Mormons and Marriage: A little overzealous, no?

Seeing as how I grew up in the Mormon church, I still have contact with many of the people I knew there through Facebook and I'm seeing it pop up everywhere - people joining no on Prop 8 groups; plastering no on Prop 8 banners in place of their profile photos. Every house I pass by that has a Yes on Prop 8 banner in front of it is assumed to be under the influence of Mormon culture. These are the people I am writing this blog to: please - don't hate people because they aren't like you; don't vote on a discriminatory measure because you think you are doing something good for your church. It will hurt no one for same-sex marriage to be upheld in California (it's been legal for almost 6 months now - has the apocalypse come? NO!), but if this proposition is passed, then discrimination, hate, and oppression will prevail; and isn't that counter to what the Mormon church teaches about treating others kindly and God giving us all free agency to choose?

I went to my parents' house the other day and my mom had a stack of leaflets about why people should vote yes of Prop 8. When I inquired as to where they had picked up all this stuff (because I thought it was church policy to not tell people how they should vote on a political issue - especially on church property). My dad told me that they handed all the propoganda out on the street just outside of the church property. How dispicable of it was of whomever decided to hand these out to the ward members - pushing politics at church is just something that rubs me the wrong way. And so now, I think, the notion among Mormon people is that they are required to blindly vote yes on this proposition because it somehow will be detrimential to their own view on traditional family.I've browsed many of the websites, both for and against this proposition (especially the ones with LDS viewpoints) and I know without a doubt that even if I were still active in the church, I would still choose to vote against Proposition 8. This is not about protecting the institution of marriage - NOTHING about marriage will change if same-sex couples continue to marry in California. This proposition is only about excluding people to a civil right and I can't stand up for a cause like that. I believe, and always have believed, that all people should be afforded equal rights: first it was women, then it was blacks, and now it is time for the GLBT community.

I would encourage those who are planning to vote Yes on Prop 8 to read some of the reasons why others are voting no (including those LDS members of your own church). And then ask yourself if you want to be an oppressor of civil rights. I found these websites to be straight forward and respectful of the issues at hand:

http://mormonsformarriage.com/

http://www.lds4gaymarriage.org/