Mormon Church Fined for Prop 8 Spending

The Mormon Church has acknowledged not declaring in a timely manner significant sums that it spent in supporting a highly divisive campaign to ban marriage equality in California in 2008.

The church has agreed to pay a fine of $5,538 imposed by The California Fair Political Practices Commission. That sum equals 15% of the total money the church acknowledges not having declared in a timely manner, a sum of $36,928, the Associated Press reported on June 8.

That money took the form of work performed by church staff in bolstering efforts to rescind then-existing marriage rights for gay and lesbian families in California. The battle focused over a ballot initiative, Proposition 8, which put the marriage rights of gays up to a popular vote. The measure narrowly passed, ending marriage equality in the state. A court later ruled that the 18,000 families that had wed during the period when marriage parity was legal would still be legally valid.

"The proposed fine under consideration by the commission addresses all the issues within the complaint," California Fair Political Practices Commission executive director Roman Porter told the press.

More than a year and a half ago, Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate accused the church of spending massive sums of money to support the Proposition 8 campaign, but of failing to disclose those expenditures. Initially, the Mormon Church claimed only to have spent a little over $2,000 on promoting the anti-family parity ballot initiative. Among other efforts to promote the marriage ban, Karger charged, the Mormon Church supplied phone banks and commercial advertising--expensive forms of support that went unreported to election officials. The church later revised its reports to reflect expenditures of nearly $200,00 in support of the anti-marriage measure. The $37,000 in question was part of that belated report.

"My fervent hope is they will get out of this business and go help earthquake victims in Chile or something, but get out of peoples' lives and denying their happiness," Karger told the press.

"All institutional contributions made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the ProtectMarriage Coalition were reported to the appropriate authorities in California," said a statement posted at the Mormon church's website. Added text at the site, "Claims that the Church misrepresented its contributions to the ProtectMarriage coalition are false."

The Mormon leadership called on its members from around the nation to donate time and financial resources to the campaign in California to rescind the then-existing right of gay and lesbian families to wed. The majority of the money funneled into California to support Proposition 8 came from Mormon individuals and families.

A documentary on the Mormon church's involvement in the anti-marriage ballot initiative, 8: The Mormon Proposition, claims that church elders paid visits to Mormon families to instruct them as to how much money they were expected to give. The film claims that Mormon families gave their savings--and in some cases their children's' college funds--to the cause.

A June 9 LezGetReal article reported that the Mormon Church issued a statement on the fine on June 8. "The church appreciates the fairness and consideration with which the Fair Political Practices Commission has addressed this oversight," the statement said. "In the last two weeks leading up to the election, the church mistakenly overlooked the daily reporting requirement and instead reported those contributions together in a later filing."

"It's just not credible that a multibillion-dollar, sophisticated organization like the LDS Church didn't know or understand the election-law requirements," said Human Rights Campaign executive director Joe Solmonese in response. The HRC is the nation's largest GLBT equality lobbying organization. "California requires early disclosure so voters know who's behind these referendum fights and, clearly, the Mormon Church worked overtime to keep their full involvement hidden from the people of California," added Solmonese.