palerobber wrote:Darth J wrote:So, palerobber.......
What do you think about the LDS Church building a temple at Mountain Meadows? You'd agree that would be a classy move, right?
well, that question isn't very relevant since, as i imagine you know, the planned Park51 is not "at" Ground Zero but is rather 2.5 city blocks away with no line of sight between the two.
Yes, it is relevant, because it has to do with the reasons people object to the location of religious buildings, which is what your comment was about. There are current descendants of the victims of the Mountain Meadows Massacre who have been offended at the way the LDS Church has handled
the site where the massacre occurred. These descendants pushed for years until the site was
designated a national landmark.but as it turns out the closest church to the MM site is already an LDS chapel, and no, i'm not offended by that.
Huh. The closest church to a given point in southern Utah is an LDS Church. Go figure! That's not the same as the Church announcing the Mountain Meadows Temple. And the Church's treatment of the site may not offend you, but it does bother people whose ancestors were murdered. It also bothers them that the Church
performed baptisms for the dead for the victims.
but here's a better question:
In 1996 a
Christian extremist planted a bomb in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta GA that killed 2 and injured 111. If a mainline Christian group (eight years later) wanted to build a church two or three blocks away from the park, you'd agree that would be a classless move, right?
That's not a better question. That's the same issue with different facts. Yes, I can understand if secularists or non-Christians would see that move as at best somewhat oblivious. I myself would not feel that way, but that doesn't mean there is no understandable reason why someone else would.
You're also moving pretty far afield from your original premise, which is that people in Massachusetts opposing the location of the "Boston" temple are analogous to people in New York City opposing a mosque being built a few blocks from Ground Zero:
palerobber wrote: one more thing that particularly disappointed me about Romney was when he came out against Muslims being allowed to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, despite the similar trouble he had faced in Boston trying to get a Mormon temple built. it was just stunning hypocrisy, not to mention a violation of his own 11th Article of Faith.
No, the opposition to an LDS temple in one's neighborhood is not "similar" to the opposition of a mosque near Ground Zero. It's not a matter of whether you agree with people's reasons for feeling the way they do, but why they feel the way they do. Whether right or wrong for feeling the way they do, people opposed to the location of that mosque are not doing so for arbitrary reasons. They are opposed because it seems insensitive to them when the 9/11 attacks were motivated by Muslim extremism. That isn't "similar" to why people don't want an LDS temple by their house. The latter is motivated by concerns about traffic, zoning, property values, and having a great big brightly-lit trophy building right by where you live. "Opposition to a mosque near Ground Zero because Muslim terrorists killed hundreds of people a few blocks away and destroyed an American landmark" is not analogous to "opposition to an LDS temple in my neighborhood because tons of people are going to start driving down my street and this giant trophy building is going to dominate the landscape and will be lit up all night long."
And I don't think this was hypocrisy on Romney's part, because hypocrisy means having a double standard in how you apply your principles. Mitt Romney is a hollow opportunist who doesn't really believe in anything except Mitt Romney. Since he has no real principles, it is not possible for him to be a hypocrite.