I'm a NeverMo who has a general interest in all faiths and has read posts at this site on-and-off for years. I'm hoping someone with first-hand experience as a Mormon can help answer a question I have, which is, do many Mormons believe that they are as persecuted or oppressed as African Americans historically have been in the US?

The "backstory": I have a lovely LDS friend whom I have known for about a year. We met through a local club we belong to that has nothing to do with religion. We both have quite sarcastic, irreverent senses of humor, which I believe is the main reason we bonded quickly. Among other topics, almost from our first meeting, maybe the second, we joked about our religions. I am a (very) lapsed Roman Catholic but still identify as a Catholic, and I started it with jokes about pedophile priests, etc. She seemed genuinely amused when I also made joking comments about the LDS faith (and joined in with joking remarks about Mormons and Catholics herself).

I might add that I honestly do not believe any of my joking comments about Mormons were as outrageous or offensive as my comments about child-molesting priests would be to many Catholics--my comments were more along the lines of "Hey, don't forget to give the Missionaries my address!" or "Maybe you should tip the waiter--you're more used to tithing." (Hey, I'm not claiming my humor is exactly brilliant, but she genuinely seemed to find it funny.) Nonetheless, I also realize that joking about one's own religion or religious background and joking about someone else's are VERY different things! I wish now that I had kept that obvious point more in mind.

Well, last night we both attended a club Christmas party. Her husband, whom I had met briefly before a couple of times, was there, and at one point in the evening, he proceeded to tell me that "X [my friend] says you're one of her favorite people in this club--she really likes you and loves your sense of humor," etc. I was very touched and thanked him for conveying such nice sentiments. He then said, "But there's a problem..." I honestly thought he was going to say that I swear too much, since I know Mormons dislike swearing, and I admit that at times I do use a lot of bad language.

Instead, he continued by saying, "You probably don't realize this, but when you make fun of a Mormon person's faith, that's exactly like making fun of a black person." I was shocked, to say the least, but I immediately apologized profusely, first to him, and then when my friend returned to our table a few minutes later, to her. I might add that my apologies were completely sincere and that I did (and still do) deeply regret hurting my friend's feelings or offending her in any way.

Her husband--who, incidentally, is an avowed atheist and NeverMo--and I then had a genuinely cordial conversation for at least another 15 or 20 minutes about religion, during which he sounded like an apologist for the LDS faith more than anything else, despite being an atheist, and even though I told him that my jokes and joking remarks really had been just that--jokes, however foolish.

Well, I apologize for getting way off-topic here. Although I felt terrible about how I had hurt my friend, I also was still shocked and frankly a bit offended by her husband's comparison of jokes about the LDS to racism against African-Americans. I am white, but I did my PhD dissertation on racist depictions of African Americans in American literature, and I also teach courses on African-American slavery literature at a local college, where I have several black students from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds. So, while I would never claim to know what an African American feels if and when confronted with racism, I am not exactly ignorant about anti-black racism and its vile history, to say the least.

Therefore, shortly before I left the party, I took my friend's husband aside and said in a nice tone, "Y, I do have to disagree with you strongly about one thing--I simply cannot accept the point you made equating racism against African Americans with people making jokes or even being prejudiced about Mormons. They simply are not the same." He retorted, "Yes, they are. They are both minorities in this country, and so they both feel oppressed and are persecuted." I understand Mormons were indeed persecuted, sometimes violently, in their early days, but does this man really know nothing of African-American (and just "American") history with slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, etc? And he is not even a Mormon--he's an atheist!

I responded, "Sorry, but people are born with dark skin--it's an inherent trait. Mormonism, like Catholicism, is an ideology. People can choose whether to believe in it." Again, he countered that racism toward blacks and criticism of Mormons are "the same" because "They're both minorities and are persecuted." (Note his present tense--not that Mormons were persecuted at one time, but still are.)

However, because I did not want to look like I was trying to deflect attention from my admitted wrongdoing in hurting his wife's feelings, I just said, "Well, I can't agree, sorry," and left it at that.

I can't help wondering...was this simply my friend's husband's personal conclusion about comparing anti-black racism and oppression with anti-Mormon views? (Or, in my case, simply making LDS jokes?) Or, is this something many Mormons believe and that he would have heard from my friend and her relatives, etc? As a serious scholar and teacher of African-American lit and history, I am genuinely curious!

During all the "persecution" the lds felt during the prop 8 backlash, oaks said this:


"I see that as directly comparable to the intimidation of black people in the South for asserting their civil rights."

So yes, the delusion is widespread.

The Cog Dis on this would shatter my brain if I tried to put these two things together.

Wah! You're picking on us just because we want everyone to discriminate against the people we pick on.

Here's a link to the speech that not part of the problem mentioned.

http://beta-newsroom.lds.org/article/oaks-religious-freedom

I remembered when he said it last year and thought it was totally ridiculous. I mentioned it to a few Mormons I know and the ones I spoke with totally agreed with what Oaks said. I couldn't believe it, but yes many do feel like they are having the same treatment blacks did during the Civil Rights Era.

Mormons have a serious persecution complex. They simply cannot take criticism of any aspect of their faith. They are taught this persecution complex by their leaders. Most people in other religions can separate themselves from their church/religion, but Mormons generally can't. Their church is the ONLY true church on the "face of the Earth" led by a REAL prophet of God, just like Moses and Abraham and therefore there can't be anything wrong with their religion.

They have a very shady church history and have a lot of wacky beliefs so in order to keep their followers in check from questioning their beliefs, the leaders teach them that that any criticism they receive is from the "adversary" "attacking" the "faithful." They teach that this is how it will be because Satan and evil people hates the true church. In the "last days" "Anti-Mormons" will fight hard against the church because its true, blah blah blah.

Unfortunately this mindset extends too far and many Mormons can't seem to take criticism even if its warranted or just a joke. They see an "attack" on their church as an attack on them. They feel inseparably linked to the church.

Its rather pathetic but that's how many Mormons think.

BTW, I'm surprised by how vigilant her atheist husband was on "defending" her insecurity. If I were him I'd think she was being silly and I would think he would be quite averse to the Mormon church since he probably gets a lot of crap for, not only not being Mormon, but also an atheist.

I'm biracial and from the Southwest. I'm not Mormon and I've never been a member of the church but I grew up around Mormons, had Mormon friends, dated Mormons, and almost married a Mormon and I'm not an expert but I will put in my two cents worth. The sense of persecution is real, but only in recent years have they equated this with the sort of race-based racism that most people are familiar with. I've often thought about this myself. They really do have a sort of "people hate us just because we're Mormons" attitude but they never seemed to relate this to the African-American or Jewish (they think they are the "real" Jews) experience -- you would think people who told and retold horrific stories about Haun's Mill and Nauvoo could relate to what happened in Tulsa and Rosewood but it didn't work out that way. In contrast blacks and a sizeable number of whites, Jews and Catholics worked together to end segregation and racism. According to Mormon theology skin colour is a curse from God indicative of sin and "fence sitting" in the pre-existence. Now that it's no longer O.K. to be openly racist in public they (the LDS leadership) are trying to get them (the members) to relate to a well known sort of persecution--kind of like North Korea saying that everybody is out to get them because North Korea is so "perfect."

I don't think that an un-apologetic church that once put out this sort of material could EVER truly relate to the African-American Experience:

http://ldspamphlets.org/Christ_in_America.htm

but she went home and whined to her husband so he could fix you for her?

Oh my.

Heresy Wrote:
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> but she went home and whined to her husband so he
> could fix you for her?
>
> Oh my.

That did cross my mind, but to be fair to her, I have no proof that she asked him to intervene. Let's face it, she IS his wife, and they clearly love each other deeply; they also have three beautiful young daughters who are all being raised LDS, so obviously the atheist husband doesn't have a problem with the faith.... More to the point, he must actually be pro-Mormon to a degree if he is fine with his kids being raised in the church.

This is even though he also told me during our conversation that he considers all religions to be "equally stupid", or words to that effect. As I said in my previous post, he even went to considerable lengths to make arguments in favor of several points of Mormon theology, which to my knowledge I had never criticized or joked about. (For example, he kept arguing that Mormonism is a Christian denomination, despite my saying repeatedly that I personally don't care whether it's Christian or not--they can believe whatever they want, and why not just be proud of their faith regardless of whether others consider them to be Christians?) Sorry that I am going off-topic again, but the whole "I'm a proud atheist, and by the way, here's what's so great about Mormonism" thing was very confusing to me. In fact, one reason that I assumed my friend could tolerate jokes about her faith is that I thought, "How devout a Mormon can she be if she married not only a non-Mormon but an atheist?"

I guess my rambling point is that I can't assume she asked him to say anything to me; it could well have just been a loving spouse's natural (and laudable) desire to defend his wife. However, it is VERY clear from all of your comments that he must have heard the "We're just as oppressed as African-Americans" line from her, or at least from one of her relatives.

I really appreciate everyone's comments here. I wish I'd visited this website much more frequently in the past, because then I wouldn't have been stupid enough to make Mormon jokes (or at least not so many of them) with my friend. What saddens me now is that I really do care for her--she is one of only two of my many friends for whom I bought a Christmas gift--and if Mormons are indeed raised to be paranoid of "anti-Mormons" and those who criticize their faith, well...probably I have to assume the friendship is over. :-( Even though I apologized repeatedly, how can she ever trust me again after being raised on a diet of "everyone hates Mormons and is out to get us"? Thanks again everyone for the education.

Meant to put this link in too:

"Race Problems -- As They Effect The Church"

Mark E. Petersen, 27th August 1954

http://www.mormonismi.net/mep1954/00.html

I know Mormons who think it's a ridiculous comparison, but there are plenty of members who do think that way, because of talks like Oaks' and the persecution/martyr complex. It amazes me that they have the gall to co-opt the African- American experience like that. But it's like the phone call I posted that had church spokeswoman Kim Farah deflecting and defending simultaneously. "We don't understand why people don't like us. We're not doing anything wrong, Prop 8 isn't about civil rights and the African-American community we like to identify ourselves with doesn't think it's about civil rights either. We have a right to defend our beliefs and the wicked will do anything to persecute the righteous blah blah blah." I'm beginning to think too, that Prop 8 has become some kind of yardstick. The valiant ones who got out there as foot-soldiers are the ones that will stay and become more entrenched; those of us who knew what it was and wanted no part of it, are collateral damage that can be jettisoned. I'm in Cali; Prop H8 is what got the ball rolling toward the exit for me. Anyway, yeah I'd say there's a strong desire to be perceived as persecuted good guys to gain whatever mileage can be had, and for some reason playing the African-American card seems like a winning hand to them.

95 percent of mormon persecution conssts of things totally untrue and made up out of whole cloth or mormons being prosecuted for their crimes.

The other 5 percent? Polygamy. Mormons really were attacked for being polygamists. The republican party was founded to wipe out slavery and mormon polygamy.

Mormons were never remotely in the same boat as African americans - hell they owned slaves and supported slavery. In 1852 Brigham Young was given the option to be a free territory or a slave one, and he ordered the legislature to make Utah a slave territory.

To equate mormons, whose vile haterd and discrimination against african-americans is well-documented, WITH african-americans, is an insult to anyone with an IQ over 50.

My mom loves to always say that the mormon "extinction order" in the 1800's is just the same as the holocaust was, and why aren't more people "remembering" that? Sigh...

girlincognito Wrote:
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> My mom loves to always say that the mormon
> "extinction order" in the 1800's is just the same
> as the holocaust was, and why aren't more people
> "remembering" that? Sigh...

Oh, wow, I just noticed your post...and I thought the husband's comparison to the African-American experience was bad! Wow...that is truly appalling.

"Because he dared to say that Mormons were persecuted like the European Jews in WWII. What an a$$hole. (Oaks, not Olbermann.)"

I got that wrong, so I'm editing it. He compared Mormons to Blacks in the Civil Rights struggle, not Jews. But he's still an a$$hole. I'm not taking that one back.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 11:08PM by cludgie.

But you lost me at apologizing for making fun of Mormons.

LOL! Maybe you have a point, now that I've read these comments.

i remember as a child constantly being told how persecuted early mormons were, killed and raped and tarred and feathered. and of course gov boggs "extermination order". what i wasn't told was about the mountain meadows massacre, jsmith destroying newspaper in nauvoo, etc. and then there was my dad always talking about how on his mission he almost got killed numerous times for being mormon. i don't believe most of it.

Is it true that Joseph Smith was murdered by Mormons and not (as some Mormons have told me) by anti-Mormons?

My quite intelligent niece told me that she routinely and constantly felt discriminated against as a Mormon at Arizona State University. She also noted that she had never felt discriminated against for being female.

I must say that these comments took my breath away. My conclusion was that she was feeling the effects of sharing her quite distinctive and unusual Mormon belief system with mainstream students, who generally (being college students) might speak their mind about those beliefs. I was quite disappointed that she would label this "discrimination". And I hoped that she would have cause to continue to not feel discriminated against for being female.

deborah2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My quite intelligent niece told me that she
> routinely and constantly felt discriminated
> against as a Mormon at Arizona State University.
> She also noted that she had never felt
> discriminated against for being female.
>
> I must say that these comments took my breath
> away. My conclusion was that she was feeling the
> effects of sharing her quite distinctive and
> unusual Mormon belief system with mainstream
> students, who generally (being college students)
> might speak their mind about those beliefs. I
> was quite disappointed that she would label this
> "discrimination". And I hoped that she would
> have cause to continue to not feel discriminated
> against for being female.


When you mention the reaction of other college students to your niece's beliefs, it reminds me again of another aspect of the conversation with my friend's husband; at one point I asked him if he did not believe Mormons may be "discriminated" against in large part because they work hard to convert others and are thus 1) often bothering non-Mormons, and 2) putting details of their beliefs out there, as opposed to other faiths which generally have to be approached in order to begin a conversion process. He either didn't get my point or chose to ignore it,

The #1 thing to know about Mormons is Satan's workin' overtime to destroy their church. This next part is more just my personal take, but I think Mormon Satan is all about destroying the institution, because he's mad that Heavenly Father chose Jesus' plan instead of his. He's not trying to get your soul for purposes of eternal torment, like other Satans. Sure, he'll mess you up and you'll be eternally sorry, but with Mormon Satan you're more of a means to the end of destroying the church. He's jealous that you have a body and he doesn't, and he will try to get your body, but it's not really personal.

Again, that's just my take. They do actively teach that Satan is out to destroy the church. You're here right now because he's using you to lead your friend and her husband astray. He tells people to lie and make stuff up to make the church look bad. That's why the rest of us are here. We have little Satan's minions whispering in our ears, telling us what to type. With some of us it may even be Satan himself, depending on how extra super elite we were in the Pre-existence.

Anyway, Satan is out there, on the job. So there's that, and the early Saints having been horribly persecuted for no reason. My mother actually said that to me a few years ago, and that's basically what they teach. Of course there is a reason--because Satan was trying to destroy the church then, too. It's just not common knowledge that the Saints did stuff to bring on this horrible persecution.

So that's where I think the persecution complex comes from. The church leaders feed and nurture it, because it helps to keep the members isolated and fearful. As if frickin' Satan hiding in your coffee cup and waiting to jump out of the TV and stuff, not to mention buzzing around your head, wasn't scary enough!

I think most Mormons know, deep down, that their religion is seriously flawed and wrong and weird, but they're not allowed to say so. It's pounded into their heads that those thoughts come from Satan, so they just stuff them down and feel defensive all the time.

As for the belief that the persecution is like that of African Americans, I'd say that depends on an individual's exposure to and empathy with African Americans. As a group, I wouldn't bet against the majority agreeing with your friend's husband.

Thank you for the additional insights. I had zero knowledge about an LDS obsession with Satan. As a comparison, I went to Catholic schools for twelve years and had daily religion classes, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the times the devil was ever brought up, and we never, EVER heard that anyone was out to get Catholics, hated Catholics or the church, etc. So, this is a new concept to me!

Sadly, my friend and I had planned for her to bring her oldest daughter over today to play with mine, but I have heard zilch from her (and normally she would have emailed me the night before to confirm). I guess I'm now in Satan's camp! :-(

Welcome to the minefield that is the Mormon experience. I sadly and without hyperbole can state that it is exceptionally difficult for a NeverMO or ExMO to have anything but a dysfunctional relationship with a TBM. If you are a NeverMo, you are at some level seen as a potential convert, and an ExMo you are at some level seen as a traitor.

Most white LDS members born and raised in Utah have no idea what persecution is. They have no clue about racism, having never experienced it from the receiving end. Many Utah TBM are blind to their own racists actions towards others. Other than the Governor Boggs extermination order, what can they show?

Can they show us mass graves in Missouri where mormons were gunned down? Can they show us historical markers of massacre sites across the United States? Can they show any of their churches that were firebombed with people inside? How many mormons have been hanged by anti-mormon crowds? How many mormons have been dragged behind trucks on gravel roads? How many mormons have had swastikas branded onto their bodies in the last year? How many mormons have had their ancestral grave sites desecrated and robbed?

Poking fun at their faith is nothing in comparison to what Black people and others endure even now in Utah.

For Mr. Oaks to even make the comparison was obscene, to say the least.

I would say it was harder for me to let go of my fear of Satan than my fear of God.
Mormons are taught that Satan is a living, personal devil driven by sheer jealousy, and out to destroy as much as he can solely for spite. We're taught that a third of all the spirit children of God (our supposed brothers and sisters) were banished to the earth as haunting spirits to tempt and torment humans, a job they supposedly do so reliably sheerly out of spite for us, for ruining their sure-shot under Satan's would-be plan.
So a Mormon has a besieged mindset.
They don't see Satanic influences as just an after-midnight or halloweeny thing, but as a continuous seige every hour of the day. Satan tempts you to masturbate, to not wash your hands after using the toilet, to skip flossing your teeth, to say shit if you stub your toe, in addition to real misdeeds like abuse and stealing. He also tempts you to fall for logical arguments, question the Lords annointed servants (the leaders of the church), and fall for heresy. "The World" is largely under the power of Satan in the Mormon paradigm, barely balanced by God's calculated counter-equivalencies. EVERYTHING is contaminated by Satan; government, education, business, all the things Mormons deeply value, they also deeply suspect. I was a biology major and had to always reconcile the gospel and evolution by twisting them both.

So, when your messin' with a Mormon, just remember that he/she may have just "seen the devil", which may be a daily occurrence for him/her. It makes them hypervigilant, but only about certain things, since in their paradigm even all the small things are sorted into "of God" and "of Satan". For example, chocolate is safe and OK with God, but coffee is Satan trying to snare them, and criticizing a politician is perfectly OK but criticizing a Mormon leader is Satan trying to snare them, and it's OK to talk about sex but talking about the temple is Satan trying to snare them. So a Mormon can suddenly get wierd on you, if you accidentally bring up something arbitrarily sensitive to them.

Thus, yes, they have a persecution complex, because since their superstition is not true, it inevitably rubs against daily realities, which they interpret as Satan on the job.

Now, there are occasional real hate-crimes against Mormons. There've been arsons, and a Mormon bishop was murdered at a church this year, targeted as such. And, the Missouri extermination order and explusion actually happened. Any fair-minded person is appalled by these attacks. Difference is, Mormons blame Satan for baldly raving against the truth just because it's the truth, whereas exmos tend to consider it a predictable extreme toward assertive man-made mettling in peoples lives, ie, trying to control people.

Is this persecuted Mormon church the same church who had trouble understanding why Jews didn't want victims of the Holocaust dead-dunked? And kept doing it after being asked by the Jewish community not to?

and may I suggest that your mo-friend encouraged the humor that you both equally participated in, i.e. she also apparently made subtle humorous "irreverant" comments about the Catholic church of equal levity. For her to complain to her husband about this, is typical. This social strangeness, if you will, is typical among mormons. Its a hypersensitive persecutory complex, wherein they can dish it out, but they can't take it. Everthing and anything remotely negative that people say about TSCC, whether true, documented, and/or factually historical is regarded as "persecution". Remember, its a frickin' cult, and cult followers are weird. I think your friend and her husband are wierd. You just now seeing it.

I agree with you, the comparison between "blacks" and "mormons" is totally outrageous on so many levels. Some of their so-called "persecutions" were merely there own violation of common law, and the resultant enforcement of law. For instance, Joseph Smith would say that he was persecuted after the Kirkland Bank collapse, as he galloped to Missouri trying to escape the law. The truth of the matter is that he was a criminal, and was fleeing justice after defrauding many of his followers out of their life savings. Most of the so called "persecution" was just the law catching up to them for marrying 14 year olds, marrying other mens wives, stealing cattle, etc.