One of the party lines here was that SSM was unnecessary, and that the church was fine with civil unions. The few open gay members of the Utah legislature, taking them at their word, have introduced constitutional amendments allowing civil unions in Utah.
We’ll see how that goes. 
(I can dig up a cite if anyone cares.)
I have a great Aunt who almost certainly died in the Holocaust. She died because she was Jewish. There is no afterlife (if you dispute this, let’s have some evidence) so I don’t care about what she thinks. I care because it is an insult to what she lived and died for.
When I was in SLC last month I didn’t go shitting over your monuments. I treated them with respect. I’d thank you and your church to start treating me and the memory of my relatives with respect also.
I still think this is ridiculous, even if the baptized were Roma, or Polish, Russian Orthodox, or ANYBODY.
Do I understand correctly that your church is proposing to baptize all victims of genocides and anyone who’s ever lived, because you think your church is “reuniting families” in Heaven?
Even as an agnostic, I’d think that an omnipotent deity would be able to manage such a task… all by Himself or Herself
Do you want to annoy Armenians first, or any group in particular? Do you intend to baptize all the Darfuris that have died? How about the all the Burmese killed by the junta? The peoples of Russia killed by Stalin? And the victims of the tsunamis, don’t forget them! What about Cambodians murdered by the Khmer Rouge, surely you have them on your list… you do, right? Who wants to add to this list?
And by the way, I’ll be more than happy to send you a poison-pen-letter when i find that my relatives have been baptized by you lot.
My differences with the LDS are a matter of record on the SDMB. I believe in the Triune God, Jesus as the Unique Son, and our destiny as glorified even godlike adopted children of God, but not literal children becoming Gods.
That said, I believe the LDS baptism for the dead is a well-meaning tho erroneous work that hurts no one, and if an LDS friend or relative or even stranger wants get baptized for me after my death, let me also go on record as saying that I appreciate the sentiment, am not offended by it, and while I wish they would adhere to orthodox Christian faith, they can do what they think they have to do for my benefit.
To those mocking the idea of God using such human efforts- If there is a God, He seems to use human effort a lot, and almost every religion says He even requires it. He doesn’t need to work through us, we need to work for Him. It’s like a Dad who lets his little kids “help” him do chores (even if he has to go back later and re-do them.)
And to those offended by the LDS doing post-mortem stuff for them or their ancestors, well, they believe their God-ordained works for time & eternity trump your petty mortal offenses. If indeed the LDS Church IS the Restored Church of Jesus Christ (which I seriously doubt, but IF it is-), they are right. Their mission is greater than your hurt feelings.
Perhaps someone could address this.
For myself I think the fact that the deceased is permitted to accept or reject the fruits of the rite makes a big difference. Jodi points out that they can’t reject the rite itself though.
Is it ok to pray for the dead -or a member of the living? Is it ok for a Catholic to pray that wayward Protestants see the light and return to the true faith? Isn’t that intrusive in a similar way?
I’m not trying to be obtuse: there’s a distinction between individual prayer and a more formalized rite of course, though I’m not sure how it matters in this instance. And if there is a distinction, would a few tweaks make it go away?
MYOB doesn’t really work for Christians, given the Biblical passages encouraging the faithful to spread the good Word.
It seems to me that we should tolerate this LDS ritual, though I don’t pretend that I’m entirely comfortable with it. I look forward to learning of others’ reactions.
Common as it is for devotees to believe that proselytizing trumps the rights and feelings of others, it is so only if we tolerate it.
Because some of my grand and great-grand relatives died in the Holocaust for being Jewish and the assholes in your church who are doing this are tainting my dad’s memory of them. It also denigrates what my relatives believed in when they were alive.
It’s the same reason you (or, most people, if not you in specific) would object to their mother’s corpse being dug up and repeatedly raped by pigs live on world-wide TV. The pig-rape doesn’t actually DO anything–either the corpse is just a shell and the person’s soul is elsewhere or the person is dead and the corpse is just a lump of rotting meat. Most people would object because decent people try to avoid causing pain to the family–who would certainly not want to remember Mommy as the middle part of a pig-rape sandwich. In the same way, I don’t want to think of my Grandfather as a retro-Mormon. And, gosh! Are you offended by that comparison? Is it because you’re afraid it might be true? Or are you afraid that there’s a more tangible threat to you because of this belief?
Uh… some symbolic ritual involving no one’s corpse does not equate to digging up your momsie and having a pig fuck her moldy bones.
One is, for the most part, a private make believe party. Think of it as a LARPING session.
The other involves someone else’s property and an actual crime.
Someone already said it in this thread, but it bears repeating: Religion is the most ridiculous shit on this planet.
Are you guys going to start to argue about how many angels fit on the head of a pin next? I’d love to see that old argument brought back. I find it… amusing.
If you believe your delusions to be true then you must believe LDS’s beliefs and rituals to be, well, delusions. How is something that must surely be make believe to you affect you in any way possible?
Do you lose sleep thinking about D&D players casting spells in their basements? How about mascarade players pretending to be vampires? How about gamers playing a world war 2 game in which they are the nazis in a multi-player match? Are you afraid for your dead jewish ancestors’s sensibilities whenever that happens?
My condolences. The Holocaust was horrible. It’s unthinkable what people will do to each other.
Well, ok. Thanks for that.
What confuses me is the notion that people have that we’re doing these baptisms to be actively disrespectful. From my perspective, it’s just the opposite.
However - HOWEVER - the church already has a policy of not performing baptisms for victims of the Holocaust or anyone else who objects to it. The fact that it has been done is not a reflection of malice on behalf of the church, but rather of individual cases falling through the cracks of an extremely large system. New records are not collected by some monlithic church-run system, but by an enormous number of volunteers. Some might not have gotten the memo, some might have simply ignored it.
LDS or not, we’re all human. We’re not perfect. We screw up from time to time, and we can try to fix it and accept it and move on.
What you don’t get is that those are our people.
You look after your own people. We’ll look after ours.
One: Sure there are assholes in our church. It’s a large organization. Is anyone surprised by this? I’m sorry they’re there. Find me one large group of people without self-absorbed assholes.
Two: If your father’s memory of his ancestors is tainted, then this is an issue with your father. If he chooses to find offense with our baptisms, then that’s his decision. I suspect that if people try to see this without an eye for anger they might - just possibly - see that we’re trying to be nice.
Three: No one’s denigrating anything. We’re not seeking to damage their reputation. We’re not seeking to belittle what they have lived and died for. We are not seeking to convert people after they died. If anything, what we’re doing is our own acknowledgment of their lives and the importance they had with others.
I believe that we are, indeed, trying to avoid causing pain to other families.
No, no offense. I don’t think of your grandfather, or anyone else in your family for that matter, as a retro-Mormon. Hell, I don’t know if I know anyone in your family. Why would I consider your grandpop to be a retro-Mormon?
It’s funny how, in the pile-on, things are forgotten.
As I have stated, this is my preference. This is how I go about business in the temple.
Question; has Tutankahmen (ca. 1300 BC Egyptian pharoah), and Otzi 9the Bronze age corpse) been baptised?
Well, that clears things some. At least I’m not offending you; I’m providing entertainment. Your outrage in this is entirely recreational. Don’t you think that your actions belittle the legitimate outrage that other people feel? And if so, what are you going to do about it?
But whatever. I’m not here to convert anyone, and I’ve said my piece.
Let’s say I call you an asshole. I don’t think that’s disrespectful because I call lots of people “asshole” and they haven’t objected. In fact, all of my friends call each other “asshole” and we think of it as an endearing nickname. Do you still have the right to feel insulted?
Then there are those, like FriarTed and CalMeacham who do not understand why anybody would be offended by these retro baptisms of their loved ones who, when alive, not only were good adherents of their faiths but were even martyred for it. Guys, I’m going to call your grandmothers cock-sucking whores. You know that your grannies were anything but cock-sucking whores, and you believe that, by either being in Protestant Heaven (Ted’s granny) or Catholic Heaven/nowhere because there’s no afterlife (Cal’s granny), they are beyond caring what some jerk on Earth says, but doesn’t it still offend you? Not even a little bit? C’mon, if they were still alive and I said that you’d punch me in the nose.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of others before you dismiss their feelings.
Uh, laugh at you? Say that your rituals are apparently extremely insulting to a rather hefty portion of the population and your claims that you’re not hurting anyone are demonstrably false and that your self-justification is really, really lame?
Honestly, your religion looking really bad probably helps me more than it hurts me, since the more people reject LDS teachings the more likely the country is to embrace things that matter to me, like gay marriage. The desire not to be associated with wacky religious rituals can be a great inspiration to some people.
Does your final sentence apply to members of the Church? Because they don’t see it as a wacky religious ritual–they view it as a rite that is of the utmost importance and absolutely their duty as active, Temple-worthy members of the Church. And the more people resist that, the more they denigrate it, the more they laugh at it, the more the LDS Church will embrace it. Mormon logic is not Earth logic. You would think, “It’s offensive to me, please stop” would be enough, but it’s not, it never will be. First, the response is justifications. Then we’ve got the “Let’s just all live and let live” plea. Finally, comes the conviction that if they weren’t right, people wouldn’t be so angry. You know, “We must be doing something right or the world wouldn’t reject us!”
You can keep having this argument again and again and again and again. It won’t do any good except reaffirm to nonbelievers that the Mormons are wacky and assure Mormons that they’re on the right path.
Yeah, that was my point. The more Mormons do this despite being told it’s offensive, the more people will learn they do it, and the more people will say, “Wow, Mormons sure are weird. I don’t want people to think I’m like that.”
While I have nothing more against Mormonism than I do against most any religion, it is to my benefit when religions that are hostile to things I find important get marginalized by their own behavior.
Seems to me I’ve heard that Mormons from time to time are suspended/defrocked/disgorged/sent to bed without their holy underwear for various transgressions. Does ignoring the supposed dictates of your church in this matter carry any penalty? Could the church limit access to its database to prevent this problem from reoccurring over and over and over again? Or is it a matter of the powers that be doing a nudge nudge wink wink when they say it’s not OK to do it?
Also, I still haven’t gotten an answer to the question of exactly why Mormons absolutely have to scribble down all the names of individuals they think are aching to convert to Mormonism in the afterlife, sort of like trading in a used car. Why not just have a generic ceremony from time to time to tell the cumulative deceased of all other, inferior faiths that hey, the door’s always open? Hmmm?
You’d prevent a good deal of angst and bad publicity that way.
Yeah, if you could find the cite, that would be great – I’d like to follow that story and see what happens.