![\"anti-Semitic](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2023\/08\/bec1b7c5-ed01-4a84-8761-263d72c872e5-1.jpg.pagespeed.ce_.DOybSflod9.jpg\")
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It seems that construction of the proposed Cody Wyoming Temple will go forward on the site that had been selected for it, and very possibly even with the tall tower of the original architectural plan: \u00a0\u201cSurprise: Gigantic 77-Foot Steeple For Mormon Temple In Cody Gets Approved After All: By not specifically rejecting the 77-foot steeple that\u2019s caused months of controversy, the Cody Planning and Zoning Board apparently has OK\u2019d the initial Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> temple plan.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve commented here on two prior occasions about the controversy. \u00a0My blog entry for 18 July 2023 (\u201cA small tempest about a small temple in Cody\u201d<\/a>) was substantially devoted to it, and, just this past Thursday, I also posted a relatively substantial observation concerning it. \u00a0(See \u201cIn the world after the fall\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n I note, however, that I\u2019m now being accused \u2014 at an online site (let\u2019s call it the \u201cPOB\u201d) where seriously misrepresenting me has, for years, been both a passion and a mission \u2014 of engaging in \u201cextreme rhetoric\u201d with regard to the Cody controversy, of trying to inflame \u201cmutual hostility\u201d rather than to foster \u201csober conversation.\u201d \u00a0Feel free to read my two linked blog entries and decide for yourself. \u00a0To me, they seem pretty calm and irenic.<\/p>\n The specifically offending passage is to be found in the Thursday entry. \u00a0In it, I mention the fact that one or two people have called for a list to be created of businesses in Cody that are owned by Latter-day Saints, so that they can be subjected to a boycott. \u00a0I commented, obviously sardonically, as follows:<\/p>\n Perhaps such businesses might be required to display a yellow star, say, so that they will be more easily identifiable?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The allusion, clearly, is to the treatment of Jewish shops and other businesses under the Third Reich in the 1930s. \u00a0In response, one poster on the POB helpfully points out that no Latter-day Saint meetinghouses in Cody have been burned to the ground and that there are no laws in Cody prohibiting intermarriage between Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n Wonderful! \u00a0But, of course, I never suggested in any way that Cody is on the road toward a cowboy-style Kristallnacht<\/em><\/a> or that anti-miscegenation laws targeting Latter-day Saints are just over the horizon. \u00a0I don\u2019t by any means imagine that the environment for members of the Church in Cody is even remotely as bad as the plight of the Jews under Nazi rule. \u00a0I\u2019ve been to the former concentration camps at Mauthausen (multiple times) and Dachau and Buchenwald \u2014 I know full well what they were like \u2014 and, many times, to the Holocaust museums in Washington DC and Jerusalem. \u00a0I\u2019ve read fairly extensively on the ideology and the crimes of the Hitler regime.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also being suggested, as I understand the comments, that I\u2019m trying to insinuate that most residents of Cody hate the Church, and that opposition to the proposed temple is motivated entirely by religious bigotry, that I\u2019m cherry-picking a selection of extreme comments in order to paint all of those who\u2019ve expressed concern about the temple as haters. \u00a0But I have expressly said otherwise. \u00a0And, yet again, I invite readers to look for themselves at what I\u2019ve posted on this subject.<\/p>\n I\u2019m said to be intransigent and refusing to back down. \u00a0However, this is clearly false. \u00a0In my first blog entry on the topic, I suggested several areas of possible compromise (including the easy one of dimming the exterior lights after a certain hour in the evening, which is already done at many temples elsewhere and which was probably always planned for Cody).<\/p>\n And\u00a0I\u2019m said to be trying to portray the ultra-wealthy Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints \u2014 they had to get that<\/em> in, of course \u2014 as a \u201cvictim.\u201d \u00a0Once again, though, I\u2019m not. \u00a0I said nothing of the kind,<\/p>\n So what was I getting at with that remark about the idea of marking LDS-owned businesses in Cody with yellow stars? \u00a0Just this: \u00a0I can hardly imagine an idea more calculated than that one to sow lasting acrimony and discord in a community, and I hate and, yes, I fear religious bigotry. \u00a0My comment was a warning<\/em>: \u00a0Don\u2019t even come close<\/em> to so noxious a move. \u00a0Think of those who have done it in the past, and be warned.<\/p>\n My comment about those yellow stars wasn\u2019t to portray the institutional church as a victim, but to speak out on behalf of ordinary Latter-day Saints, ordinary Cody families, who don\u2019t deserve to lose their savings or their livelihoods or even to be financially harmed because of a controversy about the siting of a temple. \u00a0They didn\u2019t choose the site and they didn\u2019t design the building. \u00a0Yet they would be the victims of an economic boycott aimed at their shops and businesses.<\/p>\n It also wasn\u2019t to brand anybody and everybody who might have reservations about the proposed new temple as a hateful Nazi.\u00a0 What I wrote cannot reasonably be construed that way.\u00a0 Not even close.\u00a0 I doubt that very many folks in Cody are likely to sign on for a religiously-defined boycott against their neighbors and friends, perhaps against their dentist or their doctor. \u00a0I certainly hope<\/em> not. \u00a0But such an idea shouldn\u2019t even be floated<\/em>, and, if<\/em> it\u2019s raised, it should be immediately shot down.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I care deeply about religious tolerance and religious liberty. \u00a0And I\u2019m consistent on the matter. \u00a0That\u2019s why I spoke out very publicly in favor of the right of Muslims to build the so-called \u201cground zero mosque\u201d in Manhattan many years ago. \u00a0That\u2019s why I was among the nineteen signers of an Amici Curiae<\/em> brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (on which, see this from the Washington Post<\/em>: \u201c\u2018We have to take a stand\u2019: Mormon history<\/a> scholars file brief against Trump travel ban<\/a>\u201c; the actual text of the brief, along with the complete list of signatories, is available here<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n I am in complete accord with the position of the Prophet Joseph Smith on religious liberty and religious toleration:<\/p>\n Be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Nauvoo, that the Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Latter-day Saints, Quakers, Episcopals, Universalists, Unitarians, Mohammedans [Muslims], and all other religious sects and denominations whatever, shall have free toleration, and equal privileges in this city. \u00a0(Ordinance in Relation to Religious Societies, City of Nauvoo, [Illinois] headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, March 1, 1841)<\/p>\n If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing to die for a \u201cMormon,\u201d I am bold to declare before Heaven that I am just as ready to die in defending the rights of a Presbyterian, a Baptist, or a good man of any denomination; for the same principle which would trample upon the rights of the Latter-day Saints would trample upon the rights of the Roman Catholics, or of any other denomination who may be unpopular and too weak to defend themselves. It is a love of liberty which inspires my soul \u2014 civil and religious liberty to the whole of the human race. \u00a0(Joseph Smith, 1843)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>
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