“New York Times overplays ‘mass resignations’ from ‘harmful’ Mormon Church”

Thanks to Cody Quirk for calling my attention to this item:

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/melissa-mullins/2015/11/23/new-york-times-overplays-mass-resignations-harmful-mormon-church

It reminds me of a conversation that Bill Hamblin and I had with the American feminist Gloria Steinem many years ago in Cairo, when we were both graduate students there.  She had come to Egypt to deliver a major public lecture addressing the topic of sexism in religion.  We attended, and we were deeply impressed by the courage demonstrated in her remarks, which concentrated on Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, and Mormonism — all three of which, of course, are major and very popular populations in Cairo.

Anyway, she said in her speech that people were leaving the LDS Church in massive numbers because of the Church’s opposition to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution.  Afterwards, Bill and I had a nice conversation with her, among other things asking for evidence to support her claim that the Church was hemorrhaging large elements of its membership over this issue.  She took our addresses and promised to send the evidence that we requested as soon as she returned to New York.

Egyptian mail wasn’t completely reliable in those days, and I can only assume that the evidence she sent was lost somewhere in a Cairo post office and that the two or three letters that we sent to remind her of our request never reached New York.

Posted from Marbella, Spain