Thousands To Quit Mormon Church Over New Anti-Gay Decree – Public Mass Resignation Event Saturday - The New Civil Rights MovementNews that thousands of Mormons are planning to leave the cult in protest at its decision to increase the persecution of homosexuals is evidence that the Mormon cult, like other churches, is struggling to keep up with the penetration of humanist values into society.
Like the Catholic Church which is haemorrhaging members in the developed world over it's persecution of gays and refusal to regard women as full human beings entitled to the same rights as men, and the Anglican/Episcopalian Church which has only recently been forced kicking and screaming to allow female bishops but still won't allow same sex marriages in its churches, these churches are suffering from an increasing tension between what are increasingly becoming the Humanist morals and social norms of the society they exist in, and the values and morals dictated by their 'god-given' superstition and church dogma.
The fact is, the people are increasingly rejecting the notion that a church's hierarchy of priests and bishops are better judges of right and wrong than they are. The tendency of churches to persecute minorities for no better excuse than dogma, is no longer evidence of their moral leadership but of their moral bankruptcy. Religion is simply a self-serving excuse and a means to spread division in order to reinforce ingroup and outgroup identity; not for the good of society and to maximise human happiness, but to maintain the power and privileges of the clergy - and to maintain that in complete disregard for the harm they are doing to others.
Rather than countering the homophobic bullying to which gay people are subjected, not the least of whom are children at school, these churches are quite happy to maintain the justification for that bullying by treating gays as evil and disordered human beings, not worthy of being treated fairly; something to be despised, stigmatised and shunned. Homophobic bullying, especially during childhood and adolescence, can have profound long-term effects on people, in many cases leading to social isolation, depression and suicide. The church's answer? "Stop being a degenerate, mentally disordered pervert! You only have yourself to blame!"
But society as a whole has seen through this. Now it's the stigmatising clerics who are becoming increasingly despised, and shunned. The churches are caught between the rock of losing members because of their bullying and the hard place of losing members if they desist as their remaining members become more extreme and more elderly; the moderates and enlightened young having long departed in disgust. It has now progressed to the point where churches are faced with the choice of giving up some central dogmas - in effect ceasing to be Catholic, Anglican, etc. - or losing their members. Their members are ceasing to be Catholic, Anglican, etc one way or the other.
This tension has now spread to the Mormon cult which reacted in it's usual reactionary way and decided to do more of what was causing the tension in the first place. The stigma they place on gays is to be extended to their children. And this is enough to precipitate another mass exit from the cult which no doubt the leadership will see as a vindication in that they have 'cleansed' the cult of some contaminating miscreants together with their perverse idea that all humans should have equal rights.
No doubt this tension will continue to increase as humanism makes further inroads even into the cultural desert of the Mormon cult until the cult do what they always have done when faced with a crisis such as this - they simply announce that God had revised and relaxed the rules, just as it did over the issue of polygamous marriages when this was preventing the territory of Utah benefitting from being a full member of the Union, or just as it did over its whites only policy for priests just as the US Federal Government was making segregation and denial of civil rights on race grounds, illegal. The mormon cult's god apparently looked at US law and decided the US government was right after all and it had been wrong all these years.
The Mormon god is infinitely more amenable to reason than the Catholic or Protestant god, though no less keen to divide and stigmatise people, at least so long as it can get away with it and it doesn't harm the Mormon cult's income stream, then wrong can become right the instant the ruling council realise what they're up against.
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