I just watched a documentary on Prop 8. It is amazing to me how secretive and snake-like the church works to further their goals. Then again, it's not THAT big of a surprise.

How they would use code words in their broadcasts to make allusions to temple covenants, basically telling mormon masses to "activate" those covenants, else risk the price of eternal damnation without having to say it directly.

How they would lie about their donations and use their tax-exempt status to hide their contributions from the world. How they secretly devised to start a coalition years before in preparation for the California battle, containing all the various strategies they'd use to disguise themselves behind the curtain and avoid any association with the efforts "at all costs."

Their flagrant use of misleading propaganda to thwart their enemies. Their strategic placement of "role players" to foster a public image with which they could hide behind while pulling the strings.

I don't know why, but I find it unsettling but extremely accurate of the kind of institution I thought the church really was like once I left the church, and what I felt the early church was like with Joseph Smith leading the pack. Honest, chaste, benevolent, and good-willed on the surface, but something quite not right, and rather dark and unsettling beneath it all.

The church is still as secretive today as it was back then, from polygamy to political campaigns. It tells me to never believe the church is out of the "divide and conquer" business.

Is it paranoid to think that one day the church could really rear its head and ask the members to do some really questionable things? Even more so then what it already has done?

They mobilized against the Equal Rights Amendment in the late 70s. Same marginalization strategies as always, just a different target group. And a whole whole lot more money.

I still think of the family in California that dumped the kids' college money into the campaign. If they are that brilliant, the college money probably would have been wasted anyway . . .

Selected "members" have always been willing to be "tools" of the patriarchs who hide behind enough human shields/shills that they will never be caught. Read John D. Lee's autobiography online and you will see what members were willing to do in the good old days. The Mountain Meadows Massacre didn't happen by itself.

One difference: the backlash against the corporation because of Prop Hate has some real force. The internet levels the playing field quite nicely.