From Rosemary Winters’ blog in the Salt Lake Tribune, LGBT FYI:
Prop 8 screenings draw standing ovations, but no LDS officials
Last night, I attended the Salt Lake City screening of “8: The Mormon Proposition,” the Sundance documentary about the LDS Church’s role in overturning gay marriage in California.
The film, as has become a trend (see video below), enjoyed an extended standing ovation from the audience. But co-director Steven Greenstreet complained that LDS Church officials still have not accepted his offer for a free ticket to see the film and discuss it.
It’s doubtful an LDS general authority or public-affairs person will turn up at one of the remaining screenings and sound off in a Q&A.
But here’s what some others had to say after the film showed at the Tower Theatre.
- Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate said he is getting ready to file a “supplemental complaint” with the California Fair Political Practices Commission alleging unreported LDS Church contributions to the Prop 8 campaign based on new evidence introduced during a federal trial going on now in San Francisco.
- “This is not a gay issue,” said former Mormon Emily Pearson, who was interviewed in the film. “It’s very important that straight people get noisy and courageous.”
- Tyler Barrick, who’s marriage to Spencer Jones is featured in the film, said he has achieved what his sisters have not: When Barrick was a child, he said, “my mom would go on and on and on about how my sisters would grow up to marry returned missionaries. And I was the first one to do it.”
- Linda Stay, Barrick’s mom, said she picked her son over her Mormon religion, and she hopes to inspire other moms to do the same. Most of all, she said, she did it for her LDS grandkids. “Some day they will know that this mom stood on the side of her kids.”
LGBT FYI is a blog about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Rosemary Winters covers politics and LGBT issues for The Salt Lake Tribune. Since joining The Tribune in 2003, she has written about small business, global warming, city governments, sexuality and Utah’s involvement in California’s Proposition 8. During the 2009 legislative session, she outed former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. — as a supporter of civil unions.