Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: June 07, 2019 04:36PM
CrispingPin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Admins: I support and appreciate all that you do,
> and I support whatever decisions you make, but
> I’d like to see the policy for this board be
> “no partisan politics,” even if the politics
> have a religious connection.
My personal perspective:
In real life, literally "everything" is politics, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, the climate we exist in, the housing we live (or do not live) in, whether women and children (in particular) have practical access to the necessities of life, whether children have access to adequate education, whether we are allowed by law to express our sexuality in the ways personally innate to us, or whether we are equal under the law and in employment, and are equal when we go to (or are not able to go to) whatever medical facilities or personnel we might (or might not) have access to.
Literally: In the 21st century, and in most of the industrialized world, every breath any person inhales and exhales is political--and, therefore, is a political topic.
Add in the active, and extremely well financed, activities of the LDS church in every part of life (including, but not limited to, the above), in legislatures, in courts, in the press (includes all media), and in elections and the political process itself (Prop 8, the Equal Rights Amendment, etc.), and in the fundamental, integral, parts of life such as personal freedom, civil status, marriage, childbirth and adoption, and in the very legal definition of "non-profit"....the original issue is complicated well beyond any attempt to parse out the [purely] "political."
It cannot be done.
As someone who [along with my colleagues] spends a great deal of time and thought on exactly these issues every day, I know: It cannot be done.
In the year 2019, EVERYTHING is political.
We do the best we can--and often, we don't know the MOST "right" thing to do, and we talk it over amongst ourselves and try to figure out what, compared to the alternatives, is the "best" decision--even if that decision is not as good as we would, ideally, like it to be.
This would be a whole lot easier if the underlying religion to which this board was a recovery board would be something like Quakerism (even though the Quakers, AS Quakers, had strong opinions on political topics such as slavery and some of America's least widely-accepted wars--and these were the "hot [political] topics" of that time).
Instead of a relatively "easy" religion like Quakerism, however, the LDS Church has (certainly for all of my lifetime) involved itself (and often to a major extent which has often
been outright offensive to non-Mormons) in most of the "hot topic" issues of any given moment in time--meaning: they continually, issue after issue, involve themselves in politics (while holding out, on a p.r. basis, that they are somehow "above the [messy] on-the-ground" hostilities).
The LDS Church IS politics, and although Admin efforts are made to keep partisanship here to a minimum, politics cannot be completely avoided on a board which exists as a result of Mormonism--a religious movement which continually involves itself in some of the most divisive political topics of any given moment in time.
This is my personal opinion as (by this time) a fairly experienced moderator.
Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2019 09:23PM by Tevai.