January 27, 2015

Mormon church officially endorses the gay agenda, with anti-retroviral proviso

In a desperate attempt to score moralistic status points against the not-so-Scandinavian parts of the country, the Mormon church has come out of the closet about their support for sweeping pro-homo legislation up to the national level. In typically naive Mormon fashion, they are holding to a "just the tip" strategy that stops short of fully inserting gay marriage into the body politic. But pretty much the whole rest of the diseased load is all cleared for "go".

Reporting from the Salt Lake Tribune here.
"We call on local, state and the federal government," Oaks said in a news release, "to serve all of their people by passing legislation that protects vital religious freedoms for individuals, families, churches and other faith groups while also protecting the rights of our LGBT citizens in such areas as housing, employment and public accommodation in hotels, restaurants and transportation — protections which are not available in many parts of the country."
The sleight-of-hand language about "protecting religious freedoms" is meant to suggest that religiously motivated bigots will somehow be magically protected against the BOO BIGOTS spirit of the laws. As if. Brigham Young University may be granted permission to keep gay orgies from taking place in their student dorms, but if your hotel isn't owned by the Church, then good luck keeping the drug-fueled poz parties off your property.

If your non-Mormon restaurant doesn't want to host and cater a gay civil union ceremony, TS. If you're a cabbie who doesn't feel like picking up a couple of coked up queers who are going to leave who knows what kinds of germs in your taxi, TS.
The push for gay rights was prompted by "centuries of ridicule, persecution and even violence against homosexuals," [Marriott] said. "Ultimately, most of society recognized that such treatment was simply wrong [my emphasis], and that such basic human rights as securing a place to live should not depend on a person's sexual orientation."
Got that, meanies? Ridicule leads to persecution leads to violence. Back on planet Earth, the gays dropped the AIDS bomb on themselves. Normal society played no role in the Swallow-caust.
As a matter of doctrine, the LDS Church does not support same-sex marriage, Marriott said. "But God is loving and merciful. His heart reaches out to all of his children equally, and he expects us to treat each other with love and fairness."
God doesn't want any of his wayward children to ever find The Way again, because judging them to be straying from The Way would be mean, which would contradict his unconditionally permissive love and mercy. This is just spineless "God as a helicopter parent" theology. Sadly in this case, beliefs have consequences, and religious folks will soon no longer be allowed to steer their destabilized communities back toward normality. Because God wants us all to love and not-judge each other, even as His straying flock tumbles over the cliffside.
Above all, the LDS leaders said, the debate about balancing religious and gay rights — often a polarizing predicament — should be civil and respectful.

"Nothing is achieved," Holland said, "if either side resorts to bullying, political point scoring or accusations of bigotry."
I wonder which "either side" will resort more to "accusations of bigotry" and "bullying" (i.e mean language)? The other either-side is just supposed to keep its mouth shut, while getting shouted down for being "simply wrong".

So there you have it. Mormon morality amounts to little more than secular liberalism, stereotypically blinkered to any concerns other than harm and fairness. Notions of purity, sanctity, and taboo are not invoked, nor is the threat to communal cohesion when deviance is promoted.

"Harm" now includes anything that makes someone feel upset, not only physical harm. And "fairness" now applies in contexts where discrimination is necessary, e.g. when one group is fundamentally abnormal and the other group normal, not only where two normal groups are in a relationship of majority/minority, center/periphery, and so on (as in the black/white focus of the Civil Rights era).

You might try to find a silver lining in their not assuming a raging, antagonistic tone, but the passive-aggressive behavior of this Minnesota in the Mountains will only allow the gay enablers to steamroll right over their culture. Fire-breathing liberals at least serve to alert and galvanize normal people who may not have been paying much attention. Meek liberals aren't going to trip off the alarm system so easily.

You might also try to play down Mormon liberalism by pointing to the generally Progressive nature of mainline Protestant denominations. But unlike those liberal churches, there is no conservative counter-balancing Mormon church, let alone one that swamps the liberal one in numbers and influence. It is more like the Catholic church, only from a dystopian world where it has become terminally corrupted by the homosexual contagion.

Recall that Salt Lake City is the gayest city per capita in the nation, whether or not the patrons of its elaborate gay culture would be officially "out" on a demographic survey. Recall that Mormon fat chicks feel no shame in sham-marrying Mormon faggots and bearing their children, as well as bald-facedly declaring that their gay husband is not gay. And recall that unlike Mormon country, where the ban on gay civil unions was struck down by a federal judge in Utah, such a ban was upheld by a federal judge in Ohio.

We should not expect much more from the Church of the Frontier, or the Church of the West, which historically attracts transient status-strivers. Where else could be the natural Zion for a Gilded Age cult that transplanted its way from New England all the way to the rootless Rockies, after getting driven out of one cohesive town after another in the East, the Midwest, and the Plains?

As degenerate as East Coast Catholics may think their church is becoming, at least its population is still hot-blooded enough, owing to the Irish and Italians, to not just lay down and wait their turn for AIDS-raping by the gay enabling movement. They need only look to the Episcopalians and the Mormons to see how much worse things could be, if their stock were drawn from spineless Saxons and dickless Scandinavians.

24 comments:

  1. I really thought the Mormons would push for homosexuality + polygamy. They go so well together. And we know that polygamy in Mormonism was only pushed into the closet.

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  2. That's right, the Mormons are suckers for agreeing to this. Now that there is blood in the water the gays will sense weakness and will only push harder. The Mormons probably thought they were brokering some sort of compromise and meeting the gays halfway, so to speak, but that's not how the gays will perceive it. They'll intensify their assault on the Mormon church. I wonder how the LDS church will respond?

    Something similar recently happened with the Boy Scouts. The gays went after the BSA, and last year the leadership craved. The tragic thing about the Boy Scouting case was that the BSA is not a political organization. The broken people in our society see it is a symbolic embodiment of 1950's conservative values - and that's why they hate it and want to destroy it - but the people who volunteer in the organization spend 100% of their time planning camp-outs, service projects, first aid demonstrations, and things like that. Sex and sexuality have no place in the Scouting program and those subjects are NEVER -- literally never -- brought up. No one in Scouting gives any thought to gays or gay issues and most of the boys are too young to discuss that sort of thing. So when the gays went after the BSA, it was a classic example of the maxim, "you may not be interested in war but war is interested in you"

    I am still active with Scouts (I am the den leader for my youngest son's Webelos den) and encourage both of our boys to be fully involved with it because (1) the good of Scouting outweighs the bad decision that its leaders made last year; (2) again, sex and sexuality have no place in scouting, so I don't expect the issue of gays to ever arise; (3) I don't believe that the gays will actually join scouting. If I actually believed that a bunch of promiscuous West Hollywood queers were going to show up with their adopted children and demand entrance to our Cub Scout Pack and volunteer to serve as Den Leaders, I'd probably pull my kids out. But we all know that this will never happen. I think Scouting will not change in the least and that it will go along just as it did before, even though we supposedly accept gays now.

    Hopefully that's how things will work out for the Mormons, too. I mean, how many gays actually want to be Mormons? It takes a lot of dedication to be a member of that church. I can't say the theology resonates with me but I certainly admire the Mormons that I know; they lead exemplary lives and their level of commitment to their faith is far greater than that of most Christians.

    WRT the Boy Scouts, the other thing that I thought motivated that decision was the fact that the Boomers in charge saw public opinion shifting and just didn't know what to do. They were worried about alienating regular, non-gay families whose kids might be interested in Scouting, and as Boomers they believe that "change is inevitable" and that one must simply "adapt." I think they were wrong about this, but I understand where they were coming from. Younger people are a lot more cynical about "change," generally because many of the changes in society that we have seen were for the worse, but the Boomers think of all forms of social change in the same way that they think of technology -- just as the moon landing was an evolutionary step built that upon the first flight of the Wright Brothers, then gay marriage is just an evolutionary step up from civil rights, etc. They are wrong about this but it's how they see the world.

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  3. The Catholic Church is a worldwide organisation, while the Mormon Church is really only for Americans. If the CC only had American constituents, it would probably go for a more pro-homo policy than the MC, as its American constituents tend to be pretty pro-homosex compared to Protestants. The CC certainly seems to have a fairly gay clergy which judging by such as this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/12/irish-priest-gay_n_6457808.html and http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/new-book-reveals-strong-gay-scene-in-irish-catholic-church-30781075.html and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/pope-francis-vatican-gay-priests-conspiracy. Not surprisingly given their celibacy requirements which would attract men who are not sexually normal with women.

    Although maybe the CC would be less cavalier about rewriting its history in favour of whatever some pop culture chasing mammismo think is right. Plus, seems like many American "Catholics" are pretty milquetoast so maybe they just drop out of religion rather than do the weird things the high commitment religions like Mormonism do to try and keep a hold of their gays.

    Based on the GSS for Whites only, 2000-2014* region really seems to be more the major driver of pro-homo in the US - Catholics are more pro-homo in every region, but really it is more region, particularly the case of New England being different to other parts of the country, not differences so much in religions in regions. Prods are overall more anti-homo than Catholics, in every region (including New England), but most of the difference is that they tend more to be in the South. Some of that might be a sex difference between men and women in regions. On the GSS, White who proclaim various stripes of ethnic heritage don't really differ at all. Americans who claim Irish and Italian descent, the garrulous all mouth and no trousers outgoing groups, are weakly more pro homo than people of declared English and Scandinavian descent, in keeping with some clustering or Irish and Italians in the Northeast.

    *which is not a "that's settled that" glib dismissal, but is really at least an opinion poll and not an anecdotal "Yeah, they may say that but what they really do is, as indicated by a load of random pop culture...".

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  4. Federal judges are appointed by the President and confirmed by the senate. There's a limited amount you can infer from a region based on them.

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  5. "Catholics are more pro-homo in every region, but really it is more region, particularly the case of New England being different to other parts of the country, not differences so much in religions in regions."

    "Americans who claim Irish and Italian descent, the garrulous all mouth and no trousers outgoing groups, are weakly more pro homo than people of declared English and Scandinavian descent, in keeping with some clustering or Irish and Italians in the Northeast."

    Technically, a lot of people in the Northeast are liberal but what is the overall character of people in the region? We like to make fun of the land of the Kennedy's and fashion dictates that they can talk a good game about tolerating sodomites, but let's face it, when push comes to shove North-easterners are hardly enthusiastic about perverts polluting the place.

    The biggest weirdos have drifted further West over the decades and like attracts like. So the homos (the biggest deviants of all) end up feeling out of place in the more wholesome (and more combative against the forces of treachery and discord) places which by and large are east of the Rockies. And maybe they could tolerate a plains state like Iowa but they'd better steer clear of the most pure hearted, no nonsense, unpretentious people closter to the East coast.

    Also, as Agnostic has I believe noted before, the sheer identification of oneself with a religion is a sign of of being traditional and engaged with halfway decent values.

    So however liberal self identified Catholics may be, they still are apt to be more conscientious than non religious types. And guess what? The West has far greater disregard for religion than the East. The land of renegades, vagabonds, and cocky individualists is not interested in some ancient religion and it's modern disciples telling them that they've got a duty to their fellow men and that we're all going to be held to account for our ways eventually whether we like it or not.

    When I talk about the value of religion obviously a sect that from the beginning has been highly corrupt and corrosive (like the Mormon sect that was found by outlaws) is not going to be of the same value as the better sects which have some semblance of honorable tradition so they don't corrode basic dignity and humanity.

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  6. "do the weird things the high commitment religions like Mormonism do to try and keep a hold of their gays."

    I'm not sure it's Mormons trying to convert gays/retain gays as it is the fact that the Mormon sect is so dominated by all brains no heart no guts fools (with a genetic line that's been despoiled by rootless venal types from the beginning). So gays sense that the typical Mormons wrongness detector is broken and establish enclaves among the Mormons. The Mormon's themselves were exiled outcasts whose wayward path gives them a kinship with gays.

    That Amy Chua harpy wrote a book about how we ought to emulate the Chinese, the Jews, and the Mormons. Uhh, no thanks. What do those groups have in common? They all place material success before honor.

    If enough Mormons breed selectively enough to gain a few IQ points, we may eventually come to scorn them the way we scorn Han chinks and kikes.

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  7. Apologies in advance, but I can't help myself...

    Glenn Beck "debunks" Mormon myths:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GccM_eUlMI

    Glenn Beck tries to "prove" the Book of Mormon is true.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwSzPtaK03M

    "That Amy Chua harpy wrote a book about how we ought to emulate the Chinese, the Jews, and the Mormons. Uhh, no thanks. What do those groups have in common? They all place material success before honor.

    If enough Mormons breed selectively enough to gain a few IQ points, we may eventually come to scorn them the way we scorn Han chinks and kikes."

    This is hilarious. I know a millennial Catholic convert who is ethnically Jewish, and he was a Mormon for a while (to further complicate things, he was raised as an evangelical/pentecostal, and attends both the synagog AND Mass now), but apparently never actually believed in any of it. He's the only ethnic Jew I've ever met, and it's been a very disillusioning experience knowing him. He claims to be a conservative, but always criticizes people more "conservative" then him, loves abortion, Hillary Clinton, homogamy (because he loves his gay friends, of course), and mass immigration (especially muslim immigration). Naturally, he thinks the Republican party is "too extreme." He also loves to talk about all the global traveling he goes on, how he has de-facto triple citizenship to the US, Canada and Israel, and how his relatives are simply going to get him a job in financing(?!) when he graduates. The worst part is that rather than being boisterous, he is always squirmy and awkward. Is this really how ethnic Jews act? I hope not... Apologies for the rant, but any ideas how I can troll him without looking like the bad guy?

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  8. "The Catholic Church is a worldwide organisation, while the Mormon Church is really only for Americans."

    It's OK to plead ignorance of a church that is headquartered in America if you're from the UK. If you're going to make sweeping statements, though, look up the data.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_membership_statistics

    http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=475&cat_id=30

    Most Mormons live outside the US, which only has about 40-45% of the church's population. And it's not other first-world nations, but second and third world ones.

    Mexico has over 1 million Mormons (out of ~14 million worldwide), well more than Canada's 190,000. Mexico's per capita rate is also twice that of Canada's. There are also over 1 million in Brazil.

    In Asia, the Philippines has over 5 times as many Mormons as Japan, and about 7 times the per capita rate.

    Of the top 10 countries by number of Mormons, only 2 are first-world -- America (#1) and the UK (#10). #2 through #9 are: Mexico, Brazil, Philippines, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador.

    Growth rates in membership are way higher outside the US, especially in the second / third world.

    One of the fundamental rites of passage for Mormon males is to go overseas to serve on a mission to convert the locals. Mormons are one of the few groups who are still taking up the White Man's Burden.

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  9. "I know a millennial Catholic convert who is ethnically Jewish, and he was a Mormon for a while (to further complicate things, he was raised as an evangelical/pentecostal"

    The Boomers are too far into the twilight of their lives (whether they realize it or not) to be doing too much posturing anymore. Sure they still do it but it's a lot more toned down compared to what they did in their youth. Gen X types, on the other hand, hated posturing from the get go and do relatively little of it though even they haven't totally been able to avoid modern toxic culture.

    Millennials though....

    Imagine growing up entirely in the post 1992 period where glib and selfish behavior is glorified. And where they never got much exposure to forces that would've tempered immaturity. Like having a decent outside-the-family life which would've humbled and shamed them into acting more agreeably.

    So it's on to cosmetic and fashion driven "lifestyle" preoccupations. Whether they are really seeking any self improvement (which would therefore improve other people too) at all isn't always clear but they certainly aren't going to find it by being so shameless and intellectually/spiritually promiscuous.

    This is more of liberal thing too, not necessarily just a generational thing. In another thread I pointed out that liberals tend to much more prone to fad dieting/exercising which ultimately is harmful in the long run even when it sometimes produces short term superficial improvements.

    Conservatives tend to be more mundane and also tend to have a more solid foundation to their self concept. So they end up looking and acting average/unpretentious.

    It's the liberal weirdos who end up being scrawny dorks, over muscled freaks, or fat slobs with some liberals alternating between these phases. Whatever phase they are in their neurotic and fashion driven souls (what soul they have) leads them to desperately pursue things that give them bad skin, bad hair, annoying voices, and an overall unattractive physique and manner.

    Women are more liberal and prone to these things. Amusingly male liberals of all ages seem to have body image issues that one associates with ditzy teen girls or lonely middle aged women.

    I think the sheer ugliness (of mind and body) of male liberals is why many conservatives have an instinctive, visceral disgust for hard core liberals.

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  10. On my local sports talk station, one white very late X-er producer is not only a lifelong fan of 90's rap, he also went to tanning salons and to this day grooms his eyebrows. I don't know his politics (like most X-ers he seems jaded and bored with politics) but I highly doubt he's very right wing about anything.

    Whites with an affinity for blacks (to the point of disregard for the equivalent in white culture) almost always are some of the most treacherous liberals.

    Evidently growing up privileged in the Minnesota suburbs doesn't do a whole lot to instill any pride or spirit. If anything he probably holds lower class whites in contempt but he's too much of a Gen X-er to be a loudmouth about it.

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  11. "Federal judges are appointed by the President and confirmed by the senate. There's a limited amount you can infer from a region based on them."

    Most appointees want to keep good favor and their long-term jobs, and don't try to run in the opposite direction of where their base is heading. If they don't like where the region is heading, they just try to moderate it rather than push against it in the opposite direction.

    Major exceptions are rare, like the Reconstruction Era in the South after the Civil War.

    In any case, the behavior of federal judges is not the sole basis of the argument for what a certain region's culture is like, but is one piece of the whole bigger picture.

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  12. "The Mormons probably thought they were brokering some sort of compromise and meeting the gays halfway, so to speak, but that's not how the gays will perceive it."

    I don't think they saw it as a compromise. They pushed way too hard on anti-discrimination laws across all kinds of risible situations. Hotel accommodations? Transportation? There's no homophobic conspiracy to keep gays from finding hotel rooms or a ride to work. Just folks who don't want drug-fueled gay orgies ruining their property, their reputation, and hence the rate they can charge. Or who don't want to rent our their tour bus to help a crowd of queers in Salt Lake attend the Pride Parade in LA.

    They are instead just letting their inner Scandinavian shine. Stern, moralistic tongue-clucking while promoting further corrosion, passive-aggressive references to the policies they urge not being found in every part of the country (BOO DEEP SOUTH, YAY US), and the naked attempt to score status points for Progressivism.

    Rather, the compromise is to still be against gay marriage. Mormonism these days is the sacralization of Scandinavian social and political norms -- rationalizing their intuitions, plus a supernatural imprimatur which makes them inviolable. The ones being accommodated are the backward purity-focused folks who see perfectly good reasons to discriminate against a fundamentally abnormal, dysfunctional, and diseased group.

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  13. "Americans who claim Irish and Italian descent, the garrulous all mouth and no trousers outgoing groups, are weakly more pro homo than people of declared English and Scandinavian descent, in keeping with some clustering or Irish and Italians in the Northeast."

    You're getting too hung up on the ethnic angle here.

    Both the Mormon and Catholic churches are officially against gay marriage. Who is going to push these officially mainstream views within their churches? On the one hand, meek and passive-aggressive Saxons and Scandinavians; on the other, fire-and-brimstone "Irish preacher" types and "nobody fucks with us" guidos.

    So, which church is going to be internally weaker to resist the outside political and social pressures to accept and even promote the pro-homo agenda?

    That's all there is to the ethnic angle here. Not the the Irish are inherently more anti-homo, but that among anti-homo activists, the most forceful and successful will be Irish rather than Swedish.

    That's nothing new either. The Irish were some of the most successful early missionizers for Christianity, all over the pagan European continent. Scandinavians were one of the last corners to be Christianized (only the Balts were later), and have left basically zero net impact on Christianity in Europe or the world.

    Irish are natural performers and crowd-pleasers, Scandinavians (after they killed off the Vikings) are natural rape victims.

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  14. "He's the only ethnic Jew I've ever met, and it's been a very disillusioning experience knowing him."

    Wow, where did you grow up? Honest question. Midwest?

    He sounds like a budding neo-conservative, so it shouldn't be hard to troll him.

    "Yup, nothing more conservative than radically experimenting with a new ethnic mix for our country."

    "Mmm hmm, nothing more Biblical than condoning one of God's children eating the AIDS-rotted shit out of another children of God's butthole."

    I wonder if, among Millennial college kids, identifying as "conservative" just means "I'm too socially awkward to be one of those liberal party animals."

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  15. "That Amy Chua harpy wrote a book about how we ought to emulate the Chinese, the Jews, and the Mormons. Uhh, no thanks. What do those groups have in common? They all place material success before honor."

    Good point. At least in the Mormon case, though, they're not antagonistic, sociopathic, and parasitic. Their goal is to simply have high self-esteem and material comfort, and to meet every once in awhile and sing hymns. Sin and repentance play little role in their beliefs and practices, from what I can tell.

    They are like what I imagine pre-Christian Scandinavian pagans to have been like, after they killed off the Vikings of course. Innocent of the notion of sin (Nordics being a little too comfortable with nudism), materially focused farmers, seeing no need for higher religion or belief in, let alone duty to, a deity that does not inhere in the natural material world (storm god, sun god, fertility goddess, etc.).

    Not degenerate -- Scandinavians have too low of a libido and frighten too easily over the prospect of cutting loose and having fun. Just going along their merry godless way, incapable of creating anything profound or sublime.

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  16. "In another thread I pointed out that liberals tend to much more prone to fad dieting/exercising which ultimately is harmful in the long run even when it sometimes produces short term superficial improvements."

    This is worth emphasizing in the context of Haidt's "moral foundations" of harm, fairness, authority, group-iness, and purity. Purity is the one that divides libs and cons the most -- libs don't resonate with it at all, while cons do.

    Conservatives who are too quick on the draw to paint liberals as hypocrites, point to the liberal obsession with organic food, anti-GMO laws, and the like. They could add all sorts of obsessions with cleanliness.

    These things all turn out to be concerns with hygiene, though, not purity. Same with Asians -- they obsess over not walking into one room of the house wearing the slippers that have touched some other room in the house. But watching a 10 year-old cartoon girl with 20 year-old titties getting raped by a tentacle monster? Meh, who are we to judge?

    Liberal fad-followers and dieters want to project this persona of someone who is purifying their body, labeling their potions as "cleanses," and so on. But it smacks more of someone who is promoting a hygiene routine, like what mixture of chemicals will get the grease off of dirty pans the most effectively. What is the most effective mixture and dosage of things to cleanse the digestive tract, to tone this or that muscle, and so on.

    Hygiene allows explanations for why you should or shouldn't do something. Your fingernails will get germs underneath, and when you eat with your hands, those germs could go into your mouth, and from there to the rest of your body, making you sick.

    Purity and taboo are more about you just don't do that, you don't need to know why. You just don't go there. Why is some thing disgusting? It doesn't matter, it just is, and ought to be kept away. Asking for an explanation is not only fruitless (there is none to be given), but presumptuous -- as though you were questioning whether the practice ought to be observed, if there can be no good reason for it.

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  17. Agnostic and Feryl, it is true that Mormons can be a little creepy. They generally come across as clannish, closed minded and more than a little fanatical. The origins of their faith make me skeptical about their theological claims. Also, Mormons have always produced a lot of hucksters; indeed, one could say that Joseph Smith himself was just a 19th century patent medicine salesman who sold a religion instead of a miraculous health tonic and cure for all that ails you.

    But Mormons really do have a tremendous commitment to their faith. The unpaid missionary work, the volunteering, the large families - these things are very, very impressive. Mormons don't strike me as shallow, they strike me as dedicated and sincere. It is hard not to admire their commitment.

    You can't say the same about the evangelicals who attend those Boomer megachurches. Guys like Rick Warren are basically just motivational speakers, and they don't seem to inspire any lasting commitment in their congregations. Mormons do inspire that level of commitment.

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  18. Not so sure about the Catholic Church. I'm in a northeast city: my kids go to Catholic school. Both priests at the associated church are gay (one flaming). My 4 year old's teacher made it very clear that she intends to teach the kids tolerance for 'gender identity disorder.' And look at the Pope....

    In other words, I could easily see the Catholic Church going full progressive. The modern 'kings' are progressive (even if they aren't kings, but rather journalists, academics, and other elites). The Catholic Church has bent to the prevailing zeitgeist before. So I could easily imagine the Catholic Church rewiring itself to be progressive in sexual matters (it is already progressive in economic matters, the clergy is already extensively gay) to fully embrace and partner with secular power.

    anonymousse

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  19. "The unpaid missionary work, the volunteering, the large families - these things are very, very impressive. Mormons don't strike me as shallow, they strike me as dedicated and sincere."

    The volunteering and mutual aid institutions that go through the church are what you'd expect from high-trust Saxons and Scandinavians, with their largely homogeneous populations and civic-mindedness. Mormonism sacralizes what would be secular / civic norms in Scandinavia.

    That level of trust and engagement can be inspiring at first, but when you see where it leads them in a globally interconnected world, it becomes less Romantic. Preaching the good news to all the nations is fine, although that's not enough for the Saxo-Scandis. You might say they are overly civic, or civic to the point of self-destruction by actively incorporating less civic and anti-civic populations by the boatload.

    As already mentioned, the majority of Mormons are now outside the US, mostly Latin America, the South Pacific, and Africa will probably be an up-and-coming "area for growth" pretty soon.

    Mormons are dedicated to bringing those populations not just into the US, but right into the heart of Mormon-land in Salt Lake City. Street gangs from Tonga, an obscure Polynesian island, are now an entrenched problem in the city because of missionaries and the church bringing waves of them to America. Salt Lake City also has one of the highest concentrations of Somalis and other anarchic Africans, just like the Mormons' genetic relatives in Minnesota. Not to speak of the a-religious Central American invasion that continues unabated in Utah and the Southwest generally.

    Nowadays, Salt Lake City is only 65% non-Hispanic white, the most corrupted by gay culture (per capita), and infected and bled by all sorts of SWPL status contests at the national and international level -- bringing in an NBA team, hosting the Olympics, hosting the SWPL-ist film festival right next door, and operating an extensive light rail transit system.

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  20. Another critical aspect of Mormon niceness and over-civic behavior is that they don't preserve themselves even among whites.

    So even if you try to find a silver lining in whites still being a majority in Salt Lake City, more and more of them are not Mormon or Saxo-Scandinavian, but refugees from the West Coast, and southern California in particular. And they certainly aren't bringing with them a high level of trust and civic engagement. They're fleeing to a place where they sense a higher level of white-ness, without wanting to contribute back to it, or being incapable of contributing to it.

    They're white flight parasites who will turn what was a distinctly religious place like Utah into just another Colorado.

    Mormons and Scandinavians are deeply insecure about their own worth as a group, so they get easily flattered by waves of transplants from the cooler and more Establishment parts of the country. "You really, really love us!"

    It's womanish preoccupation with emotional validation, rather than a sober man's look at whether mass transplant absorption is sustainable long-term, or even desirable short-term. Their community's cohesion will evaporate within just a few generations.

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  21. That is an interesting point. One caveat re: the cultural origins of Mormons - in the early days they were comprised of Protestant New Englanders as well as Scandinavians. Mormonism began in Upstate NY during the Second Great Awakening. Guys like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were mostly old-stock New Englanders (from what I know, upstate NY is culturally part of New England, or at least it was back then) - hence their names. The early Mormon leaders all had monikers like Ezekiah Jones and Hiram Woodruff.

    Once the LDS church got started they sent a bunch of missionaries to England and Scandinavia. Those people encouraged converts to emigrate to land of Zion - the United States. So the early Mormon migrants were comprised of people from England and Scandinavia. The LDS culture seems to be a hybrid that is one part old stock Protestantism; one part Scandinavian collectivism; one part generic rural Americanism circa 1830; and one part clannish religious fanaticism, which in turn is understandable (due to their history of persecution) and incredibly annoying (due to Mormons' holier-than-thou attitude.)

    So Mormons are indeed collectivist, but not quite in the same way as Scandinavians. It's very hard to describe the difference but I can describe it. Scandinavians have that narrow-minded "no one is better than anyone else" attitude that can be very limiting. Scandinavians internalize this attitude. With Mormons, OTOH, there is an externally imposed pressure to conform which assumes that some are indeed better than others, but that everyone should strive to live up to the example set by their betters; those who fail to live up are falling short. Also, with Scandinavians opting out isn't really an option - they'll pressure you ceaselessly until you knuckle under. With Mormons heresy is an option, there is a lot of pressure to conform but people can and do flip out and leave the group. Anyway, that's the sense I get. In the final analysis you are right - Mormons are collectivist - but I think they come at it from a different angle.

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  22. That's true about Mormon insecurity, it's sad to see. Mormons really don't take criticism well, which is sad. Part of it is because they are a missionary religion and they feel the need to be able to relate to the masses on a superficial level so that they will have an easier time conveying their religious message. But the mainstream culture is becoming so decadent that the Mormons are probably having an increasingly difficult time connecting with regular people. The things that used to make Mormons look "mainstream" (like having the missionaries wear white short-sleeved shirts with name tags) in the 1950's are looking increasingly anachronistic and the Mormons just don't know what to do about it. They are supposed to go forth and save souls but they just can't relate to ordinary people any more.

    But part of their insecurity isn't really defensible. It is, as you say, a womanish preoccupation of what others think of them, They are hyper-consicous of their minority status and don't want to feel like outsiders. I wish the Mormons would get over this, it is unworthy of them.

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  23. "Wow, where did you grow up? Honest question. Midwest?"

    Pacific northwest. City of under 100,000. It would probably be more accurate to say I've never met anyone who's actively identified as Jewish before, and made a big deal about it. I'm not sure how many Jews are in my area.

    Could you please define how you view the term neo-conservative? It's thrown around a lot, and means different things to different people. Are you referring to the ex-Trotskities from the 1970s?

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  24. Hat and Coat2/6/15, 6:20 PM

    "In other words, I could easily see the Catholic Church going full progressive."

    Probably not. In 15-20 years, the "progressive" clergy are going to start dropping like flies. They're mostly middle-aged or older; almost all of the under-35 priests and seminarians left anywhere are fairly conservative or outright traditionalist. The progressives might create a schism at some point in their remaining two decades- the liberals in, say, the Netherlands, Germany, and parts of South America could form their own progressive breakaway church, taking most of those countries' Catholics with them- but they won't capture the whole thing and make it liberal. They had their only real chance in the '60s and '70s, and they came very close, but ultimately fell short.

    'Both the Mormon and Catholic churches are officially against gay marriage. Who is going to push these officially mainstream views within their churches? On the one hand, meek and passive-aggressive Saxons and Scandinavians; on the other, fire-and-brimstone "Irish preacher" types and "nobody fucks with us" guidos.

    So, which church is going to be internally weaker to resist the outside political and social pressures to accept and even promote the pro-homo agenda?'

    What will happen to Mormonism will likely be the same as what happened to the mainstream Protestant denominations of Germanic extraction like Lutheranism and Anglicanism- the progressives will ceaselessly attempt to wrest control of the institutional machinery from the conservatives. The conservatives will fight them for as long as they can, but ultimately, when the progressives finally take charge and push their doctrinal changes, the conservative remnant will leave for other denominations, or form small and independent breakaway churches of their own.

    In Catholicism, though, because of its distinct theology concerning the validity of the Sacraments, and its strong "One True Church" claim, the conservatives and traditionalists have no choice but to stay and keep fighting the good fight, even when it seems like the liberals hold all the cards. Serious Catholics can't really in good conscience join a true breakaway denomination- even the SSPX, which is the closest Catholic equivalent, still officially acknowledges the supreme authority of Pope Francis, despite their (presumable) intense personal dislike of the man and outright loathing of the manner in which he exercises his office.

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