Hark! Let us rejoice, reader, for 2009 and its corresponding decade are drawing to a close. We’re all older, perhaps a bit grayer and, I hope, wiser. That includes the right, which began The Aughts, or whatever they’re called, drunk on anti-gay furor. Though certainly they haven’t given up their fight, many in the socially conservative camp – led, queerly, by the Mormon Church – seem poised to enter a new Age of Enlightenment as we enter the next decade. Even the Vatican and their “Conservative-Christian Big Thinker,” Stephen P. George, are using “reason,” rather than right-leaning religion, in their arguments, albeit for all the wrong reasons. As our opponents begin leaning on reason, we should, too.

For those of you who don’t remember your history, the Age of Enlightenment was, in a nutshell, the period when reason dominated the collective discourse. It was the big idea of the time, and paved the way for civil society to spring forth. The “rights” of man were debated and propagated across the globe. Men were no longer subservient to the government. They were given space in which to live independently of the yokes and all that.  Yokes are rarely tangible, however, and can take new forms in new contexts, applying to some and not the others, like the gays.

Who could forget the 2000 election, when George and the gang brought a revived right-wing energy into Washington? Then 9/11 happened, which, for some absurd reason, made us seem like even more of a threat to “traditional” American values. With all that era’s ranting about nuclear families as opposed to gay agendas, one would think that we were the real terrorists, and that contention played big in the 2004 showdown. And those fights rage on — the right used all their wits and wiles to defeat gay marriage in California and Maine — but there does seem to be a relative simmering on the side of the right. It’s almost as if, miracle of miracles, they’re injecting a bit of reason into their typically irrational ideologies.

Consider last November, one year after the Prop 8 win that was funded in large part by the Mormon church, when the Church of Latter-Day Saints supported Salt Lake City’s ordinance prohibiting homophobic discrimination in terms of employment and housing. Rather than working themselves into a tizzy, the group declared, “The Church supports these ordinances because they’re fair and reasonable.” Note those last two adjectives: “fair” and “reasonable.” Though ferocious opponents of gay marriage, the Mormons are actually acknowledging that gays are – gasp!! – American citizens who deserve at least some of the same rights as their straight counterparts. Spokesman Michael R. Otterson’s even used the “r-word:”

Across America and around the world, diverse communities such as ours are wrestling with complex social and moral questions… The issues before you tonight are the right of people to have a roof over their heads and the right to work without being discriminated against.

The Church had in the past offered only a tepid “we’re not opposed” to this particular legislative question, and these most recent remarks show a decided shift toward more civil engagement. It’s not a huge move – and some suggest they’re simply doing it for good press – but this support’s relatively progressive when compared to the Church’s checkered past. Even Utah Equality director Brandie Balken, who had been debating with the Mormons backstage, was caught off guard. The Mormons, however, aren’t the only traditionally conservative group who are taking a wider look at controversial issues, gay and otherwise.