Mitt Romney, Gay Rights, and the Mormon Church

If there's one Republican already with an eye toward the 2012 Presidential race, it's Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor, and runner-up for the 2008 GOP nomination, is getting ready to release a book, getting ready to launch a tour to promote that book, and making sure that the first two stops on that tour are in -- where else? -- Iowa.

But as Romney moves to step up his profile in advance of future elections, one LGBT rights group is looking to put some pressure on Romney to help tone down the level of homophobia throughout the Mormon Church. The group, Rights Equal Rights, is hoping that Romney can use his influence as probably the most prominent (and certainly the most popular) Mormon politician to get the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) to stop waging campaigns to take rights or keep rights away from LGBT people.

"As a national political leader and influential member of the Mormon Church, Mitt Romney could persuade Church leaders to end their 15 years of active involvement, including their massive financial support, to oppose equal rights for Gay and Lesbian Americans," Rights Equal Rights writes. (Say that five times fast!)

That's certainly giving Mitt Romney an awful lot of power, especially given that he has no official leadership position within the LDS. But the effort by Rights Equal Rights is certainly warranted. As testimony during the federal trial challenging California's Proposition 8 shows, the LDS was fundamentally involved with efforts to steal marriage rights away from gays and lesbians.

In the case, otherwise known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger, documents were submitted as evidence showing that the LDS played both a coordinating role, as well as a financial role, in backing Proposition 8. They planned out their involvement so thoroughly, that the LDS actually had to have conference calls to discuss how to keep their role in passing Proposition 8 hidden, lest folks find out how intertwined the religious denomination was with bashing same-sex marriage.

Romney's certainly an interesting character when it comes to the subject of LGBT rights. Sixteen years ago, as he was running for the U.S. Senate seat in a challenge to then-Senator Ted Kennedy, Romney told gays and lesbians in Massachusetts that he would be a bigger advocate for them than the former Lion of the Senate. That's a pretty big boast (and one that came back to haunt him in the 2008 primaries, as former Arkansas governor and sodomy condemner Mike Huckabee used the line to stoke fear about Romney among religious conservatives).

Of course, Romney has also made it a point to criticize gay marriage, among other LGBT issues, in a move to try and reframe himself as a Pat Buchanan Republican. It is, after all, one of the only ways to appeal to Iowa Republicans on the night of the caucuses. (Or so it seems.)

As Rights Equal Rights points out, the Mormon Church has given tens of millions of dollars to block marriage equality in 31 states. That means that almost two-thirds of the country has seen Mormon money used to discriminate against lesbian and gay couples. Can Mitt Romney stop it? Maybe, maybe not. But it's sure as hell worth asking him to try.

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