The Mormon Church’s Control of Utah Government
Last week’s public rollout of the anti-Prop 2 (medical cannabis) non-compromise “compromise” was compelling theater. Like Mufasa in the Lion King, House Speaker Greg Hughes emerged from secret talks with the Mormon Church’s lobbyist, climbed Utah’s Pride Rock (the Capitol’s Gold Room), lifted the work product of the four Mormon men* to the sky, proclaimed it an historic “compromise,” and all the legislative animals cheered. However, because none of the legislators had yet read the bill, they had no idea whether Hughes held a baby lion or a baboon. But, they cheered wildly. All hail another “Utah Compromise”!
Question: Why would typically-independent legislators cheer the product of the secret talks—without reading it or openly discussing it among themselves or with patients, initiative sponsors, or constituents? Answer: Because the Mormon Church wanted them to.
This would never happen on any issue that the Mormon Church was not controlling. If 1 legislator and 3 others exited secretive meetings directly into the Gold Room, having never shared their work product with the public and other legislators, and announced that their “compromise” would be passed, other legislators would react with outright laughter or anger. The arrogance of such posturing would be unthinkable—except in one case: when the Mormon Church is controlling the issue. Then, it is understood.
Until two months previous, the Mormon Church had opposed medical cannabis, assuring its defeat in the Utah Legislature. However, an election was approaching, the people of Utah had bypassed the Church and its Legislature to put the issue directly to the people in a citizens initiative, and polling data showed that Prop 2 would pass. Because everyone involved in the medical cannabis issue knew that the Church had controlled the issue at the Legislature, the Church regarded the impending passage of Prop 2 as a challenge to its dominant political position in its home state. So, the Mormon Church started interfering with the election.
Two months before the November election, the Church abruptly changed its tune on medical cannabis. It suddenly supported medical cannabis, but in a way that Prop 2 needed to fail. On script, legislators—and the assembled political power structure of Utah—changed their tune. En masse, legislators, too, suddenly supported medical cannabis, but in a way that Prop 2 needed to fail. There had been no open meetings or compelling change in fact (other than polling data). Suddenly, after 5 years of refusing to even entertain the issue, the hive mind had moved. A solution had to be hurriedly found (before the people passed Prop 2).
The Church assembled 3 Mormon men*—lame duck House Speaker Greg Hughes and Connor Boyack and DJ Schanz, the two directors of a marginally relevant libertarian group Libertas—to meet in secret to craft a “compromise” that would be revealed before ballots were mailed to voters. The stated point of the exercise was to help the Mormon Church save face before the election.
Without including a single patient in the talks or soliciting any public input, the 4 men hurriedly worked to create something. It had to be rushed, as ballots were to be mailed to voters in a month. Just 4 days before the ballots were mailed, they emerged to the television lights in the Gold Room to announce their “compromise.” [Tomorrow, I will write how no other legislator is actually bound or feels bound by the “compromise,” but—so far—no Republican legislator or legislative candidate has said so publicly. It is better to be assumed on the October Surprise train than end up under the train.]
The closest parallel I can think of to this anti-Prop 2 circus is the circus I was involved in with the Mormon Church when I passed non-discrimination legislation to protect sexual orientation and gender identity in housing and employment in 2015. Realizing that Republican sponsorship was necessary, I picked up the bill in 2013. As things stood at that time, because of the Mormon Church’s opposition, it was never going to pass. The Church would not even allow the bill to have a committee hearing in 2014. To pass the bill, I needed to move one entity: the Mormon Church. If I did that, elected officials would follow suit without asking any questions.
Before the 2015 general session, reporters from national newspapers and magazines called to ask if the non-discrimination bill would pass. I told them that they were talking to the wrong person. I—and the other 103 elected legislators—had no control over the issue. I then would give the reporters the phone number for the Mormon Church’s lobbyist and tell them to ask him. The Mormon Church controlled the issue 100%.
Soon after I started openly sharing the political reality of the situation, the Church announced that the Utah Legislature should pass non-discrimination legislation to protect sexual orientation and gender identity in housing and employment. The Church changed its position and, abruptly, legislators who—literally—would have taken a bullet the day before the Church’s announcement rather than vote for the non-discrimination legislation were elbowing each other out of the way for prime camera-mugging spots at the signing ceremony a few weeks later.
All my negotiations were with the Mormon Church, not other legislators. (The significant difference from the medical cannabis circus is that I refused to agree to secrecy and exclude the public that this affected). The Church first fought to pass hollow words on paper, just to release political pressure without, you know, providing actual protection. It wanted to put sexual orientation and gender identity protections in a separate section of the code, with questionable language (i.e., like it is doing with medical cannabis, by insisting on terminology that no other state uses to actually dispense cannabis to patients). I said, “No deal.” What the Church did to my LGBTQ+ community, it would have to do to the NAACP, Anti-Defamation League, and other organizations that had been around longer and had more firepower. Finally, the Church relented, insisting that it and the Boy Scouts be allowed to discriminate, and we passed the bill.
“You, of all people,” I often hear, “are so ungrateful. You would have never passed your bill had the Church not weighed in.” I am not often speechless in life. I still have no response to that one. I am working on euphemizing something along the lines of: “No shit. Do you not understand that you just described a theocracy? You don’t have a problem with that?”
I love the Mormon Church. It raised me and my kids. But, I also love democracy. I do not like the Church’s control of Utah government. It is wrong and bad.
Any opposition to the Church’s excesses and flaws is, of course, branded as apostasy. But, that is simply a way to shut down necessary discussions. The Mormon Church’s control of the Utah Legislature is bad for Utah democracy and for Utah itself. (I’d say it is bad for the Church itself, but they haven’t asked me).
James Madison’s design of American democracy is genius. Rather than blow up on the streets, our divisions and warring passions wage war in our legislative bodies. There, through open deliberation and balancing, we find peace and unity as a people. The solutions are not elegant, but they are workable. Where that process does not honestly take place as intended, where outcomes are controlled by whispers and secret meetings, such as the Utah Legislature’s handling of issues affecting alcohol, LGBTQ+ rights, and—in this case—medical cannabis, the healing process of Madisonian democracy does not occur. Instead, division is sown between those who dishonestly control the process and those who are controlled by the dishonest process. In Utah, the Mormon Church’s control of the Utah Legislature sows the seeds of the very division that it often professes to bare the brunt of in its home state.
If the Mormon Church wants a greater peace between itself and others in Utah, it should not attempt to orchestrate a fake “peace” 4 days before ballots are mailed. Rather, it should carefully consider its political participation and, when it believes it must participate, it should work hard to openly walk through the front doors of the State Capitol. Though it is true that the Mormon Church can’t help that it is the 600-pound gorilla in Utah politics, it can work to control the damage it does as it moves among the more fragile beings that are actually elected to enact laws.
The anti-Prop 2 “compromise” is theater intended to weaken patients’ standing before lawmakers. It is words on paper that no one is bound to follow. For Utah patients to actually receive medical cannabis, voters need to pass Prop 2. Power to the people.
*Though the four men have attempted to say that Michele McOmber of the Utah Medical Association also was present, she was excluded from the majority of the men’s meetings.
Read more coverage on Prop 2 in the by the Utah Bee in the links above and here, here, here, here, and here.
The Utah Bee seeks to share both sides of a debate. If anyone who opposes Proposition 2 wants to submit a piece with their views, we will gladly accept it.