There’s another thread in Elections that talks about just how fast the prevailing attitude toward gay marriage has shifted. When Prop 8 was put forward in 2008, the only place in the US gays could marry was Massachusetts. Opponents were proposing ballot initiatives and state constitutional amendments, but few proponents were. A Republican administration was enforcing DOMA. It really was an incredibly different world in terms of gay rights - the LDS church and other supporters of Prop 8 probably couldn’t imagine what was about to happen.
There’s been an amazing change in the attitudes of both the general public and elected officials in just 4 years. Right now it seems like it’s just a matter of time before Prop 8 is gone; in 2008, it probably seemed like a victory that would stand for a generation.
Sure, I hate all of the cults who choose to oppress others. The Catholic Church’s push in the state of Minnesota and archbishop Nienstedt bigotry, or how about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, or frankly anyone who thinks religion needs to be legislated. Sorry to hate the haters, right? But of course, this thread is about the LDS and not those other ones.
The Mormon Church is a huge organization with a lot of different people to please. It’s not a surprise that they’d keep things pleasant and innocuous. Indeed, that’s usually their MO. The crazies are already committed and don’t need a bone thrown to them, so you may as well try to keep on the side of reasonable people.
Anyway, the Church organization is not the sum or every Mormon. A couple of my very good friends are Mormon, and they are extremely smart heavily left leaning social justice types who happen to come from Mormon families, They’ve never really brought up their faith n our conversations, but I assume they find some value on a personal level, and like most people with happy childhoods would like their kids to grow up in a similar culture to the one they did. I’m sure the socially conservative stuff annoys them, but I’m guessing they hope young people like themselves can help the organization evolve into something a bit more reasonable.
(1) There was nothing resembling any kind of intellectual critique in stpauler’s post. Free-floating, irrational hatred directed at others is not, as you well know, critique. (Although people who are diffident from standing up to hatred might euphemize it as mere “criticism” in order to soothe themselves for lacking the courage of their convictions.)
But if you refuse to admit this, I’d be gratified if you make it crystal clear. Reproduce the portion of stpauler’s post where you think this critique supposedly lies and elucidate its critical, intellectual substance for me.
(2) As it is not criticism, it is also not directed against “any religion.” Indeed, it is not directed against any particular religion …
(3) This leads me to my third point. Stpauler’s bile was directed not at Mormonism, but at Mormons, and the fact that they dared to presume that they should be even the least bit welcome in the political process. Sure, he might exempt those who managed to “transcend” their Mormonism (just as the Third Reich, to show how open-minded they were, overlooked a few Jews who transcended their Judaism). But the moment a Mormon, acceptable or not, fails to toe stpauler’s line, you can bet that the “gruesome cultist” lurking in his deep, dark heart will again be attacked by stpauler.
What do you suppose all this adds up to? A quirky little pet peeve?
Read his fucking post again, I can’t believe that it represents something you want to defend.
2 Nephi 9:34 Wo unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell.
It’s all in the Book Of Mormon if you care to read it sometime, just as a exercise in curiosity not as any lame attempt of mine to get you to seriously consider the church.
It isn’t progress until the church actually treats members of its congregation equally. It’s nice that you and AprilR claim to be cool with gay and lesbian people, but unless you are speaking up in your church about acceptance, equality, and fair treatment it’s just lip service, just like the statement lauded in the OP. Don’t kid yourself. “I’m not bigoted; some of my best friends are gay” isn’t activism. As long as you are quiet and compliant with regards to the Mormon church’s policies about homosexuality and equal treatment of the sexes you do represent the church’s backwards, bigoted views. When you say I’m a practicing Mormon" you are saying “I endorse discrimination against women and the LGBT community. They aren’t as human as we are.”
Cult members are cult members. Dumb fucking cult members at that. Hey, let’s have a wee look at what Mormons believe…Oh! That shite makes your average dumb fuck Christian seem sane.
Until 2012, the leader of the Democratic Party was not prepared to treat LGBT people as equals. Instead, we were promised that his views were “evolving” (“One day, LGBTs! One day! But not today.”)
So, until 2012, would it be fair to say that Democrats who assured us that, “one day!, we would have marriage equality—but not today, there’s other stuff we have to do first,” were complicit in suppression of LGBT rights. Cause there were plenty. Our president himself, by that metric.
For a better example, let’s not fail to remember (and seriously, let’s really not fail to remember this), President Obama has articulated a theory of Presidential power that permits him to authorize, in secret, the extrajudicial killing of American citizens designated, on his say-so alone, as terrorists.
I’ve have excruciatingly few peeps on this gross abuse of executive power. So, all you happy Obama voters (which I was too)? Complicit in secret, due-process-free death warrants?
This thread is about the LDS statement on the election. The stuff about Nazis was over-the-top (and so where some of the responses to the press release), but it was at least nominally related to a discussion of the Mormon church. Stick to the actual thread topic.
Yes, it is. However crass stpauler’s comments are, these attempted gotchas are a hijack of the thread and they’re not contributing to the discussion. They need to end now.
Oh, please. There is no Mormon ethnicity (unless you count white bread). And for the record he called Mormonism’s tenets barbaric, hardly the same thing as “Mormons are barbarians.” Not that I agree in any way with stpauler as his criticisms are pretty vague and not particularly informed but you and Kimmy seem a bit desperate to manufacture some outrage here. I’m not seeing it.
And Kimmy, if you are so hell-bent on defending Mormonism, perhaps you can explain away the electroshock aversion therapy that the Mormon Church performed on homosexuals in the 60s and 70s. Or the fact that they still encourage gay men to marry straight women. IIRC, you are a gay man so I’d love to hear your perspective on that.
That’s one of the things which irate me most about Mormons, including my mother and relatives. Even in areas where they aren’t the super majority, most of them are simply unable to comprehend that non-Mormons aren’t as equally thrilled with anything pro Mormon. The two examples in this thread from mtomm and April R are typical.
Well, and you had prophets and apostles talking about killing people who had had sex with blacks and that black would be servants in the afterlife does discourage conversion rates. Granted that the former was is the early days
but as it was said in the same period as the emancipation proclamation, it’s not ancient history. I’ll hold my breath waiting for someone to say, but that was like, so 18th century, and then I’ll respond with quotes from apostles in at least the 1950s who defended the ban of intermarriage with “Negros” albeit without supporting the killing part.
And if you’re interested in the sordid history of official Mormon racism, here’s a good link. They even do original research and document quotes.
, while there may be the very rare case where some bishop may provide an insubstantial assistance to a nonmember, this claim is without merit.
This is one of my favorite topics. When Joseph Smith was writing the BoM, most probably with the help of others such as Sidney Rigdon, a former Baptist minister, he still had an orthodox view of Christianity, including the Trinity and concepts of heaven and hell. Later, his view radically evolved. The best evidence of this is found in the Mormon scriptures including the BoM which required changes in order to resolve this conflict.
I would respond in another thread (and point out there that I am not defending Mormonism, which has not been discussed yet in this thread in any serious way, but objecting to essentializing Mormons a gruesome cultists who cleave to barbaric tenets (which, evidently, is something less than saying they are barbaric) and who should be wished good riddance from the American political arena for no other reason than that they are Mormons).
As it is, Marley has asked these thread to return to its stated topic, which is perfectly fair.