I think I probably do this every year on MLK weekend. It reminds me of what the LDS church thought about King and the Civil Rights Act. And that reminds me of the lovely letter that church leader Delbert L. Stapley wrote to George Romney (Mitt's father), who actively supported the Civil Rights Act. If you haven't read it already, you'll love it:

http://www.mormonthink.com/backup/delbert_stapley.pdf



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2020 09:15PM by cludgie.

Delbert gave the standard Mormon claim at the time that Mormons are not racist. God is racist. We are just following orders, and getting rid of the racism is not our call, it is God's.

GBH, being a PR person, was well aware that while this explanation worked perfectly well with TBMs, it was never ever going to fly with the public at large, outside organizations like the KKK. Saying God is the racist is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Whenever Gordie was asked about the former policy, he always said we don't do that anymore, and changed the subject. He knew better than to blame it on God.

I was on a mission in northern Brazil, so this was an issue I had spent considerable time confronting. When a temple was announced for Brazil, my first thought was either the policy was going to have to change, or this was going to tear the church apart in Brazil, since there were so many members there with African ancestry, who were devoted, active members. If the leaders said you get to go to the temple and you don't, it was not going to end well.

I nailed that one. Just a couple months before the temple was opened, the policy changed. In the following years, I noticed GBH's unwillingness to use the traditional Mormon excuse for why the policy had existed (t'wasn't our idea. God did it, blame Him). I figured eventually they were going to have to throw Brigham or Joseph under the bus and say the original policy was racist. They finally did exactly that in their essay, but the few times I have asked my relatives if they were aware of the essay, all I got back was confused mumbling. They weren't aware and had no admitable interest in becoming aware that Brigham had been labeled a racist in an anonymous essay written and posted by the church bureaucracy.

Was insinuating death threats from God standard operating procedure in those days. I know they’re God’s mouthpiece and all, but implying that God will off you for supporting Civil Rights seems a little extreme.

It was not extreme among Mormons at the time. Among Mormons, it was common knowledge that the last days were upon us, and that Jesus would be showing up any day now to punish all those who chose to not be Mormons. The Civil Rights movement was a front for rampant Communism, and the Soviet leader was the Gog fellow of the Old Testament who would lead the literal armies of Satan to fight against the armies of God in Palestine/Israel. I can't even begin to count how many firesides we had about what to expect in the run-up to that great battle. We had timetables and topographical maps and logistical diagrams so we knew how to respond when the war started. Everybody knew that the "coloreds" had maps of all the Mormons in America, so they could steal our food storage when things went south. So no- at the time these were not extreme ideas in the least. Believe me. I was there.

That's a fascinating letter. It doesn't appear that Romney understood the civil rights bill very well because in one place he says he's not against the civil rights bill but then he goes on to say "that whites shouldn't be forced to accept them in restricted white areas." Which is exactly what the bill was trying to fix. As for the entitlements that came in the 60s I'm in full agreement with Stapley that wealth transfer, entitlement funding, and the ever expanding bureaucracies has been the cause of our now 19 trillion dollar deficit. We've been mugged by bandits with the best intentions at heart. The way to Hell is paved in gold!

And then he says three of our nations presidents who were deeply involved in the Negro cause had some calamity happen to them. There maybe some truth to that but who's he referring to?

Lincoln and maybe Kennedy? But Kennedy didn't do anything except talk big.

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And then he says three of our nations presidents
> who were deeply involved in the Negro cause had
> some calamity happen to them.

Your god sounds fantastic! NOT!