Is FAIR/MAD Hypocritical?
Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 2:38 am
There is a new thread over on FAIR which gives us a little more insight into the apologetic psyche. I don't really follow MAD much, but the owner of the board is distraught over a group of LDS on the board sympathetic to polygamy. It kind of reminds me of a situation I was in a few years ago. It rained like crazy in those days and the weeds would shoot up, sometimes it would seem like only days before they were waist high. Once the rain would stop, I'd spray them with weed killer, and then after they dried out, I'd take the weed-wacker to them and finish the cleanup. But then, a few weeks or months later, it would rain again, and a new kind of weed, different from the previous would shoot up in the space created. I went through three or four different sets of very different looking, odd weeds during that very rainy time.
Now that MAD has banned all the critics, in the space for opposition left open, it would appear a number of Mormons have gathered, Chapel Mormons, possibly, who hold beliefs in Mormon doctrines like polygamy that Internet Mormons find embarrasing. Now, do you all remember as I do, not so long ago the moderators at FAIR making a big to-do about how MAD is a forum by Mormons, FOR Mormons, and that the critics are on thin ice from the get-go? This owner of the board explicitly refers to these LDS who believe in the eventual return of polygamy as TBMs. Acknowledging their place in the church. Yet now, the lie is revealed, for FAIR/MAD is not a place "for Mormons", because these TBMs are now being told to leave MAD alone and get their own board. As we all already knew, MAD is a place for Internet Mormons and apologetics. In fact, these "TBMs" are being castigated as worse than critics!
A further irony, is that a key charge being leveled at these TBMs, is that they "denigrated statements from modern prophets and apostles." Wait?! What happened to every member a prophet? What happened to the "prophets of the pew," free to get their own inspiration from the Holy Ghost to determine doctrine? It would seem that the apologists hold some hefty double standards! Only apologists are allowed to say, "He was speaking as a man! It was only his opinion!"
Now that MAD has banned all the critics, in the space for opposition left open, it would appear a number of Mormons have gathered, Chapel Mormons, possibly, who hold beliefs in Mormon doctrines like polygamy that Internet Mormons find embarrasing. Now, do you all remember as I do, not so long ago the moderators at FAIR making a big to-do about how MAD is a forum by Mormons, FOR Mormons, and that the critics are on thin ice from the get-go? This owner of the board explicitly refers to these LDS who believe in the eventual return of polygamy as TBMs. Acknowledging their place in the church. Yet now, the lie is revealed, for FAIR/MAD is not a place "for Mormons", because these TBMs are now being told to leave MAD alone and get their own board. As we all already knew, MAD is a place for Internet Mormons and apologetics. In fact, these "TBMs" are being castigated as worse than critics!
A further irony, is that a key charge being leveled at these TBMs, is that they "denigrated statements from modern prophets and apostles." Wait?! What happened to every member a prophet? What happened to the "prophets of the pew," free to get their own inspiration from the Holy Ghost to determine doctrine? It would seem that the apologists hold some hefty double standards! Only apologists are allowed to say, "He was speaking as a man! It was only his opinion!"