CARNAL NATION

Mormon Apostle Dallin H. Oaks, in criticizing the anti-Mormon backlash that followed the passing of California's Proposition 8, ignited a backlash of his own. Speaking to an audience at Brigham Young University-Idaho, the high-ranking church official compared protests against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and boycotts against business owners who supported Proposition 8 to the oppression of blacks in the American South during the civil rights movement. Oaks said that "These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest. As such, these incidents of 'violence and intimidation' are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation." (Emphasis added.)

University of Utah historian Colleen McDannell voiced the sentiments of many: "Were four little Mormon girls blown up in the church at Sunday school? Were there burning crosses planted on local bishops' lawns? Were people lynched and their genitals stuffed in their mouths?" she said. "By comparing these two things, it diminishes the real violence that African-Americans experienced in the '60s, when they were struggling for equal rights. There is no equivalence between the two." Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake City NAACP also opposed the comparison. "I don't see where the LDS Church has been denied any of their rights," she said. "What the gay and lesbian communities are fighting for, that is a civil-rights issue."

During the Propostion 8 campaign last year, the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sent a letter to all temples in California, urging members to support the amendment through activism and financial contributions. Support of Proposition 8 by LDS members was a major factor in its passage, and following the election, LGBT activists held protests in front of Mormon temples and called for boycotts on businesses whose owners had made large donations to the Yes on 8 campaign. However, there have been few reports of violence or vandalism by pro-marriage activists.

Oaks is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second highest-ranking group in the Mormon Church. As an Apostle, Oaks is considered to be a "prophet, seer, and revelator" in the Church.