Anti Mormons Enter the Gay Rights Fray

A new anti-Mormon, pro gay website has been put online, dedicated to defaming the Mormon church over its support of California's Proposition 8. The website is entitled "The Mormons Stole Our Rights." A clear and well argued blog debunking the anti-Mormon website appears here.

The Mormons Stole Our Rights website has an anonymous registry for its contact information linked to another anonymous web hosting site. I suspected, with all of the double blind secrecy behind the website, that this site was created and is maintained, not by gay rights activists, but by professional anti-Mormons. An analysis of the language on the website also strongly typifies current anti-Mormon techniques and language.

The Mormons Stole Our Rights website has a connection with Andrew Callahan, a self-proclaimed disaffected Mormon and relative newcomer to the anti-Mormon scene. He claims he was a member in good standing in the church but has come under "attack" by his local church leaders for expressing his objections against Proposition 8. I have my doubts about the veracity of Mr. Callahan's claims as a member in good standing with the Mormon church. He doesn't sound or act like a member in good standing. He also shows no knowledge of the process the church goes through to excommunicate a member. If he were a high priest who served on a stake high council as he claimed, he would be familiar with the procedure.

Callahan makes a big deal of his "impending excommunication" from the church on a website he helped to create entitled "Signing for Something." This website is devoted to draw other disaffected Mormons who can sign a petition against their own church and in favor of gay rights. Members can even find information on how to leave the church - what the website calls "resigning." Callahan's "impending excommunication" (he seems so certain about the outcome) generated a fair amount of press because he disagreed with the church over Proposition 8. Callahan purposefully used the confrontation with the Mormon church to generate press and anti-Mormon sentiment. One of his actions was to invite the press and hand deliver 300 letters and a petition to the Mormon church's publicity department. It was quite a public spectacle, designed with no other purpose in mind than to defame the church on its pro-marriage stance.

I conclude that the pro gay attitude of the website is a facade. It is, in this case, an anti-Mormon treatise under the guise of favoring gay rights, published to libel and defame the Mormon church. Such libelous and defamatory websites break the legal regulations of anonymous hosting sites and should be reported and shut down.