc Shaiman, the Tony Award-winning composer ("Hairspray"), called Mr. Eckern last week and said that he would not let his work be performed in the theater. "I was uncomfortable with money made off my work being used to put discrimination in the Constitution," Mr. Shaiman said. He added, however, that the entire episode left him "deeply troubled" because of the potential for backlash against gays who protested Mr. Eckern's donation. "It will not help our cause because we will be...

Although a week has passed since California voters overturned that state's Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the state has felt numerous aftershocks as gay rights activists have mounted large-scale protests directed at supporters of Prop 8, specifically the Mormon church. ... Demonstrations outside Mormon temples were reported over the weekend throughout California and more are anticipated nationwide. The Mormon church, however, is not the only Prop 8 supporter coming under criticism for its role in the controversial election, as Catholics and Evangelical churches have seen protests, as well. An estimated 10,000 gay-rights protesters gathered in San Diego, Calif. outside...

I cried with joy when I heard that Barack Obama won the election, but that joy didn't last long. If not for the Mormon church and its campaign of hatred, California's Proposition 8 -- which would take away the right of men to marry men, and women to marry women -- wouldn't even be on the ballot. And without the millions of dollars it guilted and coerced its members to donate, the proposition most likely would not have passed on Nov. 4. I blame it all on the Mormons. Look at the database that the San Francisco Chronicle published. Look...

REDLANDS - A No on Proposition 8 rally here turned ugly Tuesday night, according to those holding the peaceful protest in front of a church. Soon after the rally in front of the Redlands Mormon Temple on Fifth Avenue began, a man from a group supporting Proposition 8 on the other side of the street began taunting the protesters. One thing led to another and he ended up pulling his T-shirt and revealing he had a gun, said Shelly Ayers, a San Bernardino woman who participated in Tuesday night's rally. "All we were doing was quietly holding up signs and...

Leaders of the campaign against Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, raised nearly $40 million and ran a careful, disciplined campaign with messages tested by focus groups and with only a few people authorized to speak to the media. They lost. In the week since, California has seen an outpouring of demonstrations ranging from quiet vigils to noisy street protests against Proposition 8, including rallies outside churches and the Mormon temple in Westwood as well as boycotts of some businesses that contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign. Many of those activities have been organized not by political...

SAN FRANCISCO - California's gay-rights movement has been beset by infighting and finger-pointing since the defeat of gay marriage at the ballot box, with some activists questioning the campaign's mild tactics, including the decision not to show same-sex couples in ads. The movement's leaders "were very timid. They were too soft," said Robin Tyler, a lesbian comic who created a series of celebrity public service announcements with the slogan "Stop the Hate, No on 8" that were rejected because they were deemed too negative. "We were lightweights on our side." Proposition 8, a measure to stop gay marriage in California,...

The strange bedfellow alliance of Catholics, Mormons and evangelical Protestants that slapped a ban on gay marriage in California last week represents the most “ecumenical union since the fall of Rome.” That’s the view of Richard Hecht, an acclaimed scholar in UCSB’s much-acclaimed religious studies department, whose clear-eyed take on the stunning passage of Proposition 8 cuts through the Babel of political scapegoating and speculation swirling around the election’s biggest surprise. “The issue of traditional marriage brought together this wild, very unlikely coalition,” Hecht told me. “You have the Catholics, who can’t stand the evangelical Protestants, who can’t stand the...

The Democrats won the White House and gained seats in both houses of Congress in the past election. So do you think the DUmmies would be happy? As it turns out they are angrier than ever. Why? Well, among other thngs, because Propositon 8 in California didn't pass. WAAAAAAAH!!!! They didn't get a hundred percent of what they wanted and now they are crying like a bunch of babies. And who is the scapegoat for their defeat on Prop. 8? It turns out it is the Mormons as you can see in this DUmmie THREAD titled, "I had 2...

The foes of Proposition 8 in California which would restore the definition of marriage in that state as being between one man and one woman have produced an incredibly bizarre and bigoted commercial. The video depicts a pair of Mormon Missionaries invading the home of a lesbian couple and ransacking it until they find their wedding license and then tearing it up. This video displays obvious hatred towards Mormons who mostly support Prop. 8 but to Los Angeles Times blogger Karin Klein such bigotry is no big deal (emphasis mine):

What was Abraham Lincoln’s position on the Mormons? In their funky, pre-Mitt Romney days they were an issue of national importance—Lincoln’s Democratic predecessors thought of sending the army to Utah to suppress them—so it’s not surprising that Lincoln had an opinion too. In 1863, when a Mormon visited the Oval Office, Lincoln told him that when he had cleared land for farming as a young man there were often dead trees too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so people plowed around them. That’s what he intended to do with the Mormons. That may...

MESA, Ariz. - Come what may, Donna and Aaron Bradshaw expect their spacious food pantry and emergency plan will carry them through. Shelves and shelves of home-canned vegetables and meats, dried grains, an electric generator and stored water promises reasonable sustainability for the Mormon family in Gilbert in a world where food riots, starvation and disaster-related food shortages are becoming a kind of norm. But the sharp spike in prices of staples such as bread, eggs, flour and milk at supermarkets has folks looking for options in food purchases and storage. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has...

OAKLAND -- About 50 protesters came to the Mormon Temple in Oakland this morning to speak out against the religious group's support for an anti-gay marriage ballot measure. Holding signs that read "No to Mormon Bigots" and "tax church property and investments," the protesters said they'd come to make a statement. "I can't believe that a religious group that preaches truth and love is asking their members to campaign and donate to take away my civil rights," said Jill Shearer, 40, of Oakland. Shearer grew up in San Ramon and was raised Mormon. When she came out as a lesbian,...

A group of dissident Mormons on Friday presented to LDS Church officials about 300 letters and a petition opposing the church's efforts on behalf of a California amendment to thwart gay marriage. About 50 people carried 15 stacks of personal letters wrapped in pink ribbons to the north entrance of the LDS Church headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City while singing the Mormon hymn "As I Have Loved You, Love One Another." Organizers asked that each stack be given to a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' three-man First Presidency and 12 apostles. The protesters also...

The economy is collapsing and the GOP is stuck with a candidate who doesn't know jack about economics. But what if Mitt Romney had won that hard-fought Florida primary and grabbed the nomination? Romney's whole business career was about turning around distressed companies. Plus, he's far less identified with George W. Bush than is McCain. And unlike McCain he might not have had to give up on Michigan, where his father was governor. (What state pray tell is McCain holding that Mitt couldn't?) I know there are plenty of strikes against the guy. But it's an interesting counterfactual to consider--one...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mormons are being asked by their church leaders to step up their already considerable efforts to pass a ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California. Senior elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a televised appeal to members Wednesday night and laid out a week-by-week strategy for boosting Mormon involvement before the Nov. 4 election. They urged Mormons to...

OAKDALE, Minn. - Authorities suspect arson in an early morning fire at the Mormon temple in the St. Paul suburb of Oakdale. Smoke and fire were reported in the front entry of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints temple shortly before 3 a.m...

With several polls showing Democratic Sen. Barack Obama trailing Republican Sen. John McCain in Colorado on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, some of the state's Democrats worried Sunday that McCain might pick former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as a running mate to solidify his support among a key voting bloc - Mormons. "It's going to make a big difference if Mitt Romney is the V.P." for McCain, said Nick Isenberg, a Democratic activist from Glenwood Springs. "We have a lot of Mormons in Colorado." Romney is a member of the Mormon church, officially known as the Church of...

A coalition that represents fundamentalist Mormons has issued a statement objecting to the LDS Church's attempts to deny their claim to a shared Mormon heritage. The Principle Voices Coalition, based in Salt Lake City, said that members "strenuously object to any efforts to deprive us and others of the freedom to name and describe ourselves by terms of our own choosing." Two weeks ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched a media campaign aimed at distinguishing itself from the breakaway sects. The church said its effort was primarily aimed at clarifying the difference between the LDS Church...

The irony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) wading into California’s same-sex marriage debate is too delicious to ignore. Earlier this week, the church sent a letter signed by its president, Thomas B. Monson, to all Mormon bishops in California. The document refers to the California Marriage Protection Act on the November 4 ballot, a state constitutional amendment that would prohibit the legal recognition of same-sex unions so recently won by a California Supreme Court decision. The letter is to be read aloud during June 29 services. In part, it states, “We ask that...

Lawyers for the Fundamentalist LDS Church are preparing for what could become a series of lawsuits against Texas authorities for the raid on the YFZ Ranch. "There is a desire and a need for compensation, so I think you will see something come," said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney who is acting as a spokesman for the FLDS people. The lawsuits would likely focus on the removal of the children, the raid itself and damage to the FLDS Church's first-ever temple on the Eldorado property.

Well, that was fast. I would have thought that the law would wend its leisurely way for at least weeks if not months; that the children might see their parents again for their college graduations or weddings. But like a bolt of lighting the Texas Supremes ruled that the children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch have to be returned to their parents … now. SAN ANTONIO - In a crushing blow to the state's massive seizure of children from a polygamist sect's ranch, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that child welfare officials overstepped their authority and the children...

A support group for gay Mormons urged church leaders Wednesday to stay on the sidelines after the California Supreme Court said same-sex marriage there is legal. The church, which teaches that gay sex is a sin, has expressed disappointment in the recent ruling. Some critics and conservative groups want to overturn it through a constitutional amendment. In a statement Wednesday, the executive director of Affirmation said he hopes church leaders would not "use their energies and their funds" to overturn a ruling that affirms the worth of families or meddle in politics that demonizes gays. "Rather work with us to...

Can Mormon women wear pants when visiting a temple? Can men wear cummerbunds during a marriage ceremony? Are vasectomies an appropriate birth control option? The answers to these (no, no, and not really) and similar questions about Mormon practice and leadership might not seem to be especially secret, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn't pleased about secret church documents hitting the Internet. In this case, the cause of the displeasure is the confidential Church Handbook of Instructions, published by Wikileaks on April 16. The church is currently trying to get the information pulled down using copyright...

Newly-announced Obama endorser and superdelegate, Rep. Pete Stark, talking about the California gay marriage decision on XM's POTUS08 earlier today: Rebecca Roberts, XM: Congressman Pete Stark of California, a new super-delegate for Barack Obama. I wanted to get your reaction, by the way, since you're a Californian, on the Supreme Court decision to overturn the ban on gay marriage. Stark: I think that was, you know... California usually leads on these issues of human rights and civil rights. I was quite proud of our state supreme court. We're going to have a big fight, because you know, the born-again Christians...

Saintly Scissors The Cutting Away of Unwanted Revelation Just as God spoke to Moses on the mountain, the LDS Church claims that God personally appeared to Joseph Smith and directed him to establish "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth" (Doctrine and Covenants 1:30). LDS revelations are usually written with Biblical sounding words like "thus saith the Lord." However, Brigham Young's 1847 revelation is the last section added to the D&C with that wording.There have been three additions to the Doctrine and Covenants dated after 1847 but they do not include the words...

Saturday, May 10, 2008 The Hypocrisy of Catholic Answers I had to break my hiatus to share two interesting campaigns by Catholic Answers. It appears from the two campaigns that the Catholic Church has a problem: the majority of Catholics are ignorant of their faith and susceptible to a variety of prey including Mormons, liberal Catholics, homosexuals and the dreaded “anti-Catholics�. In fact, according to Catholic Answers, the Mormons have been quite successful in gaining Catholic converts: “Many people have been doing just that—especially Catholics. In fact, in recent years the majority of converts to Mormonism have been Catholics....

"Headstrong in their two faiths, a Mormon and a Baptist squared off recently at the Tempe Institute of Religion at Arizona State University and spent 2 1/2 hours demonstrating they could aggressively question each other's religions but come away with deep respect and love for each other. Actually, some 55 times since 2001, the Rev. Gregory Johnson, founding pastor of Ogden Valley Baptist Church in Utah, and Robert Millet, dean emeritus of religious education at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, have held "A Conversation Between a Mormon and an Evangelical" in the U.S., Canada and England. Between genial ribbing...

PLURAL MARRIAGE FOR THE RIGHTEOUS ONLY- OBEDIENCE IMPERATIVE-BLESSINGS RESULTING   DISCOURSE BY ELDER JOSEPH F. SMITH, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday Morning, July 7, 1878. (Reported by Geo. F. Gibbs.) 20:24 I naturally shrink from the task of addressing a congregation in this house, feeling as I do my inability to make myself heard. I have been interested this morning in listening to the remarks of Brother Cannon. We cannot but be delighted with the testimony that has been given in our hearing, and that we are continually receiving from many sources, which go to prove that...

Back then, Harry Reid had no faith. He had just been in a fist fight with his future father-in-law and was eloping with his wife-to-be when a Mormon friend offered to help. The bishop of a congregation in Henderson, Nev., offered Reid space in a local ward house and said he'd perform the ceremony while another friend stood guard. It would be one of the memorable encounters Reid had with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a journey that now leaves him the highest-ranking elected Mormon in U.S. history. [Snip] Reid, a soft-spoken man who now wields...

May I ask a question? What the heck is going on in Texas with the kids caught up in the polygamy ranch disaster? Look, I am not a fan of polygamy. For one thing, it's all any man can do keeping up with one wife. For another, it's against the law in this country. But the polygamists that have been in the news have been operating for decades. The authorities knew about it, and them. They didn't do a thing about it for all those years! Then, on a totally unsubstantiated telephone call about sex abuse - which apparently did...

Care of sect could top $5 million Web Posted: 04/25/2008 11:37 PM CDTNancy Martinez and Janet ElliottHearst Bus convoys carrying 265 children bound for foster homes around the state pulled out of San Angelo at midday Friday, ending a three-week emergency shelter operation launched in the wake of a raid on a West Texas polygamist sect. The cost of the massive effort, which cared for 462 children and, at one point, more than 100 mothers, could top $5 million, a source familiar with the operation there said. The governor's office said Friday it did not have final cost figures. The...

Except for the two large white charter buses, three Texas Department of Public Safety patrol cars and the ambulance, Friday could have been any other day at the Hendrick Home for Children in Abilene. The weather was warm and breezy, birds happily flittered about and a Fed-Ex driver delivered packages, oblivious to the more than 10 children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch who disembarked from buses they had boarded less than two hours earlier. They were bused in from San Angelo, 90 miles away, where they had been staying before Child Protective Services began placing them in foster homes...

EL DORADO, Texas -- A 32-year-old Nevada man arrived at the courthouse here today to provide a DNA sample to Texas authorities determining paternity of children seized from the FLDS polygamous sect earlier this month. David J. Williams said he is a former member of the Fundamentalist Ladder Day Saints and has three sons currently held in state custody in San Angelo. The boys -- Parley, 9; Jacob, 7; and Teral, 5 -- were among the 416 children rounded up when Texas law officers raided the sect's YFZ Ranch. Williams, who left the FLDS three and a half years ago...

There are believed to be far more girls than boys among the children in custody. And the Texas boys are thought to have escaped the hardships common in other Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints communities, where boys are routinely expelled.

Forced marriages. Underage sex. Teenaged mothers. That is the portrait emerging for the hundreds of girls who have been removed by the state from a polygamist sect’s compound in West Texas that is now the center of one of the largest child welfare investigations in American history. But what about the boys who are among the 416 children taken from the YFZ (Yearn For Zion) Ranch? The numbers of boys among the 416 children is believed to be far exceeded by the number of girls in custody. And the Texas boys are thought to have escaped the hardships felt by...

Watching the videos, including the tours of the ranch, listening to the interviews and news reports it became clear that the women and children are living in a prison inside the gates of the FLDS YFZ Ranch Compound in Eldorado, Texas. It's run like a state prison anywhere in the US. Anyone else notice that? Nobody can leave, they are locked in, they have practically no contact with the outside world, they have work duties, they wear uniforms. The children have a restricted outside play area. There is a code like in a gang of deception. Initially the men told...

At 16 years old Irene Spencer became the second wife of her brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron in 1953. From a fourth generation polygamous family, it had been drilled into the young girl that plural marriage was required to enter Heaven.

SAN ANGELO, Texas (CNN) -- Hundreds of children who were taken from a polygamist ranch by Texas child welfare authorities will remain in state custody, a judge ruled Friday night. art.flds.ap.jpg Women arrive Friday at the courthouse wearing their traditional high-collared, pioneer-style dresses. Judge Barbara Walther also ordered court DNA testing for all 416 children who lived at the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch in Eldorado to determine their biological parents.

SALT LAKE CITY -- The neighbors knew Anne Wilde as a divorcee with three children, but she had a secret: She was married to a polygamist, a man who divided his time among his various wives, visiting her once a week at her house in the suburbs. "We'd play games - he'd park his car at a grocery-store lot and I'd pick him up" so that other people wouldn't see his vehicle parked in front of her home overnight, said Wilde, now a 72-year-old grandmother whose husband died five years ago. The neighbors had their suspicions, but they never questioned...

'Many False Prophets Will Arise and Deceive Many' When Jesus Christ foretold the major trends that would precede His return to earth, the first sign He mentioned was religious imposters who would come in His name. Do you take that warning seriously? by Tom Robinson When Jesus Christ's disciples asked Him what would herald His coming to rule all nations, He answered by first relaying a series of developments that would lead up to the grand climax of the present age: religious deception, wars, famines, pestilences and earthquakes (Matthew 24:3-8; Mark 13:3-8; Luke 21:7-11). Jesus said that these were just...

ELDORADO — Mothers separated from their children as part of a wide-ranging abuse investigation within a polygamist retreat accuse state officials of misleading them before taking their offspring into custody. Authorities raided the sect's ranch more than a week ago in response to allegations that underage girls were forced to marry older men. Women and children from the secretive community were taken to a West Texas fort-turned-museum and a rodeo pavilion, but on Monday officials began separating women and some of their offspring without warning, members of the sect said. While some women and children were taken from the shelters...

Don’t mess with Texas.The slogan used to be reserved for bumper stickers. But on April 3, Texas authorities showed the world a whole new meaning of the phrase—spreading out on a sprawling FLDS compound in Eldorado, ultimately taking more than 400 children of polygamists into custody. They did so, apparently, based on a March 31 phone call from a 16-year-old girl, who claimed to have been forced into marrying a 50-year-old man and to have had his child. Bam. Done. Round up the kids and many of their mothers. Give them safety and shelter. Detain the men on the YFZ...

The FLDS raids in Texas have put an international spotlight on the religion. But the LDS church says that some of the bad press has been spilling onto their church. The confusion is something that LDS church officials want cleared. The LDS church says that false reporting has come out of France, Russia, Mexico and the Caribbean. The church says that media organizations in these countries have been calling FLDS members, “Mormons.” Mike Otterson, Public Affairs rep. for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, says that the distinction between the two religions is important. “We don’t look like...

PHOENIX - Polygamist sect members who were moved to a Texas compound from their longtime homes along the Utah-Arizona line were hand-picked for their fierce loyalty to leader Warren Jeffs, and that allegiance may be a stumbling block for law enforcement, authorities say. Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, transferred people to Eldorado, Texas, to escape growing government scrutiny on the sect's base in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said. "This was Warren Jeffs' all-star cast," said Goddard, who has been investigating the sect since...

ELDORADO, Texas (CNN) -- Texas Rangers on Saturday met with -- but did not arrest -- the man accused by a teenage girl of physically and sexually abusing her at a polygamist compound. Arizona probation officials said the meeting with Dale Evans Barlow, 50, happened just across the Arizona state line in St. George, Utah. "The Texas Rangers met with him. He was allowed to go, and no arrest was made," said Friend Walker, director of the Mojave County, Arizona, probation office. Barlow's attorney, Bruce Griffen, said the meeting was voluntary. He said he and Barlow are working to gather...

Watching the TV this week I wept as pictures were broadcast from an isolated part of Texas. I saw 416 children - from infants to teenagers - and 133 women being taken into protective police custody. They were driven away from a place they called "home" - a 1,700-acre desert compound run by the polygamist sect once controlled by their "prophet", Warren Jeffs. The reason I was crying was simple - those images of women wearing ankle-length dresses and holding the hands of bright-eyed children brought back terrible memories. For I was once one of them. Many of those teenage...

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) - It was no secret that a polygamist sect that built a compound in the West Texas desert believed in marrying off underage girls to older men. And the sheriff had an informant for four years who was feeding him information about life inside the sect. But authorities say their hands were tied until last week, when they finally obtained the legal grounds to move against the group. The trigger for the raid was a hushed phone call from a terrified 16-year-old girl to a family-violence shelter to report that her 50-year-old husband had beaten and...