President Thomas S. Monson: You have mail – boxes of it.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) delivered 27,000 letters to LDS Church headquarters Monday – all of them asking the Mormon leader to support legal protections for gay and transgender Utahns.

The national gay-rights group has endorsed Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative, a collection of bills that would, among other things, provide rights to fair housing and employment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Utahns and domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples.

The movement was born in response to statements the LDS Church made in the wake of California’s Proposition 8 – which eliminated gay marriage in the Golden State – that the church “does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights or probate rights.”

Monson and other LDS leaders helped to get the gay-marriage ban enacted, urging members to donate their time and money to the campaign and, later, igniting opponents’ protests at LDS temples and calls for boycotts of Utah.

“The reason there’s such an uproar is every LGBT person in the United States was affected by it,” since Proposition 8 stripped away rights that had been granted to gay couples, said Jerry Rapier, a Salt Lake City resident and member of the HRC’s board of governors.

 See 27000 letters urge LDS leader to back rights of gay Utahns
Salt Lake Tribune, United States -

Attorneys for the ACLU have sent a letter to Big Bear High School saying that school officials cannot prohibit students from wearing anti-Proposition 8 T-shirts.

Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to ban gay marriage, was among the most divisive issues on the November ballot and continues to inspire protests and boycotts.

The day before the election, sophomore class president Mariah Jimenez wore a home-made T-shirt that said “Prop 8 Equals HATE.” Her sixth-period teacher sent her to the office, where the principal told her that she would have to take off the shirt before returning to class because the shirt’s message was divisive.

But attorneys for the ACLU have argued that schools cannot prohibit speech simply because it is controversial; only speech that incites a disturbance can be prohibited, ACLU attorneys said.

 See Gay marriage debate at Big Bear school over anti-Prop. 8 shirt
Los Angeles Times, CA -

Gays and lesbians — at least some of them — plan to refrain from working and shopping today as an expression of their dismay over Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 measure that banned same-sex marriage, and as a showing of both their economic clout and their place within the larger community. If organizers carry it off, this is exactly the kind of tactic that can make a difference, though its impact might have been bigger before election day.

For all the complaints (mainly coming from the Yes-on-8 campaign), boycotts against corporations or organizations are a time-honored method of expressing opinions and pushing for social or political change. But in the superheated Proposition 8 debate, this venerable tactic has occasionally been used in ugly ways. 

It started when the directors of the Yes-on-8 campaign sent letters to various companies that had donated to the opposition camp. The missives warned donors to pay an equal amount to the “Yes” side or risk being publicly outed as opponents of “traditional marriage” (the implication being that they would then face a boycott). The tactic looked and quacked a lot like extortion. It’s one thing to boycott, or threaten it; a demand for hush money goes over the line.

Since then, postelection boycott efforts by the other side — defenders of same-sex marriage — have expanded into a vengeful campaign against individuals who donated to the gay-marriage ban, usually in the form of pressure on their employers. At least two people have resigned from their jobs and a third is considering it, including the artistic director of a stage company in Sacramento and a manager at an L.A. eatery. 

 See Gay band to march in Presidential inauguration parade
PinkNews.co.uk, UK