Today, in a stunning and deeply ignorant speech, LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks commented that the Proposition 8 backlash in California and around the country could be compared to the fight southern African Americans faced during the civil rights battle.
From the Associated Press.
The anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil rights movement, a high-ranking Mormon said Tuesday.
So, let me get this straight. Mormons are now like blacks during the civil rights movement because they wanted to take away the rights of other people?
Follow me over the fold and down the rabbit hole.
It is not news, nor should it be a surprise that the LDS church has suffered a public relations hit from their highly publicized campaign against gay marriage in California. But, considering the comments from Oaks this afternoon, delivered to a BYU-Idaho university student body, they haven't learned a thing.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks referred to gay marriage as an "alleged civil right" in an address at Brigham Young University-Idaho that church officials described as a significant commentary on current threats to religious freedom.
Oaks, it could be surmised, is speaking on behalf of the Church-at-large. Being an apostle, a high priest of the Mormon faith, his words should be considered religious dogma, a script that has been previewed and passed by the upper echelons of power.
What is perplexing is the depth of ignorance displayed in Oaks' comments. For those that know firsthand the bigoted and racial bias embedded within Mormon history, Oaks' comments would be laughable if they weren't so offensive. First, this historical reminder, from PBS:
Until the early 1960s there had not been overt pressure on the church to reverse this ban on ordaining blacks to the priesthood, but then it started to pop up as the civil rights movement began to mature. The Salt Lake chapter of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] threatened to picket [the church's] General Conference if the church didn't come out and make a positive statement on civil rights, not even demanding at that point that they reverse that policy. They just wanted the church to go on record as being supportive of the civil rights movement. And eventually that happened, and it avoided that picketing of the General Conference. A couple years later the same issue emerged, and the church again had to restate its support of the civil rights movement, even though some members of the church, including President McKay, did it begrudgingly.
Mark Solomon, director of Equity California, had this to say in response to Oaks' comments:
Blacks were lynched and beaten and denied the right to vote by their government.
...
To compare that to criticism of Mormon leaders for encouraging people to give vast amounts of money to take away rights of a small minority group is illogical and deeply offensive.
You can read more on Oaks' comments here.
Below is video of his remarks (though I'm uncertain if this video represents his clarification or his original speech).
His comments on "Civil Rights" appear about 1/3 - 1/2 of the way through the video.
When will religious organizations understand that the world isn't always about them? Why, I might ask the Mormon hierarchy, is it that you oppose others doing what they choose to be in their own best interest?
I smell a rat. An apostolic, bigoted, entrenched rat. And I'm deeply offended that the Mormon church feels justified spreading absurd theology, and asking the world to accept it as gospel, while rejecting real world needs. My personal opinion is that gay marriage would do much more to further happiness and peace upon this planet than would Baptism for the Dead. Just my opinion, of course.
More to the point though, why are they wandering back into a PR fight that they cannot win?