The months after Prop 8 was passed, we saw a peek beneath the mask of the rage and bigotry behind the people who were against it. Behavior that at times even brought about the condemnation from many neutered marriage advocates. With the recent release of a movie spent on preserving or re-kindling that emnity, John Turner of the Wall Street Journal seeks to dispel some of the more egregious misrepresentations, and relates them to previous anti-religious fervor from the days of the American Frontier and beyond.
As a small, non-violent minority, the Mormons pose no such threat. The specter of Mormon money raised in the film seems like a latter-day version of older fears about Jewish financiers controlling the American economy and government. The Mormon effort made a difference only because Californians are roughly evenly divided on the issue of same-sex marriage.
Indeed, the fact that small minorities—gay and Mormon—can influence public policy through their activism reflects the basic health of our democracy. Thousands of people, many of whom had not previously been politically active, wrote checks, called neighbors and protested at rallies. While such observations are no consolation to California gay couples aspiring to legally marry, Proposition 8 did much to further the most vital political value of all, civic engagement.
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