8: The Mormon Proposition opens with a personal story. We see a young couple getting married in San Francisco right after Proposition 22, California’s earlier ban on gay marriage, was overturned by the California Supreme Court. As the bust of Harvey Milk approvingly looks on behind them, the two young men cry tears of joy. This happy scene, however, turns increasingly dark. We learn that both of the groomsmen were formerly members of the LDS Church, and that while one of them is blessed enough to have a mother who supports and accepts him, the other had to hear his parents tell him that they would take no joy in his happiness. From the personal the film turns to the political, as it clearly documents the involvement of the LDS Church in both Hawaii’s ban on gay marriage and California’s Proposition 8, which went as far as to alter the constitution of California in order to allow for the unequal treatment of gays and lesbians. The problem with the involvement of the Mormon Church, the film clearly argues, it not simply that it helped organize inter-faith coalitions that then threw millions of dollars at the effort to get Prop 8 passed. It is after all their Constitutional right to do so (although the movie does argue that any tax-exempt organization so heavily involved in politics does not deserve the exemption). The real problem is the secrecy that surrounded the involvement of the LDS Church, and the blatant lies they told in their efforts to frighten Californians into voting for Prop 8. As their own internal documents show, the LDS Church intentionally tried to obscure their central role in passing Prop 8 by placing other individuals and organizations not immediately associated with the LDS Church at the front of their campaign. And even in the propaganda which the LDS Church openly funded, scare tactics that argued that the failure to pass Prop 8 would result in the loss of religious freedom and the indoctrination of children were willingly employed by those, many of those interviewed in the film insist, that knew better.
The second claim – that the LDS Church knew they were spreading lies with their propaganda – is difficult to prove absolutely, but also difficult to dismiss. As the film discusses, the LDS Church is a highly organized, well connected organization with rich resources in legal and financial assistance; this is not, in other words, a small time operation of uneducated and paranoid citizens. Moreover, the film makes the correct decision by focusing more on what can be broadly understood as unethical behavior and less on the central question at the heart of Prop 8 - whether or not there is any significant difference between homosexual and heterosexual relationships. At first this might seem like an odd choice, but the makers of the film seem to understand that convinced Prop 8 voters are not their audience and, if there are fence-sitters in the theater, it is better to appeal to values they most likely already hold rather than to argue that they need to take on something fundamentally new. Similarly, the film does not attempt a very thorough investigation of the viewpoints of the thousands of Mormons who contributed money and time to the fight to pass Prop 8. A short but helpful segment explains why the Mormon view of the afterlife is threatened and contradicted by homosexual relationships, and we see footage of Mormons organizing workshops to pass Prop 8 and protesting on the streets of San Francisco, but the theological claims of the LDS Church are not subjected to extended analysis.
This approach works because 8: The Mormon Proposition is not a film about ideology or religion but about people – the actions people take, and the consequences of those actions to other human beings. Smartly, the film illustrates how the negative consequences of Mormon dogma also fall on Mormons themselves. One of the most effective segments features former and current Mormons discussing the importance of obedience in LDS culture and the requirement of all Church members to follow orders from their Prophet without question. When Mormons were told by their Prophet to support Prop 8, it was clearly implied that a failure to do so would result in social ostracization. As is well known, many Mormons live in a largely insular culture where social death awaits anyone who apostates. Some more devoted families even drained their children’s college funds in order to submit huge donations to the Prop 8 campaign. The willingness of parents to sacrifice their children’s future in the pursuit of religious dogma can only be described as a tragedy.
However, the most important – and most painful – portion of the film tells us the stories of the gay members of the LDS Church, particularly young people. At this point the film departs from the specific issue of Prop 8 itself to look at the lives destroyed, often literately, by the refusal of Mormons to recognize that homosexuality is neither a weakness nor a sin. Former Mormons who attempted suicide are interviewed, and stories of those who succeeded told. Indeed, Utah has one of highest suicide rates in the United States. However, we learn that even this fact may not weigh heavily on all LDS Church members, as we hear stories of awkward funerals where the victim’s homosexuality is only noted in sad laments about when he or she first began to fall victim to sin. And this position is nothing if not consistent – if homosexuality is a sin, and a victim of suicide is unable to overcome this sin, the act of suicide is merely another failure in an unrighteous life.
However, the weakness of the film is its tendency to look only at the most devoted of Mormon bigots and, conversely, caring and thoughtful dissenters who are either now outside of the Church or, it would appear, on their way out. Left out of this picture are the thousands of Mormons who will not leave the Church due to Prop 8, but do not participate in active bigotry on a personal basis. Also totally left out of the film are the thousands of people who voted Yes on 8 yet are not Mormon or actively religious. To a certain degree, the film cannot be faulted for excluding these groups – its topic is, after all, how Prop 8 was supported by devoted Mormon ignorance. However, there is also a sense that these middling sorts are not addressed because they are far more difficult to grapple with – while the openly bigoted can be easily understood, those who ought to know better and yet refuse to fully open their minds and hearts to questioning Church doctrine are inscrutable, and even more frustrating than those who are consistent in both their personal and political lives.*
Because at the heart of 8: The Mormon Proposition is the argument that the political is merely the personal writ large. As atheists, many of us spend much of our energy looking at the claims and arguments of religion, and applying reason and critical thinking to expose them as false and unfounded. However, what sometimes gets lost in this battle of logic, but what is arguably at least as important, is the human cost of religious dogma. It would be impossible to quantify the amount of human suffering and anguish caused by the position of the LDS Church on homosexuality, and no one would ever want to try to contemplate it all at once. That this suffering is justified by believers as being condoned by God shows the depth of the moral bankruptcy of Mormonism and indeed, all religions which aim to turn into a sin, that which inspires many of us to love.
———-
* Another often-criticized stylistic choice of the filmmakers was to make a video of the Prophet of the LDS Church appear grizzly and menacing, when apparently normal video quality was available. I would agree that any additional stylistic decisions to make something seem more “evil” is emotional overkill which furthermore, is really not necessary; the content of what the Prophet is saying is terrifying enough.
