The Arizona Republic comes out against the Mormon Temple, but for the wrong reasons

An editorial says the plan, originally for a 48-foot-high building, “needs tweaking”:

The church deserves credit for lowering the building by 8 feet, to 40 feet. But more concessions are needed to make this project a nice fit for the neighborhood.

The Church still gets to add a spire of nearly 80 feet on top.

It’s good the paper, however delicately, is telling the city council to limit the church’s plans to what is currently allowed.

But it should have made clear that the Mormons vaporized any claim to religioso bonus points when it went on a jihad against gay marriage.

As PHXated has said before, the Mormons should be able to build what the current zoming allows—a thirty-foot building—and nothing more.

The Church’s hostility to gay marriage—and its funding of anti-gay marriage initiatives here and in California—is within its right. But there’s no reason the city should give special dispensation to an institution that spends its money persecuting those who are striving for equal rights under the law.

Phoenix has enough problems with its national image without having the Mormon Church’s profile be any higher than it is now—literally or figuratively.