# The LDS Church's Statement on the US Elections **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 7, 2012, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226 "2012-11-07T15:34:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/181 "2012-11-09T03:31:18Z")
> [@Feyrat](#): > > Could you please explain how that is “sour grapes?” Maybe you don’t know what that means. > > Sour grapes is when someone attempts to make something THEY WANT seem less appetizing, because they can’t have it. > > Are you suggesting that Troppus secretly very much wants to be a Mormon, but is disallowed to be one for some reason? Sour grapes may also refer to: Sour grapes : One makes a disparaging remarks (usually untruthful) about something, when he does not get it, or when the situation does not turn out to how he wishes it to be. But since I just meant it to mean he seems to find reasons to try and make me upset about whatever I say in regards to religions, it was the first thing that popped in to my head. What would be a better phrase to use? Asshole? I was trying not to be so crass. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/182 "2012-11-09T03:33:22Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > I give you props for owning up to your mistake (not being sarcastic). And no, I don’t think they disciplined anyone for NOT contributing to the Prop 8 movement or for disagreeing with it. But it is an undeniable fact that the Mormon Church and the First Presidency officially instructed all California Mormons to give money and time to help outlaw gay marriage. This was not a grassroots effort; it came from the top down, from the “Prophets, Seers, and Revelators” if you will. Personally I think that was a big mistake. If the Church advocates to stay out of promoting a candidate they should stay out of the political process short of encouraging people to vote. P.S. Why can’t I just sty out of this thread? Ergh 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Troppus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a587f6/32.png) [@Troppus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troppus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/183 "2012-11-09T04:05:57Z")
No, AprilR, never said that government should direct any church’s ceremonies. Just wanted to clarify your stance. You’re cool with a handful of state queer marriages, as long as they don’t occur in your church. Them deviants gotta marry the opposite sex to earn heaven and planets. Got it. (FTR, I’m in the southeast, straight, white, and unaffiliated. Mormon catnip, at least to the bicycling doorknockers I encounter on the regular.) But the treatment of gays, women, and annihilation of third world cultures…no way this educated woman would participate in such an oppressive regime of middle aged white men. I won’t dictate who people should love in this physical world or any subsequent realm. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/184 "2012-11-10T02:48:05Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > Also, I know this is probably opening a HUGE can of worms and derailing this thread before it ever learned to crawl, but saying the Church spent money on prop 8 is not true. > [Mormonism and politics/California Proposition 8/Questions and myths - FAIR](http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_politics/California_Proposition_8/Questions_and_myths) > [@Glory](#): > > To post that as a cite is ludicrous. The headline alone would make me search something unbiased: **Defending Mormonism by providing well-researched answers to challenging questions within a faithful context** I had been pretty busy for the last couple of days and wasn’t able to respond to sooner. As Erdosain points out, FAIR is the master of misleading information. Here is an interesting [18-minute video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EReUoXIesMI&feature=youtu.be) which shows how FAIR claims are misleading. You don’t have to watch the entire video, even the first three or four minutes show how FAIR operates. It’s pretty damning evidence of FAIR’s tactics. > [@](#): > > Mormon Apologists like to blame those who question the religion or express doubts. In this video, I take apart a presentation that Scott Gordon, president of the Mormon apologetic group FAIR, gave at UVU earlier this year. He presents two lists of references that prove that the church is being open and honest about Joseph Smith’s polygamy and the translation method of the Book of Mormon. Do these lists show what he claims, or are they simply a set of obfuscation? Join me as I find out! > > Links: > Scott’s presentation: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w60VoyvWYWw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w60VoyvWYWw) The link at the end is for a seminar at Utah Valley University, a predominately Mormon state college. The title of the session is UVU: Mormonism and the Internet Session 4 Journeys of Faith on the Internet. At the same session, there are two other presentations which are also interesting. The first is an obviously LDS scholar who is upfront about the problems the Internet is causing for Mormons and how that is contributing to the current large scale defection on Mormons. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/185 "2012-11-10T03:12:06Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > I had been pretty busy for the last couple of days and wasn’t able to respond to sooner. > > As Erdosain points out, FAIR is the master of misleading information. Here is an interesting [18-minute video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EReUoXIesMI&feature=youtu.be) which shows how FAIR claims are misleading. You don’t have to watch the entire video, even the first three or four minutes show how FAIR operates. It’s pretty damning evidence of FAIR’s tactics. > > The link at the end is for a seminar at Utah Valley University, a predominately Mormon state college. The title of the session is UVU: Mormonism and the Internet Session 4 Journeys of Faith on the Internet. At the same session, there are two other presentations which are also interesting. The first is an obviously LDS scholar who is upfront about the problems the Internet is causing for Mormons and how that is contributing to the current large scale defection on Mormons. Your great indictment is the fact that a Mormon college had a seminar on the perfectly benign topic of “How does this huge new cultural influence—the Internet—intersect with Mormonism”, which is a perfectly unremarkable seminar that any number of denominations—and even secular groups—have had seminars on. This is about as fiendish as anything [the Audubon Society has done](http://www.meetup.com/SeminoleAudubon-com/events/78437802/). Or [psychoanalysts](http://works.bepress.com/penn_cct/1/). As to your invitation to watch some kook’s twenty-minute video on “Everything is Connected,” I can only say you knew everybody is going to send their regrets. I’ll add: “This YouTube explains everything” is the crank’s last stand. Step away from the tin foil. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/186 "2012-11-10T06:19:46Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Your great indictment is the fact that a Mormon college had a seminar on the perfectly benign topic of “How does this huge new cultural influence—the Internet—intersect with Mormonism”, which is a perfectly unremarkable seminar that any number of denominations—and even secular groups—have had seminars on. This is about as fiendish as anything [the Audubon Society has done](http://www.meetup.com/SeminoleAudubon-com/events/78437802/). Or [psychoanalysts](http://works.bepress.com/penn_cct/1/). > > As to your invitation to watch some kook’s twenty-minute video on “Everything is Connected,” I can only say you knew everybody is going to send their regrets. I’ll add: “This YouTube explains everything” is the crank’s last stand. > > Step away from the tin foil. Yes, it’s the crank saying that a religious organization isn’t trustworthy. :rolleyes: You’re supposed to be a lawyer. Surely you know that an ad hominem doesn’t defeat someone else’s argument. If you honestly think “Crazy people post like you do” somehow wins an argument, then I’d suggest you need to go back to college. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/187 "2012-11-10T08:35:27Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Yes, it’s the crank saying that a religious organization isn’t trustworthy. :rolleyes: > > You’re supposed to be a lawyer. Surely you know that an ad hominem doesn’t defeat someone else’s argument. If you honestly think “Crazy people post like you do” somehow wins an argument, then I’d suggest you need to go back to college. My dear BigT, did you watch the video? Care to summarize what it shows? No, you cannot. Because you’re not going to waste your time watching some kook’s twenty-minute video on “Everything is Connected!” either. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/188 "2012-11-10T09:50:50Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > But since I just meant it to mean he seems to find reasons to try and make me upset about whatever I say in regards to religions, it was the first thing that popped in to my head. What would be a better phrase to use? Asshole? I was trying not to be so crass. Push my buttons. Get under my skin. Rub me the wrong way. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/189 "2012-11-10T12:27:58Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > No, you cannot. Because you’re not going to waste your time watching some kook’s twenty-minute video on “Everything is Connected!” either. Please proceed. ---
**Author:** ![Troppus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a587f6/32.png) [@Troppus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troppus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/190 "2012-11-10T12:57:23Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > Sour grapes may also refer to: > > Sour grapes : One makes a disparaging remarks (usually untruthful) about something, when he does not get it, or when the situation does not turn out to how he wishes it to be. > But since I just meant it to mean he seems to find reasons to try and make me upset about whatever I say in regards to religions, it was the first thing that popped in to my head. What would be a better phrase to use? Asshole? I was trying not to be so crass. You belong to, defend, and promote a religion which encourages female congregants to pursue educations in foreign languages, anthropology, and sociology for the sole purpose of dismantling other cultures and replacing it with your own belief system, limits the roles of women in church, shames gays and denies them equal rights, and generally elevates straight men to godhood by devaluing female members of the congregation, shunning gays despite being aware of the suicide rate and other hardships faced by disfellowshipped gays, and generally spends your free time attempting to homogenize the planet to your belief system and _I’m_ the asshole? ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2012, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/191 "2012-11-11T03:24:42Z")
You think it devalues women? Guess what, men can’t get anywhere in our church without women. Fact. They more than make us feel like equals, they make us feel exulted. The men who don’t, well they don’t really believe in what the Church teaches. Because it clearly teaches a man cannot reach the highest level of glory without a wife. And his wife will be there by his side in equality to receive all the blessings together. Nether is one without the other. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2012, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/192 "2012-11-11T04:16:21Z")
How sweet and totally not a sop to ones emotions. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2012, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/193 "2012-11-11T04:57:18Z")
**April R** - you seem like a nice, intelligent person. Do you see things like the Garden of Eden being in Missouri, and American Indians being the lost tribes of Israel. and Jesus coming to North America as literal truths or as metaphors like many Christians view Noah’s Ark and the flood? It’s just hard for me to take someone who believes in that stuff seriously, much less elect them to Commander in Chief of our nuclear arsenal. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2012, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/194 "2012-11-11T10:42:08Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > You think it devalues women? Guess what, men can’t get anywhere in our church without women. Fact. They more than make us feel like equals, they make us feel exulted. The men who don’t, well they don’t really believe in what the Church teaches. Because it clearly teaches a man cannot reach the highest level of glory without a wife. And his wife will be there by his side in equality to receive all the blessings together. Nether is one without the other. Other than the stuff about the hereafter, that was basically the party line in America generally when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2012, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/195 "2012-11-11T11:38:13Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > No, you cannot. Because you’re not going to waste your time watching some kook’s twenty-minute video on “Everything is Connected!” either. For the purpose of this discussion, define “Everything is connect kook.” Thanking you in advance. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/196 "2012-11-12T00:11:46Z")
> [@fumster](#): > > **April R** - you seem like a nice, intelligent person. Do you see things like the Garden of Eden being in Missouri, and American Indians being the lost tribes of Israel. and Jesus coming to North America as literal truths or as metaphors like many Christians view Noah’s Ark and the flood? > > It’s just hard for me to take someone who believes in that stuff seriously, much less elect them to Commander in Chief of our nuclear arsenal. Of course I believe that. About the garden of Eden, who knows. But that Jesus wouldn’t visit all of His creation is preposterous if you believe He visited some. And it’s not just the Native Americans, it’s all of God’s creation who are part of his Kingdom and we believe that it will be eventually revealed through additional scripture that he was able to visit all his children after his Resurrection. God doesn’t neglect any of His creation. Now if you don’t believe he visited anyone or that he was ever really resurrected and was just some dude running around the Middle East preaching, then it’s all a moot point anyway. P.S. The concept of Lost Tribes is not a new one: > [@](#): > > Lost tribes > 17th- to mid-20th-century theories > > Since at least the 17th century both Jews and Christians have proposed theories concerning the Lost Tribes, based to varying degrees on biblical accounts. An Ashkenazi Jewish tradition speaks of these tribes as Die Roite Yiddelech, “The little red Jews”, cut off from the rest of Jewry by the legendary river Sambation “whose foaming waters raise high up into the sky a wall of fire and smoke that is impossible to pass through”.[7] > > The Portuguese traveller Antonio de Montezinos brought back reports that some of the Lost Tribes were living among the Native Americans of the Andes in South America. In response to this, Menasseh ben Israel, a noted rabbi of Amsterdam, wrote on 23 December 1649: > > ``` > ... I think that the Ten Tribes live not only there ... but also in other lands scattered everywhere; these never did come back to the Second Temple and they keep till this day still the Jewish Religion...[8] > > ``` > > Menasseh actually published in Spanish and in Latin in 1649 in Amsterdam a book about Montezinos’ narrative. An English translation of it with the title The Hope of Israel was also published in London in 1650. In it Menasseh argued, and for the first time tried to give scholarly support in European thought and printing, to the theory that the native inhabitants of America at the time of the European discovery were actually descendants of the [lost] Ten Tribes of Israel.[9] > > In 1655, Menasseh ben Israel petitioned Oliver Cromwell to allow the Jews to return to England. (Since the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, Jews had been prohibited by law from living in England.) One of the reasons for Cromwell’s alleged interest in the return of the Jews to England was the abundance at the time of theories relating to the end of the world. Many of these ideas were fixed upon the year 1666 and the Fifth Monarchy Men who were looking for the return of Jesus as the Messiah who would establish a final kingdom to rule the physical world for a thousand years. They supported Cromwell’s Republic in the expectation that it was a preparation for the fifth monarchy—that is, the monarchy that should succeed the Babylonia, the Persian, the Greek, and Roman world empires.[citation needed] > > Mixed in with all of this was a background of general belief that the Lost Ten Tribes did not represent ethnic Jews who partially formed the ancient Kingdom of Judah, but tribes who maintained a separate capital at Samaria. Some have attempted to dismiss this complicated saga by stating that it is nothing but Supersessionism. However, the ideas behind these various competing theories are far more complicated, especially when Sabbatai Zevi, the “messiah” claimant and his supporters postulated that he represented groups in addition to those identified as being Jews. However, Zevi lost his credibility to all but the Donmeh when he converted to Islam and became an apostate to Judaism in 1666.[citation needed] > > During the latter half of the 18th century, variations on this same theory were advocated by some who believed that the British Empire of nations was a manifestation of ancient prophecies recorded in the Book of Genesis predating both the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah.[citation needed] > > Others believe that the Lost Tribes simply merged with the local population. For instance, the New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia states “In historic fact, some members of the Ten Tribes remained in Palestine, where apart from the Samaritans some of their descendants long preserved their identity among the Jewish population, others were assimilated, while others were presumably absorbed by the last Judean exiles who in 597-586 BC were deported to Assyria…Unlike the Judeans of the southern Kingdom, who survived a similar fate 135 years later, they soon assimilated…”[10][11] {sorry for the wiki quote, it was the most succinct summary of various Lost Tribe beliefs I could find right now} ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/197 "2012-11-12T00:54:14Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > For the purpose of this discussion, define “Everything is connect kook.” > > Thanking you in advance. Oh heavens, it really speaks for itself. But at a first approximation, it means people who see Mormons holding seminars on “What’s it like to be a Mormon on Facebook” (a seminar that has been held, _mutatits mutandis_, also by Methodists, Baptists, Jews, Hindus, Democrats, gays, nudists, Tea Partiers, the transgendered, the disabled, international development officers, so on and so forth) and react, “Aha! Here is their plan for global cultural domination!!” (usually in all-caps). And then make a twenty-minute YouTube video painstakingly documenting this diabolical development. As Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, this devotion to documentation is one of the hallmarks of [“The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”](http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html) > [@](#): > > A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates "evidence.” The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it. > > ``` > Paranoid writing begins with certain broad defensible judgments. There was something to be said for the anti-Masons. After all, a secret society composed of influential men bound by special obligations could conceivable pose some kind of threat to the civil order in which they were suspended. There was also something to be said for the Protestant principles of individuality and freedom, as well as for the nativist desire to develop in North America a homogeneous civilization. Again, in our time an actual laxity in security allowed some Communists to find a place in governmental circles, and innumerable decisions of World War II and the Cold War could be faulted. > > The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not coherent—in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world. It is nothing if not scholarly in technique. McCarthy’s 96-page pamphlet, McCarthyism, contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch’s incredible assault on Eisenhower, The Politician, has one hundred pages of bibliography and notes. The entire right-wing movement of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and bibliographies. Sometimes the right-wing striving for scholarly depth and an inclusive world view has startling consequences: Mr. Welch, for example, has charged that the popularity of Arnold Toynbee’s historical work is the consequence of a plot on the part of Fabians, “Labour party bosses in England,” and various members of the Anglo-American “liberal establishment” to overshadow the much more truthful and illuminating work of Oswald Spengler. > > ``` The difference, of course, is that the paranoid never queries whether the conclusions of his extended syllogisms actually match what is taking place in the real world. And as Hofstadter notes, this is precisely the point of the paranoid’s deductive system—to permit a system that allows one to “deduce away” more temperate conclusions. Conspiracy theories are dangerous not because they are incoherent, but because coherence (and a disinclination to reality-test one’s deductions) is elevated to a position of importance well beyond empirical validation. I have no doubt that your Everything is Connected kook meticulously makes his case. However, I do not need to meditate on the question “Do Mormons want to take over the world, and are they making progress on that front?” because I have not insulated myself from the real world and can answer this real-world question with real-world experience, rather than concocting highly footnoted proofs of what “must” be taking place. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/198 "2012-11-12T01:03:43Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > You said extreme contempt, not me. > > First of all, point me to the liberal Mormon congregations. The CoJCoLDS is, as far as I can tell, pretty homogenous in terms of teachings and leadership. There are less-extreme groups of Muslims. There are Jews who identify as Jews because of heritage, but who are non-practicing. Well, there are such things as [Jack Mormons.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jack_Mormon) > [@](#): > > A Jack Mormon is somebody raised in Mormonism who still identifies with the Mormon culture to some extent, but not the belief system or the church. They may attend services on occasion but not regularly, or they may not attend at all and hold agnostic beliefs. Even those who remain in the church do not follow its teachings regarding such things as drinking alcohol and coffee. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/199 "2012-11-12T01:19:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, there are such things as [Jack Mormons.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jack_Mormon) Wow, that didn’t have a biased tone at all. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226/200 "2012-11-12T01:53:41Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > But at a first approximation, it means people who see Mormons holding seminars on “What’s it like to be a Mormon on Facebook” (a seminar that has been held, _mutatits mutandis_, also by Methodists, Baptists, Jews, Hindus, Democrats, gays, nudists, Tea Partiers, the transgendered, the disabled, international development officers, so on and so forth) and react, “Aha! Here is their plan for global cultural domination!!” (usually in all-caps). And then make a twenty-minute YouTube video painstakingly documenting this diabolical development. So, the first point would be that someone who saw a seminar and documented this as diabolical. OK, that sounds like a reasonable definition. OK we could say paranoid, as you say, or Everything is Connected kook. How much money would like like to wager that this is the case for this video? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lds-churchs-statement-on-the-us-elections/640226.md?page=11)