Elder Alexander Dushku Speaks at 2024 Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit About Building Respect, Friendship

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By Sarah Jane Weaver, for Church News

In the years after the Church’s support of California’s 2008 Proposition 8, Elder Alexander Dushku — then an attorney involved in negotiations between LGBT and religious groups — learned important lessons about peacemaking.

“If religious freedom is to be the means of human flourishing … then it must be conducive to a just and livable peace among contending factions so that all may flourish,” said Elder Dushku, a General Authority Seventy and general counsel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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While taking part in the 2024 Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit in Notre Dame, Indiana, on Thursday, July 11, Elder Dushku reflected on “Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age” and shared what he learned in the aftermath of Proposition 8 about building respect and friendship with people of different beliefs.

In 2008, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encouraged members to support the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which inserted the traditional definition of marriage into the California Constitution.

Joining with many other religious organizations in this effort, Church leaders based the support of Prop. 8 on their “belief that the traditional definition of marriage is best for parents, children and society,” said Elder Dushku. The Church saw itself as “participating in the democratic process on a matter of legitimate debate and public policy.”

But many gays and lesbians in California and around the nation saw Proposition 8 quite differently, he continued. “They saw it as a denial not just of marriage status and benefits but of equal dignity and citizenship. The anger and anguish were very real. And so was the backlash, especially against the Church of Jesus Christ.”

During his remarks as part of a panel discussion on religious liberty, Elder Dushku said he has been thinking about his friend Bill Evans, a former Church employee who died on June 26. A “warm and gentle man,” Evans supported the passage of Proposition 8 in California.

But Evans — who headed the Church’s government relations team — was a peacemaker, not a culture warrior, said Elder Dushku. “A few months after Prop. 8, Bill and a few other Church representatives began quietly meeting in Salt Lake City with a small group of LGBT persons. They talked, but not really about politics or policy. At least not at first.”

Instead, said Elder Dushku, they “talked story,” sharing “about families and friends, about common life interests and goals, about faith and love and tragedies and hope — the ordinary things we all face in life.”

The purpose of those early meetings was not to change beliefs or public policy, he said. It was simply to learn and understand each other. “Over months and years of these interactions, friendships grew, and so did understanding and trust.”

The circle of discussion expanded, and Elder Dushku was invited to participate.

“In time, we learned to talk to each other about sensitive matters,” said Elder Dushku, noting that “differences and misunderstandings were often resolved without the media explosions and harsh rhetoric that were becoming increasingly common.”

Building on this foundation of friendship and trust, Elder Dushku — then an attorney with the law firm Kirton McConkie — joined with leaders at advocacy group Equality Utah and began negotiations about the possibility of adding both LGBT rights and religious protections to Utah’s civil rights law barring employment and housing discrimination.

The ultimate result was the “2015 Utah Compromise.”

“Final passage in the Utah Legislature was uncertain, dramatic and tense, with each side stretched to its emotional limit,” he said. “Opponents and supporters alike wept. Later, the jubilation at the signing ceremony was thunderous, with many hugging and crying.”

The new law, said Elder Dushku, came to symbolize and teach “some combination of respect, equality, freedom, acknowledgment, inclusion, community and compromise.”

But what happened was remarkable, he said.

The culture and rhetoric of a very conservative state shifted in response to law — “not just the words of the law, but the process by which the sides had come together to enact it.”

Utah, he said, “remains one of the most sexually conservative states in the nation. But it is also one of the most supportive of basic rights against unjust discrimination for LGBT persons. There are still periodic tensions and flare-ups, to be sure, but as a community Utah is vastly less polarized than it once was.”

Soon after the Utah Compromise, Elder Dushku was involved in a much more complex effort among conservative religious organizations and moderate LGBT groups to draft amendments to the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act that would protect both LGBT rights and religious freedom.

They too began just getting to know each other. “The starting point was a recognition that we disagreed on certain fundamental matters and that wasn’t going to change, but also that as Americans we agreed on many other matters, such as wanting a society that treats all people with decency and respect.

“And so we spent hundreds of exhausting hours in hotel conference rooms in big cities and remote rural areas. There were innumerable conference calls, Zoom calls and emails. Negotiations dragged on for months and then years. There were plenty of deadlocks. Emotions and frustrations were sometimes high. There was yelling and tears, diplomatic outreaches, apologies and reconciliations.

“But there was also laughter and talk about spouses, family and friends, and about things that had nothing to do with LGBT rights and religious liberty. We became friends and colleagues, determined to craft a fair solution to the LGBT rights/religious liberty conundrum — or at least one that was fair enough.”

In 2019 they introduced in the U.S. Congress the Fairness for All Act. “The bill, with all its finely tuned compromises, is very long and complex — probably too long and too complex. Almost everyone hated it.”

Some denounced the bill for being a “license to discriminate” against LGBT people. Others opposed it for including LGBT rights in federal law at all and for not having broad enough religious exemptions.

It did not pass.

But, again, the effort yielded important lessons.

Elder Dushku said they learned to examine carefully what each side really needs.

“The effort taught us to be more practical and less ideological.

“It taught us to listen carefully and understand opposing views.

“It taught us to respect and trust each other in new ways — and to communicate from a position of respect and trust.

“It taught us that we have much more in common than we originally thought — that we actually agree on most truths, not all but most.”

Elder Dushku said none of the religious groups that participated has changed its doctrine or beliefs about marriage, family, gender or sexuality, or its expression of those truths. And none of the LGBT rights advocates has abandoned the quest for greater civil rights protections for LGBT persons.

“And yet, years later, many of us are still friends and in regular contact.

“Jesus Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God’” (Matthew 5:9), said Elder Dushku. “As one who is striving to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, I have come to see more clearly that the effort to promote a durable religious liberty must account for Jesus’ injunction to be a peacemaker.”

—Sarah Jane Weaver is editor of the Deseret News.

Copyright 2023 Deseret News Publishing Company.