It is interesting -- and to me, sad -- to reflect that the Mormons started out this year being treated with fear and suspicion by Evangelicals and other Christians, with regard to Mitt Romney's candidacy, and are ending this year being treated with outright loathing by many gays because of the LDS Church's paramount role in defending traditional marriage in California.
UPDATE: To clarify, I find it sad not because I have no problem with Mormon theology -- I can't square it with even the outer edges of Christian orthodoxy, which has to be Trinitarian -- but because I thought Christians who rejected Mitt Romney over his religion were being unjust. (I was not a Romney supporter, but that had nothing to do with his religion). I find it sad because the conservative Christians who were all worked up over Romney's Mormonism earlier this year saw the Mormons carry water for all traditionalist-minded Christians in this Prop 8 fight. And now the Mormons are collectively paying the price for doing what Catholics, Orthodox and Evangelicals ought to have been doing.
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Yeah, Rombald. Dawkins, and all those like him, does spend a LOT of his time writing those pampphlets, offering free missionary tracts, movies, and copies of his books. Oh, and don't forget the time knocking on doors or stopping people on the street to offer to discuss his views and to persuade you to change yours. Those half hour tv shows pretty much commandeering an entire day of the week of tv and radio time for the effort.____You're right. There's no difference at all between those Mormon duos in their matching outfits on those bikes and whatever the heck 'Dawkins type atheists' are. __
And yeah, that was me. Darn system. If you don't type the text in the box correctly, it redirects you to try again, but apparently wipes out the name box. Found out too late to change.
And I think, by 'occultic', they may be referring to the 'secret knowledge' portion of the definition. Which, since they do have portions of their theology and practice they do not make available to the public, both the rites themselves, and information about those rites and requirements, it does kind of qualify.
Katherine, how awfully stirring that you feel disheartened by the negative response to your church's donation of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of manpower to strip a portion of humanity from a group of people. I imagine it was similarly disheartening for your church to receive the occasional grumpy reaction to your totally fun policies and beliefs regarding black people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacks_and_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints
Indeed, why do people have to be such Debbie Downers, especially when they project their glumness onto such vulnerable groups as Mormons?
Come on, Sig. That's just an allegory. The meaning is clear: Eve tempted Adam with the Forbidden Fruit - viz. anal sex. This is the "knowledge" that is prohibited, where "knowledge" is used in the Hebrew sense. The stern condemnation of unnatural sex is repeated many times in other books of the Bible.
It's hard enough for a man to get his woman to do that, you're telling us a snake talked the first woman into THAT?
Kick the dog and you get bit. Mormons shouldn't be surprised or act like they don't deserve what they've brought on themselves. Live and let live. Do unto others-isn't that the golden rule? In any case, it is unconstitutional to legislate discrimination, especially based on religious beliefs. The only real objection to gay marriage is that those objecting it feel it is a religious sin. Guess what-you can't make laws for all of us based on your religion. This is not a theocracy.
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