Alone and Unobserved

Here is a list of things that Medieval Christians really believed about Jews: They murdered Christian babies. Both male and female Jews had periods, and they used Christian blood to replenish the losses. As punishment for murdering Jesus, they all suffered from hemorrhoids and open sores. Jews were all born blind, and they rubbed Christian blood over their eyes in order to see. Christian blood could protect one from leprosy. And so on.

No, really, there’s more.

Go read this post on Nervous Acid, then come back here. It’s long, but it’s worth it! I’ll wait.

Norman Brannon was unpacking the press release by Concerned Women for America in his post, but you have to remember—the Mormon church was behind the Prop 8 campaign and financed the spread of this blood libel, and, for all we know, continues to do so. And you know what’s different about the leaders of the Mormon church and a Christian peasant going on a pogrom in the fifteenth century? Mormon church leaders know they’re lying when they try to make people hate gays. When they cynically, calmly tell their followers that the homosexuals are out to force the Mormon church to perform deviant gay weddings in their sacred temples. When they paint themselves as the victims.

This is why they and their ilk deserve no pity, no civility, no quarter. They need to be exposed and vilified for who and what they are, and what they stand for.

They need to be openly castigated with the truth.

I’ve featured Mormon ‘apostle’ Dallin Oaks and his, er, peculiar take on sexuality and family relations on this blog before ([1], [2]). In some ways, Oaks has become the go-to guy when the Mormon church needs a ponderous, intolerant statement about the homosexuals, perhaps because of his talent for sounding authoritative and paternal even when he’s at his most insane. Such as in a speech he plans on giving at BYU-Idaho (formerly Ricks College), a Mormon-owned school in Rexburg, Idaho. In the speech (according to a copy obtained by the AP), Oaks “refers to gay marriage as an ‘alleged civil right’” and says “[t]he anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil rights movement.”

W. T. F. He did not just go there. But OH YES HE DID. And he’s standing by it, too!

In an interview Monday before the speech, Oaks said he did not consider it provocative to compare the treatment of Mormons in the election’s aftermath to that of blacks in the civil rights era, and said he stands by the analogy.

“It may be offensive to some—maybe because it hadn’t occurred to them that they were putting themselves in the same category as people we deplore from that bygone era,” he said.

The “anti-Mormon backlash” is exactly what the Mormon church deserved for spending so much time, money and effort taking rights away from an already-oppressed segment of the population. This is a democracy; free speech—including free speech you don’t like!—is everyone’s right. Including Dallin Oaks’s right to stick his foot so far in his mouth it comes out his ass.

EDITED (23:18): Somehow the SL Trib article I linked to in the body of the post changed from the AP story to a related one; I’ve changed the link to the AP story on Fox 13 News Channel’s website.
[SL Trib article] [AP article (on Fox News)]

An ancient code in the monuments of Ottawa.
A ruthless cult determined to protect it.
A desperate race to uncover the Mormon Church’s darkest secret.

When renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the National Gallery of Canada to analyze a mysterious geometric form—etched into the floor next to the disemboweled corpse of the head docent—he discovers evidence of the unthinkable: the resurgence of the ancient cult of the Quintifori, a secret branch of the Mormon Church that has surfaced from the shadows to carry out its legendary vendetta against its mortal enemy, the Vatican.

Langdon’s worst fears are confirmed when a messenger from the Quintifori appears at the Parliament Buildings to deliver a macabre ultimatum: Turn over the archbishop, or one cherub will disappear from the Sistine Chapel every day. With the deadline fast approaching, Langdon joins forces with the saucy and charming daughter of the murdered docent in a desperate bid to crack the code that will reveal the cult’s secret plan.

Embarking on a frantic hunt, Langdon and his companion follow a 900-year-old trail through Ottawa’s most venerable monuments and sacred monuments, pursued by a Norwegian assassin the cult has sent to thwart them. What they discover threatens to expose a conspiracy that goes all the way back to Joseph Smith and the very founding of the Mormon Church.

Generate your own thrilling Dan Brown thriller in seconds with Slate.com’s Dan Brown Sequel Generator!

(H/T to Ryan Shattuck of RevolutionsforFunandProfit.com.)

You’ve probably already heard about the gay couple who was confronted, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and ejected from Mormon-owned Main Street Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City with a trespassing citation—for a kiss on the cheek. Per the couple, they were also told by disgusted Mormon security guards that their behavior was gross and unnatural.

Here is the Mormon church’s response, via ksl.com (website of the Mormon-owned KSL television channel):

Two individuals came on Church property and were politely asked to stop engaging in inappropriate behavior—just as any other couple would have been. They became argumentative and used profanity and refused to leave the property. They were arrested and then given a citation for criminal trespass by SLPD.
—Mormon spokesperson Kim Farah

“Any other couple,” Mormon spokesperson Kim Farah? So when a heterosexual couple walks across Main Street Plaza holding hands, and one happens to give the other a peck on the cheek, they are routinely confronted by security guards and kicked off Mormon property? What about the heterosexual couples who take engagement or wedding photos on the plaza, photos in which many of them are caught on film kissing and hugging on your church’s property? Do you send your minions to round them up as well for engaging in “inappropriate behavior”?

No, you don’t, and you know you don’t. This couple was approached and kicked out because they were gay and had the audacity to show affection on Mormon church property.

Now, the Mormon church does own Main Street Plaza, and they have the right to refuse entrance to or to eject whomever they please. And maybe this unpleasantness really comes down to a handful of bigoted security guards, and is not official Mormon church policy. But the Mormon church wants to have it both ways: it wants to campaign openly and fiercely against gay rights on a national level, and still pretend to love the gays. Don’t believe them for a second. If an organization that really loved the gays were involved in a situation like this one, they would immediately clarify the behavior policy governing their property (something Farah reportedly has refused to do), apologize for the actions of a few security guards in singling out a gay couple, and announce that those security guards have now either been fired or are undergoing training on how to deal with homosexual couples.

The Mormon church is homophobic. Homophobia is behind all of its anti-gay actions—not love, not tolerance, not high-mindedness, but hate and bigotry. Don’t let them get away with sugar-coating it any longer.

By now you’ve all heard the arguments the Yes on 8 or Yes on 102 or Yes on Amendment 2 folks have made for why gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry. And you’ve also heard that the Mormon church has once again entered the fray in California, pouring thousands of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours into the Yes on 8 campaign and preaching against gay marriage at every possibility.

Here is why Mormons shouldn’t care about gay marriage, and here also is why they really do.

Reasons Mormons Shouldn’t Care about Gay Marriage

Reason #1: Mormons believe the only real marriages are called “sealings” and are contracted in Mormon temples between a worthy Mormon man and a worthy Mormon woman. According to Mormon doctrine, sealings were instituted by god in the Garden of Eden, when he married Adam and Eve “for time and all eternity.” So every single other marriage in the world—civil or religious—is a “redefinition” of marriage, from the Mormon viewpoint. And yet Mormons aren’t campaigning to take away non-Mormon straight marriage.

Reason #2: Mormons have totally been on the other side of this issue. Remember polygamy? Remember how today the Mormon church totally tries to distance itself from polygamy in every way, but how they were totally all about it until, like, 1910? And how the Republican Party was founded on the twin-plank platform of getting rid of slavery… and polygamy? And how an army invaded Utah when the Mormon church wouldn’t capitulate? Yeah.

Reason #3: Mormons believe in religious freedom and in the separation of church and state. Or at least they should, according to their own scriptures, penned by Mormonism founder Joseph Smith. Read Doctrine and Covenants Section 102 of you don’t believe me. Also the Eleventh Article of Faith.

We believe that religion is instituted of God, and that men are amenable to him and to him only for the exercise of it, unless their religious opinion opinions prompts them to infringe upon the rights and liberties of others; but we do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion; that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul. . . .

We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil Government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.
(D&C 102:4,9)

We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let the worship how, where, or what they may.
(11th Article of Faith)

Why Mormons REALLY Care about Gay Marriage

Because their church has told them to care. Also, for many of them, because they find the idea of gay sex icky. Per Green Dads:

The next time you hear anyone speak in opposition to gay marriage, take every word that comes out of their mouth and replace it with “penis, penis, penis” or “vagina, vagina, vagina” because that is exactly what they are really thinking. We all know it and so do they; and sooner or later we’re all going to have to admit the truth of what’s really going on here. Opponents of gay marriage should be ashamed of themselves; they are the real perverts here. (full article)

Why does the Mormon church care? Well… it doesn’t. It couldn’t care less about gays getting married, per se. What the Mormon church cares about is gays being fully accepted in society.

And why does the Mormon church care about social acceptance of gays and their relationships? Because, as a patriarchy, it is so deeply invested in the idea of “traditional” ’50s-style gender roles that it has no choice but to be homophobic. Gays and their relationships threaten the Cleaver-family model by their very existence.

And why does the Mormon church care about the acceptance of gays in California, when it hasn’t intervened on this scale in Massachusetts or Connecticut or anywhere else? Because California has something those other places doesn’t: masses and masses of Mormons, which means masses and masses of relatives and friends of Utahns. And if there’s one thing that scares and mobilizes the Mormon church, it’s the idea of gays gaining any kind of traction in Utah.

Oppose homophobia, even if it’s wrapped up in lies about “protecting the family.” If you are in a state with an anti-gay-marriage measure on the ballot, VOTE AGAINST IT. If you live elsewhere, or can’t vote, add your voice to those speaking out against such measures.

But most importantly, whatever your beliefs (but especially if you agree with me), get out and vote.

Check out the Mormon church’s August 13 press release on “The Divine Institution of Marriage“—i.e., on all the reasons for that church’s bigoted all-out war on marriage equality. Pay especial attention to the footnotes:

• To support their claim for the need for “gender-differentiated parenting,” the best they can do is cite two books from 1996 (which were really about single-parent homes), before any of the research on same-sex parenting came in.
• At one point they cite conservative hack Maggie Gallagher’s ridiculous sky-is-falling piece, “Banned in Boston: The Coming Conflict Between Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty” from 2006.
• They never even glance at the actual evidence out of Europe, which indicates that same-sex unions have not had any negative effect on society or marriage, and, if anything, have been of benefit.

Best of all: the majority of the quotes come from Mormon religious leaders, doctrines and scriptures. This is not the kind of press release anyone should be paying attention to—not Mormons, not gays, not anyone—except to recognize it for what it is: a pathetic, bigoted diatribe, cloaked in warm, cloying, condescending language.

A great deal has been said by many people on the subject of the letter the Mormon leaders wrote urging Mormon faithful to “[d]o all [they] can to support the proposed constitutional amendment” against gay marriage in California. It was Cog’s post—and the subsequent discussion—that finally inspired me to write about it myself.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was personally involved in the Prop. 22 push in California in 2000, along with many, many other Mormons. When I think back, it’s like I was a different person. I wasn’t just a fanatical Mormon who despised gays, but I was also much more authoritarian, more punitive, and interested in legislation that would outlaw behavior I didn’t agree with—a philosophy that makes no sense to me now, at least when it comes to non-harmful behavior.

I guess the question is, is gay marriage harmful? And the answer is: it doesn’t matter, because it can’t possibly be more harmful than cohabitation, which is not illegal and happens all over the place, by gays and straights. The same goes for gay adoption: gays have and raise children, and there is no jurisdiction in which this is completely illegal—nor can I think of a way to consistently legislate against it, if the idea is so heinous to society. Consider a single lesbian mother raising her natural offspring. How is this scenario made worse by her having a loving lesbian partner, and the partner adopting the children? Now, how is it made worse if she and her partner are married to each other?

Gay people exist. They are not going away. Gay relationships exist. They are not going away. Gay parents exist, and they are not going away. Gay people, gay relationships and gay families are part of society. Society is strengthened when they are strengthened and society is damaged when they are attacked and denied legitimacy. The Mormon church and the “pro-family” groups are acting as enemies of society in their battle against gay marriage. This is a fact that should be openly recognized by gays, straights, Mormons, non-Mormons, the religious and the non-religious alike.