Analytics wrote:My point is to assert that some people out there really do have this particular religious sensibility. That being the case, if decent, civil people really respect strong religious sensibilities," then to the extent Mormons are decent, civil people, they’d respect this sensibility of others and stop proselytizing.
I can't agree.
Just as my right to swing my fist ends (at a minimum) where your nose begins, my religious sensibilities can't trespass upon your right to worship (or not) as you see fit, provided your exercise of that right doesn't materially impact mine.
Respect for religious sensibilities doesn't confer a veto right on anybody. It doesn't confer upon the most hypersensitive some sort of moral claim to require others to surrender their own beliefs or sacred practices.
Suppose the existence of a mosque or a Mormon chapel in a town offends an evangelical. (I'm essentially paraphrasing a note I received relatively recently.) Must the Muslims and Mormons shut down their respective places of worship in deference to a rather extreme form of Protestant triumphalism?
Taking the gospel to all the living and the dead is at the heart of Mormonism. While we should try to be sensitive to the legitimate concerns of others, we are not obligated, if they're hypersensitive, to abandon our fundamental beliefs because of their unwillingness to grant our right to worship as we choose,