With the battle moving east, some advocates are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality.
"The Mormons are coming! The Mormons are coming!" warned ads placed on newspaper Web sites in three Eastern states last month. The ad was rejected by sites in three other states, including Maine, where the Kennebec Journal informed Californians Against Hate that the copy "borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion."
"I'm not intending it to harm the religion. I think they do wonderful things. Nicest people," said Fred Karger, a former Republican campaign consultant who established Californians Against Hate. "My single goal is to get them out of the same-sex marriage business and back to helping hurricane victims."
If a religion is pumping millions of dollars to defeat a human rights issue why can't people advertise against them? Isn't their actions extremely more offensive then an ad that says: The Mormons are coming?
In an unusual move for the person tasked with being his party's top cheerleader, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is shining a light on the political vulnerabilities of one of the GOP's top figures and a likely frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination — former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Now Romney's team is hitting back.
Steele, guest-hosting on Bill Bennett's radio show Friday, cast doubt on Romney's conservative bona fides and blamed the Republican base for rejecting Romney last year because "it had issues with Mormonism" and was unsure of Romney's commitment to opposing to abortion rights. Those comments aren't sitting too well with Romney's political team.
"Sometimes when you shoot from the hip, you miss the target," said Romney spokesman Eric Ferhnstrom. "This is one of those times."
Colorado-based Focus on the Family pulled an online interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck after concerns were raised about Beck's Mormon faith.
Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations for Focus on the Family Action, said that "differences in the Mormon faith and the historical evangelical faith are not inconsequential."
Beck's interview with CitizenLink.org, Focus on the Family Action's Web site, touched on his Christmas memories and his recent best-selling book, "The Christmas Sweater."
On Dec. 22, Underground Apologetics, a Wisconsin-based group dedicated to helping Christians "defend their faith," criticized Focus on the Family for not mentioning Beck's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its online interview.
"While Glenn's social views are compatible with many Christian views, his beliefs in Mormonism are not.
Check out the book by Jon Krakauer called Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith if you want to learn a bit about Mormon beliefs. I'm reading it now and it's intense. Many people don't know anything about their beliefs or practices and the fundamentalists that it spawns.
Excuse me a moment while I go throw up (no offense to David Edwards and Muriel Kane at Raw Story):
Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed "the reddest place in America" by Salon, but that didn't make it any less shocking when elementary school children started chanting "assassinate Obama on the school bus.
Matthew Whoolery told KIKD News he found out about the chanting from his second and third graders, who had no idea what the word "assassinate" meant.
"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," Whoolery stated. "I think the thing that struck us was just like, 'Where did they get the word and why would they put that word and that person together?'"
Whoolery, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Rexburg, is not an Obama supporter, but he was shocked that any public official would be threatened in that way. "I don't think that the majority of people in Rexburg have extreme ideas like that, but we were just surprised that it would go that far," Whoolery told KIKD.
The Madison County School District has sent out an email saying that students are to be told this sort of behavior is unacceptable.
OK. I grew up in southeastern Idaho -- Idaho Falls, to be exact, about 30 miles south of Rexburg. I've spent a fair amount of time in Madison County; it was where one of my more traumatic experiences as a young adult occurred. So I can talk a little about why this kind of thing might happen there.
This particular corner of the country, as the Raw Story piece notes, is heavily Mormon. Roughly 90 percent of the population there is LDS. And because of that, there is a virulent and entrenched strain of John Bircherite extremism in the body politic. That in turn has helped produce a long-running parade of right-wing extremists (particularly tax protesters and "constitutionalists") who have made Madison County their home.
At the same time, it is by nearly all outward appearances a classic slice of American heartland. My great-aunt and -uncle, both non-Mormons, lived most of their lives there and were not just perfectly comfortable, thoroughly accepted members of the community, but they loved it. There is a decency and integrity to the town and that transcends political considerations.
So having their schoolkids chant "assassinate Obama" must have shocked their sensibilities deeply, which is why school officials and parents made a point of standing up against it.
At the same time, it's not terribly surprising. And not just because there is such a deep streak of ultra-right thinking that runs through this community -- but also because the campaign just finished by Republicans was so rife with rabble-rousing rhetoric that it is, frankly, a wonder this hasn't happened more often, and in more places than just southeastern Idaho.
In fact, it very likely -- indeed, almost certainly -- has. And it's to the credit of Rexburg's conservative Mormons that they drew attention to it. Perhaps they will stop and take a good hard look at the kind of hate they've been spewing before their children.
If only other Republicans in the rest of the heartland would do the same.
(full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign)
Last night, news broke that the the Prop 8 campaign -- after first denying it -- admitted to sending certified letters to companies that donated to "No on 8" and Equality California (one of the major funders of the No campaign) demanding that the companies provide a matching donation to Yes on 8, or they would be "outed."
sent a certified letter this week asking companies to withdraw their support of Equality California, a nonprofit organization that is helping lead the campaign against Proposition 8.
"Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error," reads the letter. "Were you to elect not to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. ... The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published."
Ballsy no? And verging on illegal. Unfortunately, it is just the latest in a series of lies, smears and distortions from the Prop 8 campaign and in particular the Mormon Church.
The story broke just hours after the Courage Campaign launched a petition to Church of Latter-day Saints President-Prophet Thomas Monson to cease funding the misguided "Yes on 8" campaign.
The Mormon Church has spent the last three months intimidating their members into giving money to "Yes on Prop 8" -- which would take marriage rights away from same-sex couples -- telling Mormon families that their "souls will be in jeopardy" if they do not contribute portions of their income.
Members of the Mormon Church have contributed a whopping $8 million to the "Yes on 8" campaign -- about 40% of the total amount raised as of October 13 -- to pass a ballot measure that removes basic civil rights from our state constitution.
And what has this money bought? A pernicious pack of lies, broadcast dozens of times a day into California homes. A church whose ninth commandment reads "thou shalt not bear false witness" is helping fund false ads that claim California parents do not have the right to remove their children from sex education classes -- a right they have and that courts have repeatedly confirmed.
Yesterday, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell expressed his strong opposition to Prop 8 in a hard-hitting TV ad, emphatically reminding voters that "our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage." In fact, every education authority in the state has rejected the lies and distortions of the Prop 8 campaign, including the California Teachers Association and the California School Boards Association.
It's time for Californians to fight back against these dishonest attacks by the religious right. On Tuesday, we will deliver a letter to President-Prophet Thomas Monson at the Los Angeles Mormon Temple, demanding that his church stop funding the blatant lies of the "Yes on 8" campaign.
