This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 1996, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Rallied by a call to action from their church, many Latter-day Saints are playing prominent roles in the political war against same-gender marriages in Hawaii.
The question of whether gays and lesbians can marry legally is scheduled to go before a Hawaiian court this September. Meanwhile, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have led efforts aimed at preventing the Hawaii Legislature from validating homosexual wedlock.
Retired Salt Lake City advertising executive Arthur Anderson was enlisted into the fight last November with a phone call from Mormon Elder Loren C. Dunn, president of the church's North America West Area.
At Dunn's behest, Anderson and his wife embarked on months of volunteer work in Honolulu, mostly answering phones for Hawaii's Future Today, a group set up to lobby against legislative attempts at legalizing gay wedlock, gambling and prostitution.
Now returned home, Anderson said he is glad for his chance to serve. Gay and lesbian marriages ``are really destructive to the social order,'' he said.
According to a statement from the Mormon Church's Salt Lake City headquarters, church members such as Anderson are responding to a plea by the ruling First Presidency to get involved as citizens. LDS Church cooperation with Hawaii's Future Today, the statement said, comes in conjunction with Catholic leaders, as part of a duty by church officials to be involved on issues affecting traditional values.
``The Church is indeed, politically neutral when it comes to parties and candidates and most issues,'' said the LDS statement. ``However, when a political issue has moral overtones, the Church has not only the right but the responsibility to speak out and become involved.''
Some Hawaiians deeply resent what they see as interference from powerful outside influences in a local issue.
James Cartwright, a Honolulu-based member of Affirmation, an advocacy group for gay Mormons, called it an example of ``individual bigotry that hides behind institutional skirts.''
``This is not an issue of marriage,'' said Cartwright, born and raised in Draper before becoming a faculty librarian at the University of Hawaii. Those involved in Hawaii's Future Today, he said, ``are not opposed to gay and lesbian marriages, but to gay and lesbian human rights.''
In February 1994, the LDS First Presidency issued a call to the faithful to oppose legalization of same-sex marriages, urging them to ``appeal to legislators, judges and other officials to preserve the purposes and sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.''
The plea reflects deeply held church beliefs.
Homosexual behavior is part of a Satanic strategy to divert humans from God's plans, according to a lengthy Oct. 1995 article on same-sex attraction published in the church magazine Ensign, written by Elder Dallin H. Oaks, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Though such public forays into politics by the Mormon Church are rare, there are precedents. Notable examples include church opposition to the siting of MX missiles on Utah soil in the 1970s; fighting passage of an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and, more recently, a campaign against a 1992 initiative to legalize betting on horse races in Utah.
Hawaii's Future Today grew out of fears the politically liberal state would be the first to sanction gay marriages. Begun through a dialogue between leaders of the Mormon and Catholic churches, the group now has some 2,000 members, organization treasurer George P. Shea, Jr. said in an interview from Honolulu.
And to hear Shea and others tell it, the movement sprang from actions by individuals, rather than edicts from top ecclesiastical leaders.
Still, several of the lobbying group's organizers are prominent Hawaiian Mormons.
Group co-chairwoman Debbie Hartman works at the church-run Brigham Young University-Hawaii campus. Another co-chairman is Jack Hoag, chief executive officer of Hawaiian Reserves Incorporated, an LDS Church-owned company that manages commercial acreage surrounding the church's Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu's North Shore.
While playing down any direct links between his group and the Mormon Church, Hoag acknowledges that ``we've had a lot of encouragement from church leaders. There's no question that doctrinally, we're tuned into the church's feelings.''
The movement began quietly.
Pamphlets circulated at select Mormon Church meetings throughout the Pacific islands, urging members to support anti-gay marriage legislation pending in the Hawaii Legislature. Key statements were faxed to legislative committees, from LDS Church facilities.
Meanwhile, in Utah, the church's proclamation prompted state legislators, 80% of whom are Mormon, to vote in 1995 in favor of a law that purports to free Utah from having to recognize same-sex marriages that might be performed in other states.
Drafted by BYU law professor Lynn Wardle in Provo, the bill passed with little opposition, making it the first law of its kind in the country. Other states now are crafting similar laws, hoping to carve gay-marriage exemptions to the U.S. Constitution's ``full faith and credit clause,'' which requires states to honor each other's laws and decrees, including marriages.
Just as Utah passed its law, leaders of the Mormon Church sought to inject themselves directly into the Hawaii controversy, petitioning unsuccessfully to join the same-sex marriage lawsuit before the Hawaii Supreme Court.
``There are times when certain moral issues become so compelling that churches have a duty to make their feelings known,'' Donald Hallstrom, the LDS Church's regional representative in Hawaii, said at the time.
The state high court denied the request and later ordered the issue of same-sex marriages be put to trial. That, in turn, sparked attempts in the state Legislature to short-circuit a possible ruling in favor of such marriages with a constitutional amendment.
Moves to allow gambling in Hawaii -- the only state other than Utah to forbid all gaming -- and a call for legal prostitution in the Waikiki area died early in the part-time Legislature, allowing the lobby group to focus exclusively on gay marriage.
Hawaii's Future Today moved from citizen rallies and distributing leaflets to a full-blown lobbying campaign early in the year, around the same time LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley visited Hawaii in February 1996, welcomed by massive crowds of well-wishers.
On the visit, Hinckley huddled with Honolulu Catholic Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, devoting part of their discussions to the same-sex marriage campaign. Efforts by Hawaii's Future Today stepped up a few weeks later, culminating in a TV, radio and newspaper advertising blitz during April and May.
According to reports filed with the Hawaiian Ethics Commission, money for a total of $37,712 in lobbying expenditures by the group since Jan. 1, 1996, has come from small individual donations from Hawaiians.
Twenty-two donations, ranging from $25 to $100 apiece, were made by residents of Laie, a community near the LDS Church-owned Polynesian Cultural Center that is home to more than 5,000 residents, most of whom are directly or indirectly employed by the church.
About $25,000 went to advertising, and surveys indicate the ads had their effect. Roughly 70% of Hawaiians oppose same-sex marriages today, polls indicate, compared with a little more than half of state residents before the advertising campaign began.
Some allege that the $37,712 represents a small portion of what Hawaii's Future Today actually has spent.
William E. Woods, spokesman for the Honolulu-based Gay and Lesbian Education and Advocacy Foundation, called the group's state spending reports ``totally false.'' He claims the Mormon Church has pumped substantially more money than it has reported into backing the state constitutional amendment to make same-gender marriages illegal.
Woods lodged formal charges to that effect with Hawaiian Ethics Commission in late April, but little state action has been taken. The gay activist also alleges that one $1,870 donation to Hawaii's Future Today, listed as coming from Hana Pono Organization, is a front for direct financial aid from one or more LDS wards in Hawaii.
But Shea, the group's treasurer, said the reports are accurate. And group co-chairman Hoag said that in addition to contributions from ``Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Buddhists,'' there have been many donations from members of Hawaii's business community, incensed about possible damage to commerce should the state recognize gay wedlock.
The constitutional amendment, which would have enshrined male-female unions as the only legal marriages, remained bottled up in a Senate committee -- until the last night of the Legislature. It then was defeated April 29 by a 15-10 vote on the Senate floor.
Gay activists hailed the vote as a victory, while members of Hawaii's Future Today are vowing to hold the amendment's opponents accountable in state Senate elections this fall.
Meanwhile, all sides expect a protracted court battle, culminating in a revisit of the issue by the Hawaiian Supreme Court.
``This,'' said Shea, ``was just the first dance.''