“THUMB DOWN: Marriage vows » The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thrust itself into the Proposition 8 campaign in California in 2008, which denied marriage to gays, then was shocked at the magnitude and vitriol of the reprisals. Protesters launched boycotts and picketed temples. When two gay men kissed on the church’s Main Street Plaza in 2009 and were cited for trespass at the behest of church security officers, the controversy reignited locally. Apostle Dallin Oaks then fanned the flames with ill-chosen words, comparing persecutions of LDS defenders of traditional marriage to those suffered by civil rights activists in the Jim Crow South. But the church extended an olive branch at year’s end, supporting ordinances in Salt Lake City that protect LGBT people from job and housing discrimination.”
— The Salt Lake Tribune, the largest-circulated daily newspaper in Salt Lake City, Utah, from Thumbing ’09: Another year of ups, downs
