How many times have I heard Mormon conservatives (but I repeat myself) sound off against the ACLU? Apparently, they’re getting in the way of America being Jesusy enough, trying to keep government out of the religion business.
I can never figure out why conservatives, who think government doesn’t work, suddenly think that government would do a super job promoting religion, and they’d do it just the way you’d want. Anyway.
I have said to a few people, “If the ACLU had existed during the Missouri period, they would have gone to bat for the Mormons.” But they have trouble with this because to them the ACLU is something Bad. Maybe they just don’t like the civil rights movement. Ol’ Uncle Ezra never did, and look where he ended up.
So now the ACLU has decided to defend perhaps the most odious sect of Christianity currently in existence — though it’s close — the Westboro Baptist Church.
A Kansas church group that protests at military funerals nationwide filed suit in federal court, saying a Missouri law banning such picketing infringes on religious freedom and free speech.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo., on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members’ funerals with signs condemning homosexuality.
Why do I like this so much? It’s not because I like the Westboro folks, the sort of people who get attention by becoming serial pests.
Is it because I sort of like it when Christians (soi-disant) get the chance to reveal their ugliest doctrines as a turn-off to others? Or that they get the chance to promote their hatred of homosexuality openly in public, instead of secretly within the walls of the church, as Mormons do?
I think this case sounds right because it shows the consistency of the ACLU. Even though the WBC is repellent, the Missouri state government is out of line. Free speech is already endangered enough in the USA without blocking protests, even misguided ones. Any time government is promoting a religion or persecuting a religion, there’s a problem, and that’s what the ACLU is trying to straighten out.
Where was the government when WBC was celebrating the funerals of homosexuals, anyway?
26 July 2006 at 9:11 pm
Just for the fun of it I must say that when we met a few years ago at my dome home bach pad the question of Mormanism and blacks came up. You gave me the standard “just because individuals make bad choices (even prophets) doesn’t mean the church isn’t true”
So, just because this is fun, would you like to take that one back now?
27 July 2006 at 12:50 am
Tarring me with my own brush!
I guess that was my way of explaining how God can be in charge of a ‘good church’ that nevertheless performs ‘bad actions’.
See, I used to believe that the Church was directly inspired by God. But then I would notice that some of the actions of the Church were really human (surprise!).
e.g. Not letting Africans hold the priesthood
The Word of Wisdom being a response to Emma’s complaints
Changing mission lengths from 2 years to 18 months and then back again
and so on.
So in order to explain arbitrary things like this, I had to suppose that God gives us lots of latitude in decision-making on a Church level. To the point of not really intervening except on Big Issues.
But the more arbitrary or bad moves I found, the smaller God’s role got, until I found myself basically a deist. But you can’t really be a Mormon deist, can you? That lasted about five seconds.
What to do? The obvious thing: drop the supposition that God exists! The Church is a religion, and religions are things that people make up. Aah. It all makes sense now.
Now I don’t really need the supporting belief anymore.
Anyone want it?
27 July 2006 at 3:34 am
I loved the link to words of uncle Ezra. ya know its funny, when I made that same mental step I never did feel the need to go back and research out the crap that had been fed to me but I love it when others have and point it out to me. My cousin John, who had to come out of the closet in SLC of all places also pointed out to me how many “revisions” there have been to the book of mormon.
27 July 2006 at 3:37 am
btw. my home’s door has a sticker that reads. “This home protected by the ACLU” I am a big fan.
27 July 2006 at 7:06 am
“just because individuals make bad choices (even prophets) doesn’t mean the church isn’t true”
PS after re-reading this: I still think evaluating a philosophy by the actions of its adherents is unwise. No philosophy can control its membership to such an extent, nor would I want it to. So if that’s what you meant, I’m sticking to that one.
And IMHO, textual changes to the Book of Mormon are not really a smoking gun. I’ve looked into that one, and I don’t think there’s much there. The worst you can come up with is punctuation changes and one or two minor rewordings — nothing very significant.
Where can I get that sticker? Too bad there’s no OzCLU.
27 July 2006 at 9:13 pm
“just because individuals make bad choices (even prophets) doesn’t mean the church isn’t true”
The problem for me is that last word, ‘true’. Apart from the obvious difficulty in defining that word and then negotiating shared meanings, it still doesn’t follow logically from the issue of not judging a philosophy by its adherents. I guess you could say that ‘just because … doesn’t mean the church isn’t a useful social practice’ or something like that.
(can’t keep a good pragmatist down)
28 July 2006 at 5:20 am
Okay, snow queen, I’m aware that ‘truth’ is a tricky concept, so let’s negotiate some shared meaning.
When Mormons say that they ‘know’ the Church is ‘true’, they mean that there is a factual basis for the claims it makes.
Some examples: Joseph Smith really did see God and Jesus, the Book of Mormon was a real book that Joseph translated more or less as he said he did, and so on.
I admit that the LDS Church has a useful social function. So does any church. Or club. But the LDS Church doesn’t stop there; its leadership says that its claims are factual in their most literal sense. So we need to hold it to a higher standard than ‘Is it useful and does it have satisfied customers?’
If we refuse to do this, we are saying that the truth really isn’t very important, and it’s good enough to believe what you like, and then it’s New Age epistemological relativism. And Mormons hate that kind of thing.
31 July 2006 at 4:26 pm
two things.
While I agree that a church cannot be judged solely by the actions of its individuals there must be some point at which this kind of judgement can be made. I would say that actions of its highest leaders and official policies would meet that point.
second:
e.g. Not letting Africans hold the priesthood
and then:
God gives us lots of latitude in decision-making on a Church level. To the point of not really intervening except on Big Issues.
I have to say that denying an entire race of the full benefits of your religion would go under Big Issue for me.
1 August 2006 at 4:04 am
You’re absolutely right on point one, and it doesn’t even have to go up to the leadership. I’d like to say that we can infer things by the behaviour of rank and file members, but I don’t know how to do this in an unbiased way. But yes, at some point the theological rubber has to meet the behavioural road.
On point two I agree as well. But what could Latter-day Saints do in the late 70’s? They thought the verdict came down from on high (when it probably came from Brigham Young’s own biases), and you don’t just change God’s will cavalierly in response to social pressure. Hence the very uncomfortable conflict for Mormon liberals. And it took another pronouncement from on high to fix it.