The media in Salt Lake City have discovered the documents revealed prior to Election Day that show a long-time collaboration between the Mormons and the Catholics to destroy what they call "Homosexual Legal Marriage."

DailyKos Diarist thereisnospoon had these documents in a pre-Election Day diary, and summarized them:

Yep, you got that right. They were thinking of this in California way back in 1997. They were saying, "referendum is expensive. We have the money, but we don’t have the public face. So let’s join with the Catholics, because they have a better reputation."

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco who renewed this relationship this summer when he asked for the LDS Church leadership’s assistance had most recently been the Archbishop of Salt Lake City. The SF Chronicle revealed earlier this week:

Months before the first ads would run on Proposition 8, San Francisco Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer reached out to a group he knew well, Mormons.

Niederauer had made critical inroads into improving Catholic-Mormon relations while he was Bishop of Salt Lake City for 11 years. And now he asked them for help on Prop. 8, the ballot measure that sought to ban same-sex marriages in California.

The June letter from Niederauer drew in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and proved to be a critical move in building a multi-religious coalition – the backbone of the fundraising, organizing and voting support for the successful ballot measure. By bringing together Mormons and Catholics, Niederauer would align the two most powerful religious institutions in the Prop. 8 battle.

Of course, there’s a fairly straight-line connection between San Francisco and Rome as well as Salt Lake City:

Remember, the previous Archbishop, William Joseph Levada, was called to Rome in 2005 to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the position formerly held by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

Americans need to understand that these two powerful church hierarchies have been working closely together to deny us civil rights, for a long time.

And that’s not right.