Ummm, I Was Not Offended.

There was a swift backlash against yesterday’s Meridian Magazine blog post which attacked liberal Mormons. By mid-day, Meridian had removed it from their website.

A number of my friends and associates have mentioned that they were glad that it was taken down. I think it was unfortunate. I thought that the post was an opportunity to respond and discuss what being a liberal Mormon means to me. Hence, I posted a response.

The post by Joni Hilton was not offensive to me. I disagreed with nearly every word and sentence. I felt that it cast aspersions on people like myself. It was a poor argument riddled with generalizations and faulty assumptions. All of those things made the post more silly than offensive.

I think Meridian should have left the post up. Instead of removing it, maybe counter-arguments could have been invited to join in the conversation. We live in a pluralistic world and there also exists a pluralism within Mormonism. Part of that pluralism is people like Joni Hilton.

Additionally, I did not find what Hilton wrote to be all that different from what often appears on the website of Meridian magazine. I am at a loss to figure out why this post would be taken done when it is really not all that different in message and/or tone from what is often written by editor-in-chief of Meridian Magazine Maurine Jensen Proctor.

(BTW, I was well aware that Hilton was talking about religious liberals and not political liberals.)

I think there are sometimes good reasons to take down a post. Strong disagreement is not one of them. If the reason for removing the post was over confusion about how Hilton used the term liberal, a follow-up post clarifying her point would have been much more useful and interesting than just making it go away.