Please read this article. Here’s the highlight:
On the last day of the election, anti-Prop 8 forces ran a “home invasion” ad depicting two young Mormon missionaries ransacking homes. The ad further accuses Mormons in California of trying to take over the government because, as citizens, they participated in the political process by voting and donating to a cause they believed in. A week after the election The Los Angeles Times editorial board opined that No on Prop 8 forces should run more “hard-hitting” ads like “home invasion,” along with more “in-your-face radicalism.”
On the “Dr. Phil” show last week I sat next to a powerful politician — Mayor Gavin Newsom — who ritually rejected violence but refused to decry these extraordinary threats to ordinary voters’ livelihoods. I also sat next to Joe Solmonese, head of the Human Rights Campaign, when a young Mormon in the audience asked him, “Why are you singling out my faith when so many other people supported Prop 8?” Did Joe, an amiable guy, take a moment to call his troops to back off from religious bigotry, to refocus on the larger problem — 7 million Californians disagree with his organization’s gay marriage civil rights dogma?
No. I sat silent, dumbfounded, next to Joe when he pointed at the young man and cried, “We are going to go after your church every day for the next two years unless and until Prop 8 is overturned.”
Is there any doubt that we are in the middle of a cultural war?
Earlier this week, yet another Church member was forced to resign because he dared to contribute to a political cause. The number of blacklisted Mormons seems to grow every day.
I will leave aside the reason that we are being targeted specifically — that has been our destiny ever since the First Vision — but I will ask: who are our allies, our defenders? Ultimately, we know that our principal defender is the Savior Himself, the King of Kings. No matter what they do to our church and our Earthly bodies, they cannot damage a soul dedicated to the Gospel and building the Kingdom here on Earth.
But meanwhile, who will do what is right, who will help defend the principle of democracy, of freedom to vote as we please, freedom to participate in the democratic process? During the persecutions in Missouri and Illinois, we had a great defender, Alexander Doniphan. Doniphan helped lessen the impact of the Missouri extermination order and protected the prophet Joseph Smith when he was ordered to be executed.
Nobody is talking about murdering Mormons, which is what happened to us in Missouri and Illinois. But a great many people are talking about pursuing the Church and its members in other ways: picketing temples, going after tax exemptions and going after the livelihoods of people who dare to think and vote differently than them. And, most crucially, when they are confronted with the inhumanity of persecuting a specific religious group, they justify almost any action because we are Mormons. Stop and think for a second: would society at large tolerate such behavior against Jews, against Muslims? The clear answer is no, but Mormons appear to be a completely unprotected minority, free to be vilified and persecuted without repercussions.
If you read the Church web site, it is clear that Church public affairs is doing everything it can to protect the Church and call for tolerance of our viewpoints and respect for our rights to participate in the political process on moral issues.
But who has stepped up to the plate so far to defend our Church? Well, so far it is primarily the “religious right.”
It is the religious right that is primarily behind this petition, which is a wonderful defense of our faith. Notice the prominent signature from James Dobson and many other “religious right” leaders.
So, as Thanksgiving approaches, I would like to give thanks to the modern-day Alexander Doniphans who stand up for what is right, even when it is difficult.
Jim, I think I understand a little better where you’re coming from. It’s probably true that most sadness is tinged with a degree of anger. I work in a federal program which provides compensation to workers (or all too often, to their survivors) who worked in the nuclear weapons industry. These people were generally patriotic, and felt they were protecting their country. Now, they’re winding up with cancer and other horrible conditions. When I speak to them, their sadness is certainly blended with anger—in fact it’s hard to say sometimes which emotion comes out stronger. I understand, from your words, that you suffer from a terminal condition, and I’m truly sorry to hear that.
Mormon’s lament centered on a group of people who, in his view, brought their sufferings upon themselves, through their wickedness. His description reflects my own experience in the field of criminal justice, where I’ve often seen habitual criminals who seemed unable to connect their own actions to consequences—instead, they saw their prison sentences and other punishments as evidence to prove that they were continual and inevitable victims of the police, the judges, etc., and they bemoaned their “victimhood.” Much of my own work involved helping young offenders to take responsibility for their own actions, and to understand that their chosen actions had certain consequences.
I’m not sure, Jim, how you equate that sort of “sadness” with the sadness I’ve described. Perhaps it brings you peace to believe that gays and lesbians “deserve” some “inevitable” fate of discrimination, thus absolving (or even glorifying?) the actions of those who carry out the discrimination. Perhaps it even brings you peace to believe that a gay man who is beaten and killed by a complete stranger, merely because he was seen walking out of a gay bar, “deserved” his fate, and those left to mourn are just experiencing the “sorrow of the damned.”
If you are truly so cold-hearted, Jim (and I suspect you really are not, despite your words), then I can only assume that you believe something that even your own church leaders have publicly repudiated—that people “choose” to be gay, and thus should “choose” not to be gay. That’s the only reason I can conceive of, that would make you declare that a young person–a pure and chaste virgin, even–who finds themselves attracted to others of their own biological sex is merely experiencing the “sorrow of the danmed” when they hear hated and vitriol spewed against people like them. Perhaps you feel that Stuart Matis, an active, faithful LDS virgin in his 30s who happened to be gay, was driven to commit suicide because he didn’t have the “right” kind of sorrow that would make him “repent” by becoming heterosexual.
When you equate these people with those described by Mormon, I can only think that you see the “ultimate destruction” of gays and lesbians on the horizon. Perhaps you even believe that passing legislation such as Proposition 8 will help you to bring about that “ultimate destruction,” whether through “fortunate” suicides or through exerting enough pressure to force magical, universal changes in sexual orientation. Good luck with that, Jim.
Nick, oh brother, now you have really shown your true stripes. Deliberately twisting the words of somebody to justify your own persecution complex.
But this is illustrative of the larger subject of this post, which is the persecution complex of today’s radical gay activists, which has caused them to lash out at our church for simply participating in the political process. Case in point is the planned disruption of the Mesa temple winter ceremony. No protests are planned at Catholic and evangelical churches — only the Mesa temple is being targeted. It seems pretty clear that the Lord’s church is the target simply because it is the Lord’s church.
I think I can speak for the vast majority of Latter-day Saints when I say that we could care less what people do in their bedrooms. I try my best to have compassion for all people and treat everybody with respect. I very often fail, but I keep on trying. Personally, I am in favor of laws that protect against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. I have no problem with people visiting each other in the hospital and saying they are next of kin. I have no problem with people make private contractual relationships for inheritance purposes, etc.
What Nick and most homosexual activists don’t understand — or pretend not to understand — is that most people like myself are on the defensive. We don’t care what people do in their own homes, but it appears that radical gay activists do care what WE do in our own homes and in our own churches. And now they are even trying to tell us we cannot participate in the political process and enjoy our democratic rights without potentially losing our jobs. We are extremely concerned about what gay activists want to teach our children in the schools, and the gay marriage experiment in Massachusetts — and the experiences of my own family in California — has shown that gay activists want the complete normalization of gay sex so that the act itself is shown and taught and celebrated with people as young as fourth and fifth graders. Most parents want the right to keep sexual discussions private, but this is not good enough for radical gay activists, as history has shown.
So, the fight about marriage is important because marriage is important. But at the end of the day this is really a fight for the freedom of Mormons to worship as they please and to raise their children the way they want to. And, yes, these days we are primarily on the defensive against people who want to force us to accept their beliefs and keep us from the political process entirely. It is very similar to the environment of the 1830s and 1840s of Missouri and Illinois. And that is why this post has been written.
And with that, this thread comes to an end.