The Mormons, God bless their hateful bitter souls, have come up with a new and improved way to undercut the civil rights of gay people.

You see, the Mormon didn’t have a PR problem because they’re always on the side of hatred and bigotry (their longtime intolerance towards women and blacks comes to mind). No. The problem is that the Mormons were too brazen in their hate and intolerance.

So all they need do is find a kinder and gentler way to stick the knife in the back of gays and their civil rights, and maybe everyone can go back to not really caring about Mormons either way.

Sadly, for the Mormons and their plummeting public image, civil rights don’t really work that way. Finding a more stealthful way to dehumanize gays and lesbians isn’t really “better” for anyone but the one doing the victimizing.

The latest brilliant idea from the Mormons is to supposedly not take a position on gay marriage in Hawaii, but rather to urge Mormons in the state to follow the teaching of a specific church document that – what? – is against gay marriage.

So they basically told their parishioners to help stop gay marriage in the state. Again. The Mormons, you see, have meddled in Hawaii before (just like they meddled in California, and Alaska, and Nebraska, and…). They were instrumental in helping ban block gay marriage in the state during the 1990s.

So now the Mormons are meddling in Hawaii again. Nice way to prove you’re not longer hateful bigots. (The Mormons, you might recall, single-handedly got Prop 8 passed in California, ripping the civil rights away from potentially millions of gay couples until a US Supreme Court decision earlier this year effectively killed Prop 8 once and for all.)

In addition to their now-coded opposition to gay marriage, the Mormons also are asking their members to push for a religious exemption that would permit anyone in the state to refuse to assist, or celebrate in, a gay marriage. That means not only state officials could refuse to marry you (or even process your papers), but employers could possibly refuse to recognize gay employees are married, hospitals could turn your gay husband away, and all sorts of fun ways in which private individuals statewide could refuse to “celebrate” your marriage.

So basically the Mormons are: A) telling their followers to oppose gay marriage in the state; and B) if the state passes marriage equality anyway, the Mormons want a provision that basically says your marriage doesn’t count if someone – anyone – doesn’t want it to count.

You know, I never really had much of an opinion on Mormons either way. I knew some nice Mormons during debate camp when I was in high school, and actually dated a Mormon (though perhaps he was an “ex”- Mormon) for a short while back in the 1990s. But the Mormons I met always seemed like nice people.

Now I find the religion absolutely, aggressively, and persistently hateful.

The thing is, you can only beat the cr*p out of someone for so long before they conclude that your mean streak isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

PS Leave Anne Frank the-f-alone.