You seem to be drawing an equivalence between “calling adulterers to repentance” and Mormons’ scandalous donations to Prop 8. What Mormons did when they raised $20 mil to revoke gays’ civil rights was not calling them to repentance. That was an act of hatred, of persecution, which is evil.

My point is this: When Mormons raise $20 million to revoke the civil rights of adulterers, we’ll believe their claims that they’re acting on biblical morality.That will never happen, of course, because Mormons and Christians don’t care if adulterers work as teachers or that adulterers have the right to remarry and adopt children. And this is despite the fact that adultery is the real threat to “traditional” marriage, that adultery often leads to divorce, which causes single-parent homes, poverty and other social ills — not to mention the fact that adultery is a much bigger sin.

This proves that Mormons target gays because of personal bigotry, not morality. Of course, Mormons have a right to be ignorant and hateful — what they don’t have the right to do is write their bigotry and hatred — or even their morality — into civil law. The United States is not a theocracy, despite what Mormons may wish.

The church should have revealed the $200k it spent on Prop 8 much earlier. Not doing so was deceptive — yes, a lie. But mainly it should not have spent the money meddling in California politics. Whatever you may believe about this, here is an irrefutable fact: The $20.2 million that Mormons spent on the Prop 8 hate campaign would have been better spent feeding the starving and housing the homeless.

The Mormon Church, which was once persecuted, has become the persecutors. They have appointed themselves as judge and jury and are casting judgments about the morality of others. That is a heinous sin that makes Mormons just as hellbound as the rest of us, if not moreso.

What the church did last year was despicable. It deserves nothing less than to have it’s tax exempt status pulled. The United States could use the taxes it should pay on its $14 billion empire. In fact, the most effective way to bring down a hate group is to send the IRS after them. This is how the Southern Law and Poverty Center disrupted the Klan a few years ago. Mormons should bear this in mind if they continue to join forces with hate groups and fundamentalist extremists.

This is such a lie. The Mormon Church NEVER admitted illegally unreported Prop 8 expenditures because there was NO illegal unreported expenditures.

You are the liar!

It’s a shame that these writers can spew their deliberately misinformed writings and get away with it.

I’ll stand by the article. It’s your spin in the above response that is ridiculous and skewed.

1. The church failed to report these expenditures in earlier documents and had denied any involvement that would have threatened its nonprofit status, as this high-leveling meddling surely did. I read their excuse-making on Belief Net, and found it unconvincing — lies compounding lies. So much sinning in the Mormon upper ranks! For shame.

2. This author understands the position of Christians and Mormons who opposed Prop 8 very well. Their positions are pure hypocrisy and are based solely on homophobia and have nothing whatever to do with morality. Christians and Mormons persecute gays based on selective reading of obscure references in the Bible, including the one in Leviticus. Conversely, Christians and Mormons do not persecute adulterers, even though adultery is condemned throughout the Bible, especially in the Ten Commandments, which do not mention being gay at all.

When Christians and Mormons raise hundreds of millions of dollars to change our civil laws to prevent adulterers from marrying or to make it legal to fire or evict adulterers because of the status as sinners, we’ll start to believe their anti-gay stands are sincerely based on Scripture. Until then, logic tells us that this entire controversy is based on personal prejudice in the guise of morality.

3. This is an opinion column, not reporting, and, yes, I am biased against bigotry. Proudly so.

If you’re going to smear something written here as a lie, you need to offer the truth, with sourcing, in counterpoint. Until then, we’ll assume you’re a shill for the church and its $14 billion tax-free empire trying to muddy the waters about Mormon malfeasance.

2. The author makes not attempt to understand Christianity’s view of sin or more particular, why Mormons opposed Proposition 8. To make references to Leviticus as the reason that Mormons oppose Prop 8 shows a lack of understanding.

3. The article is ridiculously biased. Rarely is journalism so skewed or so poorly researched.

Ummm…OK, so you WANT the Mormon Church to be involved in politics? I thought that was what the gay community was upset about. Apparently, it’s quite OK to be involved on your side of an issue. Just don’t dare to disagree with you.

All this commotion about the Mormon Church’s contributions to Prop 8 is a bunch of one-sided nonsense. If they had donated to No on 8, you wouldn’t hear a peep.