The Mormons Spin Away From Prop 8

They're obviously a little rattled. The SF Chronicle reports:

Months before the first ads would run on Proposition 8, San Francisco Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer reached out to a group he knew well, Mormons. Niederauer had made critical inroads into improving Catholic-Mormon relations while he was Bishop of Salt Lake City for 11 years. And now he asked them for help on Prop. 8, the ballot measure that sought to ban same-sex marriages in California. The June letter from Niederauer drew in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and proved to be a critical move in building a multi-religious coalition - the backbone of the fundraising, organizing and voting support for the successful ballot measure. By bringing together Mormons and Catholics, Niederauer would align the two most powerful religious institutions in the Prop. 8 battle.

The intervention of my own church's hierarchy in targeting the civil rights of a minority is distressing. But they are still not as plugged into the Christianist network as well as the Mormons - and the LDS leadership was critical in pioneering this. In fact, we have a mountain of evidence that the LDS church has been waging Kulturkampf in Hawaii and California for well over a decade. How does the Chronicle account for this 1997 memo from the LDS church planning an anti-marriage referendum campaign in California:

Or this confession by Mitt Romney in September of 2007 that the Mormons and Falwell hatched the scheme long before last June:

Several months ago, not long before he died, I had the occasion of having the Rev. Jerry Falwell at our home. He said that when he was getting ready to oppose same-sex marriage in California, he met with the president of my church in Salt Lake City, and they agreed to work together in a campaign in California. He said, "Far be it from me to suggest that we don't have the same values and the same objectives."

(Hat tip: Joe)