The IRS has rules about this sort of public stand and tax-exempt status.
No they don't. They have explicit rules (often violated) about using tax-exempt monies for political campaigns, that is, electoral politics that works to elect people of one party or another to political office. This is none of that. This is a ballot measure, it's non-partisian, it elects no-one, and as such it's always been considered to be fair game for one and all to participate in.
The Mormons got Prop. 8 passed by Propganda and money that it got by making it's members almost bankrupt.
Almost bankrupt Mormons? Wait, you're serious? Let me laugh harder then. It's going to take a lot more than printing up a bunch of signs and making telephone trees to bankrupt the CoJCoLDS and/or it's followers. A LOT more.
And, to be sure the Mormons were heavily against it. They raised a lot of money (because they have a lot of money) and they did great political groundwork/legwork getting things organized (because they tend to be very organized and hard working people). So too did the Catholics, perhaps even more. Again they raised a lot of money (because it's the richest institution on earth, that's why - they also have quite the fan club, over a billion Catholics around the world, they have access to money too) and did a lot of organizing/groundwork/legwork because they've been at it for centuries now, and the're damn good at it. They have walked this fine line since the 1840s in New York, and when you learn it like that, you really learn it good.
But aside from the Hispanic communities and areas who were really the deciding factor in the Prop 8 vote, no doubt about it, (and who didn't need the Catholic Church to tell them they didn't like gay marriage, nope) the most solidly pro-8 vote came from the (for obvious reasons) record turn-out in African-American communities, who don't have many Mormons, or Catholics, running around in them.
So, it's totally unfair to blame this on the Mormons, or the Catholics, or both. Or even churches in general, yeah they were in the mix - a big part of it to be sure (and why not?, they do have an interest in the issue), but just dumping the rather large victory on them isn't going to win next time either. It needs to be seen as a whole. There was a lot of opposition - which the anti-8 side completely ignored in their rush to the victory party - and yeah, some of it was religious in nature, but there are still serious cultural problems with Gay Marriage in some groups, and those reasons are sometimes completely divorced from religion.
THAT might be a way to fight this sort of thing?
Oh, so your lawyer is going to go up against the buildings and buildings (floor upon floor upon floor, really) of lawyers that the CoJCoLDS has? Or up against the Catholic Church, that which preserved The Law for all those centuries and still teaches every priest Cannon Law? You're going up against not just buildings full of lawyers, and the fact that every damn priest is trained in the law to a degree, but you're going to toss in Georgetown, Loyola, and Notre Dame (and many others) law schools into the fight against you too. And if they know one thing, its' that they can flat-out outlast you. All they have to do is keep it going, you'll die sooner or later. So, its' proven to be pretty hard to go up against these Church things, particularly the Catholic one. But it seems to me, lots of people - up to and including the Federal Government - has gone after the CoJCoLDS and got whopped by them. So they are no easy mark either.
And my guess is that at this very time all those lawyers they are working trying to get those statues invalidated, as they (the church) are a 'person' just as much as Standard Oil is a 'person', and money is speech, and speech is free, so why can't they support specific candidates?
