These conversations with library patrons are hilarious. You need to publish a book one day with all of them.

JP
JP´s last blog ..The Leddy and Arce Families At David’s Home

Packer is also, or has also been, vociferously, explicitly anti-gay and homophobic, to the point of counseling young men to physically assault homosexuals to ward off unwanted sexual advances.

But you are wrong to suggest that either the Mormon church or Packer have explicitly or implicitly implied that gays should be mown down with a machine gun. This kind of over-the-top rhetoric is wrong and harmful, since anyone can see that the Mormon church is neither overtly murderous, nor a larger clone of the Westboro Baptist church, which may lead people to dismiss real, fact-based claims against the Mormon church and its leaders.

I also am not convinced that you are correct when you say “The Church wouldn’t have noticed or cared had the couple consisted of two females.” We’re talking about what a particular set of security guards would have noticed or cared about, not “The Church” in the abstract. Would the security guards have kicked out a lesbian couple who hugged and kissed on Main Street Plaza? We don’t have any evidence for or against that question; I personally think they would have. Would Mormon spokesperson Kim Farah have issued a similar statement if a lesbian couple had been involved instead of a gay male couple? Again, if the lesbian couple had gone public with their treatment the way Aune and Jones did, I think the answer is yes.

Demonizing the Mormon church and Boyd Packer and turning them into two-dimensional caricatures of themselves is not helpful. The leaders of the Mormon church are capable of some really shitty, hateful things, but when they say they love gay people, I think they believe it. I don’t think they really do love us, at least in any sense I recognize as love. But in their minds, everything they do is for our good, the good of the their flock, and the good of the world. Because they are full of “love.”

That’s actually worse, to me, than pure hate, because it’s so hypocritical and mealy-mouthed and self-serving and insidious. If the Mormon church really condoned or promoted murdering homosexuals, no one but a handful of crazies would be on their side. Certainly liberal Mormons wouldn’t be. But as it is they can wreak untold damage on the gays in their midst—and indirectly cause the deaths of hundreds of gay teenagers—and still appear to possess the moral high ground.

So. The following stands for Steve and for all the commenters on this thread or any other: feel free to continue this discussion, but any further comments implying that the Mormon church or its leaders advocate for, condone or would turn a blind eye to the wholesale murder of homosexuals will be deleted. This blog is not a forum for such rhetoric.

I just need to do something. Anything. lol
alana´s last blog ..Toobin On Sessions’ Suggestions That White Men Don’t Carry Biases

I think that you’re being too polite and generous to say that the Church is homophobic. I’d put it more bluntly: the Church is militantly anti-gay. If there was anything surprising about this incident, it was that Darth Packer didn’t personally come over and spray the crowd down with bullets to take as many homosexuals out as possible, and if heterosexuals died, it was all for the best in order to stop the contamination of the herd by the homosexuals. After all, the heterosexuals would go straight to the Celestial Kingdom, courtesy of the Dark Master and Commander, Lord Packer, himself.

Furthermore, when I say that Lord Packer is anti-gay, I’m being literal. The Church wouldn’t have noticed or cared had the couple consisted of two females. Instead, it consisted of two males, and this is vitally important. It is specifically gay males that the Church opposes to the very death. Only males are seen as a threat, and not females, because females are now, as they have always been, invisible in the Church. The Church is a fraternity. There is no room in it for females but as second-class citizens on a good (exceptionally good) day, and more typically, as brood mares.

I further suspect that due to the Church’s male-centric nature, not an insignificant amount of anti-gay sentiment arises from the projection of sexual orientation insecurities from allegedly heterosexual members onto the out-group homosexuals in order to avoid suspicion. Gay males are a radical threat to the Church, whose doctrines hang by a thread even in the minds and hearts of members. To see a gay couple happy is perhaps the severest blow imaginable to the Church’s procrustean, heterosexist doctrines.

If the Church behaves this way toward gay males, why doesn’t it just actively murder children with Down Syndrome, for instance, or non-whites, or those who have been excommunicated for heresy? What accounts for the violence that the Church harbors toward gays? It’s not minor. They despise us to the core.

Steve

:-)

Steve