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Actually, it's pretty complex. Beyond some (extremely) colorful details, there are two radical Mormon theological deviations from conventional Christianity, both of which have at least some bearing on the gay-marriage battle. The first is an expansion of the drama of salvation. In creedal Christianity, Jesus' divinity, incarnation, teachings, death and resurrection are the entire point. Mormons, too, believe in Christ as Saviour and model and are as committed as any other Christians to his emulation. But they also believe we existed prenatally as God's "spirit children," that our earthly life is an interlude for learning and testing and that we continue developing after death. The best Mormons may become in the afterlife parents to their own batch of spirit children. "As Man is, God once was; as God is, Man may become," goes the couplet by the fifth Mormon President, Lorenzo Snow. This unusual scheme underlies Mormon sunniness, industriousness and charity. Says Jana Riess, a comparative-religions expert who converted to Mormonism and is a co-author of Mormonism for Dummies: "There's no other Christian theology as beautifully open to human beings' eternal potential."
Gays constitute a notable exception. Some Mormons have a conventional view of homosexuality as sin. But their marriage preference has an additional aspect. The return to God is accomplished by heterosexually founded families, not individuals, and only as a partner in a procreative relationship can a soul eventually create spirit children. "I've had personal experience with gay people, and I weep with them," says official LDS historian Marlin Jensen, but the "context for our being so dogged about preserving the family is that Mormons believe that God is their father and that they have a heavenly mother and that eventually their destiny is to become like that." The alienation felt by gay Mormons was highlighted in 2000, when one of them, 32-year-old Stuart Matis, committed suicide on the steps of the Los Altos, Calif., church headquarters.
The second politically controversial Mormon teaching is the belief in a living, breathing Prophet — in Salt Lake City. Prophets have even more authority than Popes do in Catholicism; among other things, they are able to add to Scripture. Because they make key decisions with their apostles, the model is oligarchic rather than absolute, but it still vests extraordinary influence in Monson, his two counselors and his apostles, who transmit orders downward through the Salt Lake City — based general authorities, regional stake presidents and local pastors called bishops.
Mormons bristle at the notion of "blind obedience" to the Prophet. The faith makes much of free will, and each believer divines his path privately with the help of reason, prayer and the Holy Spirit. But most often, the outcome of that process affirms the Prophet's instructions. The combination of free-will rhetoric and de facto obedience produces what Stephen Carter, editor of the independent Mormon magazine Sunstone, calls "people who are psychologically healthy, have a good sense of direction and who are for the most part ready to follow orders."
The Organized Mormon
Richard and Joan Ostling, authors of Mormon America, calculated that pious Mormons devote an astonishing 20 hours a week to church-related activities, an expectation Richard Ostling says exists in "no other big denomination." Constant interaction through Bible study, family home evenings, Mormon scout troops and other community-building activities yield a practiced, seamless unity more common to much smaller insular groups like the Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The biggest manifestation of that unity is one of America's largest private welfare networks, a charitable wonder called the Bishop's Storehouse system that kept thousands of LDS members off the dole during the Great Depression (and is humming again). In the past, the only knock against the church's largesse was that it aided mostly Mormons: the Ostlings write that in the 14 years ending in 1997, the LDS spent a paltry $30.7 million in cash on non-Mormon humanitarian aid. But that changed in the late '90s, and humanitarian expenditures in 2008 alone topped $110 million (including noncash donations). "We're there when the tornadoes hit and hurricanes hit and the volcanoes explode," says Ballard. Notes Marian Sylvestre of the Bay Area Red Cross, which developed a fruitful cooperation with Pimentel: "They're quiet soldiers with plenty of resources."