Maine and Gay Marriage: “Mormons still to blame, somehow?”
Mollie Hemingway at GetReligion has done a survey and analysis of MSM coverage on Maine’s Question 1, which passed Tuesday night and overturned the Maine Legislature’s approval of same-sex marriage. The entire piece is worth reading. Among other things, Mollie notes the odd way in which the MSM focuses on the religious background of the Yes On 1 campaign’s backers, including the apparently unquestioned assertion that the National Organization for Marriage “is a stalking horse for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Here’s one paragraph:
It’s so interesting to me that so many of these stories about the Yes on 1 victory in Maine portray it as a loss for gay activists. But that similar focus isn’t brought to bear on the scrutiny of the groups that are involved in the effort to legalize same-sex marriage. I mean, I’m on a bunch of denominational news list-servs and there were plenty of religious groups fighting this ballot initiative and working to keep same-sex marriage legal in Maine. Why don’t they get the same scrutiny as the Mormons, who actually may have had no discernible role in the Maine campaign? It’s just odd.
It’s my understanding that the LDS Church indeed provided no organizational support to Yes On 1, so it’s all the more curious that its name is being bandied about in the “news” coverage of the election.
John thinks about it a bit:
What fascinated me about the piece was how incredibly convoluted was the argument to arrive at the conclusion that the whole thing was some sort of Mormon plot. It was a conspiracy theory on the order of the bilderburgrs.
These theories gain traction because the proponents of same sex marriage are so convinced of the rightness of their stance that they believe there must be an “unbelievable” conspiracy for them to be defeated. The Mormons are singled out as the conspiracy’s source based in part on the tightly held nature of some of their practices (a vacuum, even an innocent one, is always filled) and because it plays on age old prejudices.
What saddens me is that we have recently been treated to two rather elaborate, and popular, movies that paint the Roman Catholic church in similar conspiratorial terms. Can the rest of Christianity be far behind? Our philosophical and political opponents seek not merely to defeat us in the ballot box, but to portray us as purposefully evil. All the more reason for us to unify, not bicker.
Which brings me to what frightens me. Within the “Tea Party” movement, and the other “true conservative” movements are elements that are looking for such conspiracies. Like some proponents of same sex marriage, some pro-lifers and some opposition to same-sex marriage is so convinced of the sheer rightness of their stance, that they believe opposition must be born of conspiracy. But worse, the same age-old prejudices are at play and so, without realizing it, they buy the conspiracies of the left and look within their own party for the conspiracies. We are then rent asunder and the left prevails because of our disunity.
Which raises the question of whether or not the perceived conspiracy theories of the left are really conspiracy theories at all, or whether they are strategic efforts on the part of the left. Now there is a conspiracy. But then reason prevails and tells us that many on the left are sincere, if misguided, in their conspiratorial concerns, but there are some willing to use that sincerity a bit more cynically. And in turn, they use our “sincerity” to their advantage as well.
Posted in Proposition 8, Same-sex marriage | 7 Comments » | 
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