File: GEDICKS.Truth and Consequences.FINAL.docCreated on: 2/10/2010 11:30:00 AM Last Printed: 2/10/2010 12:36:00 PM ESSAY TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES: MITT ROMNEY, PROPOSITION 8, AND PUBLIC REASON Frederick Mark Gedicks* ABSTRACT Although formal religious tests for federal office are constitutionally prohibited, they have long been facts of political life in presidential elec- tions. John Kennedy remains the only non-Protestant ever elected Presi- dent, and no major party has ever nominated a non-Christian. Against this electoral history, it was predictable that mainstream Christian commentators would legitimate attacks on Mitt Romney’s Mor- monism during the Republican presidential primaries as a “false” religion. The Mormon Church itself, however, periodically intervenes in initiative and ratification campaigns to defend “true” or “divine” principles that it believes ought to be enacted into law. How unfair is it to label a religion “false” in an electoral campaign, if the religion itself regularly partici- pates in such campaigns on the basis of truth and falsity? This Essay examines the deployment of religious truth-claims in elec- toral politics through the lenses of Governor Romney’s unsuccessful cam- paign for the Republican nomination and the LDS Church’s participation in the successful Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage in Cal- ifornia. I argue that in contemporary electoral politics, attacks on the truth * Guy Anderson Chair & Professor of Law, Brigham Young University Law School; ge-
[email protected]. I presented earlier versions of this Essay during 2008 and 2009 at a conference on religion, citizenship, and multiculturalism at Harvard Law School, at a meeting of the Theory Group of the Brigham Young University Psychology Department, and at faculty colloquia at the law schools of Brigham Young University, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Denver, and DePaul Uni- versity.