For decades, Latter-day Saint Paul Mero fought the good fight, as he sees it, as a “professional culture warrior,” first in Washington as a congressional aide in the 1980s and 1990s and later in Utah as the president of the conservative Sutherland Institute think tank from 2000 to 2014.
Immigration, education, liquor laws — Mero waged war in all these arenas but none for as long and as hard as the issue of LGBTQ rights and acceptance.
And he’ll be the first to tell you: His team lost.
In his mind, God’s army (i.e., social conservatives) failed to prevent the widespread passage of nondiscrimination laws and the legalization of same-sex marriage. In doing so, these troops lost not just a single battle but also the war for America’s soul.
It’s a loss that, in no small way, he blames himself for in his new book, “Defeated: A Latter-day Saint’s Witness and Warning from 40 Years Deep Inside the Modern American Culture War.”
Part memoir and part jeremiad, the text is rife with Mero’s signature provocative prose — even as he calls on “civic-minded” Latter-day Saints to “seek Zion.”
“If the term ‘homophobe’ means opposition to or unwelcoming of a culture of homosexuality (not the person), I am a homophobe,” he writes. “... If being a homosexual ally means viewing it as natural, normal and healthy behavior, I am not an ally.”
Particularly difficult for Mero is the support The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has given to “appeasement” efforts like the Utah Compromise of 2015 and the Respect for Marriage Act of 2022 — efforts he believes undermined the cause.
(Patrick Semansky | AP) President Joe Biden reacts after signing the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Paul Mero believes the support by Latter-day Saint leaders for the law represented a tragic mistake driven by concerns over the faith's tax-exempt status.
Mero’s work was largely self-directed. Still, there were meetings through the years with senior church officials and, as in the case of Utah’s liquor laws, times his marching orders came straight from South Temple.
The Salt Lake Tribune spoke with him about what he learned about church leadership in the process, what he sees as the outsized role of lawyers and public relations professionals on faith higher-ups, and why he believes it’s time for the faithful to bury their broken, bloodied swords. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
What is your sense regarding how aligned senior church leadership is on hot-button cultural issues? And is their process collaborative or does it really come down to who the president is?
Who is prophet matters. It always matters. And we’re dealing with individuals, and they each have their own personalities and life experiences. But what I’ve found is that there are individual members either of the First Presidency or the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who are particularly equipped to deal with certain issues.
For instance, I think for a long time [apostle] Boyd K. Packer dealt with a lot of the cultural issues. I don’t mean directly. I mean he directed the church’s position on several things and especially when it came to LGBTQ matters as they developed over the years. President Dallin H. Oaks leads on religious freedom.
Who do you think is leading on LGBTQ issues currently?
The switch that was flipped in 2014 from contention to this really bad idea of accommodation and appeasement [as seen in the Utah Compromise and the church’s endorsement of the Respect for Marriage Act], that was all President Oaks. It amazes me that he’s become the villain of the LGBTQ community. He should be their hero.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the governing First Presidency, speaks at General Conference in 2023. Oaks, Paul Mero says, is the mastermind behind the church's "switch" from opposing the advancement of LGBTQ rights to "appeasement" and "accommodation."
Why the switch, do you think?
I don’t think the accommodation effort was or has been sincere in terms that the LGBTQ community would like it to be. I think it was an effort by the upper levels to defend against same-sex marriage and, ultimately, to protect the church’s tax-exempt status. The biggest threat to the church’s tax-exempt status has always come from the LGBTQ community in regards to the strains between their rights and religious freedom.
So the accommodation policy, in my opinion, was an effort to try and split the baby — to protect religious freedom and keep the LGBTQ community at bay. And I don’t mean just in Utah. I mean nationally.
You say the church has lost the culture war in the United States. Do you get the sense that it is looking further afield at this point in terms of influencing policy on issues it cares about globally?
I don’t see any evidence of that.
What do you believe comes next, then, in terms of the church’s engagement in the public square?
The brethren have to square President Russell M. Nelson’s call to live peaceably with involvement in culture wars. I just don’t know how it’s possible to live peaceably and have the church as an institution involved in something like another Prop 8. So I think the church is headed in the direction of removing itself as an institution from these debates.
One thing they could do is canonize The Family: A Proclamation to the World as scripture. Once they do that, they don’t have to say anything else.
You also argue the church should forfeit its tax-exempt status. Why?
Right now — and this is just my opinion — there’s disproportionate influence in church leadership from public relations people and lawyers, and that many bad decisions have been made as a result.
And you believe the reason they have that outsized influence is because the church is trying to protect its tax-exempt status?
That’s at the core. Getting rid of the tax-exempt status frees Latter-day Saints to lean into Zion and to separate themselves — to strategically disengage from Babylon or secularism.
