More On Those Whacky Mormons

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

I've been thinking some about yesterday's post as well as the piece that inspired it. There's another point I think needs to be made.

There is a threshold of obvious lunacy or ridiculousness a group can cross that would make them fair game for the kinds of jabs and barbs Ken Jennings hopes to insulate Mormonism from.

Example: Peoples Temple. It seems that they are fair game for "they are so gullible..." comments Ken admonishes we use as the litmus test for religious tolerance and decency. I mean... they were so gullible that a thousand of them poisoned themselves en masse at the whim of their leader, Jim Jones. They actually drank the literal and proverbial the Kool-Aid.

Or what about Warren Jeffs and the FLDS sect Anderson Cooper has been telling us so much about? Do they deserve the level of respect demanded by Mormons? Do they deserve it regardless of their "out there" beliefs? Should they be left alone, free to practice their religious tenets free from the jeers of Jay Leno and David Letterman? Or are they, because of their low score on the threshold of goofiness, open game?

Even Jennings seems to imply some kind of support for this idea by citing L. Ron Hubbard as an example of a charlatan who pulled Scientology out of his ass.

What then of the idea that Mormonism and its hefty-helping of cognitive dissonance-inducing contradictions and under-the-rug-sweeping of facts and reality is, by the same standard, deserving of the same distinction? Is it safe to say that this level of gullibility and blind-devotion, even in the face of the obvious ridiculousness of the belief, makes a group fair game for ridicule?

I say, yes.

What's that you say? Mormonism might be strange but funny underwear doesn't put Mormonism on the level with wife-stealing, Warren Jeffs and suicide-pacting Jim Jones? Think again. A mere glance into not-too-distant Mormon history gives us several applicable examples. Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young "reassigned" Zina Huntington away from her husband for themselves. Smith, Young and countless of their followers took child-brides (my own ancestors among them). Parley Pratt was murdered by the man from whom he whisked away a wife and children. A formal order from Brigham Young himself led to the slaughter of dozens of men, women and children at Mountain Meadows as part of Young's blood-atonement doctrine in retaliation.

Or how about the self-disembowelment penalties many Mormons were forced to pantomime as part of their covenants in the temple, were they ever to reveal the details of the secret temple oaths? Many, many thousands of Mormons in that situation have literally and repeatedly practiced their own suicides, just as the people at Jonestown had.

I could go on and on.

When examined objectively no amount of community activism, welfare providing, hand-helping, village building or PR spin is enough to overcome the fact that Mormons teach what they teach and make the outlandish claims they make.

To me, it is as simple as recalling my closest friends and relatives standing, men on one side, women on the other, in the Salt Lake Temple wearing white robes, caps, sashes, slippers and a green apron chanting in unison to convince me that this movement is worthy, at the very least, of ridicule. Mormonism passes the test. It passes because it is ridiculous enough.

It is ridiculous to dress up in sheets like Masons, teach each other secret handshakes with their secret names, take on "new" names, baptize Hitler and think it has anything to do with anything. It is ridiculous to think your underwear will protect your from anything other than chaffing. Religion is superstition at best and farce when taken too far.

It is ridiculous, regardless of how any one person may "feel" about it. When something is judged, nearly universally, to be absurd then it is so.

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