But does that really matter now?

of course not. only the words that come from your mouth, precious.

This quote is important too though:

There was never a statement suggesting that Elder Jensen felt the Church’s support of Proposition 8 was an error or that he was apologizing for that event.

I just was really struck by the story of the one guy who followed counsel of leaders and was subjected to some awful sound aversion therapy and whatnot. It seems like that sort of mess was really what cut the folks in the room, including Elder Jensen, to the core.

members of the stake, invited
specifically for the purpose, voiced the grief they had experienced as a result of their
church’s involvement in Proposition 8 as well as the broader history of programs and
policies relating to gay and lesbian members.

Some speakers expressed anger that the Proposition 8 campaign had given
people “a license to hate”–expressed amazement that our church could have led a
campaign that violated its own principles, a campaign in which love was not in evidence,
in which Christ seemed to have been forgotten–expressed sorrow that a family who
previously had managed to come together in loving inclusion of their gay brother and his
husband and their child found themselves ripped apart by the Proposition 8 campaign.

Elder Jensen added that in his experience the general authorities of the Church are as
good-hearted a group of men as could be found anywhere, perhaps not perfect, but trying
hard to do what is right and that they entered the Proposition 8 campaign without malice.

Those passages make clear that the purpose of the meeting was to talk about the feelings generated by the Church’s involvement in the Prop 8 campaign, and that many people there expressed concerns about exactly that.

It seems clear to me that Elder Jensen’s apology was personal to him, not necessarily speaking for the Church, but was directed at all the pain expressed in the meeting, including the pain generated by the Church’s involvement in prop 8.

See here for a first hand account of the meeting. As I read that it seems to me that the apology had virtually nothing to do with Prop 8 (contrary to most of the secondhand reports I have seen). Rather it was about botched ministering in general. Maybe others reading it differently though.

So MCQ, you seem to be saying that people were hurt because the Church got involved with the campaign. And that if the church had just kept quiet then the folks at the meeting would not have been hurt. Is that right?

That’s probably true. I imagine the hurt didn’t come so much from being denied marriage licenses, but that their Church, their own people were actively campaigning for it.

One can understand and expect a stab in the back from an enemy, but not from one’s closest allies. Perhaps this, and not the marriage thing, is what the apology was for.

There is room to regret the alienating manner in which the Church played a role, but I don’t see room for the Church to regret its political stance.