The Packer Protest
Well folks, the Mormons have done it again. Every six months they broadcast a two-day conference during which the LDS Church leadership addresses the membership. Not surprisingly, due to the furor surrounding the Church's involvement in California's Proposition 8, one of The Brethren (as the leaders are fondly referred to) brought up the subject of gay marriage.
It wasn't just any old guy, though. It was Boyd K. Packer, and though you may not know the name, you should know just what kind of clout this man has in LDS circles. Boyd K. Packer is next in line to assume the Church presidency. Basically, if the current president, Thomas S. Monson, dies before Packer does, Packer becomes the new Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This isn't just some guy from the photo lab, this is an important man in the LDS hierarchy.
And historically, he's not a tolerant man. Back in '77 he gave a speech to BYU students instructing them to plan to marry within their own race. Interracial marriages, he said, were rarely successful.
And well, he's been at it again. You can read or listen to his talk at http://lds.org/conference/sessions/display/0,5239,23-1-1298,00.html, under the Sunday Morning Session (but be aware that the text version that has been loaded up is slightly less inflammatory than what was said over the pulpit). Here's the gist of it: Voting on gay marriage won't make it right. All homosexual activity is wrong, and the reason people are gay is because Satan is impotent and he wants to make everyone like him. No, seriously. He said that.
Now, the man has a right to shove his head just as far up his ass as he pleases. He can get up there and spew hate speech for as long as he wants, and nobody is challenging his right to do that. But his actions have consequences, and so Pride in Utah organized a protest to remind The Brethren just how severe these consequences can be. Gay Mormon kids hear talks like Elder Packer's and they kill themselves. It happens all the time. When I was at BYU, a teenaged boy jumped out a dorm room window because of exactly this kind of rhetoric.
So that's the point of this protest. We all dressed in black and surrounded the six blocks in downtown Salt Lake that comprise Temple Square, and laid our little selves down on the sidewalk.
I showed up at the protest a half hour early, and still had to park two blocks away. The place was packed. How many people actually showed up is under dispute. The guys from Pride in Utah who were walking around the square counting us put the estimate at 4,500. The police who were assisting with street crossings and maintaining order estimated over a thousand. KSL, the Mormon-owned radio station, puts the number at 600. This much I can tell you: The counter-protest that the police were worried about consisted of two people with root beer bottles who would only discuss the evils of drinking, and refused to address gay rights.
This is Frank. Everybody needs a Frank, and thankfully, there's A LOT of Frank to go around. He's one of those annoying guys who can barely hold a conversation because everywhere he goes, he's constantly being interrupted by people running up to give him hugs. Yeah. I freakin' love Frank.
If you're up on your Mormon history, this sign is hilarious. The picture there is Brigham Young, the man with a thousand wives. Okay, maybe not a thousand. The actual number is hard to pin down exactly, but fifty-five is pretty accepted, and I've heard the count go as high as fifty-seven. The lesbian ladies around here are fond of saying, "Brigham had fifty-five wives . . . I only want one!"
We love our polygamy references, because they're a reminder that the people who are calling the LGBTQ community a perversion actually had war declared on them by the United States government because of the perversion of polygamy. My, how the tables have turned.
I know. Utah and Progressive . . . two words not often seen in the same sentence. There are a few of us, honestly. I mean up to 4500 that made it to the protest, right?
The building back behind us is the Church Office Building. It's in the section of the city owned by the Church, and is therefore one of the buildings that we surrounded. My brother works there. He says cell phone service really sucks inside the building.
I never really got a good picture of it.
The mingling before the protest started was fantastic. I just love Salt Lake's counter-culture. It's a fun, vibrant, interesting group of people.
Closets are for clothes. See, that's the LDS Church's policy, basically. Stay in the closet. Don't tell anyone other than your Church leaders about your unholy desires, and oh yeah, stay celibate.
This is a nice thought, but what I didn't tell this particular protester is that the LDS version of this scripture reads much, much differently. The Joseph Smith Translation of Matthew 7:2 reads:
"Now these are the words which Jesus taught his disciples that they should say unto the people. Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged: but judge righteous judgment."
And since righteousness is disputable, well, that scripture can pretty much be used to justify anybody for judging anyone else. Sorry, sweetheart, but this sign won't really sway the savvy Mormon.
I wore my black for the student who killed himself while I was at BYU. I wonder how many of these people had someone particular in mind when they dressed in black. There were three reports of gay teenagers in Utah who killed themselves in September. As of this protest, there was already one in October.
This is the view from the sidewalk next to Temple Square where I was lying. This is a high-traffic area. Many of the people who walked by were protesters getting into position--and oh my, that took quite a while to arrange--but many of them weren't. There were a lot of people who were wondering what the hell we were doing--and we were all too happy to explain it to them.
Still on the ground, with our protesters walking by. We lay down head-to-toe, and we were two and three layers strong around the six blocks of Church-owned property.
There's me! And the pretty one is my boyfriend Warren. We're lying on the sidewalk, being cold, whiling away our silent protest.
This is my absolute favorite sign I saw all night. Maybe you have to have been LDS to really love it, but it just tickles me seven different shades of pink.
This is a particularly unflattering comparison. Do you know who Reverend Phelps is? No? Me neither, I had to Google him. He's a disbarred lawyer who has been banned from entering the UK. Why? Because he's an asshole. He founded the Westboro Baptists, which is a hate group parading as a church. They're truly horrifying people, and let me be clear: they don't just hate the queers. Oh no, if you are not the picture of American White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, the Westboro Baptists hate you. And if you associate with people who aren't American WASP, they hate you for that too.
Someone came around handing out business cards while we were lying on the sidewalk, which got us snickering about how the LDS missionaries were missing a golden opportunity. Here we were, a captive audience around their Mecca. They should have been trying to convert us.
Then didn't. That was probably good. Gay Utah boys tend to have an itch for missionaries, and you never know how many of the missionaries would have been felt up.
Still lying on the ground. Across the street, on the other side of the light rail, is the Crossroads Mall. I used to see Brian David Mitchell at that station, wearing burlap and walking with a stick, his eyes half-closed, his hand held out to accept offerings. This was before he kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, and therefore, before anyone really knew who he was. Back then we called him The Jesus Guy. One of my friends from BYU harassed him once, and earned himself a smack across the head with The Jesus Stick.
The words at the bottom say, "Think about your life. Think about your choices."
And let's finish this off by calling Packer a dinosaur. That sounds appropriate, doesn't it? I thought so.
Anyway, thanks for joining me on my little political rant. Have a delightful day!
