What happens when two Mormons eat a lollipop on the NYC subway

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Mormons and religious right increasingly funding hate in Africa

Join the Mormons, learn how to say "hate" in over 200 languages. Read the rest of this post...

On Mormons and the hypocrisy of "religious freedom"

Excellent commentary from a reader, named "A reader in Colorado," in response to my earlier post about whether it's okay for liberals not to want to vote for a Mormon Republican.

You didn't get the memo John.

Liberals and the non-religious don't get religious freedom. Such freedoms are only for conservative Christians and occasionally certain kinds of conservatives practitioners of Judaism.

Christian conservatives, for example, object to gays getting married, so gays can't get married. That's their religious freedom.

Christian conservatives demand they don't have to follow the rules others have to follow and to be allowed to deny their employees birth control, question them about their private sexual practices as employees, and fire them. They're conservative, so that's their religious freedom.

Many liberals both desire and demand that states and the Federal government recognize same sex marriage and sign same sex marriage licenses out of their religious convictions concerning equality.

They're liberals, though - so they have no religious freedom and no say in the matter.

The problem with Romney is that Mormonism, no matter how out of the mainstream, is conservative.

That means he gets every freedom about his religion, including how to impose it on other people, and as a non-conservative, or non-religious person, you just, uh, DON'T.

It's not that mormons get to do things against other people and they get to hide if you have a problem with what they do, the problem is that you aren't a right wing religious conservative so you just get to shut up about it. Another right wing religionist would have, and has had, every power to question Romney's religion.

That is the true double standard here. Not about Romney's religion versus Obama's ethnic heritage. It's about only right wing religionists in this country having any kind of religious privileges whatsoever.

Until we recognize and have a national outcry against only conservatives having religious freedom while no one else does and actually having liberals loudly demanding their own religious freedom, nothing about this will change. Because it's only with lopsided religious freedom - with some having it all, others having none of it - that these lopsided power structures exist.

Right wing religionists have special rights, including rights in the media to tell you what you must do to observe their religion, even if you aren't part of it at all.

The true question that needs to be asked is why do only conservative religionists get any religious freedom or political or media consideration in this country?

Read the rest of this post...

Liberal concern about Mormons is not the same thing as racist southern concern about Obama

Buzzfeed reports today on a new study showing that liberals have serious concerns about electing a Mormon as president because of the Mormons's anti-gay advocacy, specifically their single-handedly getting Prop 8 passed in California.  Buzzfeed then goes on to quote the study's author comparing concerns about Mormons to concerns about Obama's race.

The uptick in anti-Mormon voter attitudes may come as a surprise to those who predicted Romney's candidacy would have a mainstreaming effect on his faith. But as University of Sydney scholar David Smith, the paper's author, writes, just as President Obama's successful candidacy didn't put an end to tense race relations in America, Romney's political assent hasn't cured the country of anti-Mormonism. In fact, as the data shows, Romney's rise may have lead to increased anxiety about his religion among his natural political opponents.

Uh, good try.

Liberals are offended by the Mormons' anti-gay activism (and likely also by the Mormons' ongoing attempts to steal the souls of Holocaust (and other) dead).  All of which is completely understandable.  Why should a Democrat want to elect someone whose core beliefs include the oppression of others, including the oppression of several core Democratic constituencies (women, Jews, blacks, and gays)?

We object to their politics.  Which is slightly different than objecting to the color of one's skin.

I'm sure Democrats aren't very thrilled at the prospect of a born-again Evangelical Christian president either, precisely because of the anti-Democratic, and pro-Republican, political activism of born-again Evangelical Christians.  Would that be bigotry akin to racism, or simply a recognition of the politics of most Evangelical Christians in America, politics that Democrats tend to disagree with?

If the Mormon temple is going to inject itself into national politics to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per ballot initiative, then why would it be wrong for other political actors to judge a Mormon politician on his stated politics?  Does being Mormon give a politician a get-out-of-jail free card, exempting him from scrutiny of his own political views?

Your religion isn't just your religion when your religion is per se political.  It's almost as if it's being suggested that so long as you blame your extreme political views on your religion, no one is permitted to vote against you.

The other interesting question is, regardless of one's politics: Why isn't it ok to vote against someone because of their religion?  Would people cry "bigot!" if you voted against a candidate because he's a Scientologist?  Doubtful.  And much of the base of the Republican party is made up of people whose political views are their religious views, who support candidates specifically because of their religion.

After all, it was Mitt Romney himself who recently suggested that voters should choose him over President Obama because of the President's religion.

Or take Rick Santorum.  He wore his religion on his sleeve, and, rightly, said that one's religion is of course relevant to one's politics, if in fact one claims to be a religious person.  So many Republican candidates define themselves and their policies by their religion (which is fine) - and Mormons spend tens of millions on legislative gay-bashing in state after state specifically because of their religious views - but when we take their statements at face value, that their religion is their politics, suddenly we're bigots.

If anything, it sounds like people of faith are pulling a "deny me three times."  They're all too happy to let their religion guide their politics - and they even quote religion when shooting down policies and legislation on gay rights, or abortion rights, or stem cell research - but then, afterwards, we're supposed to ignore the fact that their religion is guiding their politics.

If we're not supposed to have a religious test for politics, then maybe the GOP should stop having a religious test for its politics, policies, and politicians.

If the Mormon church wants to use politics pass judgment on the rest of us, then it shouldn't be upset when people judge it by its own politics. Read the rest of this post...

The Boy Scouts still hate you

The Boy Scouts have announced that they have no intention of lifting their ban on gay scouts and scoutmaster. How swell of them.  Don't forget that the Boy Scouts have been taken over by the Mormons.

If the Boy Scouts want to be a secret Mormon organization and/or an evangelical church, then so be it.  Americans should be told the truth - that their kids are joining a Baptist/Mormon religious youth organization.

Then see how many people send their kids to be indoctrinated into someone else's religion. Read the rest of this post...

300 straight Mormons march in SLC Pride parade

What would Brigham Young do? Read the rest of this post...

Mormons to march in Pride parade

Very cool story from the Salt Lake Tribune:

Erika Munson has never been to a pride parade.

But this weekend, she will be in one, along with at least 100 other active Mormons who — decked out in their Sunday best — will march at the head of the Utah Pride Parade to show support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Munson is not gay, and she’s not someone who became involved because of a gay family member or friend. Rather, she started the group Mormons Building Bridges a few weeks ago to support LGBT Utahns, to show other Latter-day Saints that it’s all right to embrace the LGBT community and to reach out to LGBT teens in hopes of stemming suicide rates.

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Romney defends traditional marriage, which in his family's case means polygamy

The Daily Dish has a video of Mitt Romney talking about defending the traditional definition of marriage that's existed for 3,000 years.  In the case of Romney's family, that traditional definition involved polygamy.

As the Daily Dish notes, Romney's family even abandoned the United States for Mexico, after the US government clamped down on polygamists over a century ago.

Romney says that we should not discard 3,000 years of history of one-man-one-woman marriage. Ahem. His own family were ardent polygamists only a century ago - and went to Mexican colonies to escape US federal oppression of their version of marriage (which also goes back a long, long way and still exists across the world). Romney's great-grandparents were polygamists; one of his his great-great-grandfathers had twelve wives and was murdered by the husband of the twelfth.

For Romney to say that the definition of marriage has remained the same for 3,000 years is disproved by his own family. It's untrue. False. A lie.

And let's not forget that the traditional definition of marriage limited the sacrament to people of the same race, and treated women as chattel who couldn't inherit property.

Why was it okay to change the definition of marriage for Mitt Romney's Mormon ancestors a hundred years ago, and for people of color and whites in the late 1960s, but not for the rest of us today? Read the rest of this post...

Mormons "getting more loving of gays," as they try to repeal marriage in Maryland

Isn't that nice.  A Mormon dude said some nice things about gays, and cried.  And some Mormons kids at BYU did an It Gets Better video to convince young people not to commit suicide and the Mormons didn't excommunicate them, for trying to convince young people not to put a bullet through their heads.  All of this means that the Mormons are slowly getting "better" on gay issues.

Yeah right.

What's next?  Mormons won't stone emergency room doctors who treat gay patients?

Their kindness is killing me.

Literally.

So please ignore the fact that Mormons are now behind the marriage equality repeal effort in Maryland, just like they threw around their millions to rip away our civil rights in California, Alaska, Nebraska, Hawaii, etc. over the past twenty years.  Sure gay and trans kids are still killing themselves because of the hate they face on a daily basis from people like the Mormons, but a Mormon guy cried, so it's okay.

It doesn't get better until they get better. Read the rest of this post...

Mormon students do "It Gets Better" video

I'll give them credit for sticking their necks out in a religion that hates them with every fiber of its being, and every dollar in its very deep pockets.

I did get a chuckle out of the spokeperson for Brigham Young University, where the students attend:

In recent years, the LDS Church-owned school has adjusted its Honor Code to allow students to identify as gay without facing sanctions so long as they avoid physical intimacy with members of the same sex. Chastity before marriage is expected of all students.

"Students who are upholding the Honor Code are welcome as full members of the BYU community," school spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said Friday.

Right, but the Mormon leadership is spending tens of millions of dollars to ensure that those students never can get married, so they expect them to be celibate for life. And they wonder why kids are killing themselves.

J'accuse. Read the rest of this post...

Mormon bigots trying to kill marriage equality in Maryland

I continue to be amazed at how vicious the Mormons are for people who themselves complain about suffering from a history of oppression.  One wonders if this streak of political viciousness, the willingness to spend tens of millions of dollars to destroy other people's lives, isn't part of the reason that the Mormons have an image problem.  Gratuitous hate tends to be bad PR (as is attempting to steal the souls of Jews killed in the Holocaust, including Anne Frank).

Members of the Mormon Church in Maryland are working to overturn the state’s recently passed marriage equality law, according to an email obtained by the Washington Blade.

In the message dated March 29 sent to D.C. and Southern Maryland-area church members, the writer states that a coalition of inter-denominational Maryland churches has joined to place a referendum before voters in November on the marriage law before it goes into effect.

“We need to collect approximately 200,000 signatures by the end of May,” the email states. “We are looking for people to gather signatures within the LDS community.”

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Question for today: Who saw NOM's plan to start a race war and agreed to fund it? Mormons? Catholics?

Last night's breaking news about the explosive documents showing that NOM wanted to create a race war between gays and blacks is reverberating. You really don't see many organizations put in writing that they want to start "fanning the hostility" between Americans of different races. And NOM's language on Latinos and assimilation is also highly offensive. Zack Ford wrote a post on the "Top 10 Highlights From NOM’s Race-Wedging, Donor-Hiding, Victim-Playing Confidential Strategies."

This scandal creates a number of questions. For me, the first one is: Who saw NOM's plan to start a race war and agreed to fund it?

There are some likely suspects who have close ties to the anti-gay industry, led by NOM, including the Catholic Bishops, Mormons and the Knights of Columbus.  Someone needs to ask each of those groups if they saw this racist plan and if they funded it.

Sure explains why NOM wants to keeps its donors secret. But, I hope we get some answers. We better.

NOM must be stopped. The next chance to do that is on May 8th in North Carolina. Last month, Maggie Gallagher told Chris Hayes that marriage is on the ballot in that state. And, she wants another win. That can't happen. Our side can win -- if we have the resources. Maggie and Brian want to start a race war with their money. We want to achieve equality with ours. If you haven't contributed to the campaign defeat Amendment 1, do it now. Read the rest of this post...

Utah passes abstinence-only sex ed bill, bans any discussion of homosexuality even if student asks

Funny, the Mormons are usually such tolerant people. Read the rest of this post...

Gay singer/songwriter Justin Utley who underwent Mormon "ex-gay" therapy

A snippet of Randy Report's interview with gay singer Jeff Utley:

Randy: You've spoken out about your experience with "ex-gay therapy" - can you tell us about it?

Justin: I can tell you that it doesn't work. After coming back from my Mormon mission, I went to my bishop and told him I was having these feelings that I might be gay. So they sent me to a facility run by the church which is like the church's "therapy/counseling" type thing. It's all bound by church social science, so they can't really explore outside the realm of that. So he sent me there to ask for a specialist in "same gender attraction disorder" - because homosexuality means that you're sexual and they didn't want you to be sexual so you have an affliction, it's like a disease. So I went to this one on one therapist for two years and then group therapy for the same amount of time. It was kind of like AA where everyone sits in a circle and talks, but with "ex-gay therapy" everyone is still gay the next week. At first it was liberating because I had met people who were in the same boat because I had spent 20-something years thinking I was the only one who was having these 'issues'. But then, like, a year into it I was like "so when do things change?"

In the end, the therapist had me convinced I had been molested as a child. So before I even came out to my family I had told my parents I had been molested as a child. The one who called it out was my mom. And she was like, there was never a day when you 'came home from piano lessons an hour late.' The way your conscious works, I would have known if something had happened. So this whole idea of whatever you're going through, this repressed memory that never happened needs to stop and you need to deal with your bullshit. So I decided to stop the ex-gay therapy, and I decided to start dating someone.

Read the rest of this post...

Change a Mormon gay

Interesting site.  Too bad they don't have a running count of how many conversions to date. Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post: "Elie Wiesel calls on Mitt Romney to make Mormon Church stop proxy baptisms of Jews"

From a much longer post at the main AMERICAblog site:

Famed Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel took exception this week to the fact that the Mormons were about to secretly baptize his dead parents into Mormonism without his knowledge or consent. It's something they've been doing for years to everyone of all faiths, with a particular focus on Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Wiesel was particularly upset that the Mormons lump Jews killed in the Holocaust, and their ancestors, in with Hitler and Stalin. He told MSNBC in the video below: "But really, to put us in the same category as Stalin and Hitler... really?" He was referring to the fact that the Mormons have also posthumously converted Stalin and Hitler to Mormonism, in addition to Anne Frank, Barack Obama's mother (and possibly his ancestors), and they were planning to take Wiesel's parents until he went public.

Romney “is now the most famous and important Mormon in the country,” Wiesel said. “I’m not saying it’s his fault, but once he knows, morally he must respond. . . . He should come out and say, ‘Stop it.’ ”

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Should Catholic hospitals be permitted to refuse to treat me because I’m gay?

The Obama administration is being criticized by the Catholic church for requiring that employers, including Catholic hospitals, cover their employees' birth control in their health care plans.  The Catholic church is arguing that this is a violation of its religious liberty, telling it how to treat its own employees.  Interestingly, this it the same argument that they've used to justify stopping gay couples from adopting via Catholic-run adoption agencies, and it's the same argument religious extremists use to justify pharmacists turning away anyone they "morally" disagree with.

This isn't just the Catholic church, and it isn't just hospitals.  Religious extremist Republicans are slowly taking over more and more of the economy - look at the Mormons - and are using that economic leverage to slowly cut off the rest of us.  They're just a church, the Catholics claim, when they run an anti-gay adoption agency that receives the majority of its funding - nearly $3bn Catholic Charities gets each year - from the government.  For $3bn in taxpayer money, where do I get my church?  They're just a church, the Salvation Army claims, when they take your money each Christmas and use some of it to lobby against the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

They're not just a church when they're the only hospital in town.  They're not just a church when they're using taxpayer funds to discriminate against taxpayers.

But this is the future the Catholic Church, and their evangelical/Mormon buddies, are wishing on the rest of America.  They're increasingly involved in more and more non-proselytizing ventures - hell, they're not permitted to proselytize with government money - yet when it's revealed that they're discriminating against their own employees or the public at large, suddenly the operating room becomes the divine liturgy.  (Which is a neat trick: Maybe Catholics should drop their insurance cards in the offering plate next Sunday, since apparently it's all the same thing.)

So what's next?  If Catholic hospitals are permitted to discriminate against their non-Catholic employees in health care, then I assume they should be able to discriminate in who they hire.  And who they serve.  After all, would you really want a Catholic hospital to have to serve homosexuals?  Or adulterers?  Or Baptists?  Think that's an absurd analogy, think again.  The religious extremists have been arguing for years that pharmacists should be permitted to refuse to serve any customer that violates their conscience.  Generally, they mean giving out birth control.  But what about AIDS drugs?  Should Catholic and Evangelical pharmacists be permitted to fill AIDS cocktail prescriptions only for the "innocent victims" of AIDS?  Forget about the gays and the druggies.  Only children who were infected via their moms are permitted to get their drugs, and even then, it's unclear how we should treat those Mormon children since Catholics and Evangelicals might consider them members of a cult.  And don't even get started on Muslims.  They can move back to Mecca if they want antibiotics.

And how about a Jehovah's Witness pharmacist?  Can they refuse to sell any prescription drugs at all?

In fact, a rape victim in Tucson recently wasn't able to get the morning after pill for 3 days because local pharmacies refused to stock it, and one that did have it wouldn't give it to her because the pharmacist on duty objected to the drug for "religious and moral" reasons.  And it's not just isolated to Tucson.  Remember a few years ago when we found out Target had the same policy of pandering to their pharmacists' delicate religious sensibilities.

So where does it stop?  Does the Catholic church think their hospitals can refuse to respond to 911 calls from transgender people?  That's what happened in DC a number of years ago, the emergency medical guys freaked out when they responded to a call and found out the victim was trans.  They let her die, not before verbally mocking the dying woman, rather than offend their delicate sensibilities by treating her life-threatening injuries:

Injured in an automobile accident, Hunter died shortly after a firefighter stopped treating her when the firefighter realized that Hunter was a man dressed in women's clothes. Rather than assisting Hunter as she lay dying, the firefighter harassed her by making homophobic jokes to his fellow firefighters.

So don't tell me it won't happen. It has happened. And it's what the Catholics, and the religious right, are arguing for. The right to treat their hospitals and pharmacies and any business they're involved in (hell, they want the right to not sign marriage licenses in NY state if it offends the religious sensibilities of the clerk whose job it is to sign marriage licenses) as a church. Should Catholic employees of hospitals in New York state, or Catholic hospitals generally, be able to refuse the legally-wed husband of a dying man visitation rights because the Catholic church doesn't recognize their marriage, and to force the church to do so would be taking away its "religious liberty"?

And if you object to their absurd demand to take a job, working for the state no less, that they're not willing to do - seriously, who takes a job that they know offends their religious sensibilities, or any other sensibility (if you don't like touching dead bodies, don't become a mortician)? - then you're the bad guy.  I'll tell you who takes a job like that: people who are gunning for a fight, and who want to jam their religion down your throat.

It's not your religious liberty when you'd rather let me die than do your job. Read the rest of this post...

Dissenting judge in Prop 8 case went to BYU; Mormons announce they "regret" yesterday’s ruling

Liz wrote yesterday about the dissenting judge in the Prop 8 case.  It seems he went to Brigham Young University.  And 98% of BYU students are Mormons. Just an interesting factoid.

Then there's the Mormon's official statement on yesterday's ruling, via CNN:

Here's more from the Mormons, who were single-handedly responsible for Prop 8 passing:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which came under fire for its strong support of the referendum, said through a spokesman that it "regrets" the ruling.

"California voters have twice determined in a general election that marriage should be recognized as only between a man and a woman. We have always had that view," Scott Trotter, a spokesman for Utah-based Mormon church, said in a written statement. But Trotter added that the church wants "people on all sides of this issue to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different opinion."

Mutual and respect and civility, while we rip away your civil rights.  Yeah, I'm sure the Mormons wish it were that simple, that everyone would simply roll over and play dead while they run roughshod over our civil rights.  Sorry, not gonna happen.

And one more thing.  We don't need lectures on respect and civility from people who steal the souls of the dead of other religions.  They even baptized President Obama's late mother and made her a Mormon without the President's consent or knowledge, just before the election.  I'm sorry, but you just don't get to try to jam your religion down the throats of everyone else in the country - and practice the religious equivalent of grave-robbing - and then call for respect and civility. Read the rest of this post...

Romney paid as much to Mormons as he did in taxes

From Mike Signorile:

As it turns out, he gave almost as much of the nearly $43 million dollars he made in 2010 and 2011 to the highly politically active Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints -- at the center of a firestorm since 2008 for its backing of Prop 8 in California -- as he paid in taxes: roughly 10 percent vs. 13.9 percent.

And for moderates it's a reminder that Romney is a strong adherent -- morally and financially -- to a church that is on a moral crusade against women's right to choose and, most prominently in recent years, against gay rights. The Mormon Church was the focus of protests across the country after Proposition 8 passed in California, banning marriage for gays and lesbians. Church leaders had urged members to give money to the cause, and some estimates put that amount at over $20 million. The church itself gave over $180,000 to help pass Prop 8. The church was fined by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for not reporting its numerous financial contributions to the cause.

Read the rest of this post...

How the Mormons bashed gays in Nebraska too

Prop 8 wasn't the Mormons' first time to the hate dance.  They've been bankrolling anti-gay legislation for at least two decades.  Here is one Mormon's story about how they helped push DOMA in the state of Nebraska.

I lived in Nebraska when a petition drive was held there to get DOMA on the ballot. At church we were not even asked if we wanted to gather signatures. We were handed packets (which I did not take) and several hours of our usual meetings were taken up with our bishop and stake president rallying the troops, so to speak – even sending people out on a Sunday gather signatures at the College World Series. I didn’t speak out against it. I just murmured with my like-minded friends about our disgust over the church getting involved. Hell, damn near running the whole thing. And happy, oh so happy, to join forces with evangelicals who agree with Mormons on nothing other than the so-called moral decline of society.

Read the rest of this post...