Mormons as hate-filled accomplices to mass murder?

Mormons as hate-filled accomplices to mass murder? June 17, 2016

 

Botanical garden at Uppsala University
Uppsala University’s historically important botanical garden
(Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

Yesterday, I mentioned the anger that some are expressing at the “fact” that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued no statement regretting the massacre in Orlando or expressing its condolences:

 

 

“I guess that righteous indignation is a lot more satisfying than using Google is”

 

 

Some of those who are indignant at the Church’s supposed silence in this matter are also expressing their rage at the way the Church’s view of homosexual acts contributed — they have no doubt, of course, that it did — to the murders at that Florida nightclub, Pulse.

 

 

A reader of this blog passed the following along to me, from a Facebook post somewhere.  I have no idea who the author might be, and don’t care enough to try to find out.  But it will stand for some of the things I’m seeing myself:

 

 

“To my friends who are saddened and appalled by the mass shooting in Orlando this week, but belong to a religion or ideology that does not support gay marriage, please consider the fact that you are part of the problem. Yes, I know you would never pull the trigger, but understand your beliefs oppress members of the LGBT community. You tell them you love them and that you are tolerant. That they are in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time. But your actions tell a different story. Your actions say they are not good enough to receive the blessings of your church, and they are not good enough to receive equality in this nation. They are different than you. They are less than you. They are not worthy. You vote for bills and politicians that will continue to deny them their birthright. So, although I appreciate you are mourning the loss of life and hatred in the world right now, please know your biases and prejudices will continue to put the lives of the LGBT community and other minorities in danger. I know there is so much more context around the shootings, but these primitive beliefs are so harmful to our world.”

 

 

Now, ironically, I think it’s such sentiments as that expressed above that are at least potentially dangerous.  It’s a very small jump from deciding that the religious beliefs of even nice, non-violent people are literally killing and oppressing others to taking legal and extralegal steps to punish and proscribe those religious beliefs and perhaps, yes, to punishing and proscribing even those nice, non-violent people.

 

 

As my reader remarks, following the quotation above,

 

 

“I think many members of the church are oblivious to some of the rhetoric that is creeping up declaring our beliefs to be hateful, and according to this post, even dangerous.  I fear it’s just a matter of time until we will begin having empathy for our pioneer ancestors who were violently forced from society.  After all, if I’m part of the problem, as this FB poster declared, then the only solution is to forcibly stop me from being a Mormon, or at least make it difficult to be one.”

 

 

I see the same potential threat.  It may not happen, but it could.  And the time to oppose such a threat is long before it gathers enough socio-political and cultural momentum to become effectively irresistible.  That’s why the battle to preserve religious liberty is so important, and is heating up.

 

 

“Am I overreacting?” he asks.

 

 

No, I don’t think so.  Not really.

 

 

It will start with Mormons (and with others like them, on such issues) being obliged to take gender- and orientation-sensitivity courses at work, being unable to get employment in the first place, being passed over for promotions, being de facto excluded from public office outside of Mormon-majority areas, being marginalized in cultural organizations, being effectively barred from the better universities, being targeted (even more than we already are) in elite and eventually mass entertainment, and so forth.  Will it come to “reeducation camps”?  Certainly not right away.  Hopefully never.  But it’s not impossible to see the potential seeds of such things in what’s being said now.  There are already calls for the taxing of (especially) conservative churches and synagogues, and, in some quarters, for the use of zoning powers to ensure that such undesirable elements are kept out of “good” neighborhoods.

 

 

For related reading, see Jonathan Tobin’s “The Shame of Anderson Cooper” in Commentary, as well as this piece, “The Orlando Shooting Launches a War on Christianity,” by the estimable David French.

 

 

Posted from Uppsala, Sweden

 

 


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