Just in case you aren’t familiar, the Mormon Church used to preach segregation. It was their firm belief that being a person of color was a punishment from God and people of color were lesser than white people…and that was up until 1978! It was in that year former President Jimmy Carter threatened the LDS church with taxation if they did not stop preaching segregation, and amazingly enough, God spoke to the elders, and within weeks of the taxation threat, told them being a person of color was no longer a punishment from God, therefore they should be accepted into the church.
Secondly, how is anyone, who enjoys full benefits of marriage, employment, housing, etc….you know, all the rights, liberties and freedoms offered to everyone in America except for those of us in the LBGT community, going to claim they are being oppressed…and compare their oppression to that of what people of color experienced during and prior to the Civil Rights Movement?
This statement [By Elder Dallin Oaks that he did not consider it provocative to compare the treatment of Mormons after the passage of Prop. 8 to that of blacks in the civil rights era.] is not only stupid and delusional, but it’s extremely disrespectful towards anyone of color, and it demonstrates the lengths people will go to in their attempt to prevent American citizens who are a member of the LGBT community from ever enjoying full equality and maintain our second class citizenship.
[For the full article, see here.]
At least one Mormon leader has the ignorance and/or temerity to equate anti-LDS backlash regarding their hateful animus against same-sex marriage and their strident advocacy for Prop. 8 with the way Southern blacks were intimidated during the civil rights movement.
If this isn't an outright disgrace, and if this isn't symptomatic of toxic religion and the attempt to brainwash gullible people into believing that the LDS Church is the "victim" in this backlash by decent people who demand equal rights for LGBT people and same-sex couples, I don't know what is!
The LDS Church and the Roman Catholic Church, along with most churches within the institutional Church, by their rhetoric and/or actions and/or silence amidst the oppression of our LGBT sisters and brothers, are a disgrace to God, to Christianity, and to biblical scholarship!
They must be called to account and confronted for the lies they perpetrate, and the untold suffering and damage they do to LGBT people and their families, and they must also be taxed!
They are spewing their hatred that often results in spiritual, emotional, and physical violence, and they do so with the benefit of tax-exemption.
4 comments:
Lay into that tax exemption, Jerry! That's one of the sources, if not the main source of fundamentalists' political power. If Gay activists aren't willing to call, repeatedly and often, for the end of religious tax exemptions, then they aren't serious about fighting bigotry and marginalization. We should be about taxing this unfair weapon away from our enemies.
You're absolutely right, Don Charles! By their being exempt from paying taxes, religious institutions who work against equal rights are not only doing so with their followers' money, but with our money as well.
Why should tax payers take up the monetary slack for religious institutions, and even for their hateful and discriminatory rhetoric and actions against others?
All LGBT activists must aggressively advocate for removing tax-exemptions from all religious institutions as one way of declawing the dragon that has done so much to cause untold suffering to assorted minority groups, such as women, African Americans, and LGBT people.
Best wishes, Jerry.
Exactly. Thank you
Thank you, Leonardo. Best wishes, Jerry.
Post a Comment