Quite a salacious and fascinating new piece has appeared on the
Mormon Interpreter blog,
authored by Allen Wyatt. The piece deals with a book by Ronald V. Huggins entitled,
Lighthouse: Jerald & Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism. Wyatt opens the review with some praise, saying that he found the book to be "a real page-turner," but notes that his primary motive in reading the book is because *he*, Allen Wyatt, is mentioned:
A non-member friend of mine, whom I only see at such conferences, mentioned that his wife had been reading a book and something caught her eye. It was a reference to me, and she (and her husband) were intrigued by the mention.
It turns out the the book recounts the Tanners' lawsuit against Wyatt and FAIR, dating back to roughly 2004/2005. For those who are unfamiliar with the case, Wyatt provides some useful details:
I first became aware of the lawsuit on Monday, April 25, 2005. I was sitting in my home office, in Mesa, Arizona, when that afternoon a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune contacted me by phone. I was asked for comment on a lawsuit the Tanners had filed against me and my company. I had no idea what the reporter was talking about, as the Tanners had not seen fit to file a cease-and-desist demand, nor to utilize any form of communication to let me know that a lawsuit was coming.
He then cites a passage from Huggins's book:
After being on the receiving end of lawsuits, the Tanners found themselves back in court in 2005, this time as the plaintiff. The Mormon-themed Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR), aided by Allen Wyatt, had registered thirteen internet domain names that led to sites that mimicked the appearance of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry [Page 145]site, but with links that directed people to FAIR articles instead of the Tanners’ work. The choice of the domain names made it appear that they were intentionally trying to create confusion on the web to draw traffic away from the Tanners’ website. For example, the Tanners’ website was
www.utlm.org, but if someone typed in utahlighthouseministry.com, or even sandratanner.com and jeraldtanner.org, they were directed to FAIR’s websites. They even exploited the frequent misspelling of Jerald’s name with a G instead of a J. Sandra filed suit to prevent “the exploitation of the ministry trademark and our personal names, and to ensure that those seeking our information are not misled.”
Wyatt reports that "Huggins is correct that the case did drag on for years. In virtually everything else he reports, however, he is materially incorrect." What follows at this point is fascinating, and I don't know that I have ever seen such candid admission to Mopologetic antics, and to the motives behind the behavior:
First, Huggins says that FAIR, “aided by Allen Wyatt, had registered thirteen internet domain names.” This is incorrect, as I registered only ten domains, and I registered those personally, without any knowledge by other FAIR officers. I did not “aid” FAIR in this, even though at the time I registered the domains and created the website (late 2003) I was an officer of FAIR. I did not make the registrations or website in my capacity as an officer of FAIR. In fact, I only let FAIR know about one of the domains (sandratanner.com) and the website I created later, in April 2004.
Second, Huggins says that the domains I registered “led to sites that mimicked the appearance of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry site.” He is correct in the respect that I did create a single site (not multiple sites — plural) and that site did mimic the Tanners’s site. I, however, would have used the word “mocked” rather than “mimicked”; that would seem a better description to me, as it encapsulated my design intent at the time.
There may be some here who remember all of this: it certainly created a buzz on RfM, where there was a lot of talk about Wyatt engaging in "cyber-squatting" (this was also done in retaliation against Grant Palmer). But it is remarkable that Wyatt is straight-up admitting to gleefully mocking the Tanners via these phony websites, and what's more,
FAIR's officer's were 'in on it. At the time, if I'm not mistaken, this would have included Dan Peterson, Louis Midgley, Scott Gordon, and John Lynch, among others. So Wyatt was deliberately screwing with the Tanners and boasting about it to FAIR, who were presumably cackling about the whole thing privately on their listserve.
In any case, Wyatt goes on:
Fifth, Huggins says “They even exploited the frequent misspelling of Jerald’s name with a G instead of a J.” The problem here is the use of “they,” when the correct usage is “Wyatt.” I did it, solely; there was no “they.” And, yes, I did exploit that common misspelling because I knew how people used the internet.
Interesting, no? On the one hand, I find all of this fascinating as a matter of historical record. But it's also interesting that, circa 2003-2004, these were the tactics the Mopologists were employing. (And yes: I know that Wyatt insists that he acted alone, but that ignores the "locker room" atmosphere that tends to prevail among the Mopologists.) In essence, Wyatt was trying to simultaneously mock the Tanners, but also to steer web traffic away from their websites. You have to wonder: Why wasn't direct criticism enough? Couldn't the Mopologists simply
engage with the Tanners's ideas? Why the need to resort to these petty and manipulative tactics?
Later, Wyatt says that, on the advice of his legal counsel, he gave the domains back to Sandra Tanner:
Seventh, Huggins says that happily, the Tanners “were able to retrieve all but one of the domain names.” This shows a profound lack of understanding of how the internet works. If I leave my wallet on the dresser, I can later retrieve it. I can do so because I once had it in my possession and now, happily, I have possession of it again. The Tanners never owned the domain names that I registered, so they could not retrieve them. The Tanners eventually got possession of the domain names because even before the initial suit was decided I, under advice of counsel, utilized an escrow company to transfer them to the Tanners and even provided information to them on how to claim them from the escrow company. This transferal was not required by the court, and had I not chosen to instigate the transferal, I would still own the domains to this time.
If you are sensing some bitterness here, you're not wrong. Wyatt expresses his resentment in a later paragraph:
In retrospect, with the lawsuit 15 years in the rearview mirror, I know that there are many people who consider Sandra Tanner to be a good Christian. They find her kind, affable, and giving. I have no doubt that she is all of these things to some people. She is not that to me, however. Relatively early in their publishing career, the Tanners asserted that “the leaders of the Mormon Church have always found it very hard to accept criticism.” Huggins never acknowledges that the Tanners had the same difficulty when anyone criticized them. I know, from personal experience, that the same can be said about Sandra and her actions relative to the lawsuit.
He also notes, in a footnote, that the matter is perhaps even more personal:
Wyatt wrote:I joined the Church in 1968 as a pre-teen in my parents’ family. Shortly after our family joined, my father discovered the writings of the Tanners. From that point onward he would fight against the Church, using arguments that had their genesis in the Tanners’s material. My father is now into his 90s, and he still argues against the Church using the same material. His actions — rooted in what the Tanners published — have caused no end of strife and contention within our family for over half a century.
Is it worth pointing out that the Tanners publications were made possible by a Church that worked very hard to present a whitewashed version of its own history and doctrine?
But the icing on the cake is this:
Wyatt wrote:I consider it remarkable that Huggins’s book could be awarded the Best Biography Award for 2023 by the Mormon History Association. Leonard Arrington — who founded and was the first president of the Mormon History Association — had numerous problems with the Tanners and, as already mentioned, considered their work as one of the key factors that led to the closing of the Church archives and the dismantling of the Church History Department in the 1970s. It seems simply incredulous (and darkly ironic) that the organization Arrington founded would recognize and award Huggins for a biography about the people that opposed Arrington’s work and the faith that Arrington held dear.
LOL! Yeah, it must sting quite a bit. Wyatt even goes on a digging expedition in the hopes of discovering that the book was the lone nominee:
I recognize it is possible that Lighthouse was the only submission to the Mormon History Association for the “best biography” designation for the year. In e-mail conversations with MHA personnel during September 2023, I asked if this were the case, but they indicated it was not their policy to make the number of submissions public. To my mind, however, if the only submission for a category is laudatory toward individuals whose mission and entire purpose for being was antithetical to the founders of the organization, that doesn’t mean that you must award the sought-after recognition. Would the Tanners have awarded “best biography” status to a laudatory biography of Joseph Smith? No, the thought makes reason stare!
What, like
Rough Stone Rolling? Is it even worth pointing out that the Tanners are not an "Association" in the way that the MHA is?
In any case: kudos to Wyatt for providing this account. This is surely one of the better things that Interpreter has posted to its blog.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
