The Daily Beast's Samantha Allen, who grew up Mormon, took to her keyboard today to blast the Church of Latter-Day Saints for their "gay rights charade."
From the get-go Ms. Allen made clear she had no pretense of being objective or fair-minded about the church:
Here’s a simple algebra equation to describe what it’s like to grow up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Take the year, subtract 20, and that’s the year it really is inside the Mormon gerontocracy.
Ah, yes, the Left's favorite puerile "It's [fill-in-the-blank-with-the-year], you can't possibly still be opposed to [fill-in-the-blank policy issue]" argument. Allen continued:
When I was a child, I was told that black people couldn’t hold leadership positions until 1978 because it “just wasn’t their time yet.” To explain their opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, my parents cited some paranoid logic about unisex bathrooms. I had left my family’s faith by the time church members were supporting California’s Proposition 8 to the tune of $20 million, but I still remember some ominous rumblings about the specter of legally mandated same-sex weddings being held in Mormon chapels. The horror.
So when I learned yesterday that the Mormon Church is now provisionally supporting some LGBT legal protections, I closed my eyes, counted backward to 1995 and watched the press conference.
Of course, she was not pleased seeing as the LDS won't be changing core doctrines on human sexuality and marriage (emphasis mine):
Let’s start with what the announcement is not. Mormon Apostle D. Todd Christofferson made it perfectly clear from the beginning: “We are announcing no change in doctrine and church teachings today.”
The Mormon Church is still firm in its opposition to same-sex marriage, they are still targeting Mormon dissident and same-sex marriage supporter John Dehlin with excommunication, and they still require their gay, lesbian, and bisexual members—or, in their parlance, members who “struggle with same-sex attraction”—to refrain from all forms of same-sex sexual intimacy. The church’s measured support of non-discrimination ordinances is by no means a step forward in terms of LGBT inclusion within the faith itself.
[...]
These recurring disclaimers about religious freedom reveal this announcement for what it really is: a craven bid to hang on to as much power as possible before full LGBT equality becomes a political and cultural reality. Now that the Mormon Church seems more or less resigned to the impending probability of nationwide same-sex marriage, this renewed focus on discrimination under the guise of religious freedom is the only thing they have left and by God, Jesus, and Joseph Smith, are they going to white-knuckle it.
In fact, this move is exactly the sort of bait-and-switch I learned as a Mormon child: Pledge basic support for the humane treatment of the marginalized while supporting their exclusion through every other means possible.
[...]
Coming from the Mormon Church, a half-hearted and conditional support for LGBT rights isn’t just too little, too late—it’s business as usual. Trading shelter and employment for the right to discriminate on religious grounds is a devil’s bargain coming from men who believe they speak for God. This isn’t a “fairness for all” approach—it’s a mean older sibling drawing a chalk line down the middle of the room. And what we’re witnessing now is not a slow step forward but rather Mormon bigotry in its death throes, as the church tries in vain to ride the legal coattails of the very people they have been putting down for so long.
