A decade from now, same-sex marriage will likely be the law in a majority of states. Given the domino effect of legislatures embracing a cause that has successfully claimed the mantle of equality, coupled with…
One fascinating development in the Proposition 8 debate in California was the extent to which secular arguments-involving legal, political, and sociological claims-came to take center stage, even in announcements from the Church itself. The Church’s…
The hard-fought campaign over Proposition 8, which in November 2008 rescinded the legal right to marriage for same-sex couples in California, is evidence of an important political success for religious conservative political groups who support…
Dialogue 42.4 (Winter 2009): 106–141
After Prop 22 passed, it was overturned by the courts as a violation of the equal protection clause of the CA constitution. Opponents of same-sex marriage devised a new proposition to amenda the CA constitution to ban same-sex marriage and the LDS church announced its public support and activism for the measure in the summer of 2008 before the november election. It was a deeply contentious issue bringing national attention to the church whose members provided the bulk of the funding for its passage, nearly $40m. The issue was a breaking point for many in the church and the above roundtable attempts to offer a variety of legal and religious arguments for and against the measure.
Prince: You have been involved in Guantanamo for some time, and recently one of your cases was in the headlines. Give us the background of the ongoing legal battles there, and then tell us of your involvement in them.
Rushforth: The process that is now unfolding in Guantanamo grew out of our panicked response to 9/11. A friend of mine, a lawyer in Washington, very shortly after 9/11—within a year or so—had gone to Guantanamo to represent a prisoner there.
Latter-day Saints made their first known cinematic appearance in 1898 in Salt Lake City Company of Rocky Mountain Riders, part of a series of very short motion pictures depicting American troops in the Spanish-American War. Since then thousands of films and television programs have dealt with Mormonism; at present the Mormon Literature and Creative Arts database lists 4,591 such items.
I first entered the Longfellow Park chapel on September 4, 1977. It was fast Sunday. I was a new physics grad student at MIT and a convert, baptized only about six months previously. This pair…
In 1967 when I was eight years old, my family moved from Salt Lake to Cambridge. The building on Longfellow Park quickly became a symbol for what I had brought with me from Utah: a…
So many memories! It would take a book to record them all.
I was there from 1976 to 1983 and returned many times, including a three-and-a-half month visit in 1997.
The Longfellow Park building was as quirky and original as its congregants. I hope the church will use this fire as an opportunity to build a more orthodox, rectangular, “Mormon” building in Cambridge and hopefully…