Brad Wilcox's fireside for youth quotes

[malkie]

...
I ask again, how is a white supremacist, racist, misogynist still employed in any capacity by BYU or the Church?

He fits well enough.

Also, firing him would be an admission that the critics were right, the criticisms valid.

[Moksha]

Wonder if Brad could sit down with Kwaku and Cardon Elis to work on some new material?

[pistolero]

Right, but why do you dislike Bill unReel so much?

- Doc

Bumping for Bought Yahoo.

- Doc

There were some beautiful interactions on the Mormonism Live call-in last night between BY and BR. You could feel the sexual tension from thousands of miles away.

[pistolero]

Wonder if Brad could sit down with Kwaku and Cardon Elis to work on some new material?

Both were very keen to be arch-defenders-in-chief on Brad Wilcox's Facebook apology comments ... although they are a very poor substitute for Debs.

[pistolero]

Has Brad resigned from BYU and stepped down from his calling yet? If not, he doesn’t accept the magnitude of his error. He hasn’t started repenting until he resigns.

I think the answer to him not resigning from BYU is best summarised by President Ballard. "Where will you go?"

Honestly, who would want this guy? Is there a market for anyone like him outside of BYU?

[Moksha]

Honestly, who would want this guy? Is there a market for anyone like him outside of BYU?

I could see Elder Wilcox being called to the Utah State Legislature.

[Rivendale]

Honestly, who would want this guy? Is there a market for anyone like him outside of BYU?

I could see Elder Wilcox being called to the Utah State Legislature.

I wonder if he would join in a standing ovation for hot tubbing with a 15 year year old. https://www.pressreader.com/usa/las-veg ... 9985068316

[Philo Sofee]

One thing I have learned from such in-depth research into the Joseph Smith Papyri and the Book of Abraham is they never have to apologize, because in their own minds, they really are not at all and never have been in any way incorrect...

You’re right, and I’m confident Brad doesn’t think he was wrong. Something Brad might want to #ponderize is why the Holy Ghost didn’t warn him…

Has Brad resigned from BYU and stepped down from his calling yet? If not, he doesn’t accept the magnitude of his error. He hasn’t started repenting until he resigns.

Jana Riess comments on this incident:

After listening to the talk, I think his apologies barely scratched the surface, especially since they didn’t identify what was wrong about what he said about race.

In the Feb. 6 fireside, Wilcox began his remarks on priesthood by saying he did not wish to oversimplify a complex issue before he proceeded to oversimplify a complex issue. He adopted a mocking tone for an unnamed interlocutor who questioned why people of African descent were subject to a racial ban for most of the history of the church:

“’How come the Blacks didn’t get the priesthood until 1978? What’s up with that, Brother Wilcox? Brigham Young was a jerk. Members of the church were prejudiced.’

“Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe instead of saying, ‘Why did the Blacks have to wait until 1978?’ maybe what we should be asking is, ‘Why did the whites and other races have to wait until 1829?’ One thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine years they waited. …

“When you look at it like that, then instead of trying to feel like you have to figure out God’s timeline, we can just be grateful! Grateful right down to our socks that the Blacks received the priesthood in ‘78. Grateful right down to our socks that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had the priesthood restored to them in 1829.”

By his logic, it doesn’t matter that Black people were oppressed for so many decades. They have the priesthood now, don’t they? Why are people still bellyaching about that? What really matters is white men! We had to go without the priesthood for 18 centuries, which is way worse.

Wilcox’s comment about not questioning “God’s timeline” reveals that he believes the priesthood/temple ban was the result of a decision God made. That God is a racist, essentially, doling out punishments and restrictions to people based on no other reason than the color of their skin.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/02 ... ds-leader/

The fact that Wilcox kept referring to it as “the priesthood ban” leaves women out of the equation entirely, as if women were unaffected by the church’s racist policies. So let’s remember this was never just about priesthood. All Black members were denied access to the temple. Denied the privilege of having their families sealed together for eternity. Denied the endowment ritual that Latter-day Saints believe is a prerequisite for reaching the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom. Condemned, in other words, to second-class status forever.

Jana sees other troubling aspects of Brad’s rant…

His tone is disdainful toward women, or at least toward women who dare to ask why women still don’t hold the priesthood in the LDS Church. The mocking tone continued as he adopted the stance of another unnamed interlocutor:
“’Yeah, but Brother Wilcox, how come the girls don’t have the priesthood? … What’s up with that?’
“Girls, you’re going to hear a lot of people say a lot of things and many of them say them with very angry voices. But just because somebody’s angry doesn’t necessarily make him or her right. Just because somebody’s loud doesn’t necessarily make him or her right.”
He then recounted a story about being at a professional conference wearing a BYU badge and being confronted by a female attendee:

“Some lady walked up to me that I didn’t even know, sees my nametag, and she’s like, (mumbles) ‘Brigham Young University … ' (shouts) ‘WHY DON’T YOU GIVE WOMEN THE PRIESTHOOD?!’
“Just like that! And I said, ‘Good to meet you, too.’
“And then I asked, ‘What’s the priesthood?’
“And she said, ‘Well, uh, I don’t know, but I think the women should have it.’
“Seriously? ‘I don’t know, but the women should have it?’ What’s malaria? ‘I don’t know, but the women should have it?’
“I mean, I’m going to let her voice that’s very shallow drown out my testimony, just cause she’s loud? No way.”
Ah, yes, the trope of the loud and angry feminist. How dare this woman ask him to explain why women in his denomination are denied access to decision-making or leadership opportunities. The nerve of her.

Brad is a racist misogynist. How can BYU continue to employ him? How can the Church continue to allow him unfitted access to the youth of the Church? Jan provides more insight…

If there’s a thread that runs through the entire talk, it’s this scornful attitude toward anyone Wilcox perceives as marginal in some way.

For example, he mocks a student who once came to him to confess that he didn’t believe in Joseph Smith anymore but still believed in God and Jesus. He mocks a former employee who was disappointed in her Protestant church’s wedding vows (“as long as we both shall live,” Wilcox parrots disdainfully) but impressed with what Wilcox told her about Latter-day Saint marriages for time and all eternity. Wilcox was horrified by the way she then rewrote her ceremony to include language from Latter-day Saint sealings, because her church did not have the authority to seal anyone — in his words, they “just didn’t have permission” from God.

The scorn extends to practitioners of other branches of Christianity, whether he’s claiming that the pastor who performed that woman’s wedding demanded extra payment when she changed the ceremony (somehow I have a hard time believing this happened) or he’s describing how he one-upped a different Protestant pastor at an evangelical-Latter-day Saint dialogue. That “poor guy” just didn’t understand about the need for prophets, bless his misguided little Protestant heart.

Other Christians, Wilcox surmises, are merely “playing church,” the way his kids used to do with their stuffed animals when they were little. (He approved of these adorable pretend sacrament meetings, though he acknowledges he “got a little nervous” when his daughter started trying to bless the sacrament.) In his view, non-Latter-day Saint Christians are sincere but confused, lacking the authority to do anything but “play” at their faith.

Brad is disrespectful and bigoted.

Jana summarises…

This fireside is filled with stories of Wilcox correcting those he sees as wrong, which appears to be everyone who is not over him in the Latter-day Saint hierarchy. His student is wrong, the feminist at the conference is wrong, the Protestant pastors are wrong, the woman who rewrote her vows is wrong, the people who point out the church’s racist history are wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The talk contains tale after tale of him either correcting these imbeciles to their faces or scoffing at them behind their backs.

What the talk does not contain is a single story of him listening deeply to people’s pain, asking where that pain might be coming from, or trying to understand what it might feel like to be a person who is not a white Latter-day Saint American male. That’s some serious privilege right there. Undoing it is going to require a lot more soul-searching than his two carefully worded not-quite-apologies suggest he’s undertaking.

I ask again, how is a white supremacist, racist, misogynist still employed in any capacity by BYU or the Church?

Probably because the Holy Ghost testified to them that what he said is what they believe?

[Rivendale]

Things are getting ugly there.https://np.reddit.com/r/exmormon/commen ... nts_today/

[IHAQ]

Had a student used their valedictorian speech to say what Wilcox said they would have been vociferously criticised by someone like Elder Holland. Chances are they would have had their educational credits removed and be facing Church discipline. The Church’s PR department would have put out a statement condemning racism and reaffirming their firm stance on rooting it.

When Professor Randy Bott made comments about the Priesthood Ban both BYU and the Church took a very strong and public stance against him.

“The positions attributed to BYU professor Randy Bott in a recent Washington Post article absolutely do not represent the teachings and doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the Church said in a news release issued Wednesday (see inset). “We do not tolerate racism in any form.”

BYU University Communications also released a statement yesterday.

“The comments attributed to Professor Bott do not reflect the teachings in the classroom at Brigham Young University,” said Dean of Religious Education Terry Ball.

https://universe.byu.edu/2012/02/29/pro ... gton-post/

Because it’s a white middle class male priesthood holding church authority who’s done it, the Church has been silent and BYU has taken no action to censure or reprimand Wilcox. Different rules apply I guess…

If the Church said in 2012 (a decade ago) that it does not “tolerate racism in any form.” then why is the following still part of the core scriptural canon and doctrine of the Church?

21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
22 And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.
23 And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... 5?lang=eng

Perhaps President Nelson can answer that one…