LDS call to ban gay marriage widens

Posted on October 10, 2008
Filed Under Gay News Blog

The LDS Church’s active support of a California ballot initiative banning gay marriage so far has been mostly confined to California.
    But during a special satellite broadcast from Salt Lake City tonight to LDS chapels in Utah County as well as in California, LDS authorities are expected to ask Brigham Young University students and other Californians living in Utah to participate in phone trees in support of Proposition 8, which would define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.
    The broadcast will feature Apostles M. Russell Ballard and Quentin L. Cook and L. Whitney Clayton, of the Presidency of the Seventy, discussing the LDS Church’s doctrine of marriage and describing the church’s participation in the Protect Marriage Coalition, which wants voters to approve the initiative.
    At the coalition’s request, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is making arrangements for Californians living in Utah “to call friends, family and fellow-citizens in California to urge support of the effort to defend traditional marriage,” spokesman Scott Trotter said Tuesday.
    Although many members other than Californians have expressed a desire to help, the effort in Utah for now will focus on Californians living here, Trotter said. No calls from Utah have yet been made, but a small test of the phone-call system is “anticipated soon.”
    “We are looking at options to fulfill a request from the coalition to help with phone calls to encourage support of Proposition 8. We’re also responding to the many requests we have had from students and others who want to help,” Clayton said. “Making phone calls is something they can do.”

LDS call to ban gay marriage widens
Salt Lake Tribune – United States