Here's a wonderfully clueless New York Times letter to the editor in response to that amusing NYT article "Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage" about how Mormons hijacked the gay marriage initiative in California. (By the way, gay marriage only got 48% in California, while Barack Obama got 61%. What fraction of that 13% of the Californian electorate who voted for Obama but not for gay marriage was Mormon? Eensy or teensy?)

To the Editor:

As a California resident who voted no on Proposition 8 [i.e., supported gay marriage], I am a little confused as to why money from outside the state is allowed to affect the outcome of our elections. If I wanted to live my life according to the rules of the Mormon Church, I would move to Utah.

Barbara Davilman Studio City, Calif.

You have to feel sorry for the poor villagers of Studio City whose indigenous folkways are under constant mass media assault from all those rich city slickers in Provo. Mormons grow up knowing all about how to make snazzy TV commercials, while the innocent Studio Citians only learn from their elders how to communicate via smoke signals and notches carved in tree trunks by the side of the trail.

And nobody in Studio City would ever donate money to a political campaign taking place outside of the state.*

———- * I'm kidding. I grew up in Studio City and had to put up with a lot of guff when I went to college in Texas about having a hometown called "Studio City," which I admit sounds like it was made up for parodistic purposes.

It was like the slums of Beverly Hills. The man across the street had a dozen Emmy awards in technical categories and another neighbor appeared in several hundred commercials.