A couple thousand people gathered outside the Capitol in Sacramento this afternoon to rally for the legalization of same-sex marriages just days after voters imposed a constitutional ban.

The gathering follows several similar events around the Bay Area and California. Earlier today, more than 400 people gathered outside the distinctive Mormon Temple in Oakland to protest the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints‘ support of Proposition 8.

Carla Souza was a dutiful member of the Mormon church, hosting dinner meetings at her house, taking care of children in the nursery school and going out with missionaries to spread the word about her faith.

Her devotion, prosecutors said, didn’t sit well with her husband.

On May 21, 2006, a bloodied Jeremias Bins walked into the Framingham police station and said he had just bludgeoned his wife and stepson with a hammer, authorities said.

Mormon church president Thomas S. Monson said Saturday the church has plans to build five new temples worldwide, three abroad and two in the United States.

The Mormon Church is considered to be, theologically, a cult of Christianity. Its temples, rituals and doctrines are rejected by mainstream Christians.

Due to its attempts to pass off Mormon doctrines and practices as being compatible to — or even representative of — Christianity, the Mormon Church is considered to be, theologically, a cult of Christianity.

Mormonism’s use of the term ‘Christian’ is false and misleading, in the same way that slapping the term ‘ROLEX’ onto a fake watch is deceptive.

Pointing this out has nothing to do with religious hatred or intolerance, but rather with historical and theological accuracy and honesty.

On Sept. 11, 1857, Mormon militiamen led the slaughter of 120 men, women and children on wagon train bound for California in an incident known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

For years, Mormon church officials downplayed the role Mormons played in the mass killing.

Now a new book lays the blame largely on Southern Utah church and militia leaders.

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, described plural marriage as part of “the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on earth” and taught that a man needed at least three wives to attain the “fullness of exaltation” in the afterlife.

He warned that God had explicitly commanded that “all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same … and if ye abide not that covenenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory.”

So why did the Mormons eventually reject polygamy?

The doctrines and practices of Mormon Fundamentalists are closer to those of the original Mormon Church than are the doctrines and practices of today’s Mormon Church.

Fundamentalist Mormons have responded to a less-than-honest PR campaign by the LDS Church.

Mormon leaders today said they are stepping up efforts to make the public aware of the differences between the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which has recently garnered widespread national attention.

Then we fill in the details the LDS leaves out.

The LDS Church now boasts more members abroad than in the U.S., where the church has its origins. About 55 percent of the world’s 13 million Mormons live outside the U.S., according to church figures.

Wikileaks has posted a confidential document from the Church of Latter-day Saints called the Church Handbook of Instructions, which is a guide for the church’s lay leadership and is not available either to parishioners or to the public.

The Roman Catholic Church has recently directed dioceses worldwide not to give parish information to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The move is to prevent LDS Church members from baptizing by proxy Catholic ancestors.