12-24-2007, 08:46 PM | #21 | |
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Maybe he would like to see things become more democratic and open and then he could run for President of the church. I wouldn't vote for him though. He probably would do away with BYU athletics. |
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12-24-2007, 09:10 PM | #22 |
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This letter confirms much of what we knew, but there are two revelations to be gleaned from it. First, the purveyors of the priesthood ban including BY took their lead and instruction from Joseph Smith's sayings. This was not evil introduced by Smith's successors after his demise.
Second, Delbert Stapely was not a stupid man, at least in terms of education and IQ. The letter is well written, and evinces an understanding of the nuanced issues surrounding the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Though today we take for granted that the government can prohibit discrimination by private individuals in private property, in truth it was to some a radical idea in 1964, and there was a lot of associated controversy. (The Bill of Rights does not apply to private conduct, which is regulated by the states, generally, unless the Constitution makes an exception.) You may recall that Robert Bork opposed the Act on essentially strict construction and libertarian principles. Indeed, Congress had to strain to find a basis in the Constitution for the federal government banning segregation by private persons in private property. Ultimately, the whole basis for the Civil Rights Act was the Constitution's grant to Congress of the power to regulate "interstate commerce." Really these two facts--that Joseph's utterances led to the ban, and Delbert Stapely was an educated, intelligent man--are pretty chilling. The second fact demonstrates religion at its worst. People believe what they want to believe regardless of intelligence and education. Clearly there was much for LDS racists such as Stapely to fear from the ban. The next step would be denying tax exempt status to the LDS church or similar punitive measure because of the ban. Today it's illegal for a religion to smoke marijuana as a sacrament despite the First Amendment.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster Last edited by SeattleUte; 12-24-2007 at 09:15 PM. |
12-24-2007, 09:20 PM | #23 |
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I personally believe that there were racist reasons for the Priesthood ban. Of course, I also believe that one would be hard pressed to find anyone in the US who wasn't a racist in the 1830s. People today tend to make the mistake that abolitionists were not racists.
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12-24-2007, 10:13 PM | #24 |
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12-25-2007, 11:40 PM | #25 |
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Damnit don't call it a revelation.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
12-26-2007, 12:34 AM | #26 | ||
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12-26-2007, 05:00 AM | #27 | |
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What do you think? It looks to me like Apostle Stapely is citing Joseph Smith's sayings as his authority. Contending that all black slaves should be sent back to their ancestral aboriginal villages wasn't exactly the enlightened view leading up to the Civil War, now was it. Moreover, what a curious position for the self-proclaimed prophet of the only true church to take, that all these people should be put our of reach of said church. Face it, JS was a racist as well as a philanderer and molester of under-aged girls.
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As for my saying that Stapely was not a stupid man, bear in mind that my standard was very low. I said his letter was reasonably well written and he understood the arguments pro and con the 1964 Civil Rights Act. What I meant, implicitly, is that the kind of blind faith and crude racism he was expressing, includng stating that the civil rights proponent he knew was drowned by God, was the kind of drivel one would expect from an illiterate hunter gatherer in the bayous. Except for the racist content of his letter, his letter did not seem to be written by an uneducated or uninformed man. He's your apostle. Why does it make you feel better to dismiss him as an ignoramus? Fawn Brody comments on this. The curious propensity of Mormons to excuse their leaders' bad behavior, particularly Joseph Smith's, or to try to exaggerate their achievements such as writing the Book of Mormon, by highlighting their purported lack of education or intelligence.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster Last edited by SeattleUte; 12-26-2007 at 05:10 AM. |
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12-26-2007, 05:30 AM | #28 | ||
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From a pamphlet promoting his run for President: Quote:
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12-26-2007, 05:46 AM | #29 | |
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Yes, more disturbing.
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12-26-2007, 05:54 AM | #30 | |
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
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