I figured, since you specified fantasy and also “not proselytising”. Apparently Card’s fantasy novels reference Mormonism in a way I didn’t notice in Ender’s Game.
Agreed, but this is a case of not wanting to associate with a person because he happens to be religious. To me, that is bigotry. Watching the guy’s science videos isn’t associating with or endorsing his religion in any way (or at least that’s what I gleaned from the OP, that the religious stuff is confined to a separate website).
I am very careful about where I donate money. However, when I exchange money for goods or services that money ceases to become mine at the moment the exchange occurs.
I feel this way because I expect it to work both ways. I don’t think my employers should have any say in how I spend the money I earn by working for them on some theory that I am spending “their” money. I always think of Michael Scott in The Office opining about how HE paid for an employees wedding because the money came out of her paycheck, which came from him.
But if I find someone totally rephrensible, I might decide I can help silence them by not giving them the opportunity to earn money by selling me good or services. But that bar is high for me - I can see myself deciding to not do business with a company if they are run by an actual cult - like the FLDS, but I can’t see boycotting a company because they are Mormons. Despite being a agnostic from an urban area, I worked for a Mormon company for a little over 8 years and I earned over a million bucks during that time frame. And I learned most Mormons are very secular when it comes to business.
Heh, you’re correct. There are actually lots of them. I was letting my American-centrism get in the way. 
I gather that the OP is concerned that a microtransaction of ad revenue will result in another microtransaction into the Mormon church’s coffers, since Mormons are required to pay 10% of their income to the church.
Is that bigotry to me? Maybe not, although my opinion might change if the OP inconsistently applied this level of scrutiny to all of his “business transactions”. E.g. does he refuse to do any business with companies that are owned by, or employ theists? Because there’s a helluva lot of theists out there, and many theists make donations to their church. If he went to his favorite restaurant and found out his waiter was a Mormon, would he refuse to pay a tip? If not, why not? You give a $10 tip, and I guarantee you the Mormon church will see more of that than 1000 views you give to some Mormon YouTuber.
My guess is the OPs sole media consumption isn’t this guy’s video and The Atheist Experience. And, even if it were, My bet is there are a fair amount of Mormons who work for Google, or have have Stock in google, who are ALSO making money off YouTube views, and who are going to donate some of that income to the Mormon Church. Hell, it would not surprise me at all if the Church directly owned a significant amount of stock in Google. They have about 32 billion dollars in stocks.
I was a member of the Mormon church, I do not directly give ANY money to the Mormon church. However, I am not going to boycott businesses I like that are owned or employ Mormon individuals. That’s not because I don’t have an axe to grind with the Mormon Church, I do, but because I think the benefit to myself outweighs any the damage a couple pennies to the Mormon church could possibly do. That, and I have no beef with individual members, I feel sorry for them really, and do not believe they should be deprived of a livelihood just because I think they are misguided.
Really, trying to live ethically as to how you spend your time and money falls apart so easily with any awareness beyond the end of your nose.
In this case watching a YouTube video may be sending a few cents to the LDS.
How about that hamburger you had for lunch? Is the girl serving it to you using her wages to buy drugs? Or maybe she isn’t, but the man she pays rent to sends his money to support his brother in another country. And his brother supports a fascist regime. Don’t get me started on the reputed ecological destruction in raising beef.
Can you really control what happens to your money once it leaves your hand?
So, what is one to do?
So to keep this in the abstract, this is a pretty absolutist statement that it seems to me many here would not endorse.
Many here have boycotted products or companies, or specifically purchased same, based policies or behaviors and expressed beliefs of those involved. Some would be hesitant, for example, to frequent a bakery that refused to make a cake for a gay couple even if the goods were really good, less likely to attend a conference at a Trump property, boycotted South African products back in the day, would not have been thrilled to keep watching new episodes of a show that featured someone found to be an abuser, so on.
I do not think it is unreasonable to have discomfort about what your patronage may be funding.
Now can that discomfort be based on bigotry or prejudice and then be ethically off? Of course. Not wanting use a product because the producer is a particular religion (Mormon, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Evangelical, whatever) … that seems wrong to me.
I don’t doubt that’s the case. It’s not that I… don’t care, but if, for example, I buy a ring I’m not going to bother doing research to figure out if they’re blood diamonds. That’s just me and I realize I’m probably in the minority. I’ve boycotted companies, but that’s generally due to business practices that affect me, like when Taco Bell discontinued Tostadas (I wrote a letter even, then got over it eventually, lol).
I agree, and I have quite a bit of animus towards the Mormon church as an institution. Now, I totally think it’s the OPs right to boycott this YouTuber for whatever reason he wants, I just don’t agree with his particular reasoning and think it’s kind of silly to boot for reasons I’ve already listed. I think anyone would be hard pressed make it through the day without making the Mormon church a tiny bit richer simply because they have their fingers in so many things.
On top of that, nobody forced the OP to go visit the Youtuber’s personal website. His “job” or livelihood comes from his informative (presumably secular) entertaining science videos, and likely not (much) from his personal website, which again, he was not forced to go to.
If it weren’t for his personal website, the OP wouldn’t even know the YouTuber was Mormon, so, really, he’s not ultimately deleting him because he is Mormon, he’s deleting him because he is expressing his Mormonism publicly. If he was a good little YouTuber and kept his mouth shut about his personal beliefs, there would be no consideration about boycotting him. That not somthing I’d do, but as I said before, he has every right to do it.
I disagree with this logic. If I boycott somebody because I found out he’s a mormon, the finding out isn’t the reason for the boycott. His mormonism is the reason for my choice, and the only way my discovery plays into it is that my previous ignorance was causing me to make erroneous decisions based on insufficient data.
As for the OP, I’m of the opinion that anybody can boycott anything for any reason they want. I personally boycott Deseret Industries both as a shopper and a potential donator because I don’t like handing mormonism money, despite the fact it would make life marginally cheaper/easier if I patronized them. And if the OP is displeased enough by the potential to push pennies towards the narsty religion that it makes them happier to not watch the guy, shouldn’t he do what makes him happier?
If the OP is making assumptions about the personal beliefs of the individual based upon what the OP thinks about the sect as a whole then it is bigotry, plain and simple.
For example, not every Catholic holds to every official tenet of official Catholic doctrine. Suppose Joe tells you he considers himself to be a Catholic. If you decide you do not want to patronize Joe’s business because you disagree with the Catholic church’s stance on abortion then you have engaged in a prejudicial form of discrimination by attributing certain beliefs to Joe based upon his perceived membership in a group and belief about the characteristics of that group.
If you want to boycott Joe’s business based upon his personal stance on abortion that he has told to you then it is a form of discrimination, but not based upon a prejudice. If you want to deny your patronage in that case then just own up to the discrimination and tell yourself that not all discrimination is bad.
If someone claimed to be a member of the Nazi party, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to determine whether he - personally and uniquely - was a good Nazi or a bad Nazi.
If someone was a member of ISIS, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to figure out whether I was conflating his personal morality with the organization.
“Bigotry” and “prejudice” only matter when they are things a person does not choose. A person doesn’t control the color of their skin, and the color of their skin does not reflect their morality. Therefore, it is wrong to judge someone for the color of their skin.
If your religious sect or cult is fucking evil, and you chose to participate in it, and you can quit anytime you want… Yes, I WILL judge you for that, and I won’t feel bad about it.
It’s pretty reasonable to assume that anybody who’s Mormon enough to claim the title in public is giving at least 10% of their pre-tax income to the LDS church. The LDS church is very, very, very aggressive about making sure all its members are paying their dues religiously, complete with penalties for those that don’t.
I don’t see it as being invalid to present this as a “I don’t want to hand money over to that religion” issue, because it’s extremely likely that any pennies handed over actually in fact *would *result in a marginal increase to the income to the church in question. The silliness comes from just how incredibly small that increase would be, and the utter impossibility of adopting a ‘boycott anything that will pay a mormon’ policy as a wider practice. But silly or not, if you have a hardline ideological objection to even the smallest fraction of a penny going from your hands into theirs, you’d definitely want to boycott the mormon in question. Among other people.
Which brings me back to the waiter example. I have a very keen eye for spotting mornons. But let’s say I didn’t and just didn’t like Judaism instead because of the Palestinian conflict or whatever, and I went to my favorite restaurant and my waiter walks up to me wearing a Yamulke. Something way more obvious than looking up somebody’s personal website or Temple garment lines.
I know that if I pay this guy a tip, he might use that money to support Israel… So what do I do? Leave? Ask for a different waiter? Stiff him on his tip? Never go there again because they employ someone whose base pay might go into supporting Israel? Obviously I would have done none of these things if he didn’t have to be so Jewey and wear that silly little hat.
If that’s not bigotry, fine, we don’t have to label it that way. If I were a theist and reading this thread, I might get the impression that I better not wear my religion on my sleeve on our off the clock or it could hurt my livelihood because of the, uh, “conscientious” people out there. You can find things to be upset about in any religion and even many secular organizations.
I’d say that “a jew might spend money to support the country of Israel” is a way more tenuous assumption than “a mormon might pay his tithing and offerings.” Now I admit that I could be wrong - Israel might be predatory and hunt down all folks wearing yarmulkes and extort them for money. But if that’s not happening then the odds that paying a jew is paying Israel are way lower than the odds that paying a mormon is going to financially benefit the mormon church.
Presuming that your aversion is strictly against the organization and not against the members, I’d say it’s not bigotry.
And if this “I think you’re a wonderful person and love you deeply but regretfully won’t hire you because you donate ~20% of your income to criminals” was the only effect in play, I would say that religious people should display their religion more so that people could have more complete information for their moral and upright decision making.
Which is not to say that broadcasting their religion would be a wise business move in that case, but you do you. (They do they?)
And I think we (you and I being former Mormons) can probably agree that not all Mormons think the same and engage in or support obviously bad things like child abuse. You can be in an organization that has facets you don’t agree with and try to improve it from within. For example, democrats were quick to point out that a group of Mormon women were opposed to Kavanaugh, as if they were endowed with extra moral authority on sexual abuse. (I’d also say that probably an overwhelming amount of Mormon women supported Kavanaugh.)
They aren’t strictly homogeneous. My grandmother was a life-long Roosevelt democrat. Harry Reid is a Mormon, so’s Jeff Flake, and Orrin Hatch, all them on different gradations of the political spectrum. Not all Mormons are racists. I’ve known Mormons (granted a long time ago) that have privately said things to the effect that “the n*****s never should have gotten the priesthood,” and others that were horrified by that kind of thinking (myself included).
I’ve also heard there’s been an uptick in acceptance of homosexual members, not an impressive one imo, but an upward trajectory. I don’t see them performing gay weddings in the Temple anytime soon though.
I’d also say we could agree that not every single penny that goes into the Mormon church is spent on sinister deeds like covering up child abuse or whatever. Mormonism isn’t exactly the first religion I think of when I think of child abuse. I’d also say that Mormon influence in Politics really isn’t that remarkable when you account for population density of Mormons in any given area.
I would certainly and immediately agree that not every mormon member is a horrible or evil person. If I’ve said or implied anything suggesting that I think that I retract it now.
But I’d still say that if you have a mormon who admits to their membership in public there’s an extremely high probability that they pay tithing. As a former member, you know that the LDS church checks this!
And as for whether the money spent by the church is well-spent, sure it’s not all being spent on child abuse (is any?) or on persecuting gay people (some is), but in any case the amount of money it brings in that I consider to be spent well is vanishingly, vanishingly small. I absolutely agree with the OP that I don’t want to be handing over my money to the LDS church.
I just don’t care quite enough about the issue to be boycotting every Mormon businessman I run across.
You enjoy the YouTube channel, but you dislike that your viewership is giving money to an organization you don’t wish to support.
So how about a compromise? Keep a running tally of the times you go to the channel. Every time you reach a set number, donate some money to an organization that works to keep religious groups from taking over. Something like the ACLU or the Freedom From Religion Foundation or whatever you choose. That way your viewership will work to protect first amendment rights.
That sounds like a lot of work. Better to just find a different way to entertain yourself*. It ain’t like there’s a shortage of entertainments out there.
- That will inevitably be produced exclusively by mormons
Ii think we’re in agreement there.
I think there’s also just a general practical question of whether you can have a workable society if people going out of their way to know the political or social opinions, religion (or lack of) of their counterparties in commerce and trying to punish those they don’t agree with.
I think that’s a disturbing trend. It’s not wholly based on any simple formula like ‘you can punish people for what they believe just not what they are’. I think for one thing that boundary line is significantly fuzzier than some people make it out to be. And beyond that, just what kind of a society that is where everybody is trying to coerce everyone else to agree with them on social/political stuff with all kind of pressure (be it economic, getting in their fact, everything short of violence). Even if they are very sure their social/political opinions are morally superior and opposing one morally beyond the pale, also a growing trend.
By the same token though that it’s not based on any simple axiom, I recognize cases where boycotts over political/social issues might be reasonable. I just think the tendency tendency is that it’s getting more and more carried away, as any reasonable idea can get carried away. Though again not to tell somebody what U-tube video’s they have to watch. Just asking myself do I admire the OP’s attention to the U-tuber’s religion and the implications? No, I don’t. I think it’s mainly a symptom of something amiss in American society now, albeit a mild symptom in this case.