New Mormon Church Anti-Gay Policy Leads to 32 Suicides

Image by Brian Palmer via Facebook

Religion is a toxic evil for society in my view, but it is especially evil in terms of the damage done to LGBT lives and psyches.  In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell, the bitter old men in the Mormon Church leadership felt the need to ratchet up it's anti-gay extremism and that henceforth people in same-sex marriages would be declared "apostates" and that their children would be barred from being baptized in the Mormon Church.  A support group for Mormon parents of LGBT children is reporting that the new policy is having deadly consequences: 32 young LGBT Mormons have taken their own lives since early November, 2015, when the policy was announced.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the depressing fruits of religious based hate and bigorty.  Here are highlights:

Thirty-two young LGBT Mormons reportedly have taken their own lives since early November — when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a new devastatingly anti-gay policy labeling people in same-sex marriages "apostates" and barring their children from being baptized.

All of the victims were between the ages of 14 and 20, with an average age of 17. Twenty-seven were male, three were female and two were transgender, and all but six of the suicides occurred in Utah. 

Those figures are based on a report from Mama Dragons, a support group for the Mormon parents of LGBT children that we first told you about last May. Wendy Montgomery, co-founder of Mama Dragons, announced recently during a conference of Affirmation, another Mormon LGBT support group, that the families of the 32 victims had contacted her directly about the death of a child or sibling.

The Deseret News, a Salt Lake City-based daily newspaper owned by the Mormon church, reported the shocking figure Wednesday after obtaining the following statement from senior LDS leaders.

But in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in favor of nationwide marriage equality, the church took a major step backward. In the policy released Nov. 5, the church relegated same-sex couples to the same status as those in polygamous marriages, labeling them "apostates," a term for those who've renounced their faith. The policy also bars the children of same-sex parents from becoming full members of the church until they turn 18, disavow their parents' relationship, and leave the household.

The new policy prompted thousands to leave the church in protest. Then, earlier this month, the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Russell M. Nelson, declared that the policy was a revelation from God to LDS President Thomas S. Monson, which elevated it to the status of church doctrine. Nelson is next in line to become church president, and his wife later said that LGBT people could "repent" and have their "sexual feelings be in harmony" with God's law. 

Even before the new policy was announced, Utah had the fourth-highest rate of suicide in the nation, and suicide was the No. 1 cause of death for children ages 10-17. Sadly, the families of LGBT Mormons who commit suicide typically don't publicize it because they want to avoid the associated shame from fellow church members.

LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are 8.4 times as likely to attempt suicide as those who report no or low levels of family rejection. And one quarter of young transgender people "report having made a suicide attempt."

Hate, bigotry and death are the fruits of religion.  In the case of the Mormon Church, it is particularly sad - I grew up through high school in Central New York not far from where Joseph Smith claimed to have discovered the golden tablets upon which the Mormon faith is based.  Local always viewed Smith as a shyster and con-man and fraud.  That's the basis for the Mormon faith: fraud and untruth. 

Where Imprisonment or Death For Blasphemy Is The Norm

As people continue to feel revulsion over the murders in Paris motivated by Islamic extremism and , in the case of the victims at Charlie Hebdo, sick outrage for perceived blasphemy, many are missing the point that the laws in far too many countries make blasphemy a crime and in some instances, a capital offense.   Such laws make the murders in Paris "justified" in the minds of religious extremists.  Equally disturbing is the fact that a number of the countries enforcing such laws are U.S. allies and/or recipients of large amounts of U.S. aid.  Thus, the U.S. needs to be demanding that such laws be eliminated and those imprisoned for blasphemy be released.  A prime example is the plight of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, age 30 (pictured above), sentenced to 1,000 lashes and ten (10) years in prison.  Why the Hell is America supporting such a foul regime?  In a word, oil.  In short, America is only too ready to prostitute its values.   Al-akhbar.com has details:

US-ally Saudi Arabia flogs liberal activist Raif Badawi in public Friday near a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, receiving 50 lashes for "insulting Islam," witnesses said.

Badawi, 30, was arrested in June 2012 and charged with offenses ranging from cyber crime to disobeying his father and apostasy, or abandoning his faith.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals ($266,666) and 1,000 lashes last year after prosecutors challenged an earlier sentence of seven years and 600 lashes as being too lenient.

Witnesses said that Badawi was flogged after the weekly Friday prayers near Al-Jafali mosque as a crowd of worshipers looked on.

Badawi was driven to the site in a police car, and taken out of the vehicle as a government employee read out the charges against him to the crowd.

The blogger was made to stand with his back to onlookers as another man began flogging him, witnesses said, adding that Badawi did not make any sound or cry in pain.

The faithful who had emerged from noon prayers watched in silence and were ordered by security forces not to take any pictures on their mobile phones.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said the punishment was "barbaric" and noted its timing after Saudi Arabia condemned Wednesday's deadly attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

"Although Saudi Arabia condemned yesterday's cowardly attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, it is now preparing to inflict the most barbaric punishment on a citizen who just used his freedom of expression and information," Reporters Without Borders program director Lucie Morillon said Thursday.

Badawi, who has been in jail since 2012, is a "prisoner of conscience", said London-based Amnesty International, demanding his release.

Badawi is the co-founder of the Saudi Liberal Network along with women's rights campaigner Suad al-Shammari, who was arrested last October and also accused of "insulting Islam."

"Flogging and other forms of corporal punishment are prohibited under international law, which prohibits torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," said Amnesty's Philip Luther.

Saudi Arabia's legal code follows a medieval version of Sharia law. Judges are trained as religious scholars and have a broad scope to base verdicts and sentences on their own interpretation of religious texts.

But the problem extends far beyond Saudi Arabia.  Here are highlights from an article in Slate that looks at government sanctioned murder or imprisonment for blasphemy:

The Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris this week was uniquely horrific. But in one way, it was not that unusual: Violent acts in response to “blasphemy” are unfortunately pretty common. They’re just usually perpetrated by governments.

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, UCLA law professor Amjad Mahmood Khan argues that Pakistan’s absurdly broad blasphemy laws—under which any “imputation, innuendo, or insinuation” that “directly or indirectly defiles the sacred name of Prophet Muhammad” is outlawed and in some cases punishable by death—have not only led to the arrest of thousands of individuals for crimes as trivial as wearing an Islamic slogan on a T-shirt, but “provide legal cover for terrorists to commit atrocities in the name of protecting Islam’s integrity based on their warped view of the faith.” This includes the mass killings of members of minority sects like the Ahmadis, who are forbidden by law from calling themselves Muslims and frequently charged under blasphemy laws, as well as attacks on Christians. 

Blasphemy laws are harshest and most common in the Muslim world, but aren’t exclusive to it. In the wake of Pussy Riot’s church performance, Russia’s parliament passed a new law mandating jail terms for insults to religion. Nearly a quarter of the world’s countries have blasphemy laws on their books, according to Pew, and one out of 10 bans apostasy. The Charlie Hebdo killings have already prompted some Western governments, notably Ireland and Canada, to announce that they will reconsider the blasphemy laws on their books. But in much of the world, governments, not terrorists, will continue to be the biggest threat to freedom of and from religion.

In the movie "Latter Days" a character asks the Mormon missionaries the following question: "How come if God talks to Joseph Smith, Smith gets to be a prophet, but if God talks to me, I'm a schizophrenic?"   Sadly, the same question applies to the Quran and Muhammad who wrote it based on claimed verbal communications through the angel Gabriel.  Was Muhammad truly a prophet or merely a schizophrenic con man?  I suspect readers know my answer.

Mormon Church Hypocrisy: Mormon Founder Had Up to 40 Wives

Joseph Smith and one of his many, many wives

Remember how the Mormon Church was the largest backer of the Proposition 8 movement in California a few years ago proclaiming that marriage was a God ordained institution between "one man and one woman."  In doing so, of course, the Mormon Church ignored its own history or its former claims that polygamy, not monogamy, was the biblical form of marriage.  Now, just to put the icing on the cake of the Mormon Church's rank hypocrisy, the Mormon Church has belatedly admitted that its founder, Joseph Smith had up to 40 wives.  Smith apparently saw himself as the new Solomon.  Now if only the Christofascists and bitter old men in dresses in Rome would likewise come clean and admit that their "one man and one woman" campaign is factually incorrect and contrary to true biblical marriage.  The New York Times looks at the Mormon Church's much belated honesty about marriage.  Here are highlights:

Mormon leaders have acknowledged for the first time that the church’s founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, portrayed in church materials as a loyal partner to his loving spouse Emma, took as many as 40 wives, some already married and one only 14 years old.

The church’s disclosures, in a series of essays online, are part of an effort to be transparent about its history at a time when church members are increasingly encountering disturbing claims about the faith on the Internet. Many Mormons, especially those with polygamous ancestors, say they were well aware that Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, practiced polygamy when he led the flock in Salt Lake City. But they did not know the full truth about Smith.

“Joseph Smith was presented to me as a practically perfect prophet, and this is true for a lot of people,” said Emily Jensen, a blogger and editor in Farmington, Utah, who often writes about Mormon issues.

She said the reaction of some Mormons to the church’s disclosures resembled the five stages of grief in which the first stage is denial, and the second is anger. Members are saying on blogs and social media, “This is not the church I grew up with, this is not the Joseph Smith I love,” Ms. Jensen said.  

[F]or his first wife, Emma, polygamy was “an excruciating ordeal.”  The four treatises on polygamy reflect a new resolve by a church long accused of secrecy to respond with openness to the kind of thorny historical and theological issues that are causing some to become disillusioned or even to abandon the faith.

The essay on “plural marriage” in the early days of the Mormon movement in Ohio and Illinois says polygamy was commanded by God, revealed to Smith and accepted by him and his followers only very reluctantly. Abraham and other Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives, and Smith preached that his church was the “restoration” of the early, true Christian church.

For Mormons disturbed at leaning the truth - and that the Church leaders lied to them for many years - they need to get over it and join the ranks of Catholics who have been lied to and manipulated by Catholic Church leaders for many centuries.  Institutional religion has always been about money, power and control.  Thankfully, the Internet is making it increasing difficult to perpetuate the lies and untruths.

Is Mitt Romney’s Mormonism Fair Game?

My answer to the Caption of this post is a resounding YES!  Romney has prostituted himself to the ugliest elements of the Christianist right and signed NOM's declaration of war of the rights to religious freedom of LGBT Americans and Americans who support marriage equality and to denominations like the the Conservative branch of American Judaism who have come out in support of religious same sex marriage.  And lets not forget Romney's under the table $10,000 contribution in support of Proposition 8.  Once you open the door to bringing religion into the civil laws as Romney has and is continuing seeking to do, then it is ALL on the table and open game for discussion and, if appropriate, condemnation.  And that doesn't mean that critics are necessarily anti-Mormon.  I only means that references to personal religious belief open the flood gate if those personal religious beliefs are detrimental to the civil rights of other citizens.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Romney's disingenuous attempt to pander to religion, but demand that the scope of the discussion be limited to his terms.  (Editor's note: In the interest of full disclosure, I grew up through high school in upstate New York not too far from where Joesph Smith purported to find the "golden tablets" and it is noteworthy that most locals still think that Smith was an utter nutcase).   Here are highlights:

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has developed a simple method to determine whether coverage of the candidate’s Mormonism has crossed a line.  “Our test to see if a similar story would be written about others’ religion is to substitute ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish,’ ” Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul wrote in objection to a Washington Post article last fall about the candidate’s role as a church leader in Boston.

She pointed out a passage that explained a central tenet of Mormonism. It described the belief that Christ’s true church was restored after centuries of apostasy when the 19th-century prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates that he discovered in Upstate New York.
“Would you write this sentence in describing the Jewish faith?” Saul asked in a November e-mail, adding: “ ‘Jews believe their prophet Moses was delivered tablets on a mountain top directly from G-d after he appeared to him in a burning bush.’ Of course not, yet you reference a similar story in Mormonism.”
 
Jodi Kantor reported in the New York Times that Romney’s aides often ask reporters, “Would you have written this about a Jewish candidate?” The guilt trip may be motivated by political calculation, sincere concern about religious bigotry for a faith that has suffered its fair share or some combination of the two. Regardless of its impetus, the campaign’s response gets at a crucial challenge for the news media: to educate the public about an unfamiliar faith unusually central to a candidate’s formation without treating Mormonism as biographical exotica that could fuel prejudices.

Now that Romney has secured the necessary delegates to become the Republican nominee, that challenge is front and center. Obama strategist David Axelrod has suggested that Mormonism is off limits as political ammunition. Yet news outlets delve into Mormon apocrypha, and comedian and Democratic super PAC donor Bill Maher launches salvo after salvo against Romney’s faith.

Romney clearly prefers to talk about his religion on his own terms.  At an event in Wisconsin in April, a man began asking the candidate about some of the more controversial aspects of Mormonism, including its past ban on blacks in the priesthood.  “I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view, but if you have a question, I’ll be happy to answer your question,” Romney said.

Romney has declined to clarify whether he believed that the ban — which was still in effect as he entered the local church hierarchy in Boston — was divine doctrine or flawed teaching. He has refused to comment on the policy beyond expressing relief that it was lifted. 

But Romney has also demonstrated an aversion to talking about subjects most Mormons proudly discuss, including the religion’s founding story.  “Without the Joseph Smith story, you don’t have a Mormonism,” said Patrick Mason, a professor of Mormon studies and an expert on anti-Mormonism at Claremont Graduate University. “And there is no way, especially given Romney’s church positions, all that I can collect, that he is personally embarrassed by that story. I think what is going on is a political move.”
 
Mormonism does not enjoy the authenticating quality of antiquity. Because it came of age in a modern time, its theology and saintly visitations can strike people as stranger than those of older religions shrouded by centuries.   As for Romney, church officials said it is up to the candidate how much he divulges about his beliefs and his role within the church. “But it is a matter of public record that he served as a Mormon bishop and a stake president . . . .

Asked whether it was inappropriate to discuss Joseph Smith and the core beliefs of Mormonism in connection with Romney’s time as a leader in the church, Otterson [LDS head of worldwide public affairs]said: “We’re very excited about Joseph Smith; it is absolutely core to us. But how to do that in the context of this kind of reporting? . . . It would just seem to me that you would want to run a sidebar.”

[M]any Mormons are wary about the assault the religion might come under from the secular left. Maher, the HBO comedian — who has given $1 million to a pro-Obama super PAC — has reinforced that fear by repeatedly calling Mormonism a “cult.”  It is understandable that the Romney campaign would be sensitive to such criticism. But its guard is likewise up against biographical descriptions of the candidate’s life in the church.

Frankly, in my opinion we need to get religion 100% out of politics and certainly out of impacting the civil rights of citizens.  At the same time, all Americans need to remember how Smith is remembered in upstate New York. Wikipedia has this excerpt on how Smith was viewed in upstate New York:

Smith continued traveling to western New York and Pennsylvania as a treasure seeker and a farmhand. In 1826, he was brought before a court in Chenango County, New York, for "glass-looking," or pretending to find lost treasure.    .   .   .   .  Smith had left his treasure hunting company, his former associates believed he had double-crossed them by taking for himself what they considered joint property. They ransacked places where a competing treasure-seer said the plates were hidden, the occurrence of which caused Smith to claim he could not accomplish the translation in Palmyra.

If Romeny wants to talk religion and pander to Chritianist extremists, then EVERYTHING is on the table about his Mormon religion is on the table for open discussion - including its founder who was viewed as a fraud and fortune hunter in upstate New York..

Proposition 8 Really a Loss for Mormons?

Author Frank Schaeffer at the Huffington Post has a piece that raises the argument that by undertaking a high profile role in the Proposition 8 battle, the Mormon Church has in reality suffered what will be a long term loss. Why, because with all the increased scrutiny the Mormon faith is receiving the plentiful "weirdness" of the Mormon religion will come out - as is already happening - and overall negative views of the denomination will increase. As I have said before, I am originally from a part of New York State close to where Joseph Smith allegedly had his revelation and to this day, Smith is regarded by most locals as a serious whack job - hence why he left the area. Familiarity often breeds contempt and hopefully the Mormon Church reaps some scrutiny that will convince the broader public that Mormons are NOT mainstream whatsoever. Such a result would in my view be Divine justice indeed. Here are some column highlights:

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The recent confrontation between the Mormon Church and the gay community bodes ill for Mormonism. It seems that the Mormons have begun to believe their own propaganda when it comes to seeing themselves adds "just another" evangelical group. They aren't. The evangelicals may be plenty crazy, as they have manifested themselves to be through the late great Religious Right (that is now crashing in flames following the Obama victory), but the Mormons are exponentially crazier when it comes to marriage, and gender roles.

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[T]o paraphrase the famous line from Animal Farm; some religions are weirder than others, especially when it comes to beliefs about marriage, sex and gender. One of the strangest is the Mormons.

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Here is just two of many quaint bits of Mormon "teaching" ( this first on race is no longer the official position of the church, but still...): "And if any man mingles his seed with the seed of Cane [i.e black people] the only way he could get rid of it or have salvation would be to come forward & have his head cut off & spill his blood upon the ground. It would also take the life of his Children."(Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 1852, Brigham Young's address before the legislative assembly of the Territory of Utah upon slavery)

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"Nearly all the great discoveries of man in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet... I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to be a greater age than we do, that they lived generally to near the age of 1000 years. He described the men as averaging near six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style. In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet, in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants of the sea -- to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can now behold with your eyes."(Oliver B. Huntington, Young Woman's Journal, Vol. 3, p. 263-264)

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So, okay, enough already of the "seed of Cain," moon men, on to marriage, California's Proposition 8 and the Mormons... Why pick on gay people? Here's my theory: The Mormons have assiduously pursued a policy of trying to be accepted as just one more of the thousands of Protestant splinter groups that, taken together, are often generically called "Christians" as a catchall for the born-again amongst us. That is why the Mormons jumped into this debate: make friends with the evangelical Religious Right and the more right wing Roman Catholics by joining the neighborhood Church Lady gang to beat up the gay guy.

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What is the sexual/marriage/gender teaching of the Mormons who are raising money to stop two men or women from marrying. Here's a taste: A Mormon belief is that men resurrect their wives. The Mormon man becomes a god on some uninhabited planet. As the god of his own world he will resurrect those wives who were obedient to him. They then become the goddesses of his planet.

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With their support for Proposition 8 the Mormons have more or less done what someone might do who -- in an incredibly dumb moment -- decides to call up the local IRS office and start asking the kind of questions that inevitably leads to getting audited. There is an old phrase that the Mormon leaders who launched their anti-gay crusade might have paid attention to: "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."