On Becoming Your Own Parody: How the LDS Church is Making Itself Irrelevant and a Laughingstock
Queers behind bushes, queers in dark alleys, queers in positions of power. Queers free on the streets, queers in pulpits, queers bearing arms. And worst of all, queers at the altar! Is no place free of this menace, no institution sacred? Our world teeters on the brink. Can no one save us?
Cue background music, William Tell. Cue White House spokesman.
We shall fight gays on the seas and oceans.
We shall them on the beaches.
We shall fight them in the fields and in the streets.
We shall never surrender, and even if this government were subjugated, then our Empire in the West, guarded by men in blue suits, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, Zion, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the world.
Lord be praised. The LDS are on the way. Hasten, Zion.
Not since the days of Joe McCarthy has the U.S. so narrowly escaped destruction from the imaginary forces of evil. And not since Joe McCarthy has our savior been more ridiculous.
We are in fact teetering on the brink, the brink of financial collapse due to outrageous overspending in Washington and the greed of Wall Street, the banks, and the real estate developers. We teeter on the brink of WW III in the Middle East, due to the war that Slinky and Stinky have foisted on us. We teeter on the brink of glacial meltdown. Nowhere in these real crises is the invisible hand of gay America at work. And nowhere in these real crises is the LDS Church coming to the rescue.
Half a million Americans sit in jail for smoking a plant, while the criminals who brought us Iraq and Afghanistan roam the streets free. What does the LDS Church have to say about this?
Over 90% of western America’s rivers and streams have dangerously high levels of mercury, a deadly neurotoxin and, worse, a genotoxin capable of altering our very genes. Our descendants will forever bear the consequences. What does the LDS Church have to say about this?
One in 79 Utah boys is born with autism, twice the national average. The leading suspect of this epidemic is environmental mercury. What does the LDS Church have to say about this?
2,000 Utahns die prematurely each year due to the effects of Utah’s dreadful air pollution. Nonetheless, Utah has yet to take a single meaningful step toward limiting pollution or controlling growth. What does the LDS Church have to say about this?
By mid-century, according to a Colorado university report, Utah’s snowpack will have been reduced by 85% if present warming trends continue. What does the LDS Church have to say about this?
One could go on at length about the many REAL threats to our way of life that might prompt concerted action by the LDS Church. Every one of these is also of the greatest moral import. Is not the well-being our children, for example, a moral issue? Is not our relationship to the planet, whose species are disappearing at a rate not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, a moral issue? On these, the most important issues not just of our time but of all time, the Church says NOTHING.
The true measure of the LDS Church in our time, and the canon by which history will judge it for all time, is that instead of addressing the unprecedented moral challenges to civilized society it chose to chase ghosts. Those gay ghosts who purportedly will bring the moral order to its knees.
What a long way prophecy has come since the days of Hosea, Amos, and Jeremiah! The thunder of courageous men speaking truth to power rumbles far off. Here at home there is only deafening silence.
Will the lions of the Lord ever roar again?
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
So, I seem to recall something about the separation of church ans state. Everytime the LDS church does speak up there are people clamoring for them to shut up because of that barrier. It seems to me that if there were an area where church and state would mix would be when the state chooses to legislate on a moral issue (on either side of the issue BTW). The church sees gay marriage as a moral issue and fiscal irresponsibility as a secular issue.
Given that viewpoint I don’t see how they could stay silent on gay marriage or speak up about greed in Washington.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Church members are more likely to listen to the scum that are allowed to make millions of dollars lying to the American people on the radio and television, while the rest of us give our time and money trying to deprogram our friends and relatives of the same.
A piece of shit with a microphone named Michael Savage, went on the radio and said that autistic children are the way they are because their parents didn’t scream at them to stop acting like a girl when they were growing up. That is how far these paid shills for all corporations are willing to go to separate the responsibility for this disease from mercury polluters.
Of course Savage gives the standard non-apology, apology the we expect from members of the radical and lazy right wing pop-culture shitbag losers, but be assured, he will never lose his radio program and will avoid being incarcerated for misusing the public airwaves as the hundreds of other Christ-killers that run with the bullies do.
It does feel good to be able to call somebody a shitbag loser and know I’m 100% justified in doing so, but there has to be something better then this that could pass for entertainment in our dying society. They tell us left wing radio is boring and doesn’t bring in the bucks though. It’s all bullshit!
The church will continue to protect it’s tax free status, give voice to warmongers like like Hannity and O’ Reilly but never say a four letter word. This is why I’m not religious.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
David:
The church is allowed to attack INDIVIDUALS not organizations which can fight back. That seems to be how it works, but then I’m paranoid.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Wow, Ed, you are really on a roll. Be careful…before you know it you will be translated as a god from all of the wisdom and revelation you receive and share.
I am a LDS convert (was baptized the day the Church sustained the revelation wherein blacks got the priesthood). Clearly, for many reasons, I am not your common Church member (you’ll have to take my word for it). But I do consider myself faithful (though faulty) and considerably orthodox…meaning I actually believe in both Church and gospel…and in the authority and veracity of God’s modern revelations through His appointed servants.
With that in mind, let me say, Ed, that there is intellectual fun, even curiosity, and then there is apostasy. I have no clue who you really are or what you really believe beyond the cover of this sort of semi-anonymous forum. I don’t even know if you care about such things as apostasy…iow, that you are so apostate by now that you wouldn’t know it if you saw it. Apostasy may be your being…and it probably seems weird to have someone like me accuse you of it…”weird” in that you don’t recognize what I am saying and “weird” that you simply can’t relate at this point.
But you manifest classic apostate behavior…you can leave the Church but can’t leave it alone.
So, tell me, why would I care that you have these concerns about the LDS Church? I would be much more impressed with your logic, and even more inclined to respond, if you were sincere in your concerns about the relationship to your Church and the world around it. But that isn’t the case.
I was with your dad at one of Rocky’s Freedom Forums…sat next to him…helped him up and down out of his seat…he struggled physically to participate. He was emotional but well-spoken. I “felt” for him even as I disagreed with him. I felt sad for him as well (and I understand he does not need, ask for, or require, anyone’s pity…iow, I respect him). But in his public persona as “the” Ed Firmage, he is barely a shadow of the man I remembered from the late 1970s and 1980s.
If he has left the Church, I can see how you could become bitter and cynical…and become even a lesser cast of his remaining shadow.
Of course, you will write what you want to write about…and perhaps you don’t seek credibility or even an intelligent dialogue…but you raise wonderful questions that, alas, you will never receive serious answers to because you are off the proverbial “deep end.”
And, for what’s its worth coming from me (some lame apologist for narrowmindedness, bigotry, and hatred, as you see me)…I feel sorry for your children who will inherit a world of their father’s making and not see the beauty of life or truth.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Did I miss something? I don’t seem to recall them attacking any individuals. As far as I can see they are staunchly opposing the public sanction of an activity that they consider immoral - isn’t that what churches have done for centuries? What’s so different now? Attacking individuals would be if they were calling for new laws declaring homosexual relationships as illegal. Gay marriage is the public sanction of those relationships, but stopping the public sanction is not the same as jailing practitioners.
What this really looks like is that all those people who dislike the LDS church position disagree on whether this is a moral issue and would prefer that the church take their position that it is an amoral issue.
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
David,
The separation of church and state is a mandate on the state not the church. Churches can and should be involved in politics. The state may not and should not be involved in religion. I would therefore disagree with most of my liberal friends in saying that I would like to see more not less church involvement across the board. That of course means that churches will sometimes take stands that I don’t like. That’s democracy.
The biblical tradition, to which Americans give lip service but which we don’t really accept at all, knows no distinction between secular and religious life. And, indeed, if you really believe that all aspects of life should be subject to your belief there CAN be no separation. Certainly in the early LDS tradition this was the case. Brigham Young didn’t think himself bound only to talk about “moral” matters. He would lecture the saints from the pulpit about darning their socks to save money, tell them they would go to hell if they shopped outside of the church-sponsored coops, damn them for even thinking of going out to California to strike it rich, etc. For Brigham and his generation, religious life was all-encompassing, not just the worship service you attended on Sunday.
In limiting itself to “moral” matters, by which it means really sexual matters, the LDS church today steps back from its proper role as a prophetic institution with a divine mandate to speak truth on all matters of concern to God and his people.
And don’t suppose that greed in Washington isn’t of concern to God, if he/she/it exists. To judge by the Hebrew Bible, greed is one of the things God is MOST concerned about. Take a look sometime at the prophetic books of the Bible and count the number of times God speaks about greed versus homosexuality. The former number in the hundreds, the latter you could count on one hand, if not one finger. But are today’s LDS prophets standing outside Congress to lambaste the inmates for their callousness toward the poor and their sycophancy toward big business?
If, therefore, the LDS church feels that it must speak out against gays, fine, so long as they give the infinitely more important issues that I talked about appropriately more attention. Right now, they give the gay issue HUGE attention, and NONE to the more important issues, which affect every single person on this planet. By no stretch of a reasonable imagination can gay issues of any kind be said to affect every person on the planet.
My complaint is therefore about priorities. The LDS church’s are wildly out of proportion not only with respect to present reality but to any notion of morality based in Judaeo-Christian tradition. Indeed the traditional stance of the Christian church vis-a-vis homosexuality is quite mixed. It’s never positive, but the seriousness of the offense was debated. There are many instances, for example, in which monks were counseled that homosexual acts, an inevitable occurrence in a world without women, were infinitely preferable to sex with women. Effectively, the church said that if you must give in to your sexual desires, better to do it with a man than a woman. Greed, by contrast, is one of the seven deadly sins.
When the LDS church starts excommunicating its many real estate developers for greed instead of promoting them to high office, I’ll begin to take the church seriously as a voice for real moral order. As long as its attention is focused on burning gays at the stake, I’ll take it for what other serious people do, prigs in the priesthood, and self-appointed prigs at that, for their divine mandate, if they ever had one, was long ago made null and void by their refusal to tend to the pastoral needs of their flock, which include insuring that the flock isn’t poisoned, roasted, or fleeced to death by slimy businessmen and their political bootlickers.
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Ed,
Thanks for that explanation. I hope you can understand why I might have expected that you were someone complaining about when they don’t speak up but just waiting to pounce if they do.
I agree with you that the separation of church and state is a mandate on the state more than the church. I hope you’ll agree with me that the enforcement of that separation has been as much against the church as against the state. In this environment it is natural that the church protects their tax-exempt status in an attempt to “obey, honor, and sustain the law” as it is currently interpreted.
At least I understand better where you are coming from.
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Paul:
Do I detect a bit of attack the messenger in your comment, rather than the message itself? I see an incredible amount of serious discussion buried in Ed’s satire. Your response to such would be appreciated.
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Paul,
I’ve responded to you in the form of a new post. Take a look. This is the real Ed talking, not a debater on stage.
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
David said:
It depends on which church. Falwell’s and Robertson’s “churches”, (political entities disguised as churches), got plenty of money to sustain their failing institutions from the Bush administration.
To it’s great credit, the Mormon church rejected that money in favor of not being bought. Not that they needed the money. I disagree that the Mormon church should keep it’s tax exempt status as a way to honor the law. The Bush administration holds itself above the law and makes a mockery of it. The church could be a powerful force by rejecting and fighting against Bush, even if it results in losing their exempt status. The world is waiting for a sign, especially from the state that supposedly voted 71% in favor of this lawless administration.
Just because churches have been attacking individuals for centuries doesn’t make it right.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
The righteous have always been a laughing stock among the wicked. Fools mock, but they shall mourn. Ether 15: 3
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Haha! Leave it to Ken Bingham to quote scriptures during a thread like this!!
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
In the immortal words of Ken:
Being a laughing stock is a sure sign that you are among the elect. Shirley MacLaine, my hero. Arrgh!
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Ken, you been huffing ether?