fellow Californians

[shannon_f_r]

Please consider writing to your representatives and Senators Feinstein and Boxer about the Mormon Church's actions in passing Proposition 8. This site has a good summary of some of the issues at hand as regards tax exempt status for religious organizations, and feel free to reproduce as much of the text of my letter below to save time.

--

8 November

Comments

[madbard]

I guess this isn't the best place to add, "p.s. The IRS should be abolished", huh.

[shannon_f_r]

Might muddy this issue a bit. I did my best in the letter to sound very mainstream. Wholesome. Cookie-baking.

[kraorh]

I don't think this is a bad idea - an investigation into LDS politicking. That said, I think the most constructive reaction to this outcome that I've seen so far is here. What say you?

[airstrip]

Volokh is foolish. It is, for all intents and purposes, a religious ideology that we are up against.

Aren't you an Objectivist? Don't you have a problem with these superstitious whim-worshipers?

[kraorh]

Of course. I lived in Utah for a while, and Mormonism is something I'm very well acquainted with. You have no idea.

I think you misunderstood my post, or I wasn't clear with it. I was suggesting that in addition to polite inquiries with the appropriate authorities to quietly investigate LDS electoral mischief in this election, that many of the things suggested by Dale Carpenter in his Volokh Conspiracy post are good ideas - sit-ins, civil disobedience, that kind of thing. To the extent I agree with Carpenter, it's more that the obviously anti-Mormon protests, that is, the protests at their temples, may not be the wisest strategy. If there's one thing that the Mormon Church has, like all Christians I suppose, it's a siege mentality - only much more intense. And protests directly at the temples feed into that. Now, I point this out not to suggest that we should be nice to the Mormon Church with hopes of getting them to change their minds or anything, but rather to make it harder for them to spin the reaction as some kind of anti

[airstrip]

When we interpret the meaning of a sentence, which is necessary, we do so in a context of other statements made. In the context of your statements and, more strongly, in the context of the statements you have added in extension, it really seems that you're actually defending the Mormons and being particularly sly about it.

So I will refer you to my earlier comment and suggest you get your premises in order.

[airstrip]

And this is why I believe large segments of the population are not fit to continue living.

[shannon_f_r]

I'm indescribably and sputteringly angry at the Mormons, although I tried to mask this a bit in the letter. I've never liked them--they seem to raise the ante on crazy to new extremes--but they seemed harmless enough. No longer.

[songofapollo]

Do we really want to endorse a regime in which tax-exempt status is contingent on political silence?

[shannon_f_r]

For religious organizations, yes. The nature of religion is to short-circuit rational epistemology: as expressed in my letter, these people, once they've bought into religion, have no choice but to follow the dictates of the people they believe are God's messengers on Earth and are willing political cannon fodder for a variety of (it usually seems) restrictive and rights-abridging regimes. I consider them little better than children, at least where rational political decisions are concerned, and my interactions with them bear this out.

[kraorh]

Be careful not to generalize too much. For every Mormon I've met who's fit that description, I've met roughly an equal number who are kind and decent people, and even "rational" in a compartmentalized kind of way, and with whom I've had no trouble forging friendships. The challenge, for these people, is to break down that compartmentalization, so the rationality they apply to their career, relationships and daily living is brought to bear on the irrational parts of their brains that they've insulated from critical analysis. That can be done - I speak from experience. It's not easy, but it's doable. They are not all the completely child-like, short-circuited, irrational types who literally take their role on Earth to be God's messengers or political cannon fodder.

As for political rationality, I'd hardly consider myself a fan of his, but you do know that there are Democrats who are Mormons, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who I've not really seen posturing as an anti-gay politician.

[shannon_f_r]

Sorry, but this isn't one of these things that's open to much nuance. If you accept that a) God exists; b) His will is knowable to certain people; c) the people who lead your church are among those (or perhaps only those) who know his will; and d) that in their capacity to interpret his will they have discovered an action or belief that, undertaken or acted upon, will put your immortal soul in peril, then of course you will act in accordance with what you're told. I didn't mean "childish" as a slur, but as a precise analogy: when you're a child, you have an implicit faith in your parents, the truth of what they tell you, and the rightness of their recommendations. As you grow older, you understand that you need to develop your own epistemology. Religion short-circuits this process in anything that touches religion. Which is not to say that Mormons can't be kind or decent people, or that they can't compartmentalize to some extent in anything that their religion doesn't touch, but the LDS Church made damn sure that they convinced their