SUMMARY: Dozens have already responded to the call to leave the Latter-Day Saints after the church enters another state campaign against same-gender marriage rights.

On July 24, as Utah celebrated the anniversary of its statehood, a press conference was held in Salt Lake City by some of those who are leaving the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, the Mormons) to protest its anti-gay political activism. The protest campaign announced only two weeks before has already been joined by 30 - 40 Mormons with promises from three dozen more, according to Salt Lake City lesbian organizer Kathy Worthington. Worthington is also coordinating a similar campaign for Roman Catholics. The LDS issued a statement July 24 regretting its members' choice to exit.

Worthington described as the "last straw" the LDS' call to its estimated 740,000 California residents "to do all you can by donating your means and time to assure a successful vote" on an upcoming California ballot initiative to reserve legal recognition exclusively for marriages between one man and one woman. The church had expended a total of $1.1-million on similar referenda in Alaska and Hawai'i last year, contributed greatly to their success. Gay and lesbian activists called on gay-supportive Mormons to write letters of resignation asking to have their names removed from the church's central records. An LDS spokesperson told reporters that those letters would be forwarded to their authors' local church leaders, who are the usual channel for withdrawals.

Among those who joined Worthington at the press conference at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Utah were Dave Ensign, who drove from Boulder, Colorado to present to church officials in person his statement of "outrage that the church has been working to control state policy on secular marriage," and open lesbian Kathleen McGuire, who is married to a bisexual man and is raising three children in the church.

"We regret that any member would asked to have his or her name removed from our records because the church has joined a coalition ... to oppose same gender marriage. In the face of organized efforts to redefine marriage, the church has no doctrinal choice but to defend the traditional family. [LDS] President Gordon B. Hinckley has observed, 'Our hearts reach out to those who struggle with feelings of affinity for the same gender. We remember you before the Lord, we sympathize with you, we regard you as brothers and sisters. However, we cannot condone immoral practices on your part any more than we can condone immoral practices on the part of others.'"

More than most U.S. Christian denominations, LDS serves as a primary community for many of its members, engaging with their lives on a near-daily basis. It also prescribes a personal commitment to missionary work and a 10% annual tithe.