Blaming it on the culture

[_Buffalo]

This is a time-honored tradition amongst the LDS people to blame anything unpleasant about church on the culture rather than institution. However, I've never come across a "cultural" artifact that was troubling that didn't meet at least one of the following criteria:

A) Presents it self more strongly the closer you get to church headquarters
B) Has roots in some general authority or other, either in sermons or in practice


Whether it's attitudes about blacks & women, homophobia, anti-psychologist attitudes, anti-science attitudes, judgmental attitudes, etc., it all seems to emanate from a single source and gets weaker the further away you get from it: