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Mormon Church Goes After WikiLeaks
An anonymous reader writes "The Mormon Church has instructed its lawyers to gag the Internet over WikiLeaks' release of the 1968 and 1999 versions of its confidential handbook for Church leaders. Apart from attacking WikiLeaks, legal demands were sent to Jimmy Wales of the WikiMedia foundation for a WikiNews article merely linking to the material, and scribd.com has also been censored. WikiLeaks has (of course) refused to remove the documents."
Yah, but what is so sad is that the LDS church has a HUGE online presence, uses the internet on a frequent basis to distribute media and is an early adopter of a lot of technology.
Secondly, these books aren't secret. Any member can walk into any LDS distribution center and pick up a copy. I've got a copy. 95% of the book is on how meetings run, proper activities for youth, how to distribute tithing and how to put in requisition forms for repairs.
However, there are sections on church doctrine and rules. These are more solid rules than what is generally liked in the church. It gives hard and fast examples of improper conduct and what the church response is to them.
The basic idea is that people should govern themselves. If you give them a hard and fast rule, some types of people will see how close they can get to that rule without breaking it. Not a good way to live a christian life.
As a lifelong member of the LDS church, I'm extremely disappointed in how church lawyers and officials are handling this. It's not SECRET. It's PRIVATE. There's a big difference that some church members just don't seem to get.
BZZZZT. Wrongo, Tex. The "Mormons" in El Dorado weren't the same religion as the "Mormons" in the OP. Get your facts straight before you start slinging mud around here. And speaking of which, "well-documented fraudster" is easy to say as an AC. What say you walk around that cloak of secrecy and provide some first hand accounts of Joseph Smith's fraud?
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
I was pretty deep into Mormonism for a while. I served a Mormon
mission, graduated from the church-run BYU, and was appointed to
various leadership positions (with 6:00am Sunday meetings to talk
about other peoples' sex lives and all). I left the Mormon institution a
few years ago, and based on discussions I have read on various
Mormon-themed web forums, the main interest in the church's handbook
of instructions relates to how people can just get the hell out.
From the handbook:
> Name Removal and Church Discipline
>
> If a member requests name removal and a bishop or stake president
> has evidence of transgression that warrants convening a disciplinary
> council, he should not act on the request until Church discipline
> has been imposed or he has concluded that no disciplinary council
> will be held. Name removal should not be used as a substitute for or
> alternative to Church discipline. If a member requests name removal
> and a bishop or stake president suspects transgression but lacks
> sufficient evidence to convene a disciplinary council, the request
> for name removal may be approved. Any evidence of unresolved
> transgressions should be noted on the Report of Administrative
> Action form so priesthood leaders may resolve such matters if the
> individual applies for readmission into the Church.
I should emphasize that this is pure bullshit, but a lot of people who
are trying to leave the Mormon institution get caught up in these
sorts of games. For someone who was indoctrinated into Mormonism as a
child, this really is a fantastic mind-fuck.
The trick is not to request name removal, but to submit a formal
letter of resignation. There is an entire web site devoted to helping
people in the Mormon institution do just that:
http://www.mormonnomore.com/
The lesson from the handbook is that if you just request name removal,
if the church hierarchy determines that you are somehow sinning, they
will still try to humiliate you by putting you through their kangaroo
court. The truth is, you have a legal right to simply resign from the
church at any time, and from the instant your letter lands in the
hands of the local bishop of your church, you are *out*. They
absolutely cannot hold these disciplinary proceedings for you, since
you have legally resigned and are longer a member.
By having access to this handbook, people trying to leave the Mormon
intitution can learn a lot about what to expect from the leaders in
the institution when they try to leave, and they can be prepared ahead
of time to react in a way that serves their own best interests.
Joseph Smith's background is pretty well documented. See this for a good writeup. He was a con man and a thief, who (one can reasonably conjecture from the documented history) came up with a polygamist philosophy because he was also one randy goat.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
"Mormons" (more correctly Latter-day Saints, at times abbreviated "LDS") practiced polygamy in the 1800's. The practice was outlawed by the LDS church in order for Utah to achieve statehood, which it did some years later in 1896. There are no Mormon polygamists anymore because any practicing polygamists are excommunicated. The nutjobs in Arizona / Texas are Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (or "FLDS") church members.
FLDS != LDS
It is similar in name only, because given this free country, the founders of the FLDS church were free to do so when naming it. Which just leads to a common source of confusion. It's very likely you were just trolling, but it's worth pointing out for those who genuinely confuse FLDS with LDS.
As far as transgender operations one of the basic beliefs has to do with gender identity. I was shocked more by the fact that someone that had the operation could be baptized. So if you are undecided about your gender you must wait until you decide before you are baptized.
Parenthood and children and families are very important in the church doctrine so I can understand the the surrogate parenting thing as well. Adoption is HIGHLY encouraged. Voluntary sterilization? Last time I checked that was changed. I believe that Bishops are now instructed that it is between the husband and wife. I could be wrong but even under the old manual it is just a recommendation. If you get a vasectomy that is really up to you.
To be honest I am a member and I have not been a Bishop. I know several of them in my ward. Most wards will have several members that have been bishop so this isn't some secret. That book isn't a big secret and everything listed was stuff I knew except one.
I didn't know that the church would allow someone that had a sex change be baptized. I feel that is a good thing.
As far these ideas being backward or strange? Well some of our ideas are rather old. Like sending 10,000 people to help with the clean up after Katrina. Here is some of what they have been doing lately.
http://www.lds.org/ldsfoundation/welfare/welcome/0,7133,1325-1-9,00.html
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
She's the 14 year old girl who Joseph Smith bullied into marrying him by claiming that it would ensure the salvation of her family. There's plenty of more examples of fraud, but as long as the topic is El Dorado that one seems to be the most poignant. Todd Compton's book has references to primary sources for her and about thirty others of Smith's wives, if you'd like to check that out. Be aware that Compton is still a believing Mormon and so some bias shows through; for example when he quotes Helen's sorrow at finding out that her marriage wasn't just "for eternity", he suggests that that must just mean that Smith wasn't letting her date, rather than that Smith was using her for what his "revelation" on polygamy said his "plural wives" were for.
You're right that the FLDS Mormons aren't the same religion as the LDS Mormons, but that's because the FLDS sect is the one that still believes in the doctrines that the LDS were smart enough to back away from.
Sikh men wear "funny underwear" too. Kaccha is a pair of shorts. This is special, slightly longer type of underwear and is symbolic of continence and a high moral character. Like breeches, Kaccha can be worn on their own without causing embarrassment. Thus it is quite useful in hot weather, swimming and sports activities. It also reminds the Sikh of the need for self-restrain over passions and desires. They are worn with a knotted string that takes a few moments to untie. This gives the Sikh a moment to reflect on why he is taking his pants off. Google the term "Kakkar" for more information.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
It is not the 'underwear' part that is weird, it is the 'magic' part.
The 'magic' part is pure invention. Look, there are a lot of Mormons. Maybe some random Mormon somewhere has said something wacky about their garments. In fact, I'm sure some have. Mormons are wacky people.
But I don't think it's right to hold the religion responsible for the wackiest of its adherents. What religion, or what group of any kind, can withstand that kind of scrutiny?
Mormon's believe garments are a sacred symbol of covenants made with God. They are not magic. Nowhere does the word "magic" appear in Mormon belief about garments. Nor do we apply any magical beliefs to them. They will not protect you from demons or vampires of bullets or fires. They do not repel temptation, except that insofar as when you're taking them off you might hesitate to think about why.
There's nothing magical about them.
"Anyone thinking their clothing has properties outside the laws of physics is weird."
Symbols are not physical. But symbols can be powerful. Other than as a symbol, I don't really know that garments have any non-physical properties at all.
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
I'm not trying to troll, and I actually agree that all religion is pretty stupid, but I do think it's more stupid to believe in miracles that happened 170 years ago -- when we understood much of nature, the scientific method, modern archeology, and kept accurate records of everything -- than 2000-4000 years ago, when humanity was ignorant of all of those things and essentially had no written language.
If you found someone who had no modern education or understanding of natural phenomena but was nevertheless intelligent and rational, and you told him that thunder is the raging of an angry god, he might well believe you. But even very stupid people with a modern education would laugh at you. This is the fundamental difference between believing in supernatural occurrences 2000 years ago and believing in them 170 years ago.
Your religion teaches that there was an advanced civilization of white people in America before the Native Americans. Archeology shows us that that claim is false. This is not a matter of opinion or even honest belief; the science is quite clear that there was no such civilization. Your religion is premised on taking the word of a convicted con man that he could read ancient inscriptions off of gold plates, even though (1) no one ever saw the gold plates, (2) he could not reproduce the readings even when challenged, and (3) he enjoyed enormous personal gain when people believed him.
This critique covers only the positive claims of the religion. It does not address what I think are the many enormously unethical positions the Church holds, from its persecution of gays to the many ways it subjugates women to its relentless torment of people who leave the religion.
Again, this is not a troll. There has to be room in our discourse for legitimate condemnation of a farcical set of claims, and having its adherents insist that it is a religion does not immunize it from criticism.