Something happened to Dallin H. Oaks between October 8, 2013 and April 16, 2014. On October 8, 2013, then-Elder Oaks attended a Sutherland Institute dinner and presentation at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. In attendance was another apostle and dozens of Utah A-listers all gathered to hear a presentation about how Utah could avoid gay rights and same-sex marriage.
The gist of the presentation was that, in Utah, religious freedom beats gay rights every time and that gay rights diminish religious freedom every time. Elder Oaks was exuberant over the presentation and stayed after the event for another 45 minutes sharing his excitement.
Sutherland Institute and allies had stopped gay rights – what became known as Equality Utah’s “Common Ground Initiative” – at the Utah Legislature for six years straight. With the 2014 legislative session just three months away, Sutherland and allies would stop gay rights for a seventh consecutive year.
Approaching the 2014 legislative session, Sutherland Institute countered Equality Utah’s initiative with our own “Sacred Ground Initiative.” Our legislative campaign, aptly titled “Fair to All,” was comprised of stopping gay rights and introducing three legislative bills authored by State Senator Stuart Reid. Those three bills would have 1) created a state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 2) helped public school children understand the importance of religious freedom and 3) provided gay rights on a raft of subjects such as hospital visitation rights – without placing the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in Utah code.
Interestingly, just prior to the beginning of the 2014 session in January, Elder Oaks asked Senator Reid not to run those three bills – and Senator Reid obliged him. Stopping gay rights was still on the table and, without a similar conversation with Elder Oaks, Sutherland Institute was not going to slow down or stop that effort. So, no gay rights in 2014 either.
Just after 2014 April General Conference, on April 16, 2014, Elder Oaks gave a speech at Utah Valley University wherein he announced that the time had come to stop “contending” over gay rights and begin to “accommodate” those rights. Senator Reid and I were in the audience that night and were stunned at his 180-degree turnaround. When asked privately why the turnaround, Elder Oaks is said to have replied that he wasn’t sure, but he was sure he was supposed to say it.
He said at the speech,
My last cause for hope is not tied to [legal] developments but to principles. I am optimistic about the long-term prospect of furthering the interests of all contending parties by mutual understanding and accommodations. … We all want effective ways to resolve differences without anger or contention and with mutual understanding and accommodation.
In contrast, on February 4, 2011, at the Chapman University School of Law, Elder Oaks said as a matter of fact,
I am here to contend for religious freedom. … Along with many others, I see a serious threat to the freedom of religion in the current assertion of a “civil right’ of homosexuals to be free from religious preaching against their relationships. … Even more alarming are recent evidences of a narrowing of religious expression and an expanding definition of the so-called civil rights of “dignity,” “autonomy,” and “self-fulfillment” of persons offended by religious preaching. Thus, President Obama’s head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldblum, recently framed the issue in terms of a “sexual-orientation liberty.” Such a radical assertion should not escape analysis. … Feldblum asserts that sexual orientation is now to be defined as a “sexual liberty” that has the status of a fundamental right. … Religious expressions are to be overridden by the fundamental right to “sexual liberty.”
Of course, everyone is allowed to change their mind.
At some point in 2014, the church – someone with the LDS church – asked Sutherland’s board chairman to talk with me or fire me – anything to get me out of the way of stopping gay rights. I was fired on August 15, 2014 in a conference room at the church’s law office of Kirton McConkie. Not one board meeting to discuss firing me took place. Not one donor meeting to discuss firing me. No meetings. When I asked a friend on the Sutherland board for the reason he simply said that the board chairman wasn’t asking for his opinion. Nobody else, on the board or off, shared a reason with me. And why would they? In my circles, when the church calls for you to jump, you say how high. While I am deferential, I’m not a “how high” kind of guy.
After seven years of failure, the “Utah Compromise” passed the Legislature during the 2015 session five months after I was fired.
While possibly interesting, the “Utah Compromise” was just the beginning of a church campaign led by Elder Oaks titled “Fairness for All” (note my “Fair to All”). The campaign went on to enlist former Congressman Chris Stewart to introduce federal legislation by the same name. He did and the bill was never heard of again. That said, President Oaks saw an opportunity to apply his “fairness for all” compromising to a Senate bill titled “The Respect for Marriage Act” in 2022. Church underlings from public affairs were sent to the White House signing. Unfortunately, that bill required the church to endorse same-sex marriage along with some, in my opinion, unnecessary religious freedom provisions.
President Oaks, by explanation for the church’s support, said that same-sex marriage was already the law of the land through the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, so endorsing same-sex marriage in the Respect for Marriage Act was practically meaningless. Of course, the church opposed Obergefell and lobbied the Court to oppose same-sex marriage. So cheering on the Respect for Marriage Act actually was a change in church policy to newly endorse same-sex marriage.
Life goes on. End of story. Right?
Wrong.
Over the course of a few years, President Oaks doubles, triples, quadruples down – basically goes on the campaign trail – to give “accommodation” and “compromise” politics a big endorsement.
But let’s back up. Way back. In a memo dated August 7, 1984, just three months after he was called to be an apostle, with a title of “Principles to Govern Possible Statement on Legislation Affecting Rights of Homosexuals,” Elder Oaks offered his brethren some advice.
At the outset, it is well to reaffirm the status of sexual sins under religious law.
Sexual acts between consenting adults (including adultery and fornication), though they are crimes is some states (including Utah), are rarely prosecuted as crimes. …Even in states where sodomy is a crime, it is rarely enforced. [Interestingly, just two years after this memo, in the Hardwick case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no fundamental right to homosexual sodomy in the U.S. Constitution – a case stemming from law enforcement witnessing the plaintiff having sodomy with another man.]
The word “homosexuality” is used in two senses: 1) as a condition, and 2) as a practice. [In reality, a “condition” of homosexuality does not exist because nobody is “born that way.” Elder Oaks use of the term “condition” could be where the church went down the path of embracing the idea of “same-sex attraction” to placate confused and grieving parents of children sliding into homosexuality.]
The First Presidency’s letters condemning homosexuality are, by their explicit terms, directed at the practices of homosexuality.
Among their legislative objectives are 1) to remove criminal penalties against sodomy or other homosexual acts, 2) to forbid discrimination against homosexuals in credit, education, employment, public accommodations and housing, and 3) to permit homosexual marriages.
Criminal penalties on persons with the “condition” of homosexuality are a thing of the past. [Up until 1972, there was no such thing as a “condition” or “born that way.” The American Psychiatric Association invented the “condition” to appease protesting homosexuals.]
I believe there is little to be gained by having the Church enter the public debate and take a public position on an expansion or retention of the criminal law to cover illicit homosexual relations. … I suggest that the Church take no public position on this subject, reserving its influence for more important matters.
Homosexuals seek legislation that would guarantee nondiscrimination against persons with their condition, what they really seem to crave is public approval of their practices. They want the right to proselyte their lifestyle and to practice it in public without penalty or public disapproval.
Opponents and proponents join issue on one question: gay rights advocates want public approval of their lifestyle (including public display of their “condition”) and their adversaries oppose this.
If the legislative issue [nondiscrimination in employment] is posed in terms of whether the public has a right to exclude from certain kinds of employment persons who engage in (and will teach) practices … the gay rights proposal will lose … the public will reject such approval and the proposed means of promotion. … Properly so.
The best strategy to oppose further anti-discrimination legislation protecting homosexuals is to propose well-reasoned exceptions rather than to oppose such legislation across the board.
It would also be desirable to permit employers to exclude homosexuals from influential positions in media, literature, and entertainment, since those jobs influence the tone and ideals of society. However, homosexuals have such footholds and influence in these areas that such a law would be difficult to enact and almost impossible to enforce.
For the reasons discussed above, I recommend that if an anti-job-discrimination law is proposed to protect homosexuals, the Church should oppose the law if it did contain a youth-protection exception of the type described above. Such opposition should be explained, with careful emphasis on the bad effects of homosexual “practices” (not homosexuals) and the need – for the good of society – to protect youth from homosexual proselyting and role models among their teachers and counselors.
If the proposed law contained a suitable exception, the Church could remain silent on the proposal: it would not need to support the law – it could just refrain from opposing it.
The major objective of the gay rights homosexual movement is to win legitimacy and public approval for the homosexual “sexual preference” or “lifestyle.”
In my opinion, the interests at stake in the proposed legalization of so-called homosexual marriages are sufficient to justify a formal Church position and significant efforts in opposition.
We therefore do not mention that, in religious terms, homosexual “marriages” would be a devilish perversion of the procreative purposes of God and the earth life He has granted His children. Homosexual relations are wholly deviant to the procreative purposes of sexual relations. Homosexual marriages are wholly deviant to the patriarchal family.
That was then.
Giving the Joseph Smith Lecture at the University of Virginia on November 12, 2021, a speech he titled “Going Forward with Religious Freedom and Nondiscrimination,” President Oaks kicked into high gear,
We have always had to work through serious political conflicts, but today too many approach that task as if their preferred outcome must entirely prevail over all others, even in our pluralistic society. We need to work for a better way — a way to resolve differences without compromising core values. We need to live together in peace and mutual respect, within our defined constitutional rights. …
Another basic imperative is that we should not seek total dominance for our own position; we should seek fairness for all. Specifically, people of faith should not contest every nondiscrimination law or policy that could possibly impinge, however insignificantly, on institutional or individual religious freedom. Likewise, proponents of nondiscrimination need not contest every religious freedom exemption from nondiscrimination laws. The goals of both sides are best served by resolving differences through mutual respect, shared understanding, and good faith negotiations. …
We should also be wary of the idea that one set of rights automatically trumps another in all circumstances. Both religious freedom and nondiscrimination are important values that are powerfully protected by law. Nondiscrimination principles have been given increasing social recognition in the last century and are now rooted in the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law. Yet, they still cannot be said to obviate the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. …
Therefore, notwithstanding its heavily criticized opposition in the political debate over same-sex marriage, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached out to nondiscrimination advocates and participated in Utah negotiations over shared concerns on housing and employment. The discussions that followed were previously thought impossible for either side. Over a six-year period, however, they were able to craft suitable local and statewide legislation because adversaries gradually learned to understand each other’s positions, including what they deemed most important to affirm and protect by law. One participant told me that he recalls them as “an effort in peacemaking, learning how to live together” with mutual respect, even love.
At issue was a head-to-head conflict between free exercise of religion and nondiscrimination in housing and employment in a Salt Lake City ordinance first proposed in 2009. In time, a jointly designed proposal gained traction, and its adoption at the city level prompted an effort to adopt a similar law statewide. The resulting law, later called “the Utah Compromise,” was enacted with the Church’s full support in 2015. This law offered protections to both sides. One side obtained significant legal protection from discrimination in employment and housing. The other side gained protection for religious freedom in its most sensitive areas of Church employment and student housing. While the law gave neither side all that it sought, its reconciliations did grant both sides significant benefits — a win-win outcome — that could not have been obtained without the balancing of interests made possible by the dynamics of the legislative process. …
The resulting “Utah Compromise” on housing and employment was a pathbreaking beginning that has been embraced by all parties, including the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a Church, we are committed to the free exercise of religion to allow us to practice the principles of our faith. But we are also committed to fundamental fairness and the rule of law. We see the process that succeeded in Utah as a promising way to have both religious protection and fundamental fairness, particularly on individual issues like housing and employment. Whether it can be applied to other sensitive issues remains to be seen.
“Fairness for all” is explained there. What used to be a judicial concern over equal protection for homosexuals was a zero-sum game. Winners and losers in a court of law. At first glance, as a non-lawyer, his whole train of thought seemed puzzling to me. Hypothetically, I think Lawyer Oaks or Judge Oaks would be violating standard legal practices if he were to enter a courtroom willing to preemptively compromise his client’s case in the spirit of “fairness for all.”
But Elder Oaks turned “fairness for all” into a legislative play, a matter of public policy. Only then does “compromise” make any sense. Rarely does any advocate get everything they want, pure and undefiled, in a legislative setting. Everything is compromised.
One month later, on December 14, 2021, President Oaks was in Rome before Sapienza University addressing religious freedom,
I advocated such a position in a recent talk in the United States at the University of Virginia. There, I spoke hopefully of the possibility of reconciling existing conflicts between the proponents of two compelling constitutional rights. I titled my talk, “Going Forward with Religious Freedom and Non-Discrimination.” There I tried to steer the way between the free exercise of religion and the equal protection of the law. That task continues unresolved and even untried thus far, with a legislative effort titled “Fairness for All” languishing in Congress. But the importance of the values involved makes efforts at reconciliation worthwhile.
And during an interview with Judicature, a publication for judges primarily, President Oaks shared,
How do we live through this time of toxic political partisanship? Compromise must obviously be sought, but that is not a good label for our goal, because it seems to focus on what is given up, not what is gained. “Principled accommodation” is a better label. We approach this by seeking an accommodation under which contending parties identify and preserve the deepest interests of the greatest number of parties through mutual respect, principled toleration of differences, and shared commitment to the common good.
For example, our country is still painfully unsettled in attempting to manage the relationship between religious freedom and nondiscrimination. We need to seek a better way for the respective advocates of religious freedom on the one hand and nondiscrimination regarding sexual identity and sexual orientation on the other to relate to one another as fellow citizens dedicated to maintaining a civil society. We need each other. We need a more workable balance between these important rights. Our common goal should be laws that serve the rights of all: “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” …
What is needed is not a declaration of the winner in a legal contest, but a body of wise public policy. Courts are constitutionally limited to resolving the specific cases before them. They are ill-suited to resolving the overarching, complex, and comprehensive policy-making that is required when there are conflicts between various great values in a pluralistic society.
This was illustrated in Utah’s success in resolving a head-to-head conflict between free exercise of religion and nondiscrimination in housing and employment. This effort began with a Salt Lake City ordinance that was first proposed in 2009 and finally more broadly resolved in a state law passed in 2015. It took about six years to work out the reconciliations that granted both sides significant benefits — a win-win outcome — that could not have been obtained without the balancing of interests made possible by the dynamics of principled negotiations in the legislative process. (Judicature, “Faith in Law,” Vol.107 No. 1 2023)
As I said previously, over the course of a few years, President Oaks doubles, triples, quadruples down – basically goes on the campaign trail – to give “accommodation” and “compromise” politics a big endorsement. These few examples have inspired a flank of support from several influential LDS voices – perhaps no voice more influential than former appellate court Judge Thomas Griffith.
In the Summer 2026 issue of Y Magazine, BYU’s alumni magazine, Judge Griffith, working out of BYU’s Wheatley Institute, spends several pages in an address titled “Promise and Peril at 250,” cheerleading President Oaks’ unrelenting campaign of “Fairness for All.” For readers of Y Magazine, this campaign must be important if Judge Griffith is weighing in too.
The judge seems to focus on three themes to justify public policy that, to my mind, makes no sense: 1) religious freedom is facing an existential crisis, 2) public debate is overwhelmed by toxic politics, and 3) Latter-day Saints should express “peacemaking” by surrendering on gay rights.
We celebrate under ominous clouds. Contempt courses through the veins of our body politic. We don’t just disagree with our fellow citizens anymore. We think they are evil and immoral. …
I agree with those who say we are in a constitutional crisis, the most serious since the Civil War. … The greater crisis is about toxic political polarization, a cancer corroding our civic life. Our public discourse is poisoned by contempt. …
The problem isn’t that we disagree about important matters. We’ve always done that. It’s that we do so today with contempt for those who see things differently.
Referencing the thoughts and words of President Oaks, Judge Griffith believes,
President Oaks has the answer. Our charge is to “exercise our influence civilly and peacefully” and “on contested issues, we should seek to moderate and unify.” …
What does this look like in practice? President Oaks pointed to the Utah Compromise of 2015 as a model.
Number one, there does not exist an existential constitutional crisis. We still have a representative form of government. We still have a separation of powers. President Trump is having to squeeze every last drop of executive privilege to undertake reversing 80 years of economic and foreign policy not in the interests of America. It’s not President Trump’s fault that Congress isn’t working. It’s not his fault that Americans are pretty equally divided. And it’s not President Trump’s fault that the lower courts are overreaching in their authority – thereby setting up the U.S. Supreme Court to command that the lower courts stay in their lane. The U.S. Constitution is working exactly how it was designed. No crisis.
Number two, if public debate is toxic – more toxic than any other time in U.S. history? – it’s because President Trump, again, is undoing 80 years of bad economic and foreign policy designs by former leaders who thought it was their place to arbitrate world politics and nation-building. The old guard and the news media who view them as the real experts are simply nasty. They will not stop at inventing crises after crises, constant negativity and the use of a fading sense of authority to confuse regular Americans.
What I call “peace hypocrites” are the worst naysayers. A “peace hypocrite” is a person who manipulates “the contradiction between stated intentions of promoting peace and their actual behavior of engaging in conflict to achieve their goals.” Judge Griffith is a peace hypocrite based on his referenced article. The body of the Wheatley Institute at BYU are peace hypocrites for behind-the scenes machinations to promote gay rights and same-sex marriage through its aggressive advancement of political compromise. Even my old friends still on staff at Sutherland Institute have played along by their endorsements of the 2015 “Utah Compromise” and the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act.
And, dare I say, even President Oaks seems to have set the bar. These folks only care about their invented principles about constitutional government and, most of all, their support for gay rights and same-sex marriage.
Loyalty, friendships, partnerships – the trust among faithful friends – disappears when the choice involves the “Fairness for all” campaign. As a material fact, no “sour grapes,” they successfully took away my livelihood on August 15, 2014, simply to get me out of the way of their “Fairness for All” campaign. I was the only obstacle standing in their way – and when all you see is an object, not a human being, you can justify any injustice.
In case you’re missing the point, all of their “peacemaking” is conflict, even if developed in back rooms and secret meetings. They just want what they want and will move mountains to get it.
And number three, all of this peacemaking from the mouths of these peace hypocrites is about nothing more than compromising and accommodating gay rights and same-sex marriage. They do not talk about or address or use as an example any other topic – just gay rights and same-sex marriage.
All of the high-level references exist to make compromise a public virtue – references about what Jesus would do or how our founding fathers unnaturally transcended and settled very common disagreements. All of it coming from the mouths of these peace hypocrites, is little more than a front to justify “Fairness for All” and compromise on gay rights and same-sex marriage. There would not be any “Fairness for All” campaign if gay rights and same-sex marriage were not a campaign.
They all know it – from President Oaks down through Elder Alexander Dusku and the late Bill Evans (former head of LDS government relations) over to the yes-men – the “how high” cowards – at the Wheatley Institute at BYU who hide their impotent intellects behind out-of-town speakers and intellectuals to drive their cause.
Judge Griffith quotes President Oaks, “President Oaks explained how witnessing the nation’s culture wars had changed his own perspective.” This explains his 180-degree turnaround between the event on October 8, 2013 and his UVU speech on April 16, 2014. At the time, I was the only real culture warrior standing before him. Judge Griffith then quotes President Oaks again, “We need to work for a better way – a way to resolve differences without compromising core values.”
The 2015 “Utah Compromise” compromised core values – at least my core values. It protected the institutional church from gay rights but not its individual members in Utah. I’d say that’s a very big compromise. Wanting to do it at the federal level is an even bigger compromise. But the grand-daddy of them all is “the church’s” support of the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Church operatives, President Oaks among them, actually endorsed same-sex marriage. Unbelievable.
If a Latter-day Saint leader seeks to support gay rights and same-sex marriage – and homosexuality is still a sin – core values definitely will be compromised. Period.
In the real world, even a world where Latter-day Saints strive to be their better angels, preemptive compromise or accommodation as civic virtue are appeasements, tactics for losers. If you have what you want, why give it away? Judge Griffith and the gang invoke virtue – “civic virtue” – unfounded emotions in politics to suggest you’re doing the Lord’s work. Again, from President Oaks’ Rome speech, the vision is “principled accommodation.”
We should not expect or seek total dominance for our own positions, but in the exercise of mutual respect should seek fairness for all.
If “principled accommodation” were a real thing, the church should settle every lawsuit against it out of court. In current news, the church should settle with John Dehlin about the use of the word “Mormon.” Why not let that apostate use the word? It’s just a word? He would feel much better about us and might not continue to insult the church on a daily basis. Why not settle with Paul Huntsman? He just wants his fair share of tithing dollars back? These examples raise an important question, if we accommodate, whose “principles” are we adhering to? The term “principled accommodation” sounds synonymous with magnanimity. Jesus gives grace to even those two apostates. Why not follow in His footsteps regarding them?
Jonathan Rauch, the “self-described liberal, atheist, Jewish homosexual” absolutely loves the concept of “principled accommodation.” He loves President Oaks for even entertaining the concept. Here is how Rauch describes the compromising, it’s “conspicuously countercultural in the conservative religious world.” Judge Griffith adds to Rauch’s glee, it “may offer the best path, perhaps the only path, out of our current constitutional peril. Countercultural, yes. But following Jesus’s charge to be a peacemaker has always been countercultural.” Yikes! These two guys should get a room. Of course, a liberal, atheist, homosexual loves the concept of the LDS Church supporting gay rights and same-sex marriage! You can almost hear inside the walls of the Wheatley Institute the chittering with utter joy.
When we’re not tiptoeing through the tulips, of course, we defend the church! Of course, we don’t hand over the keys to the kingdom to apostates! We take them to court! We win! And we don’t give up anything. Period.
This stark reality makes me believe that the term “principled accommodation” is made up singularly to address capitulating on gay rights and same-sex marriage. Of course, it is. Again, it also is why Lawyer Oaks flips the script and pushes for legislative solutions. The “Utah Compromise” and the Respect for Marriage Act were legislative wins. Public policy in legislative arenas welcomes any compromise, especially idiotic preemptive compromises. In a courtroom, that approach would be grounds for malpractice.
“Principled accommodation” is nonsense – right up there with the founding fathers “accommodating” slavery. Oh, they were so principled in their collective focus to get a constitution signed and sealed that they happily took slavery off of the table. Our best minds of the period knew that not addressing slavery was shameful and unconscionable in retrospect. Funny thing, I am quite sure that many of these same virtue-signaling LDS voices cheering on gay rights and same-sex marriage view those legal struggles with the legal struggle akin to slavery. They are on the “right side of history.”
Enough of that nonsense.
In Part 2, I will disabuse the same crowd trying to compromise on gay rights and same-sex marriage in regard to the explicit nature of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution has nothing to do with compromise, especially the preemptive compromise of President Oaks’ “fairness for all” tactic. The U.S. Constitution is about one thing and one thing only: establishing order.
The Ugly Underbelly of “Peacemaking”: Part 1
Something happened to Dallin H. Oaks between October 8, 2013 and April 16, 2014. On October 8, 2013, then-Elder Oaks attended a Sutherland Institute dinner and presentation at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. In attendance was another apostle and dozens of Utah A-listers all gathered to hear a presentation about how Utah could avoid gay rights and same-sex marriage.
The gist of the presentation was that, in Utah, religious freedom beats gay rights every time and that gay rights diminish religious freedom every time. Elder Oaks was exuberant over the presentation and stayed after the event for another 45 minutes sharing his excitement.
Sutherland Institute and allies had stopped gay rights – what became known as Equality Utah’s “Common Ground Initiative” – at the Utah Legislature for six years straight. With the 2014 legislative session just three months away, Sutherland and allies would stop gay rights for a seventh consecutive year.
Approaching the 2014 legislative session, Sutherland Institute countered Equality Utah’s initiative with our own “Sacred Ground Initiative.” Our legislative campaign, aptly titled “Fair to All,” was comprised of stopping gay rights and introducing three legislative bills authored by State Senator Stuart Reid. Those three bills would have 1) created a state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 2) helped public school children understand the importance of religious freedom and 3) provided gay rights on a raft of subjects such as hospital visitation rights – without placing the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in Utah code.
Interestingly, just prior to the beginning of the 2014 session in January, Elder Oaks asked Senator Reid not to run those three bills – and Senator Reid obliged him. Stopping gay rights was still on the table and, without a similar conversation with Elder Oaks, Sutherland Institute was not going to slow down or stop that effort. So, no gay rights in 2014 either.
Just after 2014 April General Conference, on April 16, 2014, Elder Oaks gave a speech at Utah Valley University wherein he announced that the time had come to stop “contending” over gay rights and begin to “accommodate” those rights. Senator Reid and I were in the audience that night and were stunned at his 180-degree turnaround. When asked privately why the turnaround, Elder Oaks is said to have replied that he wasn’t sure, but he was sure he was supposed to say it.
He said at the speech,
My last cause for hope is not tied to [legal] developments but to principles. I am optimistic about the long-term prospect of furthering the interests of all contending parties by mutual understanding and accommodations. … We all want effective ways to resolve differences without anger or contention and with mutual understanding and accommodation.
In contrast, on February 4, 2011, at the Chapman University School of Law, Elder Oaks said as a matter of fact,
I am here to contend for religious freedom. … Along with many others, I see a serious threat to the freedom of religion in the current assertion of a “civil right’ of homosexuals to be free from religious preaching against their relationships. … Even more alarming are recent evidences of a narrowing of religious expression and an expanding definition of the so-called civil rights of “dignity,” “autonomy,” and “self-fulfillment” of persons offended by religious preaching. Thus, President Obama’s head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldblum, recently framed the issue in terms of a “sexual-orientation liberty.” Such a radical assertion should not escape analysis. … Feldblum asserts that sexual orientation is now to be defined as a “sexual liberty” that has the status of a fundamental right. … Religious expressions are to be overridden by the fundamental right to “sexual liberty.”
Of course, everyone is allowed to change their mind.
At some point in 2014, the church – someone with the LDS church – asked Sutherland’s board chairman to talk with me or fire me – anything to get me out of the way of stopping gay rights. I was fired on August 15, 2014 in a conference room at the church’s law office of Kirton McConkie. Not one board meeting to discuss firing me took place. Not one donor meeting to discuss firing me. No meetings. When I asked a friend on the Sutherland board for the reason he simply said that the board chairman wasn’t asking for his opinion. Nobody else, on the board or off, shared a reason with me. And why would they? In my circles, when the church calls for you to jump, you say how high. While I am deferential, I’m not a “how high” kind of guy.
After seven years of failure, the “Utah Compromise” passed the Legislature during the 2015 session five months after I was fired.
While possibly interesting, the “Utah Compromise” was just the beginning of a church campaign led by Elder Oaks titled “Fairness for All” (note my “Fair to All”). The campaign went on to enlist former Congressman Chris Stewart to introduce federal legislation by the same name. He did and the bill was never heard of again. That said, President Oaks saw an opportunity to apply his “fairness for all” compromising to a Senate bill titled “The Respect for Marriage Act” in 2022. Church underlings from public affairs were sent to the White House signing. Unfortunately, that bill required the church to endorse same-sex marriage along with some, in my opinion, unnecessary religious freedom provisions.
President Oaks, by explanation for the church’s support, said that same-sex marriage was already the law of the land through the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, so endorsing same-sex marriage in the Respect for Marriage Act was practically meaningless. Of course, the church opposed Obergefell and lobbied the Court to oppose same-sex marriage. So cheering on the Respect for Marriage Act actually was a change in church policy to newly endorse same-sex marriage.
Life goes on. End of story. Right?
Wrong.
Over the course of a few years, President Oaks doubles, triples, quadruples down – basically goes on the campaign trail – to give “accommodation” and “compromise” politics a big endorsement.
But let’s back up. Way back. In a memo dated August 7, 1984, just three months after he was called to be an apostle, with a title of “Principles to Govern Possible Statement on Legislation Affecting Rights of Homosexuals,” Elder Oaks offered his brethren some advice.
At the outset, it is well to reaffirm the status of sexual sins under religious law.
Sexual acts between consenting adults (including adultery and fornication), though they are crimes is some states (including Utah), are rarely prosecuted as crimes. …Even in states where sodomy is a crime, it is rarely enforced. [Interestingly, just two years after this memo, in the Hardwick case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no fundamental right to homosexual sodomy in the U.S. Constitution – a case stemming from law enforcement witnessing the plaintiff having sodomy with another man.]
The word “homosexuality” is used in two senses: 1) as a condition, and 2) as a practice. [In reality, a “condition” of homosexuality does not exist because nobody is “born that way.” Elder Oaks use of the term “condition” could be where the church went down the path of embracing the idea of “same-sex attraction” to placate confused and grieving parents of children sliding into homosexuality.]
The First Presidency’s letters condemning homosexuality are, by their explicit terms, directed at the practices of homosexuality.
Among their legislative objectives are 1) to remove criminal penalties against sodomy or other homosexual acts, 2) to forbid discrimination against homosexuals in credit, education, employment, public accommodations and housing, and 3) to permit homosexual marriages.
Criminal penalties on persons with the “condition” of homosexuality are a thing of the past. [Up until 1972, there was no such thing as a “condition” or “born that way.” The American Psychiatric Association invented the “condition” to appease protesting homosexuals.]
I believe there is little to be gained by having the Church enter the public debate and take a public position on an expansion or retention of the criminal law to cover illicit homosexual relations. … I suggest that the Church take no public position on this subject, reserving its influence for more important matters.
Homosexuals seek legislation that would guarantee nondiscrimination against persons with their condition, what they really seem to crave is public approval of their practices. They want the right to proselyte their lifestyle and to practice it in public without penalty or public disapproval.
Opponents and proponents join issue on one question: gay rights advocates want public approval of their lifestyle (including public display of their “condition”) and their adversaries oppose this.
If the legislative issue [nondiscrimination in employment] is posed in terms of whether the public has a right to exclude from certain kinds of employment persons who engage in (and will teach) practices … the gay rights proposal will lose … the public will reject such approval and the proposed means of promotion. … Properly so.
The best strategy to oppose further anti-discrimination legislation protecting homosexuals is to propose well-reasoned exceptions rather than to oppose such legislation across the board.
It would also be desirable to permit employers to exclude homosexuals from influential positions in media, literature, and entertainment, since those jobs influence the tone and ideals of society. However, homosexuals have such footholds and influence in these areas that such a law would be difficult to enact and almost impossible to enforce.
For the reasons discussed above, I recommend that if an anti-job-discrimination law is proposed to protect homosexuals, the Church should oppose the law if it did contain a youth-protection exception of the type described above. Such opposition should be explained, with careful emphasis on the bad effects of homosexual “practices” (not homosexuals) and the need – for the good of society – to protect youth from homosexual proselyting and role models among their teachers and counselors.
If the proposed law contained a suitable exception, the Church could remain silent on the proposal: it would not need to support the law – it could just refrain from opposing it.
The major objective of the gay rights homosexual movement is to win legitimacy and public approval for the homosexual “sexual preference” or “lifestyle.”
In my opinion, the interests at stake in the proposed legalization of so-called homosexual marriages are sufficient to justify a formal Church position and significant efforts in opposition.
We therefore do not mention that, in religious terms, homosexual “marriages” would be a devilish perversion of the procreative purposes of God and the earth life He has granted His children. Homosexual relations are wholly deviant to the procreative purposes of sexual relations. Homosexual marriages are wholly deviant to the patriarchal family.
That was then.
Giving the Joseph Smith Lecture at the University of Virginia on November 12, 2021, a speech he titled “Going Forward with Religious Freedom and Nondiscrimination,” President Oaks kicked into high gear,
We have always had to work through serious political conflicts, but today too many approach that task as if their preferred outcome must entirely prevail over all others, even in our pluralistic society. We need to work for a better way — a way to resolve differences without compromising core values. We need to live together in peace and mutual respect, within our defined constitutional rights. …
Another basic imperative is that we should not seek total dominance for our own position; we should seek fairness for all. Specifically, people of faith should not contest every nondiscrimination law or policy that could possibly impinge, however insignificantly, on institutional or individual religious freedom. Likewise, proponents of nondiscrimination need not contest every religious freedom exemption from nondiscrimination laws. The goals of both sides are best served by resolving differences through mutual respect, shared understanding, and good faith negotiations. …
We should also be wary of the idea that one set of rights automatically trumps another in all circumstances. Both religious freedom and nondiscrimination are important values that are powerfully protected by law. Nondiscrimination principles have been given increasing social recognition in the last century and are now rooted in the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law. Yet, they still cannot be said to obviate the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. …
Therefore, notwithstanding its heavily criticized opposition in the political debate over same-sex marriage, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached out to nondiscrimination advocates and participated in Utah negotiations over shared concerns on housing and employment. The discussions that followed were previously thought impossible for either side. Over a six-year period, however, they were able to craft suitable local and statewide legislation because adversaries gradually learned to understand each other’s positions, including what they deemed most important to affirm and protect by law. One participant told me that he recalls them as “an effort in peacemaking, learning how to live together” with mutual respect, even love.
At issue was a head-to-head conflict between free exercise of religion and nondiscrimination in housing and employment in a Salt Lake City ordinance first proposed in 2009. In time, a jointly designed proposal gained traction, and its adoption at the city level prompted an effort to adopt a similar law statewide. The resulting law, later called “the Utah Compromise,” was enacted with the Church’s full support in 2015. This law offered protections to both sides. One side obtained significant legal protection from discrimination in employment and housing. The other side gained protection for religious freedom in its most sensitive areas of Church employment and student housing. While the law gave neither side all that it sought, its reconciliations did grant both sides significant benefits — a win-win outcome — that could not have been obtained without the balancing of interests made possible by the dynamics of the legislative process. …
The resulting “Utah Compromise” on housing and employment was a pathbreaking beginning that has been embraced by all parties, including the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a Church, we are committed to the free exercise of religion to allow us to practice the principles of our faith. But we are also committed to fundamental fairness and the rule of law. We see the process that succeeded in Utah as a promising way to have both religious protection and fundamental fairness, particularly on individual issues like housing and employment. Whether it can be applied to other sensitive issues remains to be seen.
“Fairness for all” is explained there. What used to be a judicial concern over equal protection for homosexuals was a zero-sum game. Winners and losers in a court of law. At first glance, as a non-lawyer, his whole train of thought seemed puzzling to me. Hypothetically, I think Lawyer Oaks or Judge Oaks would be violating standard legal practices if he were to enter a courtroom willing to preemptively compromise his client’s case in the spirit of “fairness for all.”
But Elder Oaks turned “fairness for all” into a legislative play, a matter of public policy. Only then does “compromise” make any sense. Rarely does any advocate get everything they want, pure and undefiled, in a legislative setting. Everything is compromised.
One month later, on December 14, 2021, President Oaks was in Rome before Sapienza University addressing religious freedom,
I advocated such a position in a recent talk in the United States at the University of Virginia. There, I spoke hopefully of the possibility of reconciling existing conflicts between the proponents of two compelling constitutional rights. I titled my talk, “Going Forward with Religious Freedom and Non-Discrimination.” There I tried to steer the way between the free exercise of religion and the equal protection of the law. That task continues unresolved and even untried thus far, with a legislative effort titled “Fairness for All” languishing in Congress. But the importance of the values involved makes efforts at reconciliation worthwhile.
And during an interview with Judicature, a publication for judges primarily, President Oaks shared,
How do we live through this time of toxic political partisanship? Compromise must obviously be sought, but that is not a good label for our goal, because it seems to focus on what is given up, not what is gained. “Principled accommodation” is a better label. We approach this by seeking an accommodation under which contending parties identify and preserve the deepest interests of the greatest number of parties through mutual respect, principled toleration of differences, and shared commitment to the common good.
For example, our country is still painfully unsettled in attempting to manage the relationship between religious freedom and nondiscrimination. We need to seek a better way for the respective advocates of religious freedom on the one hand and nondiscrimination regarding sexual identity and sexual orientation on the other to relate to one another as fellow citizens dedicated to maintaining a civil society. We need each other. We need a more workable balance between these important rights. Our common goal should be laws that serve the rights of all: “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” …
What is needed is not a declaration of the winner in a legal contest, but a body of wise public policy. Courts are constitutionally limited to resolving the specific cases before them. They are ill-suited to resolving the overarching, complex, and comprehensive policy-making that is required when there are conflicts between various great values in a pluralistic society.
This was illustrated in Utah’s success in resolving a head-to-head conflict between free exercise of religion and nondiscrimination in housing and employment. This effort began with a Salt Lake City ordinance that was first proposed in 2009 and finally more broadly resolved in a state law passed in 2015. It took about six years to work out the reconciliations that granted both sides significant benefits — a win-win outcome — that could not have been obtained without the balancing of interests made possible by the dynamics of principled negotiations in the legislative process. (Judicature, “Faith in Law,” Vol.107 No. 1 2023)
As I said previously, over the course of a few years, President Oaks doubles, triples, quadruples down – basically goes on the campaign trail – to give “accommodation” and “compromise” politics a big endorsement. These few examples have inspired a flank of support from several influential LDS voices – perhaps no voice more influential than former appellate court Judge Thomas Griffith.
In the Summer 2026 issue of Y Magazine, BYU’s alumni magazine, Judge Griffith, working out of BYU’s Wheatley Institute, spends several pages in an address titled “Promise and Peril at 250,” cheerleading President Oaks’ unrelenting campaign of “Fairness for All.” For readers of Y Magazine, this campaign must be important if Judge Griffith is weighing in too.
The judge seems to focus on three themes to justify public policy that, to my mind, makes no sense: 1) religious freedom is facing an existential crisis, 2) public debate is overwhelmed by toxic politics, and 3) Latter-day Saints should express “peacemaking” by surrendering on gay rights.
We celebrate under ominous clouds. Contempt courses through the veins of our body politic. We don’t just disagree with our fellow citizens anymore. We think they are evil and immoral. …
I agree with those who say we are in a constitutional crisis, the most serious since the Civil War. … The greater crisis is about toxic political polarization, a cancer corroding our civic life. Our public discourse is poisoned by contempt. …
The problem isn’t that we disagree about important matters. We’ve always done that. It’s that we do so today with contempt for those who see things differently.
Referencing the thoughts and words of President Oaks, Judge Griffith believes,
President Oaks has the answer. Our charge is to “exercise our influence civilly and peacefully” and “on contested issues, we should seek to moderate and unify.” …
What does this look like in practice? President Oaks pointed to the Utah Compromise of 2015 as a model.
Number one, there does not exist an existential constitutional crisis. We still have a representative form of government. We still have a separation of powers. President Trump is having to squeeze every last drop of executive privilege to undertake reversing 80 years of economic and foreign policy not in the interests of America. It’s not President Trump’s fault that Congress isn’t working. It’s not his fault that Americans are pretty equally divided. And it’s not President Trump’s fault that the lower courts are overreaching in their authority – thereby setting up the U.S. Supreme Court to command that the lower courts stay in their lane. The U.S. Constitution is working exactly how it was designed. No crisis.
Number two, if public debate is toxic – more toxic than any other time in U.S. history? – it’s because President Trump, again, is undoing 80 years of bad economic and foreign policy designs by former leaders who thought it was their place to arbitrate world politics and nation-building. The old guard and the news media who view them as the real experts are simply nasty. They will not stop at inventing crises after crises, constant negativity and the use of a fading sense of authority to confuse regular Americans.
What I call “peace hypocrites” are the worst naysayers. A “peace hypocrite” is a person who manipulates “the contradiction between stated intentions of promoting peace and their actual behavior of engaging in conflict to achieve their goals.” Judge Griffith is a peace hypocrite based on his referenced article. The body of the Wheatley Institute at BYU are peace hypocrites for behind-the scenes machinations to promote gay rights and same-sex marriage through its aggressive advancement of political compromise. Even my old friends still on staff at Sutherland Institute have played along by their endorsements of the 2015 “Utah Compromise” and the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act.
And, dare I say, even President Oaks seems to have set the bar. These folks only care about their invented principles about constitutional government and, most of all, their support for gay rights and same-sex marriage.
Loyalty, friendships, partnerships – the trust among faithful friends – disappears when the choice involves the “Fairness for all” campaign. As a material fact, no “sour grapes,” they successfully took away my livelihood on August 15, 2014, simply to get me out of the way of their “Fairness for All” campaign. I was the only obstacle standing in their way – and when all you see is an object, not a human being, you can justify any injustice.
In case you’re missing the point, all of their “peacemaking” is conflict, even if developed in back rooms and secret meetings. They just want what they want and will move mountains to get it.
And number three, all of this peacemaking from the mouths of these peace hypocrites is about nothing more than compromising and accommodating gay rights and same-sex marriage. They do not talk about or address or use as an example any other topic – just gay rights and same-sex marriage.
All of the high-level references exist to make compromise a public virtue – references about what Jesus would do or how our founding fathers unnaturally transcended and settled very common disagreements. All of it coming from the mouths of these peace hypocrites, is little more than a front to justify “Fairness for All” and compromise on gay rights and same-sex marriage. There would not be any “Fairness for All” campaign if gay rights and same-sex marriage were not a campaign.
They all know it – from President Oaks down through Elder Alexander Dusku and the late Bill Evans (former head of LDS government relations) over to the yes-men – the “how high” cowards – at the Wheatley Institute at BYU who hide their impotent intellects behind out-of-town speakers and intellectuals to drive their cause.
Judge Griffith quotes President Oaks, “President Oaks explained how witnessing the nation’s culture wars had changed his own perspective.” This explains his 180-degree turnaround between the event on October 8, 2013 and his UVU speech on April 16, 2014. At the time, I was the only real culture warrior standing before him. Judge Griffith then quotes President Oaks again, “We need to work for a better way – a way to resolve differences without compromising core values.”
The 2015 “Utah Compromise” compromised core values – at least my core values. It protected the institutional church from gay rights but not its individual members in Utah. I’d say that’s a very big compromise. Wanting to do it at the federal level is an even bigger compromise. But the grand-daddy of them all is “the church’s” support of the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Church operatives, President Oaks among them, actually endorsed same-sex marriage. Unbelievable.
If a Latter-day Saint leader seeks to support gay rights and same-sex marriage – and homosexuality is still a sin – core values definitely will be compromised. Period.
In the real world, even a world where Latter-day Saints strive to be their better angels, preemptive compromise or accommodation as civic virtue are appeasements, tactics for losers. If you have what you want, why give it away? Judge Griffith and the gang invoke virtue – “civic virtue” – unfounded emotions in politics to suggest you’re doing the Lord’s work. Again, from President Oaks’ Rome speech, the vision is “principled accommodation.”
We should not expect or seek total dominance for our own positions, but in the exercise of mutual respect should seek fairness for all.
If “principled accommodation” were a real thing, the church should settle every lawsuit against it out of court. In current news, the church should settle with John Dehlin about the use of the word “Mormon.” Why not let that apostate use the word? It’s just a word? He would feel much better about us and might not continue to insult the church on a daily basis. Why not settle with Paul Huntsman? He just wants his fair share of tithing dollars back? These examples raise an important question, if we accommodate, whose “principles” are we adhering to? The term “principled accommodation” sounds synonymous with magnanimity. Jesus gives grace to even those two apostates. Why not follow in His footsteps regarding them?
Jonathan Rauch, the “self-described liberal, atheist, Jewish homosexual” absolutely loves the concept of “principled accommodation.” He loves President Oaks for even entertaining the concept. Here is how Rauch describes the compromising, it’s “conspicuously countercultural in the conservative religious world.” Judge Griffith adds to Rauch’s glee, it “may offer the best path, perhaps the only path, out of our current constitutional peril. Countercultural, yes. But following Jesus’s charge to be a peacemaker has always been countercultural.” Yikes! These two guys should get a room. Of course, a liberal, atheist, homosexual loves the concept of the LDS Church supporting gay rights and same-sex marriage! You can almost hear inside the walls of the Wheatley Institute the chittering with utter joy.
When we’re not tiptoeing through the tulips, of course, we defend the church! Of course, we don’t hand over the keys to the kingdom to apostates! We take them to court! We win! And we don’t give up anything. Period.
This stark reality makes me believe that the term “principled accommodation” is made up singularly to address capitulating on gay rights and same-sex marriage. Of course, it is. Again, it also is why Lawyer Oaks flips the script and pushes for legislative solutions. The “Utah Compromise” and the Respect for Marriage Act were legislative wins. Public policy in legislative arenas welcomes any compromise, especially idiotic preemptive compromises. In a courtroom, that approach would be grounds for malpractice.
“Principled accommodation” is nonsense – right up there with the founding fathers “accommodating” slavery. Oh, they were so principled in their collective focus to get a constitution signed and sealed that they happily took slavery off of the table. Our best minds of the period knew that not addressing slavery was shameful and unconscionable in retrospect. Funny thing, I am quite sure that many of these same virtue-signaling LDS voices cheering on gay rights and same-sex marriage view those legal struggles with the legal struggle akin to slavery. They are on the “right side of history.”
Enough of that nonsense.
In Part 2, I will disabuse the same crowd trying to compromise on gay rights and same-sex marriage in regard to the explicit nature of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution has nothing to do with compromise, especially the preemptive compromise of President Oaks’ “fairness for all” tactic. The U.S. Constitution is about one thing and one thing only: establishing order.