WHY AN “EQUALITY BOYCOTT?”
An economic boycott should focus on harming the opponent’s assets, hence the belief that the focus should be on the Mormon (LDS) Church and its investments rather than the entire state of Utah. There are richer churches than the one based in Salt Lake City: Roman Catholic holdings dwarf Mormon wealth. But the Catholic Church has 45 times as many members. There is no major church in the U.S. as active as the Latter-Day Saints in economic life, nor, per capita, as successful at it. Remember that they took it upon themselves to start the issue. We’re just taking the issue back to them.
In many ways, we can draw the parallel between this boycott and one that freed South Africa. Both involve people who are being denied basic human rights and equality, people being treated institutionally through their government as inferior to others. It took more than the efforts of affected South Africans to change public opinion; it took caring people from all over the world to unite and challenge the way things were accepted to be and to demand justice and equality.
It isn’t our business to tell someone they can’t marry who they want to marry any more than it is our business to regulate what they do in the bedroom. There are some religions that still believe and preach that sex is only for procreation. Lucky for the rest of us, they have not succeeded in making that the law of the land. But within recent history, there were laws prohibiting blacks and whites from marrying and religions that preached against it. The Supreme Court ruled these laws were unconstitutional in the 1960s. If we want to get Biblical about this, let’s simply go with Leviticus 25:17 “Ye shall not therefore oppress one another,” and leave it at that.
But action must be taken now. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty purchased a full-page ad in the New York Times to blame supporters of equality for “violence and intimidation” directed towards the Mormon Church and its members in the aftermath of Prop. 8’s passage. All of these claims are, at the very least, exaggerations, and at worst, outright falsehoods. We’re going to see this as we work toward marriage equality and fight to enact federal hate crimes legislation: the other side can only win by telling lies.
All the more reason for an economic boycott against the Mormon Church. We need to make sure they don’t have the money to keep this up. The LDS Church conducted a national broadcast to every temple, calling on members to organize and write checks to the Prop. 8 campaign. These LDS church members donated more than half of the $40 million behind Prop. 8, even though California Mormons represent just 2 percent of the state’s population. The same church now continues to spend exorbitant sums to mislead the public and attempt to transform its image.