On Friday, Salt Lake City and its mayor, Ralph Becker, joined the growing list of cities nationwide to ramp up protections and rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender citizens, as the city’s ban on discrimination in the workplace and in housing for the GLBT community took effect. Voicing support for Salt Lake City’s new laws, in addition to gay-rights groups, was an unlikely organization: the Mormon Church. Indeed, the Mormon Church had pledged to support Salt Lake City’s anti-discrimination laws as early as last fall, when a church spokesman said, “The church supports these ordinances because they are fair and reasonable and do not do violence to the institution of marriage.”
The Church’s support of gay rights is anything but typical. As MoJo’s Stephanie Mencimer describes in her latest piece, “Game Changer,” the Mormon Church has consistently, secretly battled gay marriage for several decades. And though Salt Lake City’s laws have nothing to do with marriage, the Mormon Church as a gay rights ally is nonetheless startling.
Leading the effort to push back against the Mormon Church’s gay marriage opposition, Mencimer writes, is a man named Fred Karger, a wily, creative, unrelenting thorn in the Mormon Church’s side. A former TV actor and top GOP operative (remember Willie Horton? That was Fred), Karger is now taking his bag of political tricks into the gay marriage battle nationwide—and, in many ways, winning. The story of his transformation and battle against the Mormon Church is one you don’t want to miss.
