In a small, flickering hint of public relations competence, LDS Church spokesman Michael Otterson appeared before the Salt Lake City Council and declared "The church supports these ordinances because they are fair and reasonable and do not do violence to the institution of marriage." Salt Lake Tribune, November 11, 2009
How magnanimous! How astute! How decent! How did they manage to get the New York Times, Washington Post and Dustin Lance Black and Joy Behar to sing their praises?
First to the ordinances (and what a happily coincidental term to use): clearly they do no violence to the sacred institution of marriage. Which is nice. After all the conspiracies I've been hearing from my gay friends about assaulting and battering Mormon marriages, it's a relief. Apparently what the ordinances do is twofold: they prohibit discrimination in 1) Employment and 2) Housing, based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
Unless you're, say, a bigoted church. Then you can discriminate and do violence to gay folks all you want (somebody has to do it, right?).
Now, the question is why did they do it? Dustin Lance Black seemed pretty sincere in his conclusion that the Church is actually moderating its position, like they did with the policy on the seed of Cain (or Ham or the Canaanites, take your pick) being entitled to the priesthood. On the other end of the spectrum (the end that the Southern Poverty Law Center's HateWatch monitors) there's America Forever, asserting what I suspect will become a rallying cry for homophobes churchwide: the church had to do it.
Of course, as Dustin acknowledges, the church decided to endorse the ordinance as a direct result of recent, acutely felt social pressure.
And seriously, the ordinance is hardly a shining beacon of civil rights. As noted above, churches are categorically exempt from the requirements of the law. And the law itself, apparently, is only binding on employers and landlords. While certainly a significant step forward in a city where landlords just last month had every right to turn out an 18 year boy for holding hands with his beau inside their apartment, the ordinance still falls pretty short. Restaurants, fitness clubs, gas stations, grocery stores, movie theaters, institutions of higher learning, even the public transportation system can still deny service on the basis of perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
To make matters worse, the Utah Legislature may very well still trump the ordinance and others like it, LDS church endorsement notwithstanding.
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