On the other hand, the "street preachers," as they identify themselves, who have decided to devote their lives to disrupting the peace of Latter-day Saints as they gather for pageants, dedications of buildings, and even temple worship—these people I do not mind calling anti-Mormons. Many of us have in our minds an indelible picture of one of these preachers, standing outside the entrance to the Salt Lake Temple, shouting insults through a bullhorn at the worshippers, and refusing a polite request to desist out of "common decency" while a young bride emerges from the temple on her wedding day.
I like how Davis defines anti-Mormonism, and associates it with things over the top crude, while the FAIR wiki tries a different approach:
"Anti-Mormon" is not a slur nor is it pejorative in its use; it is a descriptive term for those whose tactics or desires oppose or fight against the beliefs, members, or practices of the Church. Being "anti-" something may be a positive or negative thing, depending upon one's perspective. Almost everyone would be happy to be considered "anti-child abuse." Few people would want to be known as "anti-Semitic.
So right off the bat, Davis makes the term “anti-Mormon” one that is pejorative. Not only do they disrupt weddings, they also can’t help but probably lie about the Church:
To be sure, the identity of the publisher is not the final determinant of whether a book is anti-Mormon, but it can be a preliminary indicator. We can assume that publications of the Utah Gospel Mission and the Utah Lighthouse Ministry, for example, are anti-Mormon, at least in intent. When individuals see it as their life's mission to tear down and destroy the Church of Jesus Christ, either in speech or in writing, their words are, in whole or in part, predictably anti-Mormon.
Contrast with this:
Since good books can be written by bad people and bad books by good people, I prefer to evaluate a book on its own terms.
Davis tries to be fair, but he can’t seem to carry it through
Goes on to say:
But if the author participates in anti-Mormon activities, denounces the church, or engages in behavior defiantly contrary to church standards, his portrayal of the Saints and their history will probably not be scrupulously accurate, much less fair or sympathetic.
So I denounce the Church when it needs to be denounced, I engage in a lot of behavior that is defiantly contrary to church standards (I engage in all seven deadly sins listed here), so according to Davis, my portrayal of the LDS Church and history carries a prior probability of over 50% of not being scrupulous, fair, or sympathetic.
Just to hedge off the poor reading abilities of some here, the quote above contains a disjunction in it (‘or‘), so what Davis actually wrote is that it only takes meeting one of those criteria to incur (and some how justify, which he never does) a high epistemic discrimination against texts.
The ground rule here should be to let each person say for himself what he believes. You may speak for yourself. I will speak for myself. All too often our enemies like to state our beliefs for us.
I like how the author slipped in the word “enemies” here.
Since it is impossible to include everything, any author selects what he wishes to include. If a book about Latter-day Saints shows a strong preference for negative information, I don't mind considering it anti-Mormon.
Again, going off precisely what was written, if a book shows a strong preference for negative information( Davis shows no regard for the accuracy of that information), it can be considered anti-Mormon.
If he presents himself as a Latter-day Saint when in fact he has not set foot inside a sacrament meeting for twenty-five years, we have a right to be suspicious. If he indulges in snide, disrespectful, cruel comments about the Saints and those they sustain as prophets, we should not be surprised if his book is anti-Mormon. I am always happy to be proved wrong in such expectations, but when an author makes no effort to hide his contempt of the Saints and what they stand for, his predisposition is hard to ignore.
I thought this was really odd. An author should hide his bias? No, an author should never engage in that sort of deception.
That was a horrible article. There wasn’t much good advice to be had, just subtle ways to disregard information one doesn’t like. Surprise that Simon likes it?