On social issues, many Mormons enthusiastically take part in what evangelical activist (and former Nixon accomplice) Charles Colson calls the “ecumenism of the trenches”—the practice of conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons toiling side by side as allies in the culture war against secular liberalism. Still, the differences, and tensions, among the groups are real and deep, and not only because Mormons think of their religion as a “restoration” of genuine Christianity after an 1,800-year apostasy that produced both Catholic and Protestant forms of the faith. The church goes far beyond its comrades in the culture war in holding that an ideal marriage—one between a man and a woman, undertaken as a sacrament in a Mormon temple—is forever binding, with marital vows, and procreation, extending into eternity. This view of marriage motivates some of the church’s most controversial public stands—the most recent being its backing of Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative to prohibit same-sex marriage.