On an unrelated note, we'll have our own story about Mormons - and their Deseret Ranch property - out next week.
Dan Savage, the guy who writes Savage Love, is going full-bore after the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
So here's what the Mormon church bought with the $20,000,000 it pumped into the "Yes on Prop 8" campaign: They've infuriated homo and hetero creative types who are now going to drag Mormon beliefs out into the public square, mock them mercilessly and at length, which will entertain the irreligious while also exposing Mormon beliefs to fundamentalists and evangelicals who weren't already familiar with them. This should destroy whatever goodwill the Mormons bought with those gauzy "this message brought to you by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" commercialsâ??it should also quickly undo whatever political capital the Mormon church thought it was purchasing with the "base" of the GOP, a.k.a. fundamentalists and evangelicals, which should undermine Mitt Romney's chances of securing the GOP's nomination in 2012 or 2016 or 2020 and ever.
He's right, and they've got it coming. Spend $20 million to strip away the rights of others based on a religious message of hate, then it's completely fair game to point out that your religion was started by an obvious con man.
I wouldn't vote for someone who truly believed in the founding whoppers of Mormonism. The LDS church holds that Joseph Smith, directed by the angel Moroni, unearthed a book of golden plates buried in a hillside in Western New York in 1827. The plates were inscribed in "reformed" Egyptian hieroglyphicsâ??a nonexistent version of the ancient language that had yet to be decoded. â?¦ Smith was able to dictate his "translation" of the Book of Mormon first by looking through diamond-encrusted decoder glasses and then by burying his face in a hat with a brown rock at the bottom of it. He was an obvious con man. â?¦ One may object that all religious beliefs are irrationalâ??what's the difference between Smith's "seer stone" and the virgin birth or the parting of the Red Sea? But Mormonism is different because it is based on such a transparent and recent fraud.
It also might be worthwhile to note that for most of this church's history, it was staunchly racist and considered black people inherently cursed so maybe it's not surprise that now they turn their bigotry on homosexuals, because that's socially acceptable and all.
