It is likely true. What we ALL know as fact that Mormons in general believe that and certainly the leaders of the Church believe that. there is no debating that fact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Seeing his comment, I felt that I needed to contradict it for the sake of the public record.\u00a0 I responded as follows:<\/p>\n
Actually, there is. And I deny it.<\/p>\n
If you have actual evidence to demonstrate that contemporary Latter-day Saints in general and current Church leaders in particular believe that mixed-race marriages are \u201ccursed,\u201d I hope that you\u2019ll share it.<\/p>\n
As it is, I suspect that Elder Gerrit Gong, an ethnically Chinese member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who is married to a Caucasian woman, DOESN\u2019T believe that mixed-race marriages are cursed.<\/p>\n
Nor, I suspect, does Elder Peter Johnson, a Black member of the Seventy who is married to a White woman.<\/p>\n
Nor, probably, does Brother Ahmad Corbitt, a Black man married to a White woman. Brother Corbitt has served as a stake president and as a mission president and he now serves in the Young Men\u2019s general presidency of the Church.<\/p>\n
Nor, I\u2019m guessing, does Sister Tracy Browning, who is both a counselor in the Primary general presidency of the Church and a Black woman married to a White man.<\/p>\n
Nor, presumably, do the Church leaders through whom their appointments came.<\/p>\n
Nor, probably, does Brother Alex Boy\u00e9, a popular English-born Latter-day Saint performing artist (formerly a member of the Tabernacle Choir) of Nigerian background who is married to a White woman.<\/p>\n
I could go on, but those, I think, are sufficient grounds for dissent from your declaration that \u201cthere is no debating\u201d your claim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But my reply never appeared.\u00a0 Instead, I received this message from the anonymous Newsweek<\/em> editor:<\/p>\nYour comment on \u201cBlack Mormon told they can\u2019t marry white members because \u201cseed is cursed\u201d\u201d violates the community guidelines and has been rejected.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019m puzzled.\u00a0 I can\u2019t seem to see how or why my response was inappropriate.\u00a0 I thought it quite irenic and to the point, and I still do.\u00a0 Of course, I\u2019m also puzzled by the fact that the folks on the Peterson Obsession Board seem to believe that the comments posted after the Newsweek<\/em> article make me<\/em> look bad.<\/p>\nBut then, life is weird:\u00a0 This afternoon, for instance, I was cruising northward on Orem Main Street \u2014 which isn\u2019t a very main Main Street \u2014 at just slightly over the speed limit when a car pulled out in front of me so suddenly and unexpectedly that I was obliged to slam on my brakes in order to avoid a collision.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t honk my horn, though, or otherwise react.\u00a0 However, since there was nobody behind me I was more than a little bit puzzled as to why the driver felt such an urgent need to pull into the street just when he did.\u00a0 And then, only about two hundred yards further along Main Street, he abruptly pulled off into a shallow parking lot to the right and stopped parallel to the road.\u00a0 Out of curiosity, I looked over to see for myself who this marvelous creature might be.\u00a0 And he flipped me off.\u00a0 He<\/em> flipped me<\/em> off.\u00a0 As I say, life is weird.<\/p>\nBack to Newsweek<\/em>, though:\u00a0 An interesting side product of this little episode was the appearance of one \u201cLance Hemmert\u201d in the Newsweek<\/em> exchanges.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen him before, in other online \u201cdiscussions\u201d of the Church.\u00a0 I agree with the assessment given by a participant in one of those earlier encounters that he seems to be both unpleasant and rather obsessive.\u00a0 This time, though, he posted as his own and essentially verbatim an entire paragraph that had previously been posted over at the Peterson Obsession Board by the character that I call my \u201cMalevolent Stalker.\u201d\u00a0 (The Stalker has been after me anonymously, day in and day out, for something on the order of fifteen years now.)\u00a0 Either he stole the Stalker\u2019s words without attribution \u2014 a whole paragraph, remember, basically verbatim \u2014 or he is<\/em> the Stalker.\u00a0 If he\u2019s not the Stalker, he may be another anonymous character whose online moniker appears to refer to Cameron, North Carolina (\u201cCamNC\u201d).<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another item from the Tales-of-the-Weird Department:\u00a0 It\u2019s being confidently asserted over on the Peterson Obsession Board that I\u2019ve banned this blog\u2019s most consistent multi-year atheist commenter, who goes \u2014 or, anyway, went<\/em> \u2014 under the moniker of \u201cgemli.\u201d\u00a0 In the dispassionate judgment of at least some of those on the POB, his was the only voice here that was worth reading.<\/p>\nBut I haven\u2019t<\/em> banned him.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s true that he hasn\u2019t commented here for several weeks.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve been aware of his absence.\u00a0 However, for all I know, perhaps he\u2019s given up, having realized that we here are too perverse and too devoid of intellectual integrity ever to be persuaded by his invincible logic, by the powerful evidence that he marshals, and by his open-minded but honest truth-seeking skepticism.\u00a0 Maybe he\u2019s taking the missionary lessons.\u00a0 Perhaps, for all I know, he\u2019s passed through the veil into the next world and has reconsidered all of his major assumptions.\u00a0 (I had once deduced his real-life name, but I\u2019ve long since forgotten it.\u00a0 So I can\u2019t do a search for him.)<\/p>\n
I hope that he\u2019s well.\u00a0 However, assuming that he is, he\u2019s entirely free to comment here . . .\u00a0 or not to comment here.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ll give it a shot:\u00a0 Gemli, if you\u2019re still out there please let us know that you\u2019re okay.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I mentioned the other day that I had responded to an online article in Newsweek entitled\u00a0\u201cBlack Mormon told they can\u2019t marry white members because \u201cseed is cursed.\u201d\u201d\u00a0 Almost immediately, a clutch of vocal anti-Mormons showed up to target me, personally.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 It\u2019s happened many times before.\u00a0 So, basically, I backed out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33825,28005,7872,33810,1809,17117,10555,14937,2218,19798,17933,33834,933,33816,2905,1812,1815,7113,1191,33837,33819,788,55,1667,33807,28855,33822,1260,4147,33813,4561,33831,33828,8514,11480],"class_list":["post-98343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ahmad-corbitt","tag-alex-boye","tag-black","tag-black-mormon-told-they-cant-marry-white-members","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-dehlin","tag-elder","tag-gemli","tag-gerrit-gong","tag-gerrit-w-gong","tag-gong","tag-interracial","tag-john-dehlin","tag-lance-hemmert","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-lds-church","tag-marriage","tag-miscegenation","tag-mixed-race","tag-mormon","tag-mormonism","tag-mormons","tag-newsweek","tag-north-carolina","tag-peter-johnson","tag-racism","tag-racist","tag-seed-is-cursed","tag-seventy","tag-tracy-browning","tag-tracy-y-browning","tag-twelve","tag-white"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Africa's](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/03\/accra-ghana-temple-lds-249027-gallery.jpg\")
<\/a>