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California Battle Over Gay Marriage Touches Nonprofit World

November 26, 2008, 1:48 pm

The fight over California’s vote this month to ban gay marriage in the state continues to produce political fallout, some of which is affecting the nonprofit world, according to reports in The New York Times and The Boston Globe’s online blog Brainiac.

The Times reports that California officials will examine charges that the Mormon Church failed to report several nonmonetary contributions — such as phone banks, a Web site, and commercials — that it donated to support a ballot measure to overturn the state’s gay-marriage law. Such disclosures are required by law.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints said the church will comply with the investigation but had no further comment on the accusations.

The Globe‘s Brainiac blog notes than another high-profile supporter of the ballot measure, John Templeton Jr., president of the Templeton Foundation, is now under fire for his effort.

He provided $1.1-million to push the ballot issue’s passage — and that support, even thought it came from his own checkbook, prompted a question about his support of a ban on gay marriage in on an online forum sponsored by Templeton Foundation.

The Globe notes that Caleb Crain, a New York writer, responded to the forum’s theme, “Does the Free Market Corrode Moral Character?” by asking how the grant maker reconciled its charitable mission with “the rather low and brutal practice of taking a civil right away from a minority group,” and proposed for the next forum the question, “Is marriage a civil right? “

When the foundation refused to post his comments, Mr. Crain asked others to boycott it; the grant maker then replied to Mr. Crain that it had no requirement to post criticism of Mr. Templeton’s donations as an individual.

(Free registration is required to view the Times and Globe articles.)

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