Posted by:
elderolddog
(
)
Date: February 26, 2024 02:05AM
I believe he wanted to be a stud mormon, a leader, and a legend. But ghawd fatally wounded him, although he did try to slip by the brethren by stifling a natural tendency and trying to pass for Straight ... and White.
But I'm biased.
There's another biography, "D. Michael Quinn: Mormon Historian," by Gary Topping, a contemporary of Quinn. I could not find reviews of it on Amazon or Goodreads. But then Google led me to this one:
https://www.associationmormonletters.org/reviews/older-reviews/topping-d-michael-quinn-mormon-historian-reviewed-by-cheryl-bruno/ The review's author made an interesting point: "Recently, I spoke to a younger colleague who had just read Quinn’s Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. I rhapsodized at how the book had changed my entire conception, not only of Mormonism but of life itself. My friend fairly yawned.
"The book had presented him with nothing new. I mulled over this for a long time and realized that in the years since the book was published in 1987, Quinn’s ideas have thoroughly saturated Mormon culture to the point where they don’t seem that unusual.
"In the late eighties, these ideas were truly original. Joseph Smith’s early involvement with magic was barely known and little understood."
Finally, here's the Wikipedia entry on Bro. Quinn, as a member of the September Six (1993:
"D. Michael Quinn was a Mormon historian. Among other studies, he documented LDS Church-sanctioned polygamy from 1890 until 1904, after the 1890 Manifesto that officially abandoned the practice. He wrote chapter 17, 'Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843' in the book Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (1992). He was excommunicated on September 26.
"Quinn was summoned to a disciplinary council to answer charges of 'conduct unbecoming a member of the Church and apostasy,' including 'very sensitive and highly confidential matters that were not related to Michael's historical writings.' (It is) ... suggested that the 'allusion to Michael's sexual orientation, which Michael had not yet made public, was unmistakable.'
"Quinn afterward published several critical studies of Mormon hierarchy, including his three-volume work, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power; The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power; and The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power.
"He also authored the 1996 book Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example, which argues that homosexuality was common among early Mormons and was not seen as a serious sin or transgression.
"He also authored the 1987 book Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, which argues that early Mormon leaders were greatly influenced by folk magic and superstitious beliefs, including stone-looking, charms, and divining rods.
"Despite his excommunication and critical writings, Quinn, who was after his excommunication openly gay, still considered himself to be a Latter-day Saint, which stance he continued to maintain until his death in 2021."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Six