Retracton: The Dishonor Roll

The limited retraction: According to a posting on Yelp, a guy named Rick Baker is the franchisee for the Hillcrest location of Golden Spoon, reported as being owned by Roger & Heather Clawson. He is reportedly not affiliated with Yes on 8 or the Clawsons and fully supports the gay community of San Diego. Roger Clawson is the Franchising President to of Golden Spoon - his wife Heather gave the $5,000 donation. Our apologies to Rick Baker.

Lesbian politics: Dude, Mormons--Why the $H8?

(Before I say anything else, I would like to point out that you can make "No on Prop 8" phone calls from home, no matter where you live in the U.S. Save marriage equality in CA; click on that link above to find out how.

Do you really want to live in a country where voters get to decide who has inalienable rights and who doesn't? On November 5 will you be patting yourself on the back for having done all you could for your fellow queer brethren, or will you be kicking yourself that you failed to stand up for queer rights? Make phone calls today!)

I don't really know very many Mormon people, so I'm hoping I can get an education here in the comments section. Here is what appears to be a spreadsheet with all the "Yes on 8" donors (source: mormonsfor8.com). 46% of them are Mormon. I ask you: why? These are people who themselves had to redefine their own "traditional" marriage to "Marriage is between a man and a woman" from "Marriage is between a man and a woman and another woman and another woman and another woman," and it wasn't that long ago. Their church founder advocated for plural marriages back in 1831 and had one himself in 1835, and the church had to restructure its traditional marriage system back in 1890 to get rid of that. Are the Mormons overcompensating now to prove they're the man-and-wifeiest? Or are they just mad that we can get wife-on-wife action today, and they can't?

Carlos Santoscoy at ontopmag.com writes: "Mormon leaders say gay marriage is incompatible with Mormon theology. According to church doctrine, Mormons must be married to achieve 'exaltation' – the ultimate state in the afterlife – where they retain their gender and give birth to spirit children."

O.K., so you need male/female interaction in the afterlife; let's assume that is true. But LGBT folks typically receive excommunication from the Mormon church when they're outed--hell, the LDS church will excommunicate people merely for supporting "No on Prop 8" even if they aren't gay--meaning (as far as I understand) that they are no longer Mormons. So if they aren't Mormons anymore, they do not go to a Mormon afterlife; is that correct? And if they're not going there, it doesn't really matter if they get married, does it?

Well, I'm attempting to apply logic to literalist religion, which is just going to frustrate everybody, so let that lie. Let's instead take a peek at the lengths to which the LDS community has gone to beat up on us so far:

• $10 million in contributions

• technological firebombing (texts, blog posts, videos, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook) mostly by young people (how sick is that?)

• traditional methods of political organizing (1,000,000 yard signs distributed by mob LDS crews)

• collaboration with James Dobson, the Focus on the Family shithead (who says a father can teach his son not to be gay by doing the following:

He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

Sure, James, keep up your pitching/catching, hole-pounding, and prominent penis contests . . . that's not gay at all.)

Almost $27,000 came from these Mormon lawyers alone all from the same law firm in Irvine, CA (contact info taken from firm website):

	Brent M. Dougal 949.760.0404 Brent.Dougal@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $500
	Douglas B. Espenschied 949.760.0404 douglas.espenschied@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $1,500
	Nathan S. Smith 949.760.0404 nathan.smith@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $1,000
	Marc Morley 619.235.8550 mmorley@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $1,000
	Ted M. Cannon 949.760.0404 tcannon@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $5,000 (extra douchey)
	Philip M. Nelson 949.760.0404 pnelson@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $1,100
	Glen Nuttall 949.760.0404 gnuttall@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $150 (mini-douche)
	Curtis R. Huffmire 949.760.0404 chuffmire@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $1,000
	Paul Conover 949.760.0404 pconover@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $500
	Christian A. Fox 949.760.0404 cfox@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $1,500
	Bill Bunker 949.760.0404 bbunker@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $5,000 (megadouche)
	Ned Israelsen 619.235.8550 nisraelsen@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $3,000
	Jason J. Jardine 619.235.8550 jason.jardine@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $500
(unpictured)	Michael Erickson michael.erickson@kmob.com Prop 8 Donation: $5,000

These are lawyers--you know, those people who are supposed to defend the Constitution? The ones who are supposed to promote equal rights for all free from religious persecution? The ones who sometimes grow up to be judges? My justice-seeking perennial heroes? Does the fact that lawyers are putting up big money for this terrify you as it does me?

I applaud the efforts of groups like Affirmation, the coalition of queer Mormons that has been admirably and bravely standing up for our side. (That is the link to their main site, but they also have a blog.) Unfortunately, many of Affirmation's members have to practice a sola scriptura, sola fide strain of Mormonism due to their rejection by the church proper.

I'm so curious why the LDS church is so LGBT-unfriendly! I mean, even the fundamentalist Christians let you stick around (although I'm not religious and never have been, so I would have to ask all you Lesbiatopia readers, "What's worse--excommunication from the church, or being allowed to stay but having to go through reparative therapy?") As always happens with whatever the evil kind of anti-gay garbage, devout and well-meaning people wind up hating and/or hurting themselves.

There is a really terrific autobiographical one-man show about these types of issues called Confessions of a Mormon Boy. The show's protagonist mires through unceasing struggle from beginning to end, confronting faith, upbringing, family, addiction, and hate on his passage to coming out. He does get excommunicated, though not for lack of trying. I highlight this show because I know there are thousands of people out there with similar stories--people the LDS church has gone out of its way to shame into silence. Now the church is trying to extend this into government policy, because, sure, look how well it works to hurt people.

I'm a, well, fairly tolerant person so long as no one is attacking me and mine; sometimes even under attack I can forgive if I can understand from whence the attack comes. I just don't get this one, though, especially because it seems like we have so much in common, me and Mormons. I mean, c'mon, we both like choral singing, genealogy, soda . . . well, the list just keeps going. Can't we be friends?