8: The Mormon Proposition

"gays represent the greatest threat to America going down today." -Mormon Bishop & Senator D. Chris Buttars

Both of which have compared gay people to radical Muslims.

Now here is a documentary that I was not going to watch, and then decided I would.

It's a depressing film, however it delivers a powerful correlative lesson.

You can clearly see that united citizen journalism played an important role in outing these big-money political players who would have otherwise put their stamp on laws from the capitalistic safety of the shadows.

I appreciated how the filmmakers hammered hard on the Mormon church. From the shady PR stunts, to the shady financial reporting, to the human fallout of their treatment of gays both inside and outside their flock.

It's so tragic that the Mormon Church’s massive efforts to support and pass California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative (also called the California Marriage Protection Act), which in 2008 redefined marriage in the state of California as being only between a man and a woman, effectively making marriage between same-sex couples illegal and unrecognized.

Depending on which side of the debate you stand on, you will find it either silly and pointless, or obscenely infuriating and find yourself filled with a sense of righteous fury.

After Mormons got involved, the fight flourished

As California's anti-gay marriage proposition 8 languished in the polls, Mormon Prophet Thomas S. Monson issued a call from Salt Lake City to millions of Mormons all over the world. His was an order to action containing the secret code language of the highly secret Mormon temple ceremony.

The action alert commanded Mormons in and out of California to do all things necessary to insure the passage of California's Proposition 8. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Mormons all over the United States funneled thirty million Mormon dollars in to California coffers to purchase the passage of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8.

Before the Mormons and their participation in the passage of Proposition 8, evangelicals were flopping in the fight.

8: The Mormon Proposition puts on record one of the greatest election shams in the history of the United States.

If the Mormon church gets a pass on this one, we're in grave danger as a society of letting other groups purchase votes and we're putting power behind their so-called 'secret combinations' to do it again. This can never happen again. Never.

Director Reed Cowan initially planned on making a documentary about gay teen homelessness and suicide in Utah but soon realized that the homophobia that prompts otherwise loving parents to kick teenagers out of their homes is deep-seated in current Mormon ideology.

Cowan, with his fellow filmmakers, experienced first-hand what it was like to grow up gay in Utah in the Mormon faith, then turned their attention to the historic campaign by the Mormon Church to pass Proposition 8 in California believing that it was the cornerstone of an ideology that has worked for decades “to damage gay people and their causes.”

The film is their emotional outcry to what they found.

Here's the raw deal

In 2009, thousands of LGBT citizens are denied almost 200 civil rights their straight, married counterparts enjoy through civil marriage. Some states have signaled progress. But amid the progress, The Mormon Church, with its front-group The National Organization for Marriage, has been coordinating, financing and leading the effort to stop the advancement of marriage equality for more than three decades.

As an organization worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the Mormon Church has been able to wage this war in secret.

Not until the California Fair Political Practices Commission launched an investigation into the Mormon's involvement in Proposition 8, did the secrets of the Mormon effort become a matter of record.

Through never-before seen documents, recordings & insider-interviews, 8: The Mormon Proposition exposes the efforts of the Mormon Church and its members to halt nearly every piece of LGBT legislation on the desks of lawmakers from Hawaii to New York. 8: The Mormon Proposition makes these efforts a matter of record and challenges viewers to demand more of government officials in requiring religions more transparency in their efforts to influence public policy.

The filmmaker Reed Cowan is a former Mormon who served a two-year mission door-to-door for the Mormon Church. His access to high-level Mormons & Mormon communications on the matter, coupled with his OUT status as a gay man and father of two adopted sons has provided a compelling and at times shocking look at the Mormon way of doing business against LGBT people.

As California's anti-gay marriage proposition 8 languished in the polls, Mormon Prophet Thomas S. Monson issued a call from Salt Lake City to millions of Mormons all over the world.

His was an order to action containing the secret code language of the highly secret Mormon temple ceremony. The action alert commanded Mormons in and out of California to do all things necessary to insure the passage of California's Proposition 8. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Mormons all over the United States funneled thirty million Mormon dollars in to California coffers to purchase the passage of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8.

Before the Mormons and their participation in the passage of Proposition 8, evangelicals were flopping in the fight. During the fight, the Mormon Church media-engine, including mega-million dollar public relations and political consulting firm support, barraged Californians with a suffocating number of misleading television and radio ads and door-to-door campaigns manned by the Mormon National Organization for Marriage.

When Prop. 8 passed in California by a slim margin, Mormons were quick to take credit for the success. But when backlash from LGBT citizens targeted Mormon temples throughout the United States, the Mormon Church was the first to complain that they were the ones being persecuted.

In the wake of it all, documentary producer Reed Cowan was collecting secret recordings, secret documents and never before seen footage exposing Mormon efforts to quash ANY rights for LGBT citizens anywhere in the world.

"As a former Mormon missionary, I am appalled in knowing that a church which itself worships the practice of alternative marriage (polygamy), would become so vehemently involved in the marriage debate." — Director Reed Cowan.

8: The Mormon Proposition follows the story of many LGBT citizens seeking marriage equality. One of the couples Cowan follows is Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones. Barrick is the direct descendant of Mormon founder and Prophet, Joseph Smith's right hand man Fredrick G. Williams.

The Barrick-Jones family history tells tales of Mormon ancestors chased from state to state because of their own practice of alternative marriage (polygamy). Now, decades later, the Barrick-Jones family is experiencing cultural and governmental discrimination of the same kind that haunted their ancestors. Only now, they're at war with their own religion of Mormonism and the people their religion seduced in to voting against their union.

"When 8 passed, I called my mother crying--why did the Mormons do this to us? Why would our own people do this to us? They have turned their backs on us" —Barrick-Jones

8: The Mormon Proposition exposes decade's-long campaigns against LGBT rights, not only working behind the scenes to unseat political leaders who advocate for marriage equality, but also abuse against their own people through electric shock therapy and frontal lobotomies for BYU men arrested by Mormon security police.

For the first time in history, the film goes on record about alleged prurient meetings between Mormon Prophet Spencer W. Kimball with a secret group of gay BYU students who called themselves 'Spencer's boys.' The film chronicles the hundreds of gay-Mormon suicides, including the story of Mormon Stuart Matis, who shot himself on the steps of a California Mormon Church during another of the church's work against marriage equality during the days of California's Knight Initiative.

Buttars characterization of gays engaged in so-called pig sex, brought on an HRC action alert, a scolding from GLAAD, and the eventual ouster of Utah Senator Buttars from his position as chair of Utah's Senate Judiciary Committee.

In the days during the media backlash following Buttars interview with Cowan for 8, major media outlets and programs like Forbes, Washington Post and The Rachel Maddow Show picked up on the story with considerable coverage that resulted in thirty thousand e mails to the Utah Senate President and the crashing of the Utah Senate computer server for three days.

8: The Mormon Proposition also reveals the truth about Utah's gay homeless youth and the fact that the lions-share of hundreds of homeless teens on the streets in Utah, are LGBT youth who have been kicked out after coming out to their families.

Finally, in the telling of the Mormon Church's risk of losing their tax-free status, 8: The Mormon Proposition is a call to action not only to LGBT citizens, but all citizens everywhere to not only stand up for human rights, but also to pay attention to where the money and the information is coming from whenever a ballot measure picks up uncommon speed, money and heat.

Things Mormons will not tell you.

They believe your Church is wrong, your Christian creeds are abomination to God, and you pastor or Priest is a hireling of Satan.

There is salvation only in their church and all others are wrong.

Those who have been through their temples are wearing sacret underwear to protect themselves from "evil". This "evil" includes non-Mormon religions like yours.

Their secret temple rites at all. If they did, you would spot them as non-Christians immediately.

They think "familiar spirits" are good, and that their Book of Mormon has a "familiar spirit". Leviticus 19;31 says familiar spirits defile one, and are to be avoided at all costs.

That women receive salvation only through their Mormon husbands, and must remain pregnant for all eternity. 

That they intend to be gods themselves some day, and are helping to earn their exaltation to godhood by talking to you.

That they intend to have many wives in heaven, carrying on multiple sex relations throughout eternity, until they have enough children to populate their own earth, so they can be "Heavenly Father" over their own planet!

That you were once a spirit-child of their heavenly father, and one of his numerous wives before you were born on earth.

That the Virgin Mary really wasn't a virgin at all but had sex relations with their heavenly father to produce the Mormon version of Jesus Christ.

That their leaders taught that Jesus had at least three wives and children while he was on this earth.

That the "heavenly father" they ask you to pray to with them, is really an exalted man that lives on a planet near the star base Kolob, and is not the Heavenly Father of the Bible at all.

That Jesus was really Lucifer's brother in the spirit world, and it was only due to a "heavenly council" vote that Jesus became our redeemer instead of Satan!!

That there are over one hundred divisions in Mormonism. They conveniently "forget" this while criticizing the many denominations within the body of Christ.

That all their so- called scriptures such as the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, and even their official "Mormon Doctrine" statements contradict each other on MAJOR doctrinal points. The King James Bible is likewise contradicted.

That the reason the Book of Mormon has no maps is because there is not one scrap of archaeological evidence to support it!

That the state of Utah, which is predominately Mormon, has a higher than the national average of wife-beating, child abuse, and teenage suicide.

That their prophet Joseph Smith was heavily involved in the occult when he founded Mormonism.

That that they encourage visitations from dead relatives from the "spirit world", a practice forbidden in the Bible. (Deuteronomy 18:10- 12)

That there are many accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision besides he one they present to you, and all are different.

That their secret temple oaths are based on the Scottish Rite Masons.

That for years they considered the Negro race inferior, and even one drop of Negro blood prevented a person from entering their temple.

That  they expect Christ to return to their temple in Missouri, but they haven't built the temple He's supposed to return to, because they don't own the property. (It is owned by the "Temple Lot Mormons" who have plans o of their own, and won't let the Salt Lake City group buy it).

That they consider the Bible to be untrustworthy and full of errors.

That Jesus' death on the cross only partially saves the believer.

That that according to Anton Lavey's Satanic Bible, the demon god of the living dead is called "Mormo". Is it just a coincidence that the Mormons are so concerned with the dead?

That on their Salt Lake City Temple they prominently display an upside-down star which is a Satanic symbol known as the Goat's head.. Why?

That they believe the Archangel Michael came down to earth with several of his celestial wives, and became Adam in the garden of Eden.

That they believe the angel Gabriel came down to earth and became Noah in the days of the flood.

That their Prophet Joseph Smith prophesied falsely many times. For example, he foretold the second coming of Christ for 1891. The Bible teaches that one false prophecy puts a prophet under death sentence. (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).

That their Prophet Joseph Smith did not die as a martyr as they claim, but was killed during a gun battle in which he himself killed two men and wounded a third.

About the Mountain Meadows Massacre in which they brutally murdered an innocent wagon train of settlers, of over one hundred men, women, and most of the children, traveling through Utah.

That Joseph Smith taught that there were inhabitants on the moon, and Brigham Young taught there were inhabitants on the sun as well!

I highly recommend that you watch 8: The Mormon Proposition. It’s definitely a hard-hitting exposé of a shameful episode.

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