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Tom Hanks has issued an apology after calling Mormons who voted for Prop. 8 "un-American" at a Big Love premiere party last week.
"Last week, I labeled members of the Mormon church who supported California's Proposition 8 as 'un-American,'" Hanks said via his publicist. "I believe Proposition 8 is counter to the promise of our Constitution; it is codified discrimination."
The Oscar-winning actor is a producer for Big Love, the HBO drama about a family of polygamists living in suburban Utah and he made his initial remarks at the show's Los Angeles premiere, Fox News reported.
"The truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen," he told Fox News at the show's premiere. "There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American, and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here's what happens now."
Hanks continued his apology by saying that Americans also have the right to vote as they please.
"But everyone has a right to vote their conscience; nothing could be more American," Hanks continued in his statement. "To say members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who contributed to Proposition 8 are 'un-American' creates more division when the time calls for respectful disagreement. No one should use 'un- American' lightly or in haste. I did. I should not have."
Following his "un-American" remarks, Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, responded saying, "expressing an opinion in a free and democratic society is as American as it gets."
