An Agnostic Defence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Yesterday, on my regular post-school depressing Twitter scroll, I came across a repost of an article entitled "Mormons Aren't Nice People: a bitter victims [sic] deep dive into very old theology." Firstly - brushing past the fact that victims is misspelt because I'm not an educational classist - I'd like to point out how incredibly generalised this statement is, just in the title. This author, that's 'Sadie Lee' on Medium, isn't looking for a resolution, and place to unload, a resolution, or even an apology. She's looking for conflict. As a rather devoted agnostic, I'm not known for running to the rescue of horribly oppressed theists, but I will argue against the public slander of a really quite legitimate belief system.

                                    The Book of Mormon.

Ignoring the inflammatory title, and proceeding to the main body of the article, I found out that Lee is actually a survivor of a lot of shame, trauma, and hard times at the hands of people who just happened to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. However, when confronted with this, Lee resolves that it's not the fault of these individuals, but the religion that they belong to. She refuses to believe that all religions have good and bad individuals - and that the bad members are mostly cast out by that religion's establishment. For example, Islam has birthed both Amir Muhammad Sa'id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla and Malala, respectively horrible and amazing people - a warmonger and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Christianity has produced both mass-murderer Constantine and famed first lady Michelle Obama. Anyways, let's take a look at the list of qualities Lee states are possessed by all Mormons:

Firstly: "Mormons gaslight and don’t except [sic] the LGBTQ community." So, that's just untrue. Whilst I'll admit I am very disappointed with the church's record on queer rights, but they are absolutely getting better, and the LDS community has evolved and split to form pro-queer Mormon temples and smaller communities more conducive to gay rights. Whilst the church, its scholars, and its Prophets used to draw exclusively homophobic connotations from the Bible and Book of Mormon, this is changing as LDS states to no longer have a stance on the issue. Whilst the establishment LDS still refuses to perform same-sex marriages, and whilst queer and trans youth have absolutely been oppressed by the LDS (along with every other religion) it's frankly just a little generalist and ignorant of the work of so many queer Mormons to state that Mormons are anti-gay. Also, I've decided to become petty as that's always the best response to religious discrimination, and I'd like to add that it's accept, not except. 

Secondly, she says that "Mormons are nice to other submissive, middle class white people." Is that a bad thing? Are we currently living in a society that is too woke to accept being nice to white people who benefit from capitalism and do what they're told - because if so I should really start hating myself a little more? Methinks that really it's just counterproductive to focus on the fact that Mormons are nice to traditionally privileged classes of people. If there's a genuinely concerning point about them discriminating against underprivileged classes of people, then that's more than worth pointing out. But Lee can't find that, because it isn't happening, so she's gone with the technically true inverse. Oh, also, it's middle-class, not middle class. 

Thirdly: "Mormons are racist." No. They're not. Although I'll have to defer to Lee's opinion as she's a white woman who writes about "Social Work, ex-Mormon content, Ethical Non-Monogamy, and BDSM," so she's clearly very qualified to talk about what and who is racist. I just find it that the write woman is talking about an apparently "racist" religion (not even that, but a bunch of racist religious people) when the church loves and cares for many black, Asian, and Hispanic members. In fact, Eldrige Cleaver, notorious black panther and aspirational activist was a Mormon convert. However, obviously, the middle-aged white woman knows more about racism than the black panthers. There are no spelling errors here, but maybe that's because it's three words - which is very impressive for Lee regardless. She finishes this section by saying:

After reading this long list, would we still classify this group of people as nice? Let me be very clear, Mormons are victims. They are members of a cult that employs many different tactics from the BITE model that control [sic] thoughts and behaviors [sic]. They are very kind, simple people.

Simple, yeah. That's "lacking in intelligence: STUPID" (Merriam-Webster.) Interesting choice of words there, Lee. As somebody who later mocks LDS for being 'classist' and spelling a rather astounding number of words wrong in that quote alone (2) she's very quick to call other people idiots. Also, she calls LDS a cult, which is just horribly offensive and incredibly minimizing of a "very old" and well-established religion. 

On a closing note, I'd like to mention that I'm not a Mormon, I'm not even religious, but I have met with a couple members of LDS in my time as a British person: thrice even intentionally, most recently May of 2022, when I met with two LDS missionaries. They were the sweetest, kindest women I've ever met, and they're exactly models of each and every Mormon I've interacted with: genuine, lovely, and true believers. Honestly. I'm jealous of their trust and their faith, maybe you are too, I know Lee is. But this - anger and hatred - isn't how you heal. C'mon, Lee. Learn some tolerance; stop being bitter; download Grammarly. 

07/08/2022

by Frankie E.J. Robinson