Rumor about Quinn

[_why me]

Anyone who has interacted with Zeez even a little knows that's not true.

I only know him from this board. His mind is now closed toward the LDS church. And of course that is his decision and that is fine with me.

[_Baker]

Anyone who has interacted with Zeez even a little knows that's not true.

I only know him from this board. His mind is now closed toward the LDS church. And of course that is his decision and that is fine with me.

Thank goodness! I'm sure Zeez was really worried about your lack of approval.

[_zeezrom]

Hahaha Why Me. Actually, I was trying to protect Quinn from this apologist friend who claims he was/is crazy.

[_Buffalo]

Anyone who has interacted with Zeez even a little knows that's not true.

I only know him from this board. His mind is now closed toward the LDS church. And of course that is his decision and that is fine with me.

You claimed: "Zee, is in the mood to accept any negative about the LDS church that he can get his hands on."

Patently false.

[_Simon Belmont]

A couple of thoughts here, Zeez. For one thing, while the bit about the "hit squad" is wrong, the general eeriness of what happened with Quinn is dead-on. Now, I'm just going off memory here, but as I recall, what happened was that Quinn was basically in hiding from the Church. He'd heard through the grapevine that the Powers that Be were gunning for him, and so he high-tailed it off to New Orleans as a kind of self-imposed exile.

Meanwhile, the Church was trying to track him down. They went looking for him at his mother's house, but his mom had been given strict instructions not to tell anyone where Quinn was. Then, If I recall correctly, they tried to get Quinn's attorney to tell them where he was, but the lawyer didn't budge. Apparently, they wanted to locate his actual, physical address, since they need that--per the bizarre, bureaucratic rules--in order to begin Church disciplinary action. Later, he visited his ex-wife and kids, and it turned out that there was some mail there for him, including an application for some kind of zero APR credit card, and so he went ahead and filled this out.

Later, when he was back in New Orleans, he got a phone call from the credit card company, and they wanted his address. The thing is: he had a P.O. Box, which was the address he gave out when he filled out the credit card application, but this person who called him was asking for his actual, physical street address. Quinn said that he said something to the effect of, "Why do you need my physical address when you have my P.O. box?" and the person on the phone began sort of stammering and backtracking, etc. When he got off the phone, he went digging a bit and made some phone calls and was able to determine that the credit card and phone call had originated out of Salt Lake City.

So: not quite "death squads," but it does seem as if the Church was doing some remarkably strange and creepy surveillance-type things in an effort to track him down.

And all that said, it's not totally misguided to have lingering fears about LDS "death squads" or Danites. These things seemed to have been a historical reality clear up through the end of the 19th century, and perhaps beyond. So there is a historical basis for your (and others') concerns. There is a whole spectrum of ways that the Church can put the hurt on somebody, though, and nowadays "death" seems to be off the table.

You're obviously our resident expert on Quinn. How do you know so much about him, might I ask? Was it just a matter of paying attention to the news, etc. while all this was going down?

[_why me]

Hahaha Why Me. Actually, I was trying to protect Quinn from this apologist friend who claims he was/is crazy.

Quinn has been silent for quite a while. And unfortunately does not post on the internet. However, I am sure that he finds it all amusing just how critics rally around him year after year. I would rather here it all from the horse's mouth than from the cheerleader squad.

[_DarkHelmet]

I never heard this rumor, but I did hear a rumor that he was gay.

[_sock puppet]

Hahaha Why Me. Actually, I was trying to protect Quinn from this apologist friend who claims he was/is crazy.

Quinn has been silent for quite a while. And unfortunately does not post on the internet. However, I am sure that he finds it all amusing just how critics rally around him year after year. I would rather here it all from the horse's mouth than from the cheerleader squad.

Posted by the leader of the LDS cheerleader squad.

We'd like to hear from TSM directly. You get TSM to come post here regularly, we'll get Michael Quinn to come and post directly too.

[_Kevin Graham]

Oh come on zee, it seems that you and your wife are fishing for these kind of rumors. I am sure that you are just a tad disappointed that it isn't true. I am sure that your friend is misinformed about most things LDS. She seems to be fishing in antimormon waters too.

What whyme doesn't see to grasp is the fact that Zee asked if it were true, to which he was quickly corrected by the 'anti-Mormons' who seem to have more respect for the truth. Instead of applauding Zee for doing the right thing, he attacks him and his wife!

Compare this to a number of hideous rumors floating around in apologetic circles about various "anti-Mormons," where the apologists don't ask for verification, and so they aren't corrected by one of their own, and the rumor takes on new life in further "garbled versions" through time (i.e. Brent Metcalfe colluded with the murderer Mark Hoffman, robbed the Church archives, swindled a grieving widow, etc).

This pretty much crystallizes the difference between the apologetic and "anti-Mormon" psyche. One cares more about truth, the other more about what they prefer to be truth. It is wonderful to know that my search for truth, my willingness to self-reflect and challenge my own assumptions via critical assessment, is shared by so many other like-minded critics. When I was an apologist it was all about getting the juiciest version of a rumor possible, and then running with it. No one ever really cared to ask for validation of such rumors, because that would make you something of a prospective apostate for daring to break free from the tribal "group think."

[_Blixa]

A couple of thoughts here, Zeez. For one thing, while the bit about the "hit squad" is wrong, the general eeriness of what happened with Quinn is dead-on. Now, I'm just going off memory here, but as I recall, what happened was that Quinn was basically in hiding from the Church. He'd heard through the grapevine that the Powers that Be were gunning for him, and so he high-tailed it off to New Orleans as a kind of self-imposed exile.

Meanwhile, the Church was trying to track him down. They went looking for him at his mother's house, but his mom had been given strict instructions not to tell anyone where Quinn was. Then, If I recall correctly, they tried to get Quinn's attorney to tell them where he was, but the lawyer didn't budge. Apparently, they wanted to locate his actual, physical address, since they need that--per the bizarre, bureaucratic rules--in order to begin Church disciplinary action. Later, he visited his ex-wife and kids, and it turned out that there was some mail there for him, including an application for some kind of zero APR credit card, and so he went ahead and filled this out.

Later, when he was back in New Orleans, he got a phone call from the credit card company, and they wanted his address. The thing is: he had a P.O. Box, which was the address he gave out when he filled out the credit card application, but this person who called him was asking for his actual, physical street address. Quinn said that he said something to the effect of, "Why do you need my physical address when you have my P.O. box?" and the person on the phone began sort of stammering and backtracking, etc. When he got off the phone, he went digging a bit and made some phone calls and was able to determine that the credit card and phone call had originated out of Salt Lake City.

So: not quite "death squads," but it does seem as if the Church was doing some remarkably strange and creepy surveillance-type things in an effort to track him down.

And all that said, it's not totally misguided to have lingering fears about LDS "death squads" or Danites. These things seemed to have been a historical reality clear up through the end of the 19th century, and perhaps beyond. So there is a historical basis for your (and others') concerns. There is a whole spectrum of ways that the Church can put the hurt on somebody, though, and nowadays "death" seems to be off the table.

You're obviously our resident expert on Quinn. How do you know so much about him, might I ask? Was it just a matter of paying attention to the news, etc. while all this was going down?

As was pointed out earlier, this is all covered in Lavina Anderson's essay, "DNA Mormon: D. Michael Quinn," in Mormon Mavericks: Essays on Dissenters, edited by John Sillitoe and Susan Staker, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002, pp. 329-363. So it is available to those who read scholarly work on Mormon history and are interested in such things.

In addition, I have read extensively in the D. Michael Quinn papers in the archives at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, and mentioned many of my notes from that research both on the board, in chat and in email to friends of mine. Perhaps Scratch is drawing from some our discussions in his remarks here.

The resident expert on Quinn, in so far as this board could be said to have one, would be Don Bradley, who not only has read all of his works, like anyone discussing/criticizing Quinn would surely have, but has also conducted researched in those same Yale archives and is a friend of Quinn.

The take away here, Simon, is reading and research.