Mormons and gay marriage

Anger at the disproportionate number of African-Americans who voted for California’s same-sex marriage ban “has been widely noted,” said Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. But "for sheer hatefulness," the "hatemongering" directed against Mormons for pushing the ballot measure can't be beat.

“A few extremists” have “crossed the line into religious (and racist) bigotry,” said Dale Carpenter in The Volokh Conspiracy, but the vast majority have kept their well-justified protests in bounds. Still, the Mormon church did largely bankroll Prop. 8, and “it’s not anti-religious bigotry to call attention” to that—just do so at government buildings, not churches.

The Prop. 8 protesters are certainly making the Mormon church into the guardian of “traditional marriage,” said Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic online, so the Mormons are getting something in the deal: “serious cred in social conservative circles.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

That might make the real winner in all this Mitt Romney, said Jason Zengerle in The New Republic online, whose inability to generate support among “rank-and-file social conservatives” helped cost him the Republican presidential nomination this year. Look for that to change in 2012 if “the Mormon church becomes the driving force behind the anti-gay marriage crusade.”