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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has been emphatic about its role in the Proposition 8 campaign. Yes, it strongly urged its members to donate to the Yes on 8 campaign to repeal the right of same-sex couples to marry, as well as encouraging them to volunteer for the campaign. But the actual donations of time and money came from Mormons, not the church.

Gay-rights activist Fred Karger takes exception to that description, and now the state Fair Political Practices Commission is listening. Karger alleged that the church organized out-of-state phone banks to work on the campaign, and distributed thousands of the nearly-ubiquitous lawn banners as well as other campaign materials -- none of it reported as non-monetary contributions as the law would require.

The FPPC said it will investigate the allegations. If they're found to have merit, the church could be fined for each infraction.

The backlash isn't dying down so fast over the passage of Proposition 8, which gives signs of being one of those events that transform a group into a force. Proposition 8 has brought gays and their many supporters to a new level of anger and determination that the initiative's backers probably hadn't foreseen.

There are the ongoing protests, the legal challenges. There are the calls to boycott all things Mormon because the church strongly and successfully called on its members to donate and work for the Yes on 8 campaign, and even the movement to boycott all things Utah (including the Sundance Festival, hardly a bastion of social conservativism). And now a gay-rights group in Utah (not quite the oxymoron you might think) plans to use the words of the church itself to launch legislation there that would expand civil rights for gays.

In an apparent effort to soothe scorched feelings after the vote, Mormon Elder L. Whitney Clayton  said that in general, the church does not oppose civil unions and domestic partnerships created to extend equal benefits such as health insurance and property rights to gays and lesbians. Taking him at his word, Equality Utah says it will help draft five bills for the Utah Legislature seeking these as well as equal rights in employment, housing and probate. The idea is that the church, a powerful force in the state, is faced with a choice of either favoring these rights or coming off as less than honest.

Church spokesmen are mum on this issue so far.

Mormons have been beset this week by news that tends to cast their community in a negative light. A Holocaust survivors' group stopped all discussions with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, saying that despite a 13-year-old agreement to stop the practice, Mormons continue to posthumously "baptize by proxy" Jewish Holocaust victims as Mormons, a practice that deeply offends most Jews. And a judge has ordered the University of Phoenix and its parent company to pay $1.88 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against its non-Mormon employees.

Photo by Chris Detrick/AP