Last week the Courage Campaign unveiled a new ad highlighting the millions of dollars the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has poured into the California campaign to strip marriage rights from gay and lesbian couples. As KUTV explained the ad:
A new commercial against proposition 8 in California is expected to fuel the fire of an already heated debate over gay marriage.
The commercial depicts two Mormon missionaries invading the home of a same sex couple.In the commercial they knock on the door, say they are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and tell a lesbian couple “we are here to take away your rights.”
They enter the home take the women’s rings, ransack the house looking for their marriage license, find it, and then tear it up.
At the end, the missionaries was away saying, “that was too easy, yeah, what should we ban next?”
The ad itself is here:
Needless to say, the Yes on 8 folks are none too pleased with the ad and are now screaming “religious bigotry”
“This ad reaches new lows of religious bigotry and intolerance,” said Yes on 8 Chairman Ron Prentice. “We hope that the leadership of the No on 8 campaign – including Senator Feinstein, Mayor Newsom and Superintendent O’Connell — as well as all Californians regardless of their position on Proposition 8, will not only condemn the ad but join us in asking television stations to refuse to air it. After all, the No on 8 campaign has been running their own television commercials saying we must all oppose discrimination and intolerance whenever we see it. The bigotry this ad shows to members of the LDS church demands action now.”
The California Catholic Conference is likewise outraged:
Bishop Stephen Blaire, the President of the California Catholic Conference decried the new advertisement from opponents of Proposition 8 as “a blatant display of religious bigotry and intolerance.” He expressed dismay that any public media outlet would give it an airing. “The YES on 8 campaign is not about discrimination and intolerance; it is about restoring the traditional definition of marriage for the good of society and children,” said Bishop Blaire. “All individuals and groups, whether religious or not, have both a right and a responsibility to participate in a civil debate about this important issue. From the beginning of this campaign the Catholic Conference has stressed the importance of mutual respect and denounces this type of religious bigotry.”
Of course, when footage surfaced last week of Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute telling a rally of Prop 8 supporters that failure to pass the amendment was akin to failing to stop Hitler, they uttered not a peep.
