"What is our advice with respect to intermarriage with Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians and so on? I will tell you what advice I give personally. If a boy or girl comes to me claiming to be in love with a Chinese or Japanese or a Hawaiian or a person of any other dark race, I do my best to talk them out of it. I tell them that I think the Hawaiians should marry Hawaiians, the Japanese ought to marry the Japanese, and the Chinese ought to marry Chinese, and the Caucasians should marry Caucasians, just exactly as I tell them that Latter-day Saints ought to marry Latter-day Saints."

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day? Saints has consistently made plain that in matters of public policy it is not opposed to responsible consumption of alcoholic beverages by informed adults."

The First Presidency of the Church sent a letter that was read in Sacrament Meeting urging members to get involved and that's all that was needed and they were galvanized by it.

Mormon fundraising to oppose gay marriage has plummeted. In Washington state, for example, gay marriage opponents netted just four donations from Utah, for $197.50. Utahns donated $2.7 million to back California's Prop 8 four years earlier.

Marriage defined as the union of one man and one woman is an axiom of Western civilization - not an attack on the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

Reframing the people's considered decision as an attack on civil rights employs a narrative of majority oppression that is powerful, resonant, and wrong.

On the contrary, our members supported Proposition 8 based on sincere beliefs in the value of traditional marriage for children, families, society, and our republican form of government. Only a demeaning view of religion and religious believers could dismiss our advocacy of Proposition 8 as ignorance, prejudice, or [anti-gay] animus.

no law is invalid simply because it happens to coincide with particular religious beliefs.

simply restoring one of the axioms of Western civilization

We supported Proposition 8 because it offered the narrowest available means of recovering the time-tested definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

From our perspective as religious organizations, several of which actively supported its adoption, Proposition 8 was a moderate response to the California Supreme Court's decision overturning Proposition 22 - the initiative statute limiting marriage to male-female couples. See In re Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d 384, 453 (2008). Before that decision, we and many other religious organizations generally had supported, or at least refrained from opposing, the expansion of legal rights for same-sex couples in California, including their formal recognition as domestic partnerships. See id. at 397-398 (describing California's domestic partnership laws). But marriage is different. Issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples necessarily entails the redefinition of marriage itself.

traditional marriage is conceived in terms of a man and a woman bound in a legal union oriented toward the bearing and rearing of children for the benefit of society. On the other is a genderless conception of marriage whose principal focus is on affirming adult relationship choices.

Yet for us and our members, traditional marriage is also indispensable to the material welfare of children, families, society, and our republican form of government. To be sure, these beliefs are nourished by the teachings of our respective religions. But the value we place on traditional marriage is also influenced by rational judgments about human nature, the needs of individuals and society (especially children), and by our collective experience counseling and serving millions of followers over countless years.

This tight connection between the age-old conception of marriage and the welfare of children "makes marriage a public good that the state should recognize and support,"... Defenders of traditional marriage are sincerely concerned that " `a society without the institution of marriage, in which heterosexual intercourse, procreation, and child care are largely disconnected processes, would be chaotic'

These competing visions overlap in some respects but are nevertheless in deep tension. One is inherently intergenerational; the other, primarily interpersonal. One is focused on children's and society's needs; the other, on the desires of the couple.

The question before this Court is whether the Constitution imposes on the Nation a novel conception of marriage over the one that has endured in all societies for nearly all of human history.

Essentially, the court of appeals found Proposition 8 offensive to the Equal Protection Clause because it reflects religious beliefs supposedly hostile to same-sex couples.

Most disturbing to us, the decision below falsely insinuates that our support for traditional marriage amounts to hostility toward gays and lesbians.

Proposition 8 is not invalid merely because it reflects the people's moral judgment - that is, their collective sense of what is right, just, and prudent - about the nature of marriage. This Court has long held that States possess broad authority under the police power to regulate public morality.... Of course, Proposition 8 takes sides in the moral debate over same-sex marriage, but value judgments are unavoidable here because every definition of marriage implies one: there is no values-neutral ground in this area of social policy.