The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) is urging the Supreme Court to uphold
the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Proposition 8, California's
2008 voter-approved gay marriage ban.
The Supreme Court will hear 2 cases in
March challenging the constitutionality of each statute.
Lawyers for the LDS Church drafted the
briefs on behalf of the National Association of Evangelicals, the
Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the
Romanian-American Evangelical Alliance of North America, Truth in
Action Ministries and the Mormon Church.
In a friend of the court brief in
support of DOMA filed last week, lawyer Von Keetch argued that the
“opposite-sex definition of marriage in the civil law is not only
constitutional but essential to the welfare of families, children and
society.”
Keetch wrote in the Proposition 8 brief
that voters “violated no one's civil rights when they adopted
Proposition 8. Their twice-expressed preference for the traditional
definition of marriage over an untested rival conception was
thoroughly rational. It is therefore thoroughly constitutional.”
The LDS Church has faced protest over
its heavy involvement in passage of Proposition 8.
(Related: “Ex-gay”
group tells Supreme Court that being gay is a choice.)