Posted on 10/15/2009 8:58:39 AM PDT by Colofornian
LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks on Tuesday likened the post-Proposition 8 backlash against Mormons to the persecution blacks endured during the civil-rights struggle.
Now Oaks faces a backlash himself.
"Were four little Mormon girls blown up in the church at Sunday school? Were there burning crosses planted on local bishops' lawns? Were people lynched and their genitals stuffed in their mouths?" asked University of Utah historian Colleen McDannell. "By comparing these two things, it diminishes the real violence that African-Americans experienced in the '60s, when they were struggling for equal rights. There is no equivalence between the two."
Oaks, in a strongly worded defense of the church's efforts opposing same-sex marriage, told students at Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg that Latter-day Saints "must not be deterred or coerced into silence" by advocates for "alleged civil rights."
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
A 2006 Rasmussen poll shows: Ninety-two percent (92%) of Evangelical Christian voters consider a candidate's faith and beliefs important. On the partisan front, 78% of Republicans say that a candidate's faith is an important consideration, a view shared by 55% of Democrats.
This Lds "apostle" was -- without naming them -- taking issue with all these people.
So the civil rights angle Oaks took shouldn't be the only backlash. For a list of four concerns and eight points to consider in response to the tale end of Oaks' speech, see: ReligiousFreedom
Isn’t this the same mormon church that denied blacks the priesthood until faced with the backlash from the civil rights movement?
Why do Mormons have such bizarre names?
I assume they are all alien names from that planet the mormons came from with the gold plates.
Regardless, it’s sad how anal so many of Obama’s post racial era liberals have become.
Utah historian Colleen McDannell needs to brush up on the history of violence against Mormons. Perhaps she is unaware that 27 Mormon churches were bombed as recently as 1992?
Not defending either the Mormons or the use of “civil-rights” language. I am commenting on a historian not knowing her craft or the subject on which she is commenting as being very unprofessional.
They were bombed? Really?
(Or are you talking about 27 cases of arson since 1992?)
The Apostolic Charismatic Church of the First Born, one of America's oldest religious minorities, is usually totally ignored in the news. I frequently track down their involvement in stories and report that to Freepers.
They do get tired of that, but Fur Shur no professional historian or MSM story teller is going to do that.
It helps to know these things though. Bill Clinton's birth daddy, (Billy Blythe) was a COTFB elder, and David Koresh' grandmother belonged to a COTFB church in the Tulsa area. Gene Autry's wife belonged to one in South Oklahoma, and there's one at the end of the road on the Kenai Peninsula ~
They do get around in the strangest places. In their guise as one of the major Indigenous People's groups they even have United Nations Recognition ~ something not even the Bilderberger's have!
No doubt Colleen McDannell has no idea who or what either of those groups are about ~ and yet she thinks she's being erudite and intelligent by asking how many Mormons had their genitals sliced off and stuffed in their mouths ~ I'm pretty sure someone here has a precise number somewhat above ZERO, and her rhetorical question simply demonstrates that she's an idiot.
Yes, minor bombings.
The following is from US State Department report on Global Terrorism for 1992.
.....
The Communist-affiliated FPMR generally sought to attack Chilean targets, particularly government buildings and banks, as well as politicians and members of the uniformed national police, the Carabineros. The MJL claimed responsibility for 27 attacks on Mormon churches throughout Chile, as well as bank robberies and extortions of local businesses. Virtually all the attacks on Mormon churches were small-scale bombings that caused minor property damage and no serious physical injuries. Both groups carried out low-level, largely symbolic bombings of foreign interests to protest the Columbus anniversary celebrations in October, including the bombing of the Abraham Lincoln memorial near the US Embassy....
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terror_92/latin.html
Well....those didn’t happen in the ...uh...USA so, uh..therefore...uh, they can’t be counted. /sarc
That oughta get ‘em going! flame away!
Handy that as a lds apologist you forgot to mention that those 27 bombings in ‘92 were NOT in the USA, and were part of an communist protest of Columbus day in South America in which other targets where hit that had nothing to do with the lds. All of which makes the comparison to events IN the USA some what disingenuous.
Patterns of Global Terrorism: 19927
Latin America Overview
“The Communist-affiliated FPMR generally sought to attack Chilean targets, particularly government buildings and banks, as well as politicians and members of the uniformed national police, the Carabineros. The MJL claimed responsibility for 27 attacks on Mormon churches throughout Chile, as well as bank robberies and extortions of local businesses. Virtually all the attacks on Mormon churches were small-scale bombings that caused minor property damage and no serious physical injuries. Both groups carried out low-level, largely symbolic bombings of foreign interests to protest the Columbus anniversary celebrations in October, including the bombing of the Abraham Lincoln memorial near the US Embassy”
First off, let me stop you from creating a false straw man. I am not an LDS Apologist and if you had read my post in it’s short entirety, you would have known that.
My point was, and remains, and has not yet been refuted, is that a so called historian, did not conduct any research but rather spouted off in an attempt to discredit the “civil-rights” analogy. This was very poor professionalism at best.
Even a casual study of “the Mormon Wars” would have show that there were indeed acts similar to or worse than the abuses of the civil rights movement visited upon the Mormons ... and yes, caused by them as well.
Well, that's terrible.
The persecution, tho, in that case is coming from one source in one country. You raised these bombings in the context of "the history of violence against Mormons."
That's analogous to saying "the history of violence against Americans" and then going to point out one non-American rapist who targeted 27 victims of the same American community as sweeping evidence of "the history of violence against Americans."
I think the difference is that racism was widespread, endemic, thick within the culture, and was based upon a thin skin-deep perception. This especially then was magnified in the South re: abuse, murders, assault, lynchings, etc.
In Missouri, there were MANY dynamics and reasons behind the conflicts...some shallow...some deeper.
If you compare that to the Missouri Mormon wars, only one county was involved in the 1833 acts of abuse (Jackson County). Within that county, one judge later blamed it on less than 50 "roughians" who were the instigators...though obviously a couple hundred others reinforced their activities. What they did lasted about 3.5 months during an otherwise previous 3-year residency of peaceful co-existence in that county.
Now, a few more MO counties & their residents got involved in the 1838 conflicts. That, too, was of a short duration (about 2.5 months). So, Mormons were enduring these things in about a 6-month window over 8 years; whereas, blacks during that same time period were enduring things daily or weekly, month-in, month-out.
And, of course, it didn't stop in 1838, 1839 or 1844 for blacks. What they suffered when on for quite a while.
like I said, these later events don’t count because it didn’t happen in the U.S. How dare Mormons claim they are persecuted./sarc
Do you want to know how many Christian churches have been destroyed in Nigeria, India, Sudan, Asian, and Muslim countries over the past 200 years? What happened in Chile between 1986-1991 by one group who had it in for American businesses and Mormon church buildings would pale in comparison what happens EVERY YEAR to Christian churches around the globe.
Yet I don't see American Christians walking around with a persecution complex or chip on the shoulder constantly proclaiming, "We're the persecuted ones. We're the persecuted ones."
"I know there were some bad incidents of people being threatened," Laycock said. "To the extent that that kind of thing went on, it shouldn't have. It does intimidate the exercise of free-speech rights."
And he's the ONLY so-called expert in the entire article quoted from outside the Salt Lake City area?
Everybody knows that you can't have any discussion on civil rights and race without a quote from Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, preferably both. < / sarcasm >
My apologies, you are correct.
Your statement is direct and on point that you are discussing the practice and skill of the historian.
I will still stand by the rest of my statement that not mentioning that the events took place in South America or that they were part of a wider attack on several institutions still makes your comparison disingenuous, but not apologetic.
Oakes has stepped in it, IMO.
Perhaps finally this card can be retired.
Of course that being said...
Where? When? Why was this not reported in the news?
God(s) sent a revelation to upper management that they were correct to deny the priesthood but they would also be correct to allow it.
Hence the new procedures and such...
I think Oakes has handed a hammer to Mitt’s candidacy to his opponents.
Mitt? Mitt who? Ohhhh that mitt, the guy who is so silent about the whole health care debacle currently underway.
Your hate blinds you to the various socialist stances like health care he is so strong on...
That is why the most conservative religion in the universe supports him so..
Wait, um...
The hate, the hate!
So, let me get this straight.
Unless I’m mistaken, the brain trust here is alleging that Oaks was wrong for stating that that Latter-day Saints “must not be deterred or coerced into silence” by advocates for “alleged civil rights.”
Isn’t that tantamount to arguing that Latter-day Saints (or any other church group for that matter) in fact should be deterred or coerced into silence by same sex advocates? Aren’t most “Christian” groups kind of unified on the same sex marriage issue? Does it really make sense for so-called “Christians” here to be throwing in with the same sex marriage advocates?
The issue is not same sex marriage, that is a given among anyone with a conservative philosophy religion not with standing. (ok guys, I know but go with me here)
The issue is that an LDS official (Oaks) equivocated the backlash the LDS is receiving to the actions that occurred to African Americans in the civil rights era.
Turn off the "Auto Victim Response Protocol" and read the article.
No, this is the one that denied blacks the priesthood until faced with the backlash from the civil rights movement AND which Mitt Romney was a church elder in during that same time.
Comparing decades of struggle with people going to jail and even dying for the right to vote, work, educate their children and live where they like is in no way comparable to people being angry with the LDS Church.
I read the article just fine, and I’m not getting the fake outrage. He is dead right that there is intimidation going on of those espousing the “Christian” view that same sex marriage is wrong.
Just a "few" examples of mormon attitudes towards blacks.
—The Utah Mormon Church’s Advocacy of Separate Blood Banks for Whites and Blacks In Order to Maintain the “Purity” of White Mormon Blood—
Quinn recounts how the Mormon Church in Utah established its own hospital blood supply in order to prevent Black blood from contaminating that of White members of the LDS flock:
“In 1953, a First Presidency secretary also informed a white Mormon about the less-obvious extent of Utah’s racial segregation: ‘The L.D.S. Hospital here in Salt Lake City has a blood bank which does not contain any colored blood.’ According to [First] Presidency counselor J. Reuben Clark, this policy of segregating African-American blood from the blood donated by so-called ‘white people’ was intended ‘to protect the purity of the blood streams of the people of this Church.’”
_____
—The Utah Mormon Church’s Support of Racial Discrimination Outside the Boundaries of Utah—
Quinn reports on efforts by the Salt Lake City-based Mormon Church to “de-Black” neighborhoods in California where LDS temple construction was planned, as well as to persuade Arizona legislators to follow the example of the White South in denying equal rights to African-Americans:
“President [Joseph F.] Smith’s counselors . . . extended their support of racial segregation to states beyond Utah. In 1947, when discussing the site of the future Los Angeles temple, Counselor Clark asked the LDS Church’s attorney in that area ‘to purchase as much of that property as we can in order to control the colored situation.’ A month later, during the meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the Salt Lake Temple, ‘President Clark called attention to the sentiment among many people in this country to the point that we should break down all racial lines, [and] as a result of which sentiment negro people have acquired an assertiveness that they never before possessed and in some cases have become impudent.’ In 1949, while criticizing the legislative efforts in Arizona to ‘guarantee rights of Negroes,’ LDS presidency counselor David O. McKay said, ‘The South knows how to handle them and they do not have any trouble, and the colored people are better off down there—[but] in California they are becoming very progressive and insolent in many cases.’” (Quinn adds that McKay, in fact, “instructed an Arizona stake president against that state’s proposed legislation to ‘guarantee rights of Negroes’”) . . . Likewise, in 1950 Counselor Clark wrote: ‘Race tolerance: the trend is just terrible.’”
_____
—Efforts At Obstruction by Utah’s Mormon Church of National Civil Rights Legislation Designed to Grant Equality to Blacks in Broad Areas of Daily Life—
Quinn makes note of warnings issued by the Utah Mormon Church to the leadership of the Relief Society concerning the feared spread of equality for Blacks, as well on the rise of Utah’s anti-Black social infrastructure that prohibited the African-American purchase of homes, denied African-Americans the right to become educators of White children, discouraged the hiring of African-Americans in general, banned African-Americans from government-operated lunch counters, kept African-Americans out of White-owned bowling alleys and banned African-Americans from White-utilized medical facilities.
Coupled with that, Quinn reports on how the Mormon Church of Utah opposed what it regarded as the evils of federal civil rights legislation designed to protect Blacks, warned that such efforts were Communist-inspired and referred to African-Americans in condescending, patronizing and ugly terms as it continued to encourage segregation of Whites from Blacks:
In 1963], Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith told ‘Look’ magazine’s editor: ‘”Darkies” are wonderful people, and they have their place in our Church.’ At best, this revealed the racial paternalism that governed LDS headquarters. However, this platitude was also a smoke-screen for the worst of what Utah Mormon leaders had done against African-American rights for the previous 116 years.”
(D. Michael Quinn, “Prelude to the National ‘Defense of Marriage’ Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities,” originally published in “Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought,” 33:3, pp. 1-52)
Blah blah blah ...
Exactly.
It is the scale of 'intimidation' that is grossly overstated. Are they (mormons) receiving the same persecution that the blacks did during the civil rights movement (and before)? NO - read the article. It is disingeneous for mormonism to wrap the civil rights analogy around them (one in which they discriminated greatly against blacks) to the angry stomping of feet by the gay lobby.
As the article states - There is no equivalence between the two.
I can just imagine...Sharpton on CNN...."Those honkies are tryin' to horn in on MY territory"!
It is the scale of ‘intimidation’ that is grossly overstated. Are they (mormons) receiving the same persecution that the blacks did during the civil rights movement (and before)? NO - read the article. It is disingeneous for mormonism to wrap the civil rights analogy around them (one in which they discriminated greatly against blacks) to the angry stomping of feet by the gay lobby.
...
Your point might be valid if Oaks said the scale of intimidation was the same. He didn’t. Why don’t you stop lecturing me to do so and read the article yourself?
Oaks stated “In their effect, they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation.”
In their effect. That’s a lot different than saying “in their scale”, or “in their manner”. You’re acting like its the latter when its the former. Words matter.
The do more damage against themselves by themselves than the queer lobby. You don’t see Christian churches whinning about gay persecution as lds inc.
Exactly right. Homosexuals are less than 2% of the population, and activists among them are less than 10% of that group. So here you have at best about .1 to .2% fussin' on the 2% of the population (Mormons).
And this fussin' by .1 to .2% of the population (and some of their straight allies) = "persecution" and "oppression"??? (I don't think so) Most of it is verbal name-calling & derision.
Blacks, on the other hand, had to deal with a majority of 'tudes and actions against them for generations.
Mormon generations wrapped themselves up over the same kind of "persecution complex" based upon a small number of people making it rough for them -- less than 50 "roughians" in Jackson Co., Mo in 1833 -- over 3-4 months' time...followed by additional actions 5 years later in two other MO counties.
All points considered you did read the article fine.
Its the facts and reality that fail you as GZ pointed out.
BTW I think my question is answered.
Hadn't heard that before had you? I grew up listening to those kinds of attitudes in Sunday school and Sacrament meetings.
Oaks is the one who uses the last 2 graphs of his speech to try to intimidate 92% of Evangelical voters, 78% of Republican voters, and 55% of Democratic voters to stop considering character, other-worldly commitments, and religious beliefs held by candidates. (Go ahead, read Oaks' lecture yourself...there's a link off of the original article)
The lead sentence of the article makes the point clear - LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks on Tuesday likened the post-Proposition 8 backlash against Mormons to the persecution blacks endured during the civil-rights struggle.
Yes, words matter and Oaks in his speech states - It is important to note that while this aggressive intimidation in connection with the Proposition 8 election was primarily directed at religious persons and symbols, it was not anti-religious as such. These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest. As such, these incidents of “violence and intimidation” are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation. . See, you bothered to only cite a portion of the passage. Are you capable of defining "like" within that context VC? Perhaps you can list the rights lds have been denied like the blacks were?
The lead sentence of the article makes the point clear - LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks on Tuesday likened the post-Proposition 8 backlash against Mormons to the persecution blacks endured during the civil-rights struggle.
...
No, the lead sentence of the article reflects the same twisting of Oaks’ words that you are engaged in.
...
Yes, words matter and Oaks in his speech states - It is important to note that while this aggressive intimidation in connection with the Proposition 8 election was primarily directed at religious persons and symbols, it was not anti-religious as such. These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest. As such, these incidents of “violence and intimidation” are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation. . See, you bothered to only cite a portion of the passage. Are you capable of defining “like” within that context VC? Perhaps you can list the rights lds have been denied like the blacks were?
...
I would imagine that the ordinary definition of “like” applies. Do you need me to explain the meaning of “in their effect” for you as well? Again, you pretend as though those words are not there. Words matter.
In their effect, the actions complained of stifle the exercise of Constitutionally mandated rights, just like the actions of some in the 60’s violated the Constitutional rights of African Americans.
Again, Oaks never said Mormons have been lynched or what have you as a result of Prop 8. You are setting up a straw man to suggest otherwise.
How pitiful for you that you actually have a collection of graphics.
I also question the validity of your statement, particularly the “I grew up” part.
Turbo charged motorized goal posts...
LDS Retread ping...
This is a real game.
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