rymenhild

That's great. Thanks for this reply.

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I do disagree, to a point. I think that the Mormon Church as an organization has greatly overstepped the bounds of acceptable political activity and should be stripped of its tax-exempt status. I think it, as an organization, is homophobic, bigoted and hateful. I know that BYU performs electric shock therapy on students who are LGBT or questioning. Since it requires a 10% tithe from its adherents, I refuse to spend money in Mormon-controlled businesses unless I know that none of that money returns to the Mormon Church. Shortly, the organization declared that I am its enemy; appeasement or negotiation is for naught at this stage.

I do not blame individual Mormons. I note with pleasure and encouragement the objection by Steve Young to his church's activities. But the Mormons who contributed to this outrage? We are never going to persuade them. Yes, there is a great deal to be done to engage with non-gay people. But these are not the ones whose opinions we can alter. These, we must shine a light on, identify, marginalize, allow to quite literally die off as they inevitably must, because only the generation that grew up with gay people on TV as an unremarkable thing (and that's, really, people born after 1990 or possibly even 2000) will truly accept us.

Yes, improve the numbers. But part of that is also removing the ability of hatemongers to act too.

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To be fair, BYU hasn't done that since the 1970s.

I think that singling out the Mormons for losing their tax exempt status is a bit tough to justify. They do not seem to me abnormally involved in politics, and the bar is (and ought to be) lower for ballot initiatives than for political candidates.

I mean, there are things I find upsetting about their conduct here. But I don't think they're particularly worth singling out of the general mass of evangelical conservatism.

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I'm by no means singling out the Mormon Church; Rym's post just referred specifically to them. That said, they are well up there on the list, and part of this that particularly grates on me is that the LDS of all people are telling others who they can and can't marry.

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You're in no way singling them out, but you're repeating years-outdated slanders about electroshock therapy, and making snide remarks about practices the church abandoned decades ago. Which is to say, you're singling them out.

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Your points are accurate, but please watch your tone. I don't really want to be moderating an argument in this journal.

Thanks!

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I apologize.

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No need, don't worry about it. I just wanted to stop things from getting heated before they got heated.

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Watching my tone here...

This isn't slander. It's not even libel, because the best defence against a charge of slander or libel is the fact that it's the truth. Which it is, well-documented truth. And "years-outdated"? I don't consider there to be a statute of limitation for hooking someone's penis and testicles up to the mains and electrocuting them for loving the wrong person.

Yeah, the difference between irony and snideness doesn't come across well in text. Trust me, I am equally ironic (or snide! Take your pick) about the hypocrisy, historic and present, of the KOCs, Dobson and the FOF, the Catholic Bishops and the CWA.

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I just find hitting them for things they haven't done in decades to be a cheap shot. There are plenty of things they do today that are worthy of criticism. Why go for the sensationalistic things they stopped doing?

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Simply, to show precisely how hypocritical they are about defining marriage, and how brutal they have been towards gay people in the past, because there's a lot of people saying we shouldn't criticise the Mormon Church. And, well, j'accuse.

From:

Longer comment coming in a moment, but I want to say to you what I just said to

snowspinner, namely that I don't want to be moderating arguments in this journal, so please watch your tone. (Your tone's been fine so far. Just heading things off at the pass.)

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campkilkare

---initially commented here with an RPG journal. *facepalm*

Repeating: the LDS and individual Mormons, mostly living outside CA, contributed $19 million dollars, four out of every five spent promoting Prop 8. I wouldn't mind seeing them lose tax-exempt status, if they want to use their influence to put their thumbs on the scale to that degree.

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I wouldn't mind it either, but I'd prefer not to direct my energies towards that end. I'd rather focus on positive ways to change society to accept gay marriage.

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campkilkare

No, I agree that it would probably be unproductive. (Just satisfying...)

I was just reacting to I don't think they're particularly worth singling out of the general mass of evangelical conservatism.

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Eh, not like I knew the difference. :)

I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm very, very creeped out by that campaign, and I find stories like the Mormon family who wiped out most of their savings donating to Yes on 8 downright disturbing. I have serious ethical issues with any faith that would teach its adherents that they have a moral obligation to do something like that.

But unfortunately, I fail to see anything unique about them compared to the Catholics, large swaths of evangelical Protestant groups, etc. The scale of this operation is nothing out of like with what Dobson and Focus on the Family directs routinely towards political causes, or what Falwell did before that. I think, in each case, that the ideology espoused is horrific. But I think it is within the bounds of what is acceptable for a religion to do, at least in a legal sense.

ETA: And anyway, given that the whole point of the marriage equality argument is "my legal rights are not at the whim of your morality," I figure let them be tax-exempt bigots in peace, and maybe someday they'll catch on to the whole live and let live thing.

Edited Date: 2008-11-08 03:31 am (UTC)

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I am a little sad to hear you say that only those who grew up seeing gay people on TV as something unremarkable will be truly accepting. Not so. I was raised as a Catholic in an extremely conservative small town in the 70's and 80's. I think that puts me firmly in the category of people whom you're assuming will never be accepting--never mind welcoming or outright celebratory of homosexuality. I hope you rethink that.

I certainly understand your opinion. I've met plenty of people who would say the same thing about racist groups: we are never going to persuade them. I thought the same thing for awhile, but it turns out that I was wrong. (There was an article on the topic in the NYT today, I think, describing a study in which the prejudice of test subjects was measurably eroded by simple togetherness with another person. Kind of amazing and wonderful.)

I think once you've been on the receiving end of some ugly attitudes, yours is a natural conclusion to come to. But my experience--and I'm not speaking of myself, but of just about everyone I know--tells me that this conclusion is an unfair (albeit understandable) dismissal of an enormous segment of our society which has rejected--or is now rejecting--the values with which they were indoctrinated.

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Oh, your point is fair enough, and there are certainly many, many people in previous generations who have worked to overcome their indoctrination and now identify as LGBT or strong allies.

What I meant (and should perhaps have been more clear about) is that once the 2000s-born generation grow up, gay marriage will be like marrying beneath one's class or miscegenation.

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Gay marriage, in the community I live in, is already pretty unremarkable. I know I live in a bubble; still, I'm taken aback by your pessimism, even in the face of these abhorrent state initiatives. But I do think that perhaps you needn't give up on the living altogether.

By the way, you may want to avoid that word, miscegenation. It connotes something other than what I think you intend to say. (Interracial marriage, probably?)

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saskia139.livejournal.com

No, "miscegenation" is precisely the word that is wanted. It denoted interracial relationships at a time when they were seen as so disgusting and immoral that they had to be outlawed by the state. We no longer think that marrying outside one's social class or marrying a person of a different race is immoral and should be illegal or in any way blameworthy. We can hope that ideas about marrying a person of the same sex as oneself will change just as the idea of "miscegenation" did.

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Let me clarify, then; I find the word deeply offensive. When it's used outside of quotation marks, that implies agreement with its unpleasant connotions. So while that may be what you meant, I'd suggest quotation marks when using the word to make your disagreement with the sentiment behind it clear.

Minor grammatical point, but you'd be doing your readers a service. (And thanks!)

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saskia139.livejournal.com

It *is* a deeply offensive word. I use it without quotation marks, however, because, like slavery, it was a historical reality. Parallels between the attitudes and laws against interracial marriage, calling it "miscegenation", and the attitudes and laws against gay marriage, are extremely strong; the same rhetoric is being used against the latter that was used against the former. I fear that not using the historically prejudicial word "miscegenation" allows that parallel to slip under the radar. How many people remember that it was one of the central themes of the musical Showboat?

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I understand your point.

I'm not suggesting that you not use the word. I'm suggesting that you signal to your readers that you are aware that this is a word that was coined specifically to denigrate interracial marriage. There may other ways to convey this than by using quotation marks. But your original paragraph doesn't make it clear that this is not a word that you, personally, would use to describe interracial marriage.

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Oy--(*rereads orinigal comment*) I did actually initially suggest that you avoid using that word! At that point, I thought you didn't understand its negative connotations, because of the way you used the word. I see now that you do, and were using it to make a point. I'm afraid that for me, the point was lost because of the way it was used.

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Thanks for this thoughtful and really useful comment.

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My position is that even if we're facing organized opposition from the leadership of one or more religious groups -- and it does seem clear that we are -- attacking them just wastes our energy and gives them more reasons to attack us in turn. Besides, groups are made up of individuals. I don't want to give individuals who are perfectly nice, if lacking in experience of people who aren't heterosexual and if educated in ways that will predispose them against them, extra justification to hate and fear GLBT people.

I do understand and respect your position, though. I wonder sometimes if I'm not too optimistic and if I have a tendency to want to appease people I should be fighting with. But for what it's worth, that's where I stand.

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Oh, I see your point. I also see a great deal of energy of a different sort to the persuasion through kindness variety.

I think we need a multi-pronged strategy. Cut off the funding, then start to persuade people once the lies about gays recruiting kids aren't on the TV any more.

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Here's the link to the NYT coverage of that study: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/us/07race.html?scp=1&sq=study%20prejudice&st=cse

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angharad_gov.livejournal.com

you may want to take a look at this article. it's relevant to the discussion:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/politics&id=6495050

and the "print/text only" version:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/politics&id=6495050&pt=print

From:

concordantnexus.livejournal.com

I have a couple of white liberal Canadian friends (one of whom is NeoPagan, one of whom is atheist/agnostic/sort of Taoist (I'm not sure which)) who, when the doorbell rang on rainy days, let the Mormons in and treated them to tea or hot chocolate.

Then they visited Salt Lake City just before those Olympics.

They noted that someone at the University cleverly chose to run loops of footage of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The message was simple when compared to what they experienced in person.

If you aren't Mormon, you are treated like shit, non-human, subpar.

For rather calm rational upper middle class people to change to actively disliking a cultural group takes work.*

Their answer now, to ringing doorbells is: "I'm sure that you are wonderful people individually, but we've been to Salt Lake City and we know how you treat outsiders there and we want nothing to do with it."

That being said - I agree with

rymenhild - and suggest what could be done is work on the newly registered young and/or Black and/or Latino and/or immigrant voters.

You're not going to get much traction with/against Mormons (look up Jack Mormons). If you do manage to convince anyone, they'll get ostracized and shut out from their former community - its like the Catholic Church was during the MiddleAges in a way, there is that much power in the hierarchy).

Worth watching for ideas and laughs:

=================
*Canadians** tease and make fun of Americans (especially the redneck*** Republican end of things) to cajole and shame them into a more civilized**** way of doing things.
**Another Canadian friend puts it roughly this way: "I like Americans quite well, thank you, as long as they come in bunches of 10 or less. More than 10 gets these batshit crazy 'moral' and political ideas."
***A joke I heard in upper New York state goes along the lines of: the flag of the United States of America is red, white and blue for the following reason: red neck, white trash and blue collar.
****Ever read Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale"? It's used in English Literature classes in high school in Ontario and Quebec, and most teenagers understand the hint that this dystopia is what possibly awaits us if the Talibangelicals take power in the USA.

Edited Date: 2008-11-08 06:58 am (UTC)

From:

whatifoundthere.livejournal.com

its like the Catholic Church was during the MiddleAges in a way, there is that much power in the hierarchy

As something of an expert in mediaeval Christianity, I feel qualified to say that the Catholic Church didn't really resemble this simplistic stereotype. The technology didn't exist to surveille everyone; remember that surveillance is necessary for top-down, fascist-style, society-wide purges and witch hunts. There were, of course, hunts and purges, and no doubt there were plenty of backward small towns filled with xenophobic assholes. But if you compare the "power" of that "hierarchy" to, e.g., Stalin's (atheist!) regime, the Middle Ages suddenly start to seem pretty tame.

Mediaeval ignorance about the "official" rules that the elite were busy churning out in Rome or wherever was rampant -- even among clergy. Yes, the written sources that survive tend to be pretty shrill and chest-thumpy (though even they are more diverse than you might think). But take it from me, the social authority of those texts on the ground was often negligible in a far-flung and mostly-illiterate empire. Europe, like our world now, was a huge and complicated place, and "Catholicism" (as if that is even "a" thing) had room for lots and lots of different kinds of people.

I'm sorry your friends were treated badly in Utah. I don't see how that speaks against

rymenhild's point, though.

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obopolsk.livejournal.com

Thanks for the reminder. I completely agree with you.

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marianme.livejournal.com

I agree. So far, the things I see gay marriage supporters doing will not change votes and sometimes alienate people. I've seen other groups so this, too.

Like after a Berkeley parade, there was a group in the park talking about tolerance for all sorts of people except the military - they hated those people. Didn't sound all that tolerant to me.

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agonistes

The point at which I disagree (after some really careful thought about this subject) is that the Catholics were smart enough to do this through the Knights of Columbus -- like a smokescreen. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints wasn't.

If your organization breaks the 501(c)3 rules, your organization does not deserve to be exempt from paying taxes. Period. And I support revoking the 501(c)3 status of the LDS Church.

I'd tentatively planned a trip to Utah next spring, as a part of the West I haven't visited yet. I plan to investigate businesses beforehand, so I know what businesses are owned by the LDS Church, or what businesses the LDS church has a stake in, because I can choose not to spend my money to support an organization that does not appear to recognize the separation between church and state.

I have never, never met somebody who was LDS and who was anything but kind, polite, and wonderful to speak and interact with, and it's a part of my religion to practice tolerance.

Tolerance does not mean being a doormat. Tolerance does not mean keeping your mouth closed regarding injustice. And the LDS Church broke the rules. I can see the differences between the LDS Church leadership and the LDS people I know and admire, and right now I am going to choose not to support the LDS Church.

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Thank you for this comment. It makes a lot of sense, and I'm going to take some time to think about it. may in the end agree with you more than with my original post.

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