In our next conversation with Dr. Taylor Petrey, we’ll talk about Elder Oaks’ pivotal role in outlining strategy for preventing acceptance, and some accommodation, of gay rights and gay marriage.  We’ll also talk about the internet rumor that the Family Proclamation was a result of the court case in Hawaii in the 1990s.

GT:  As we talk about kind of the history of gay rights and that sort of thing, can you address that issue? I’ve even heard the rumor that the Proclamation on the Family was not written by the apostles. It was written by the Kirton & McConkie law firm. Can you enlighten us on that? Is that a true story?
Taylor:  It may be. It may be, but the documents don’t fully support at least one iteration of that internet rumor. So let me sort of lay out the timeline a little bit, because I do think it’s important. I absolutely do think that the Proclamation on the Family is connected to what was going on in Hawaii and is connected to a broader set of conversations. So I do mention some of this in the book. But let me get into a little bit of the detail here.
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Taylor:  So the church comes out with a proclamation. It’s an affirmation of a kind of theological vision, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and it’s an explicitly political document. At the end, the last paragraph says, “We appeal to citizens and judges, and we appeal to legislatures and leaders all throughout the world…” that this is the thing that you need to make sure that basically that same sex marriage doesn’t happen. Same sex marriage and homosexuality aren’t mentioned in the document. But it’s absolutely the implicit thing, because the church is deeply embedded in what’s going on in Hawaii. Did they need to do that for some sort of legal tricky reasons? I don’t think so. But it becomes a kind of clarion call, a kind of thing that unites the church membership and says, this is our political stance. And again, we have to read it as a political document.
The other part of the context that I think needs to be understood, is that there are a number of political documents that are coming out during this exact same time period, both before and after the LDS version of the Proclamation, that are making the exact same kinds of arguments. So, Phyllis Schlafly ran something called the Eagle Forum. She was still alive, at the time, in the 1990s. She passed away, I think, maybe five or so years ago. But she was running the Eagle Forum. Then there were other conservative groups, and they all got together, and they wrote a document in 1993, I want to say, maybe it was 1989. Again, my memory is fuzzy a little bit here, called The Family Manifesto. The Family Manifesto looks exactly like what the Proclamation on the Family does, except it’s longer. I think it’s five pages or so. It says, what are the obligations of husbands and wives to each other? What are the obligations of husbands and wives to their children? What are the basic scriptural values that inform these positions?
It took a little bit more aggressive stances on issues like spousal hierarchy than the LDS version does, but it does affirm their equal dignity.  Husband and wife have equal dignity before God, it says. So we still have some of that egalitarian and patriarchal tension even in a document like that. Then after that, there are other documents that look very similar to the LDS version of the Proclamation. So I also want to put the Proclamation in the context of all of these other political documents that the religious right is producing, that is sort of laying out an anti-feminist and anti-homosexuality agenda as a political thing. And again, [we should] understand the Proclamation as a political document, and to see it in conversation with all of those. Did Kirton & McConkie write it?