From: lee@wang.com (Lee Story)
Subject: Re: religious bigotry (was: It can HAPPEN in *IOWA*)
Organization: Wang Laboratories, Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: 10 Apr 92 13:48:21
	<1992Apr7.204127.22593@midway.uchicago.edu>
	<1992Apr8.025514.17450@queernet.org>
	<1992Apr8.055551.11041@midway.uchicago.edu>


(nora gayle rivkis) writes:
  (Roger B.A. Klorese) writes:
    (nora gayle rivkis) writes:
   >|> You're making me ashamed to have ever been naive enough to believe
   >|> that people who have faced bigotry are less likely to commit it.

That does seem to be a common opinion today, but I honestly can't
imagine why.  Where are the Toynbees and Ortegas to tell us to look at
the record of the past?  What seems to have happened throughout
history is that a group of people under unwarrented and unsolicited
attack (whether the Germans under economic attack in the Weimar
republic, or the Mormons under attack for their social conventions and
beliefs in New York or Ohio) closes in upon itself and becomes fertile
ground a demagogic leader (of which there is always a ready supply),
for xenophobia, and for future bigotry.

Should I erase the above?  No---I did not compare the Mormons with the
Nazis (though I'll probably get hate mail anyways).  I compared the
pre-to-early-Mormons with a people some of whom became Nazis.  But I
hope Mr(s) b-cpu doesn't read this.

Roger:
   >That's not bigotry.  I stated a very simple fact: that if you
   >identify with a sect and do not change it, you have every right to
   >be expected to carry its beliefs.

Nora:
   I disagree -- if you were right, there would be a separate sect for
   every person in the world. Sects are general groupings, and can be
   expected to behave like any other general grouping -- has some basic
   things in common, but you'd be dumb to expect everyone in it to agree
   with everything said at the top.

I have to agree with Roger here.  It's not a matter of the people
presently "at the top" giving optional directions.  Western religions
are pretty well defined by their written doctrines plus their
well-known and traditional customs; and the intolerant principles of
the Mormons, from which flow their coercive practices, are matters of
dogma.  They fully expect their members to follow this dogma, and are
quite ready to ban those who disagree.  (Remember that stereotypical
individualist "jack Mormon" raft guide, Seldom Seen Smith?)

They are far from unique: unless one makes (nominal) obeisance to a
ridiculous set of dogmas known as "the Apostles' Creed" one is not
admitted to full membership in most Christian denominations.
Personally, I realized I couldn't do this at the age of 12, and on
this one matter have not changed my opinion in 35 years.  Reading the
Bible, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, "Science and Health", "The Book of
Mormon", etc. etc. has only reinforced this.  (Admittedly it's easy to
refuse, since the only penalty is burning in Hell forever.)  Indeed,
if there is a sect for me it has precisely one adherent.

Of course in the usual anti-individualist manner of religions, they'll
insist that you cannot actually separate yourself from them, but must
remain an "excommunicated" or "lapsed" or "non-practicing" or "jack"
Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, Jew (despite people here complaining
that this word does not describe a religious belief, I know of no
other less awkward phrase than "adherent of the religion of Judaism"),
or whatever.

I do recognize the likely contradiction in my own views: On the one
hand I appreciate communities, especially those less transitory than
mere communities-of-interest (and so rather Nora's quoting from the
Kaddish as a .sig).  There's a much humbler quote which describes my
feeling: "Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in."
At the same time I suspect that a good deal of discriminatory and
nonsensical mumbo-jumbo (and dubious charismatic leadership) is needed
to hold such communities together.
--

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        Let your mind go, and your body will follow.
                   _L.A._Story_
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     (^^above part of .sig stolen, but heck, it's my name^^)
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  Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
              (Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.elections,misc.taxes,alt.society.civil-liberty