h8

[solarbird]

A relative of a Slog blogger voted Yes on 8 to reassure herself about her faith:

You already know we believe in the Church—and, by corollary, the importance of thoughtful and considered obedience to divinely called leaders, and have made our decision to stand in that place. ... But when we look back at polygamy or the “Negro question” for example, we feel like as awful as those things are, we wouldn’t have wanted to give up on our most important feelings and beliefs because of them. I guess I feel like we were not so much supporting Prop 8 as making this small signal that we believe in a prophet.

Hey, sure, fuck millions of people to make a personal statement about your internal belief system. Go the fuck ahead, why the fuck not? It's not like queers are actual people.

More at the link above, if you can stomach it.

The Associated Press has picked up on the Utah boycott story. In case you're curious, here's the MSI, which is the Mormon Stock Index.

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

NPR has also been covering it, including statements by one of Utah's openly gay elected office holders.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

In other words, they've placed what they believe to be obedience to the Divine Word ahead of their fellow man.

Well, it's not the first time such has been done. And it's sad now, as it has been before.

[dustin-00.livejournal.com]

So now I'm looking at my American Express card... do I cancel it?

It's also my Costco card, so that's the only reason I hesitate.

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

you can *probably* trade 'down' for a regular Costco membership, though of course they'll try to talk you out of it. call your local warehouse's customer service desk

[avram]

Don't take any important actions based on that "Mormon Stock Exchange" list. For one thing, they list any major company that has so much as a single Mormon executive in upper-level management.

For another, their information is out of date. American Express is listed because their CFO is supposedly Gary Crittenden. But Crittenden left AmEx for Citigroup early last year. If you cancelled your AmEx card, you'd be doing it for no benefit.

[dustin-00.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've been looking for an excuse to axe one of my 3 cards.

I have no need for so much credit I could walk down to a Lexus dealership and just say "put in on my card".

[avram]

Having unused credit improves your credit rating, though I'm not certain how American Express counts in that regard.

[dustin-00.livejournal.com]

I have a house. My car is paid off.

I don't need to improve my credit rating. I'd actually kind of like to lower it to reduce the crap mail I get (I'm NOT buying a race horse!).

[emrecom.livejournal.com]

Sundance should get the fuck out causing the Mormons to revert to a more apt form of entertainment: watching cave carvings dance by torch light seems their speed.

Failing that, every fimmaker on Earth should boycott the fest.

Talk about literal culture warfare.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

The MSI is pretty lame, they call it "Mormon run businesses" but really it's businesses that have at least one Mormon executive. Like Dell is on there, because someone on the board of directors is Mormon.

ETA: Why not target companies that the Mormon church owns a large share of, or companies that donated a lot of money to Prop 8. We don't know anything about these particular Mormons, if they're practicing Mormons or were just brought up LDS. Targeting a company based on the fact that it has some executives of a particular religion, without being tied to any specific act of that executive, strikes me as really creepy.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I don't think this boycott will accomplish anything, unfortunately. Boycotts tend to only work when they're narrowly targeted, and in any case the Mormons have really deep pockets. king_chiron is also correct when he points out that this index includes companies that merely have Mormon executives (and if it's the one posted at the Slog, it's several years out of date, too.) You can't know for sure that any single one of these execs, if they still work at the companies listed, were among those donating to the Prop 8 cause, without doing a check against the public contribution records. So this really amounts to guilt by several degrees of association.

As for Sundance, it occurs in one of the most gay-friendly parts of Utah, and is run by a gay-friendly organization. A boycott of Utah would disproportionately hurt Salt Lake City, a liberal and largely gay friendly part of the state. It would be like boycotting California to hurt the voters there, when the people most affected would be those in San Francisco and the other gay-friendly parts of the state. And really, why not boycott California if your criteria is to hurt those who supported Prop 8?

A blanket attack on the Mormon church also hurts those Mormons who are sympathetic and supportive of the cause of marriage equality.

If you want to boycott, start with a list of contributors to Prop 8 regardless of their religion, race, or residency. If they own companies, boycott those companies and tie the end of the boycott to the restoration of full marriage equality. Make them work for your cause or pay forever. That eliminates the collateral damage and creates an incentive even for the bigots to help your cause just to avoid the economic consequences. It also means you're not directly taking on one of the wealthiest religious organizations in the country. You win not by antagonizing a whole state or religious denomination but by separating people of good will in a state or within a religion from those of bad will.

Prop 8 passed in large part because religious people were not convinced to support it. You need to do outreach to those people and explain to them how marriage equality and the separation of civil and religious marriage helps everyone, particularly churches that want to be free to define marriage according to their beliefs. You need to stress to them how marriage is a conservative, stabilizing institution. You need to find common ground. You only need to convince 10% of them. Changing demographics will do it for you in a generation, but hard political work can do it for you in a few years.

I gave money to No on 8 even though I didn't like how they were running their campaign. I will not support any broad boycott or any effort that is based on scapegoating of a group of people who are not monolithic, just because a majority of people within that group voted the wrong way. That would be counteractive for gay and lesbian civil rights in particular and positive progressive change in general. Start a targeted boycott or a long-term outreach campaign that is aimed at repealing 8, and I'm on board for the long haul. I'm not the only person who feels this way, either.