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Leaders for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints received thousands of letters today asking them to support bills in next year's Legislature which would give benefits for same-sex couples.
Representatives from the Human Rights Campaign in Utah say they needed to hand-deliver the more than 27,000 letters to the Church Office Building this afternoon because the Church blocked e-mails asking leaders to support gay rights.
Jerry Rapier, with the Human Rights Campaign, said, "Our hope is the LDS Church will move away from not being opposed to these basic protections and more towards supporting them."
The letters urge the Church to publicly back the Common Ground Initiative that would allow domestic partners of public employees to receive insurance and retirement benefits.
A spokesman for the Church responded: "We are deferring comment on the petition delivery, but we would like to clarify that we did not take measures to block the e-mails."
Like many large organizations, the LDS Church has safeguards built into its computer system, and that many e-mails arriving at the same time are automatically blocked as spam.
E-mail: mgiauque@ksl.com
