The anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil-rights movement, a high-ranking Mormon said in a speech delivered Tuesday.
Elder Dallin Oaks referred to gay marriage as an “alleged civil right” in remarks at Brigham Young University-Idaho, a speech church officials describe as a significant commentary on current threats to religious freedom.
Oaks suggests that atheists and others are seeking to intimidate people of faith and silence their voices in the public square.
“The extent and nature of religious devotion in this nation is changing,” said Oaks, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a church governing body. “The tide of public opinion in favor of religion is receding, and this probably portends public pressures for laws that will impinge on religious freedom.”
Oaks’ address comes as gay-rights activists mount a legal challenge to Proposition 8, the ballot measure that overturned gay marriage in California. His comments about civil rights are likely to anger gay-rights activists who consider the struggle to enact same-sex marriage laws as a major civil-rights cause.
In an interview Monday before the speech, Oaks said he did not consider it provocative to compare the treatment of Mormons in the election’s aftermath to that of blacks in the civil- rights era.
“It may be offensive to some — maybe because it hadn’t occurred to them that they were putting themselves in the same category as people we deplore from that bygone era,” he said.
Some of the most pointed comments in Oaks’ address focused on Proposition 8. Oaks said that while “aggressive intimidation” connected to Proposition 8 was primarily directed at religious people and symbols, “it was not anti-religious as such.”
“As such, these incidents of ‘violence and intimidation’ are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic,” he said.
