After the Fact II – An Unexpected Prop. 8 Opponent

Will there be enough room in that grave for his 40 wives to roll over with him?

In November, a few days before Californians narrowly approved Proposition 8, the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, a San Francisco Chronicle writer reported seeing a “No on Prop 8” sign on the lawn of Steve Young, who lives not far from my former neighborhood in Palo Alto, California. For the ESPN-weary and -agnostic among us, Young is the former San Francisco 49er quarterback and NFL Hall of Famer who also happens to be a graduate of Brigham Young University and, in fact, the great-great-great-grandson of Brigham Young himself. A bit ironic when you consider that Proposition 8 almost certainly would not have passed in California had it not been for a massive invasion of Mormons and Mormon money from Utah: as Hendrik Hertzberg reports in this week’s New Yorker, “Almost all the early canvassers for the cause were Mormons, …[and of] the forty million dollars spent on behalf of Prop. 8, some twenty million came from members or organs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Mormon invasion or no, Barb Young, Steve’s wife, declared, “We believe all families matter and we do not believe in discrimination.” Scurrilous words indeed from the wife of a (perhaps former) favorite son.

So I ask you, what is more ironic, the fact that the antecedent followers of Brigham Young, a man who had 40 wives, are now dictating to Californians who they can and cannot marry, or the fact that Young’s most famous antecedent, Steve Young, was against the measure from the start?