Now, you can read the monstrous horror for yourself!

Well, the pseudonymous and anonymous reviews of my 2017 FairMormon remarks are in:

I offer a selection of them from a couple of hostile message boards that I watch fairly regularly.  I find these two boards curiously fascinating.

Their focus has been on my first few sentences, because those are the sentences that begin the Church News account of what I said and that the Church News article highlights.  In those first few sentences, I recall an exchange of letters from many years ago with a troubled young man who had lost his faith and who, tragically, ended up taking his own life.

And they aren’t pleased that Daniel Peterson would “choose to sell that narrative using the suicide of an individual who reached out to him seemingly in the midst of a faith crisis, who he failed to help and who he doesn’t know the circumstances of the individual’s tragic death. It’s reckless, a breach of trust.”

As one writer puts it, “DCP keeps giving us new reasons to dislike him.”

“This may actually be the worst talk I have ever heard from Professor Peterson,” says one critic, who doesn’t actually appear to have heard it nor even to have read it.  “Or from anybody else associated with the LDS church.”  “Unbelievable,” writes another.  The speech, says a third, was “astounding utterly jaw dropping.”  “The guy is tone deaf as the day is long,” adds a fourth.  The speech represents “an incredibly low ebb.”  It was, observes a message board participant, “trivial and self serving.”  “The whole thing makes me scream,” writes one respondent.  It “makes me sick to my stomach,” says another.  ““Jack Chick without the pictures,” remarks a writer with obvious literary background.

And they’re not the only ones.  The talk was “extremely insensitive,” manifesting “not one hint of compassion or empathy” but showing, rather, “a lack of respect and sensitivity.”  I’m “still having trouble getting it through my head that Dr. Peterson would say something like this,” says one of the more gentle respondents.

“This fat [obscenity] stomps all over the memory of a dead man who was an apostate, goes on to state apostates are evil, and then acts like he’s the victim. Get a ____ ing clue Mormons. Daniel Panniculus is execrable writer and even worse public speaker.”  In an addendum, the same writer expresses his sheer wonder at the situation:  “How people can tolerate The Panniculus is beyond me. What a complete and utter garbage human being.”

Naturally, comparisons to the Third Reich came readily to the minds of those confronted with my remarks:  “The man is a NAZI apologist,” observes one writer. “Total scum bag.”  Another agrees:  “The man has the morality of Adolf Eichmann.”  With, adds yet another, “an IQ of 1.”  He’s “pretty tone deaf about the sensitivities of others,” says yet another.

But why would I give such a speech in the first place?  One suggestion is that I have “a vested interest in membership (and therefore tithing) growth, or at least sustainability.”  Another says “I get the distinct impression that what is going on here is an attempt to put on a par the suicides of LDS gay teens and young people with this poor RM who killed himself.”  (The speech doesn’t actually mention homosexuality at all, but, hey, we’re talking hidden agendas here.)

The most popular explanation, though, is that the speech was motivated by a desire for self-promotion.

“Peterson,” notes a critic, “[is] so obsessed with publicity that he will do anything, even to the extent of talking obnoxiously and insensitively about a suicide, just to generate some attention.”  And another concurs, pointing out that “it’s all about you, Daniel. It’s always all about you. . . .  It’s all about you.”

I “used” the young suicide victim.  As one writer puts it, in my speech I was “standing on the corpse of a dead man to get attention.”  I was, remarks another, “prepared to breach the boundaries of common decency in an attempt to draw attention” to myself.

Of course, it’s very possible that I was just lying.

It was, one observer points out, a “non-verified story.”  “Did Scott Lloyd [of the Church News] fact-check this story?” inquires another.

Given “Peterson’s obsessive sense of importance,” one writer optimistically suggests, “he could be making up an imaginary suicide just to generate some publicity for himself. Hopefully, it’s that. God forbid he is capitalizing on some tortured soul’s suicide.”  “FAIRMormon needs to issue a retraction,” advises another.  Perhaps, writes a third critic, “we will see a retraction in one month’s time.”

“There isn’t a hint or a shred of a hint of compassion or empathy in his words,” observes one commentator.  “Not one ounce of simple human compassion or empathy.”  “My god,” exclaims an incredulous message board writer, “what part of yourself do you have to shut off in order to do that?”  The “insensitivity” is beyond belief, notes a message board writer.  “Extremely insensitive,” adds another.

But then, another asks, “Since when did he treat any opponent with decency?”

Although my correspondence with the young man involved was entirely private, between us, some commentators provide deep and damning insights into my exchange with him and how I treated him.

Asks one, “Why feel penitent about taking away whatever’s left of a guy’s will to live?”

Another offers a good analogy for the counsel that I offered the young man and for the point of my talk:  “The solution for the poor housewife whose abusive husband ties her down weekly and rapes her front and back, against her will, leaves her all night, then unties her, and forces her to more physical abuse and bruising and slapping around, but lying to her that he still loves her, is to quit staying away from his love, and return to him and submit in faith”

My speech, says one, was in exercise in “victim blaming . . . and to say that this is sick is an understatement.”

“A young person was put through an intensive, cultic experience,” comments a critic, “and discovered his error and the depth of his damaging indoctrination and sought help that was not given. He may have become suicidal as a result. And it’s all his fault?”  Another offers a similar observation:  “He’s basically saying that the young man failed the church. Not that the church failed him.”  My presentation was, says yet another, “a protracted “I told you so.”  But that’s the way my kind of monster behaves:  “They ALWAYS blame the victim,” summarizes one student of the phenomenon.

Another emphasizes the immorality of my comments:  “Religious faith means never having to say you’re sorry. . . .  This blaming the victim is sickening.”

So what was the message of the speech?

One concise summary indicates that the bottom line was “Let those sinners die and claim victory for Jesus.”  Another proposes that the point was “to marginalize this Poor Man’s suicide by using it as some don’t-leave-the-church type crusading tactic.”

In that light, a third person’s indignation is entirely understandable:  “Leave it to an [insulting crude pejorative] like Peterson to take something horrific and deeply disturbing to use as a bat for promoting Mormonism!”

One author offers an overall summary that is helpful as a bottom line:  Peterson, he says, “was in a unique position to help someone navigate a complex moment in his life, and instead the walking gasbag tried to get him back into the very thing they both knew to be fallacious. Furthermore, he blames this man’s faith alienation on the man and then takes a huge [crude noun] all over him to score some attention. Instead of attending to a clearly hurt and distraught member or former member who had legitimate complaints and feelings the Mopologists argued with him and then further insult his death by blaming him for his pain.”

Another expresses his disgust at the fact that people of my ilk would “exploit something like this. On the one hand, they can say that apostasy makes people miserable and drives them to suicide, and on the other, they can pat themselves on the back because, hey, the only good apostate is a dead apostate.”

“There are,” one presumably otherwise kind and loving person confesses, “few people in this world I truly *hate.*  But Peterson qualifies as one of them.”  Why?  “Because you lie to people,” said another, addressing me directly.  “For a living.  And you know you’re lying, you sack of [vulgarity].”  I’m guilty, a third respondent points out, of “poor taste.”

The commentators cited above did not have access to the actual text of my 2017 FairMormon remarks, which have only just now gone up online:

“What Difference Does It Make?”

Now, if you care, you can inspect my exploitative viciousness and shameless self-promotion for yourself.  Be sure that you’re sitting down, though.  And keep your smelling salts handy.

Oh yes:  There’s a fellow who’s been sending insulting (and often obscene) anonymous emails to me over the past five years or so, several times a month and sometimes multiple times a day, from various routes that conceal his email address.  Anyway, he wrote to me again a few days ago, calling me a “coward” because I chosen to engage the various critics that I cite above.  I found his note really funny.  (I don’t think he meant it ironically.)