To make it simpler for me, lazy as I am, I'll condense it into this one post so I don't spend too much time bouncing around among the various other threads on the same general subject.

This will offend some, but I'll say it anyway & be done with it.

On this forum, there is a very wide range of people who have had less than good results from contact with the corporation. Natural to find resentment, hatred, and all sorts of anger levels among them.

There is a relatively small contingent, however, that goes beyond venting, seeking help, sharing war stories, asking for comfort, providing comfort, asking for info on the corp & providing info on the corp, and so on, to try to see a bear behind every tree in the woods.

The lengths some go to in trying to blame the corporation for just about every negative feature of Utah in general, and every newsworthy aberation in particular, is ludicrous.

I'll say it again & then I'm done with it.

The corporation is not responsible for the Powell deaths.
The corporation did not cause it to happen.
The corporation did not have a hand in it.

Two adult people made certain choices, those of one resulted in her own death, those of the other resulted in three additional deaths.
None of the deaths were "religiously" oriented or occurred because of any church teaching, doctrine, or philosophy.

Josh Powell did not do what he did because of any Mormon influence, teaching, or belief.
His wife did not die because of any Mormon influence, teaching, or belief.

Attempts to lay this one on the corporation are ludicrous.
And in saying all of the above, I do not defend the corporation.
I just place responsibility where it truly lies, and much as I dislike the corp, I refuse to blame it for everything that goes on in this state. Or anywhere else.

You don't have to agree, and I won't argue it.
Also will not post on the matter again.

I agree with you for the most part although it is possible that church teaching had some effect on their behavior or decisions.For instance, the belief that marriage is eternal MAY have influenced Susan to stay. However, we do not know that and blaming the church without evidence makes us look petty and vindictive especially since Josh and his father were ex Mormons and Susan and the kids, the victims, were TBM. Anyone see the irony? I certainly do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2012 08:24PM by bona dea.

I agree, in general. Religious beliefs often play into decisions people make.

Re the kids - I wouldn't call them TBMs. At their ages, they just do as directed by their parents, like kids everywhere, Mormon or not.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2012 08:53PM by Nightingale.

They were being raised as TBMs by their mother and later gradparents. That is why I called them TBM. I just think it is ironic that an ex Mormon kills a Mormon and some of us are blaming the church. They would blame the church if had been the other way. The game is blame the church for some people whether there is evidence or not..

isn't 'effect' and 'influence' the Whole Point of being religious/Mormon-LDS?

IMO, the Black/White, Right-Wrong mentality, which is Exaggerated in Mormonism, is responsible for a LOT MORE than we realize.

When things go 'right' with Mormons, the church PR team is Right There to take credit/grab the glory;
However, when things tailspin out-of-control...

For some Mormon that is probably true but the point is we do not know these people and have no idea why they did the things they did or how much influence the church had or what advice was given by church officials or how much knowledge the leaders had who gave any advice. I was raised as a Mormon and was neverr a black and white thinker.Neither are many Mormons. Josh left the church and we don't know what Susan believed or what kind of Mormon she was.There are many happy Mormon marriages and many Mormon men are good husbands and are not control freaks.Some wives are the dominant partner. Many Mormon women would not put up with abuse at all. You can't stereotype.

Notice: I DIDN'T SAY that LDS is responsible for the Powell Deaths!

Things we DO KNOW:

Mormonism treats women as second-class citizens; just read the thread about why LDS chooses NOT to participate with Girl Scouts. It starts Very Early in a females life.

comment: Mormonism is a Very Competitive religion. MANY wifes want the 'Peter Priesthood / Walking Wallet' model of Husband (RM PREFERRED!). When hubby doesn't Measure Up, they're OUTTA THERE!

When women buck what their husbands want- All the way UP, All the way DOWN, trouble's a brewing, it's what 'Unrighteous Dominion' is all about! Hint: that phrase DIDN'T have Female Domination in mind!!

?Why are there So Many TBM wife vs. NOM/Apostate marriage problems & divorces??? Black/White, Right-Wrong!

the LDS prescription for ALL problems: Live the Gospel; Pray, Pay, Obey.

Black/White? Look back to what GBH said; case CLOSED!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2012 10:28PM by guynoirprivateeye.

My opinion is, statically fundamental religions, in this case Mormonism, cause stress in people's lives that people outside of the church do not experience. If this weren't the case, there would be no need for any of us to be here! Of course Powell went further than 99.9% of people go, but I believe Mormonism played a part.

Anyone would be crazy to defend Powell just because he was an exmo. I see no irony in this. He was a psychopath! We aren't the black and white thinkers you seem to want to call us. Most of us have Mormons in our lives who we love, except we disagree with their religion. Many of us disagree with other exmo's. In this case, I can agree to disagree!

Without knowing him really well and/or his family, we can only speculate.

Chances are he had a form of mental illness. But what caused it? No one knows exactly, unless they knew him and his entire family really well.

It may or may not have been induced by pressure he felt to remain active in Mormonism. It may have partially been that, or it may have nothing to do with that!

On the etiology of narcissism... Not to get too far into the political realm, but there's no difference in the "unwarranted political control" (what the psychiatrist Scott Peck called "genuine evil") than, say the murderer of abortion provider George Tiller, and what happened Sunday.

LDS doctrine, with its hyper-rigidity and manufactured beliefs, creates these sorts of monsters whose hold on sanity and reason slips... It's the same rigidity in the German culture of the early 19th Century that gave rise to the Holocaust (I hope I don't have to flatten "Godwin's Law" with the ol' police interceptor with my pointing to this dynamic, which, as I said, originated with Bradshaw and Alice Miller, among others).

I suggest you acquire an open mind and also read Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven" with its focus on the narcissism present in the Lafferty brothers (I'll gladly provide a review I wrote when that book came out).

Mark Hacking fits this profile as well... So, too, do other acts of violence... These sorts of murderers are so delusional they are absolutely convinced there is no other solution to their turmoil...

Fortunately, of course, events like these are extremely rare, and the "corporation" may not have caused this horror, but the "corporate rules"--and doubtless the likely deviency in the Powell family that "ran afoul" of those rules--were a factor.

As for Susan, assuming she was a victim as appears overwhelmingly likely, it is axiomatic that victims are not to blame for what happened to them. Blame is one of the "rules" of the corporate culture and serves as a catharsis for the others to "deal" with their own demons. She may have unwittingly provoked the violence, but she was operating under "corporate rules" of her own upbringing. And of course it is entirely reasonable and true that the "rules" of LDS, Inc. are generally in keeping with the rules of society itself. It nevertheless remains its own "sub-system" with its own hyper-rigidity.

Cabbie Speech #846 on "Black-and-White" Thinking

How people respond to evil when it shows up in our lives are difficult problems that all people struggle with. We have no definitive answers on what to do or how people become so evil. It is in fact one of the reasons humans invented religion--to try to understand something that affects the human race and that predates religion.

Murdering wives and children has been happening all over the world in all cultures since time began. And women being unable to protect themselves or their children has been happening everywhere since time began. It has nothing to do with Mormonism. All cultures struggle with these problems.

We would never claim that Josh Powell committed his crimes because he was an ex-Mormon either. Josh had strict orders that his in laws were not to take his children to the Mormon church, so they followed his orders and didn't take the children to church even when they had custody. It could equally be argued that he murdered them to make sure they didn't stay behind and grow up Mormon. But we know that would be an outrageous statement. Neither being an exMormon nor the Mormon church have any causative relationship in what happened to Susan or her children.

Most people on this forum aren't blaming Mormonism for this.

+1, but a few people on this forum are blaming the church.

There are things that she might have done and I did said MIGHT HAVE DONE that could have prevented it. We will never know, but maybe she did something that set him off.That doesn't mean he had the right to kill her, but if she had said or done something differen, she might still be here. If she had left him, she MIGHT still be alive. She made the choice to marry him in the first place.That was a choice, That isn't to say she is to blame, but her choices had some thing to do with this.Everyone has choices and choices have unintended consequences.

Wrong place



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2012 01:22AM by bona dea.

I agree, Mormonism wasn't a factor, as he was just a sick person who killed his children to prevent them from talking about what happened to their mother. Women and children are abused in all religions and cultures, and all too often, they end up murdered like these innocent people were. One of the most dangerous times for a woman is when she tries to leave an abusive spouse, and it's very likely that Susan Powell was working on an escape plan, only in this case, she was the TBM, and he was the exmo.

Mormonism: 100% Feelings/Emotions; NOT based in (those Nasty) Facts.


Mormonism, by its Very Nature, brings most everything it touches to Exaggeration if not Extremes.

Psycho or not (probably was) this is an Extreme of behavior.

Which must be how you can categorically state that the Mormon-dominated culture of the intermountain West had absolutely zero influence on any of the individuals involved in this series of crimes, correct?

informer: I'm assuming that your remark is cynicism; am I correct?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2012 11:49PM by guynoirprivateeye.

LOL! No, it was sarcasm.

I do not consider any of Horsefeathers' claims to be intellectually serious or logical, so I responded thus to register disagreement.

-------------------------------------------------------

Are you seriously trying to say that Susan Powell chose to be murdered, crammed in the trunk and disposed of like garbage? What are you saying? The choices of JOSH POWELL resulted in Susan's murder. This attitude is disrespectful beyond belief.

Horsefeathers wrote:

>" Two adult people made certain choices, those of
> one resulted in her own death"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2012 12:40AM by buddhdayochristian.

All actions and choices have consequences and that includes Susan's. She choose to marry him, stay with him, demand that he retun to the church or face divorce. She might be alive if she had chosen differently. That doesn't mean she was at fault, but her choices were a factor.

bd: this MAY Have been started b/c SP told (or, info slipped) that she was in the process of Leaving josh...

Let's not say or suggest ANYTHING that may tend to denigrate her, O.K.?

I am not denigrating her. Just saying that everyone makes choices and those choices have consequences. Maybe he did it because she was planning to leave and I wouldn't blame her if she did,but that too is a choice.Maybe she said something which upset him. Maybe they had a fight. We can't predict when something we say or do might set someone off or have consequences.I'm just guessing, but it sounds to me like he may have been set off by something and did it in the heat of the moment. I could be wrong, but most people who planned a murder could come up with a better alibi than taking two toddlers on a camping trip in the middle of the night in December and coming home to find their wife had disappeared.That has got to be the lamest alibi of all time.

if they apply here, are reinforced/exacerbated by the culture of TSCC, and its priesthood dominance. Not to mention the patriarchal culture often gives deference to abusers, excusing them, and does not take the needs of abused women, and children seriously.

from "Fathers Who Kill" By Katherine Ramsland

Motives

Ewing offers a list of motives for familicide, as does Dr. Herbert Stream in Our Wish to Kill and Christine Jackman in “When Dads Get Deadly.” Jointly, they cover the following reasons why men kill their families:

Losing control over the family circumstances/panic over powerlessness
Seeing only adverse circumstances ahead in life/desperation/frustration
Feeling overwhelmed and unable to let the family live while he dies
Seeing the deaths as a necessary sacrifice
Believing the children cannot survive without him
Revenge against an estranged wife, or teaching her a lesson
Grief over losing the family in a divorce
Discipline gone too far
Possessiveness/entitlement/ownership
Psychosis
Self-enrichment
Projecting their self-hatred onto the children
Killing witnesses to abuse
A joint crime with the mother—erasing the family
Compassion
Duty to the family
Suicide by proxy
Jealousy of children who are getting involved with others
Difficulty adjusting to being a parent
A long tradition of abuse in the family that just continues
The idea that children must serve the parent’s needs

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/fathers_who_kill/3.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2012 02:04AM by atheist&happy:-).

Didn't read any of the posts, so this has probably been covered but here goes anyway.

Josh Powell is totally responsible for what he did. The church can't turn me into a murderer no matter what they try.

But that doesn't mean that it had nothing at all to do with it. Many people stay in a bad marriage way too long because the church tells them that they just need to be long suffering and forgive. Who knows, absent the church she might have left long before.

I personally know people who stayed way too long because of the church. One person had me very worried that she would be killed by her TBM husband. In the end, the cops killed him and the problem was solved. She stayed way too long because of what she was contantly taught about forgivness and turning the other cheek, being an eternal family etc.

If the OP had left even a little bit of room for the church to have had influence on the situation, without causing it, I would have agreed with the post.

... but then I read in an article that in 2009 Susan Powell had given her inactive Mormon husband an ultimatum that if he did not become an active Mormon and regain his temple recommend by their next wedding anniversary (in 2010), then she was going to divorce him (and, presumably, take his sons with her). Don't know what effect this had on him, but I can't help but wonder ....