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New Moon opens everywhere today. And, while I am a huge fan of Twilight stars Taylor Lautner, Kellan Lutz, Alex Meraz, and the others, I’m not all that big a fan of the actual Twilight stories. The book was unreadable. (I tried, and it was agony.) And the movie was Sweet Valley High cringe-inducing.

If it weren’t for the boys, I wouldn’t know one single thing about Twilight or its creator, Stephanie Meyer. So perhaps I can be excused for not knowing (or forgetting) that Meyer is a devout Mormon who graduated from BYU.

Now, we all know about the Mormon church and Prop 8 financial intersections. Are we being irresponsible gays if we lust after Alex Meraz? If we see the movie? Buy the book? These were questions that hadn’t occurred to me until I read Mike Albo’s new piece in the Advocate, “Love Bites for Twilight’s Gay Fans:”

Meyer’s religious background hasn’t escaped the gay blogosphere. [Um, well . . . . ] There have been some intelligent, penetrating questions among many sites about the motivations of Meyer and the subsequent film projects — and whether this is something we gays and lesbians should be obsessing over. It brings up an interesting quandary: In our current political state as a minority, just how are our dollars and sexual energy being used?

Albo’s article introduced me to the Professor, What If blog (which is kind of amazing). And there the Professor dives deeper into what Meyer does with the money she earns from her series:

While [Meyer] has not made any public statement regarding Prop 8, her tithing to the church supports institutionalizing discrimination against those who are not heterosexual. By extension, a percentage of the multi-billion dollar Twilight industry went towards the Mormon Church, an institution that played a huge funding role in initially getting Prop 8 on the ballot, and then kept the funding in plentiful supply in order to grow support for the Yes on 8 camp. The success of this campaign, which relied on dollars and dogma, would not have been possible without the big money that came from the Mormon Church and other religious donors.

. . . Meyer’s silence about the issue of homophobia in her church in general, and Prop 8 in particular, comes across as deafeningly loud –it speaks volumes, showing support for discrimination via economic buttressing of an institution that helped California, the state I live in, to etch inequality into law. So much for the sunshine state – so much for dazzling, sensitive vampires…Guess it’s ok for a lion to love a lamb, but not for a man to love another man.

Yeah. And the Professor makes a pretty serious argument that the depiction of the shirtless “Wolf Pack” is an example of the historical hypersexualization of people of color. Something I hadn’t thought of.

Albo continues:

Defenses of Meyer (from The Mormons Are Coming! blog and En.FairMormon.org, for example) stipulate that LDS’s contributions to Yes on 8 campaigns were through individual contributions and “in-kind donations”(free or discounted services) that total about $190,000. Defenders also contend that support for the campaign only came from congregations within California under the direction of the Protect Marriage Coalition.

. . . Infinitely more savvy than she was perhaps five years ago (and also probably armed with the shrewdest publicists in the history of Hollywood]) Meyer has, smartly, stayed away from the bubbling controversy, avoiding any discussion of her politics. On the other hand, she has publicly discussed how important her Mormon faith was in the creation of her multimillion-dollar saga.

We need to keep in mind, too, that the Mormon church has softened, just a little, on its rigid stance against LGBT equality. It’s too easy, of course to demonize an entire organization.

But all of this makes Albo’s question even more resonant: “In our current political state as a minority, just how are our dollars and sexual energy being used?” By us. And by everyone else.