Mormon Church Under Investigation For Prop 8: May Have Violated Full-Disclosure Law

McClatchy:

The Mormon church has revealed in a campaign filing that the church spent nearly $190,000 to help pass Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California.

The disclosure comes amid an investigation by the state's campaign watchdog agency into whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints violated state laws by not fully disclosing its involvement during the campaign.

Read the whole story: McClatchy

Comments

[aorist27]

Here’s probably what happened: Amid the controversy of the initial “reporting” of some $2K of official support by the Church on the Yes of Prop 8 campaign, Church officials probably felt it would be best to hold off a complete and accurate report of spendings until it was absolutely necessary (i.e., until just before the 1/31 deadline) in hopes that the surprisingly stiff amount of bad publicity the Church faced just following the results of the vote would have subsumed. But, the question, it seems, is really about the integrity of this word “lie.” It seems to me that most members of the Church would agree that withholding the full truth is the same as lying; thus, it appears that this is not an inappropriate use of the word. Moreover, the whole of this affair mirrors a common tendency in the political doings of a Church very much consumed with maintaining the PR of its facade over that which is intuitively right. (See: www.devanhite.com)

[ThirdSection]

Hmmmm, a tax-exempt religious group using its money to influence elections? Why I've never...