Demos find LDS silent on issues

Democratic state legislative leaders came out of their annual luncheon with LDS Church leaders this week with "really great feelings" personally, but little further enlightenment on church leaders' stands on specific issues to be dealt with in the 2009 Legislature, which starts in two weeks.

House Minority Leader David Litvack, and Caucus Manager Jen Seelig, both D-Salt Lake, and Senate Minority Leader Pat Jones, D-Holladay, said the Democrats did discuss three issues — immigration, liquor control and gay rights — brought up by members of the Special Affairs Committee of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"It was a general discussion of issues," said Litvack.

Around 80 percent of the 104-member, part-time Legislature is LDS. And public stands by church leaders are carefully watched by lawmakers and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who is also LDS.

Seelig and Jones said church leaders did not elaborate on previous public statements on alcohol control, other than to reiterate that they consider it a moral issue.

Huntsman has already run into opposition from GOP senators over his idea of doing away with private club membership fees, which would in effect allow liquor-by-the-drink in Utah.

LDS leaders "are concerned about drinking and driving, underage drinking, and over-consumption," said Seelig. How Huntsman's liquor reform effort plays into those concerns remains to be seen.

Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, one of three openly gay members of the Legislature, has said previously that he hoped that his Democratic leaders would take the annual luncheon as an opportunity to ask LDS Church leaders if they would support an effort he and other lawmakers are making concerning rights of gay couples in Utah.

While that issue was discussed, the three Democratic leaders said, church officials were careful to say they would take no public stands on bills before they were written and available for review. And those bills, one which McCoy will carry, another that Seelig, who is not gay, will carry, have yet to be released.

Gay right advocates have both demonstrated against and petitioned the church on recent gay rights issues, including the church's support of Proposition 8 in California — a constitutional amendment to define marriage as just between one man and one woman. Proposition 8 passed in the November election; Utah has already adopted a similar amendment.

McCoy and others want LDS leaders to publicly support a group of bills to be considered in the Legislature that, according to McCoy, would advance gay partnership rights in areas that the church has not opposed in California.

Those include, said McCoy, nondiscrimination laws for gays in housing and employment — "so you can't be fired or kicked out of your apartment for being gay" — rights to visit your partner in the hospital and inherit property and valuables from a deceased partner, among other issues.

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