Why So Much Ridiculing of Mormonism?

[realtraveller]

In spite of, or perhaps because of Mitt Romney's speech religious tolerance in politics, there seems to be an explosion of Mormon-bashing in op-ed pieces, on the chat shows and on the internet blogs. Ridiculing the holy underwear, the ban on coffee, the design of the temples. (Just read Maureen Dowd's column in the NY Times today). Lawrence O'Donnell just went off on a crazed rant on the McLaughlin report the other night.

None of this went on when Lieberman ran for Veep. He didn't have to make any speech essentially begging people not to vote against him for his religion, but there weren't any snide comments, tirades or jokes about the practices of Orthodox Jews.

I really don't get it. The Huffington Post is even making fun of his family's Christmas card, posters calling it so 'white-bread'. The only reason I could even see for HuffPost having the Christmas card on its website is for mudslinging purposes. It's just a photo of his family.

I'm not necessarily a Romney supporter, but I'm beginning to feel sorry for him based on all this intolerance and bashing.

[drmomentum[$]]

Are you saying that, in this country, you don't see how people will react differently if you make a joke about Mormonism vs. making a joke about Judaism?

I agree with the basic idea (that I think is) behind your post -- that most religion is pretty much on equal footing in the ridicule department. None should be more protected or especially respected over any other. If that's what you're getting at.

But as I think of it, that is how I feel about religion philosophically. In other words, the ideas of most religions should be given the same treatment.

If there were a group of people who believed in a giant squid-headed god, but they mostly kept to themselves except to help people once in a while and preach a lot of loving-thy-neighbor, I'd probably overlook the squid thing. As long as they could take a joke about it once in a while.

I don't find most Mormon jokes any funnier than other religious jokes, and they're also sometimes strained because of the beliefs of whoever is telling them.

Anyhow, you religionists need to stick together. The big, bad Atheists are out to get all of you. Boogita, boogita!

-JP

[hadassahchana[$]]

I do agree with Kathy's main point, though- mudslinging at a candidate seems fair game, but dragging someone's religion through the mud the way people have been doing to LDS is absolutely appalling. Starting with that AARP poll which showed that a huge majority of Americans would not vote for a Mormon for pres. and continuing on with the columns as well as snide comments on TV, I really don't get it. Take any column aboutRomney's religion, substitue Islam for LDS, and see how long it would take CAIR to have their lawyers send you a letter.

I totally agree that one religion oughtn't to be protected, but neither should someone's religion count as much as Romney's seems to.

[pippadaisy[$]]

In the realm of how people view religions, aside from Scientology, LDS is really the most "modern" religion in terms of when it was founded, formed... whatever you want to call it. Without the thousands of years that the rest of the religious world has up on it, it's sort of the new kid on the playground.

[theworm[$]]

I agree with Kathy and Cindy. It's disgusting how we tolerate jokes about anything that's not in the majority.

There were Jewish jokes when Lieberman was running, but everyone had heard them all before so they didn't even stick out. I think the reason that we're hearing more now is because the candidate has made some comments about religion that in my mind are a bit out of whack, but the backlash should be against the comments and not against the candidates religion.

[frazzledspice]

Are these comments emanating from Colorado Springs, CO by any chance? (Home of Focus on the Family.)

Fundamentalists do not believe that Mormons are Christians. I even heard a speech by a Baptist college student who was going out to evangelize the Mormons in Utah last summer. He said that they believed Jesus and God were aliens from another planet and all sorts of unusual things...

(Probably the most scandalous of all was that EVERYONE would go to heaven, but that heaven had different levels! Personally, I think that point of view is kinda cool....)

Now I have met SOME fundamentalists who think that Catholics are Christians--but I haven't met any who think Mormons are. After all, if you are sola scriptura, then the Book of Mormon is unnecessary (and some would even say the work of the devil.....)

I live in the Bible Belt, and this is what I've heard around town....

And if a quarter of the population, a very vocal, politically active quarter of the population, believes that about your religion, you're in trouble.

[magenta321]

He's in trouble because he's "not christian?" But, I don't think that any whackjob thought that Leiberman was a christian either, FWIW.

The religion stuff makes me wish I lived in a place where government and religion were seperate. We pretend they are seperate here, but in reality, there are so many deluded people who try to govern based on their religious convictions. That's damn scary.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

theworm said

I agree with Kathy and Cindy. It's disgusting how we tolerate jokes about anything that's not in the majority.

oops.

mj
off to remove some posts from the Hanukah thread

[hadassahchana[$]]

Huh? I hope you don't mean the jokes I was laughing at!


I agree about Romney's remarks on religion, Delia, but the antimormon stuff started long before he said anything like that. I just think it's a sad thing to note that some religions are acceptable as targets of jokes and others are not.

[theworm[$]]

I laughed a lot in that thread, MJ - don't remove anything!!

[jgibson2[$]]

There are religious jokes and then there are mean-spirited religious jokes.

[drmomentum[$]]

I was wondering. Who gets to say whether someone is a Christian or not?

-JP

[drmomentum[$]]

BTW - I had missed Dowd's column. It was very good this week.

[realtraveller]

Mormonism bashing in the main stream press and on television seems to be okay (referring to the Dowd column in particular) in a way that if the same sorts of ridicule had been directed against Jews or Muslims would get them fired quicker than you can say Don Imus.

I'm not saying that comments should not be made about a candidate's religion, in a reasoned way. It's the mocking tone that offends me.

[frazzledspice]

One of the problems, I think, is that some people perceive this religion as a cult.

When I first moved to the South, I went to a newcomer's organization meeting. A woman who heard I'd done some newspaper writing came up to me and asked me if I would consider ghostwriting a book about her son. She said that he had become a Mormon, went to college in Utah, and was "advised" never to contact his non-Mormon family again. All their efforts to reach him were to no avail. Eventually (they were fairly well-off) they paid someone to kidnap him and de-program him. It was a harrowing tale. She said she'd tried to get his story out in the press but that the Church was so powerful she couldn't find anyone with the courage to do it (I didn't, either--I found her story troubling but so over-the-top that I was uncertain as to how much was true.)

A few years later, one of my daughter's friends, who was being raised by her grandmother, had a HS Math teacher who recognized she was alone and vulnerable. This teacher befriended her, gave her a babysitting job, took her all over, and eventually converted her to Mormonism. She became so evangelical she alienated all her old friends, but, a few years later, she managed to break away and now attends her old church.

I was extremely concerned about the behavior of this teacher. Several people reported her to the principal and the Board of Education--I don't know whether anything was ever done (Math teachers being in great demand.) I hope she was at least reprimanded and observed more closely.

On the other hand, I know many wonderful Mormons, and they have never tried to convert me. I am especially impressed by their sense of community, and how they help one another out.

But because some people perceive them to be a cult rather than a religion, candidates like Romney have more trouble.

[drmomentum[$]]

realtraveller said

Mormonism bashing in the main stream press and on television seems to be okay (referring to the Dowd column in particular)

This is the second time you've made vague mention of Dowd's column, but for the life of me I can't tell if you're agreeing with her or criticizing her. Could you elaborate? Because it seems to me that Dowd's column doesn't have much to do with the point you were making. She's neither bashing Mormonism nor chronicling the bashing of Mormonism.

Although she does touch on it in passing:

"You’d think Catholics, who watched with trepidation as J.F.K. battled prejudice, would be sympathetic to Mitt Romney."

She clears up the JFK comparison by the end:

“J.F.K.’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic,” Mr. Krakauer agreed. “Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.’”
The backdrop, he said, is “the wickedly fierce competition between Mormons and Southern evangelicals to convert people.”
The world is globalizing, nuclear weapons are proliferating, the Middle East is seething, but Republicans are still arguing the Scopes trial.
Mitt was right when he said that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience.” Now if he would only admit he’s describing himself.

[realtraveller]

She starts out by saying that the temple is a 'white Oz', then goes on to say its an 'alien world'. She says that Under the Banner of Heaven was about Mormonism. It wasn't. I read it. It's about polygamists in Arizona and Canada.

She then goes into Joseph Smith and the rose-colored glasses, black magic, crystal gazing. After all this she shows her disingenuousness by stating "The problem with Romney is not his religion". Then why did you spend several paragraphs on the details?

Look at any religion and its going to look odd to outsiders. Drinking the blood and eating the flesh of your god? The dead coming back to life? A baby born to a virgin?

She says that the leadership is authoritarian, white and male and intolerant of dissent. Isn't that true of Catholics too? But would such a column be written about Biden, Guiliani or Kennedy? She says that women aren't of equal status? Isn't that true of Muslims, too?

None of this sort of thing came up four years ago regarding Lieberman. There weren't any columns on the 'alien world' of Orthodox Judaism. If there had been, people would have rightly suspected religious bigotry of the writer.

[erik_kosberg]

She says that the leadership is authoritarian, white and male and intolerant of dissent. Isn't that true of Catholics too?

Maybe if you define "leadership" as only the Pope. But there are a fair number of cardinals and bishops who aren't white and at least some bishops who aren't totally against dissent. And at the monsignor/priest level dissent too is not unknown.

Granted, the leadership is currently all male.

[pippadaisy[$]]

Um, I read Under the Banner of Heaven, and last time I checked, the folks who were the subjects of the book called themselves Fundamentalist LDS. The main church of LDS may not recognize them, but technically it's the same religion with one difference in that the main LDS church gave up polygamy.

[realtraveller]

Meanwhile, Obama attends an all-black so-called Afro-centric church and no one has written any excoriating columns.


Here's the website: Trinity United Church of Christ

[frazzledspice]

It really doesn't matter whether Americans' prejudice against a particular religion--or race--or gender--is logical or not.

They hold the election in their hands, and if they decide they're not ready to elect a woman, or a Mormon, or a black, they won't.

And while it might not be fair to slam Romney for his religious beliefs, dirtier tricks have been played before.

When Karl Rove spread rumors in South Carolina that McCain had "fathered a black baby" when he had, in fact, adopted a disabled Bangladeshi child...

People's prejudice turned the primaries in favor of Bush, when, if the truth had been told, most people would have pinned a big fat medal on his chest that said, "Father of the Year."

Then of course there were the Swift Boat veterans for (cough, cough, harumph) "Truth" (???) This is what Wikipedia says about them.

Of the 3,500 Swift boat sailors who served in Vietnam, the names of some 250 appeared on the group's statement against Kerry; most did not serve at the same time or in the same place as Kerry.

Of those who served in Kerry's boat crew, only Stephen Gardner joined SBVT.{[1] He was not present on any of the occasions when Kerry won his medals, including his Purple Hearts. Gardner appeared in two of the group's television advertisements.

All other living members of Kerry's crew supported his presidential bid, and some frequently campaigned with him as his self-described 'band of brothers'. Kerry crewmembers have disputed some of SBVT's various allegations: "totally false" (Drew Whitlow), "garbage" (Gene Thorson), and "a pack of lies" (Del Sandusky).

No members of SBVT were aboard Kerry's boat during any of the incidents for which he was decorated

Swift Vets and POWs for Truth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This sorry story shows just how much well-financed, well-publicized lies can hurt candidates.

There are some extremist polygamist Mormon groups, but Romney doesn't have anything to do with them.

Still, in the free-for-all of American politics, a retroactive "no fair!" doesn't cut the mustard.