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Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 11:17 pm
by _moksha
My friend Bill at Beliefnet has a very interesting post I would like to share:
When I joined the Church, back in '82, nobody would have accused Mormons of being leftists but the Church was definitely center right. It remained as much through the mid-80s. Most Mormons I knew of were staunch Republicans, but they were careful not to buy into the NeoCon tendencies of some of Reagan's brood. Ronald Reagan, himself, wasn't the NeoCon they thought he was, and many LDS people I knew of were loathe to "go all the way" with the Republican Party.
Sometime in the late 80s, things shifted. Even as Ezra Taft Benson took the leadership - in a much softer form than the Elder Benson who hated Civil Rights and told BYU students to show some "integrity" by refusing financial aid - the Church was just beginning to jump on the Republican bandwagon. During my 6 1/2 years at BYU, I watched the great shift to the right, often in frustration, sometimes in horror. I saw professors get the ax, some of them ex'd on the way out. Right-wing politics got thicker and more a part of daily life. It was weird.
It continued, even after I left BYU for Florida, one of the original states of the Confederacy. Things have got to get pretty right-wing for Mormons to even come close to rednecks in the "yeehah" parade. I don't live in South Florida, which is New York City transplanted to Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. I don't live in North Florida, which is Gomer Pyle country. I live in Central Florida - between Tampa and Orlando - which is the landing strip for Midwesterners. I'm used to bickering between nice Midwesterners and displaced rednecks, with the latter flying their rebel flags and holding their Klan rallies. These are not folks the Church should be seeking approval from.
But since George W. Bush's takeover in 2000, and spiking through the 9/11 aftermath - when all things right became all things American - the Church has jumped on the bandwagon with reckless abandon. Somewhere between the "real Mormons" who took over BYU and the "real Americans" who have taken over the Church, a reckoning has been in order. Every tree shall be judged by the fruit it bears. In this case, with circumstances on their side, the right wing of the Church has made its move. Under its leadership, the Church has taken on an imperialist spirit, finding its own axis of evil with evangelicals and big-money Republicans.
And these folks have managed to steer the Church right off a cliff.
The "Mormon moment," which began with tolerance and the beginnings of acceptance from people of goodwill, and which spiked with the Olympics, has been squandered on a political version of Zion's Camp. Thinking it would get this big pat on the head - from concerned citizens everywhere - the Church has plunged its fortunes into Prop 8. But instead of being cast as a kind of cultural messiah, the Church has knit itself a cape made from leftover rebel flags. The Church is now considered a fellow traveler with the bigots of the right wing. People now link Mormons with evangelicals. And as this newfound attention goes south, the Church is being distinguished as "evangelicals cut from the weirdest cloth."
Thanks, Prop 8 mor(m)ons. Thank you for doing one thing right: You have created a new crisis that will weed your kind out. I suspect that the future for the Church will not sound like something out of a John Birch newsletter. It will involve a kind of inside-job of demoting, reassigning, transferring and otherwise setting at arms length the kind of idiot fascist fringe that got the Church into this mess. Every Custer must eventually meet its Bighorn.
I can't imagine a better testing ground than this. Thanks, Prop h8ters. You performed magnificently. Enjoy the ride down.
To paraphrase Oliver Hardy, what a pickle we have gotten into.
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 11:28 pm
by _JohnStuartMill
Hear, hear!
Solid majorities of young people are in favor of full marriage equality. As the older generation dies out, the Church is going to find itself in a similar position to the Bob Jones University freaks.
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 12:05 am
by _EAllusion
The LDS Church and its culture's relationship with the Republican party seems to mirror the rest of fundamentalist Christians in the United States in roughly the same time period. It's a reciprocal relationship where one of the quirks is that conservative Christian culture picks up views related to the ebb and flow of Republican political discourse that have nothing to do with their religion proper per se. Global warming skepticism is one that springs to mind, if only because it's now causing schisms that weren't there 10 years ago.
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 12:14 am
by _harmony
The Lord will not allow the church to be led astray.
For now we see through a glass darkly.
Beware of secret combinations.
Let your light so shine that all men may see your good works...
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
Do not put your trust in the arm of flesh.
We don't seem to learn from the past, do we?
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:31 am
by _bcspace
Most Mormons I knew of were staunch Republicans, but they were careful not to buy into the NeoCon tendencies of some of Reagan's brood
And what tendencies would those be? The fact remains that to be a leftist today is to be in opposition to significant LDS doctrine and policy. There is a drain in conservativism where liberal clap trap goes, but liberals have no drain at all which is why their toilet is stopped up and overflowing.
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:35 am
by _JohnStuartMill
bcspace wrote:Most Mormons I knew of were staunch Republicans, but they were careful not to buy into the NeoCon tendencies of some of Reagan's brood
And what tendencies would those be? The fact remains that to be a leftist today is to be in opposition to significant LDS doctrine and policy. There is a drain in conservativism where liberal clap trap goes, but liberals have no drain at all which is why their toilet is stopped up and overflowing.
Oh, you're just mad because you never graduated high school!
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:38 am
by _bcspace
And what tendencies would those be? The fact remains that to be a leftist today is to be in opposition to significant LDS doctrine and policy. There is a drain in conservativism where liberal clap trap goes, but liberals have no drain at all which is why their toilet is stopped up and overflowing.
Oh, you're just mad because you never graduated high school!
I've never known a liberal to be very educated in the sense of having learned the lessons of history.
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:38 am
by _Trevor
All of that stuff sounds so familiar. Nice to hear that I am not the only one who perceived recent Church history in this way. The problem with his analysis, as I see it, is that the "Prop h8ters," as he calls them, are the leadership of the Church itself. So, I guess it will take a while before things change to his liking. Otherwise, I guess he could leave like I have.
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:56 am
by _JohnStuartMill
bcspace wrote:I've never known a liberal to be very educated in the sense of having learned the lessons of history.
This is an intriguing point, coming from someone who can barely talk in complete sentences.
Re: Down the Conservative Drain
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 3:06 am
by _Phouchg
Two possible metaphors for the LDS church:
1.The LDS church is like the unpopular kid in high school who is desperate to be accepted by the cool kids crowd. Unpopular kid shares some of the opinions of the cool kids and thinks "hey, maybe if I do this thing that we all like, they will accept me and we can join forces!". They all start working together and it seems like all the kids will finally get along and be friends.
Then the unpopular kid tells the cool kids they aren't really "cool" but have been taught false things that made them think they are cool. Unpopular kid takes over the event they are all participating in, it blows up in their faces, and the cool kids take the unpopular kid into the bathroom and give him a swirly and a wedgie and tell him he's a weirdo and not a true "cool kid".
OR
2. The LDS church is the ugly girl at the dance who is all dressed up and is convinced that everybody wants to dance with her, but all the hot guys are laughing at her behind her back while they dance with the cute Catholic girls.
take your pick
fook