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<DIV class=timestamp>November 15, 2008</DIV>
<DIV class=kicker></DIV>
<H1><NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0">Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay
Marriage </NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0">
<DIV class=byline>By <A title="More Articles by Jesse Mckinley"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/jesse_mckinley/index.html?inline=nyt-per">JESSE
McKINLEY</A> and <A title="More Articles by Kirk Johnson"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/kirk_johnson/index.html?inline=nyt-per">KIRK
JOHNSON</A></DIV></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody>
<P>SACRAMENTO — Less than two weeks before Election Day, the chief strategist
behind a ballot measure outlawing <A
title="More articles about Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions, and Domestic Partnerships."
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">same-sex
marriage</A> in <A title="More news and information about California."
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/california/index.html?inline=nyt-geo">California</A>
called an emergency meeting here. </P>
<P>“We’re going to lose this campaign if we don’t get more money,” the
strategist, Frank Schubert, recalled telling leaders of Protect Marriage, the
main group behind the ban.</P>
<P>The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more
than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the
grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive
to intensify a sharp-elbowed advertising campaign, and support for the measure
was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote. </P>
<P>As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on
Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot
measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat — and the
extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money,
institutional support and dedicated volunteers.</P>
<P>“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken
out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing
director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
as the Mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. “But we don’t get
involved to the degree we did on this.”</P>
<P>The California measure, Proposition 8, was to many Mormons a kind of firewall
to be held at all costs. </P>
<P>“California is a huge state, often seen as a bellwether — this was seen as a
very, very important test,” Mr. Otterson said.</P>
<P>First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few
weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the
Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final
spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians,
conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with
strong religious ties. </P>
<P>Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese,
the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be
read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the
Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause. </P>
<P>“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said. </P>
<P>Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons
made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door
in election precincts.</P>
<P>The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in
California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to
cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a
Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and
shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from “walkers,” assigned to knock
on doors; to “sellers,” who would work with undecided voters later on; and to
“closers,” who would get people to the polls on Election Day.</P>
<P>Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a
prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were
instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of
marriage God intended. </P>
<P>But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll
instead, emphasizing that Proposition 8 was about marriage, not about attacking
gay people, and about restoring into law an earlier ban struck down by the State
Supreme Court in May.</P>
<P>“It is not our goal in this campaign to attack the homosexual lifestyle or to
convince gays and lesbians that their behavior is wrong — the less we refer to
homosexuality, the better,” one of the ward training documents said. “We are
pro-marriage, not anti-gay.”</P>
<P>Leaders were also acutely conscious of not crossing the line from being a
church-based volunteer effort to an actual political organization.</P>
<P>“No work will take place at the church, including no meeting there to hand
out precinct walking assignments so as to not even give the appearance of
politicking at the church,” one of the documents said.</P>
<P>By mid-October, most independent polls showed support for the proposition was
growing, but it was still trailing. Opponents had brought on new media
consultants in the face of the slipping poll numbers, but they were still
effectively raising money, including $3.9 million at a star-studded fund-raiser
held at the Beverly Hills home of Ron Burkle, the supermarket billionaire and
longtime Democratic fund-raiser.</P>
<P>It was then that Mr. Schubert called his meeting in Sacramento. “I said, ‘As
good as our stuff is, it can’t withstand that kind of funding,’ ” he
recalled. </P>
<P>The response was a desperate e-mail message sent to 92,000 people who had
registered at the group’s Web site declaring a “code blue” — an urgent plea for
money to save traditional marriage from “cardiac arrest.” Mr. Schubert also sent
an e-mail message to the three top religious members of his executive committee,
representing Catholics, evangelicals and Mormons.</P>
<P>“I ask for your prayers that this e-mail will open the hearts and minds of
the faithful to make a further sacrifice of their funds at this urgent moment so
that God’s precious gift of marriage is preserved,” he wrote.</P>
<P>On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O.
McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the
WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the
direction of the church.</P>
<P>“I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories about
members of the church who had worked long hours and lobbied long and hard,” he
said in a telephone interview from Orem, Utah.</P>
<P>In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40
million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.</P>
<P>Even with the Mormons’ contributions and the strong support of other
religious groups, Proposition 8 strategists said they had taken pains to
distance themselves from what Mr. Flint called “more extreme elements” opposed
to rights for gay men and lesbians.</P>
<P>To that end, the group that put the issue on the ballot rebuffed efforts by
some groups to include a ban on domestic partnership rights, which are granted
in California. Mr. Schubert cautioned his side not to stage protests and risk
alienating voters when same-sex marriages began being performed in June.</P>
<P>“We could not have this as a battle between people of faith and the gays,”
Mr. Schubert said. “That was a losing formula.”</P>
<P>But the “Yes” side also initially faced apathy from middle-of-the-road
California voters who were largely unconcerned about same-sex marriage. The
overall sense of the voters in the beginning of the campaign, Mr. Schubert said,
was “Who cares? I’m not gay.”</P>
<P>To counter that, advertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical
consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax
exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex
marriage, claims that were made with little explanation. </P>
<P>Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip
to a teacher’s same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that
same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.</P>
<P>“We bet the campaign on education,” Mr. Schubert said. </P>
<P>The “Yes” campaign was denounced by opponents as dishonest and divisive, but
the passage of Proposition 8 has led to second-guessing about the “No” campaign,
too, as well as talk about a possible ballot measure to repeal the ban. Several
legal challenges have been filed, and the question of the legality of the
same-sex marriages performed from June to Election Day could also be settled in
court. </P>
<P>For his part, Mr. Schubert said he is neither anti-gay — his sister is a
lesbian — nor happy that some same-sex couples’ marriages are now in question.
But, he said, he has no regrets about his campaign.</P>
<P>“They had a lot going for them,” Mr. Schubert said of his opponents. “And
they couldn’t get it done.”</P>
<P>Mr. Otterson said it was too early to tell what the long-term implications
might be for the church, but in any case, he added, none of that factored into
the decision by church leaders to order a march into battle. “They felt there
was only one way we could stand on such a fundamental moral issue, and they took
that stand,” he said. “It was a matter of standing up for what the church
believes is right.”</P>
<P>That said, the extent of the protests has taken many Mormons by surprise. On
Friday, the church’s leadership took the unusual step of issuing a statement
calling for “respect” and “civility” in the aftermath of the vote.</P>
<P>“Attacks on churches and intimidation of people of faith have no place in
civil discourse over controversial issues,” the statement said. “People of faith
have a democratic right to express their views in the public square without fear
of reprisal.”</P>
<P>Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as
off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye
shall know them.”</P><NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
<DIV id=authorId>
<P>Jesse McKinley reported from Sacramento, and Kirk Johnson from Salt Lake
City.</P></DIV></NYT_AUTHOR_ID></DIV></NYT_TEXT></DIV></BODY></HTML>