NOM

How much real persecution does LDS Church/general membership actually endure today?

Oaks doesn't stop droning on about religious freedom, but how much is real actual persecution?

I saw this article http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/5 ... -feds-keep referencing this letter http://www.mesastewardship.org/bears-ea ... -monument/ and the thought occurred to me - exactly how much more can the church keep beating the drum of religious persecution.

They were persecuted for their crazy lifestyle, blatant disregard of the law and damaging doctrines. That's like a methhead claiming persecution for being a drug abuser. OK - fine, yes they did suffer some unwarranted persecution, but they never tell an accurate account of what really happened.

Anyway, what really chaps my bacon is how many mormons just try to pass off persecution of black people? I say this because I was one. Black people claiming persecution and discrimination - that was 50 years ago, get over it already. Civil rights was so 1960's, you're equal now.

However, an occult religion that was "persecuted' 100 years ago - hey we know all about being persecuted, actually, we're still persecuted today. The letter says "We seek to be partners in healing the legacy of religious persecution and displacement wherever it has happened". Except the gays, f*ck those guys.

I also find it ironic that it appears the majority of people signing this letter are not directly involved in the Bears Ear Monument area. And they use lots of made of titles to make themselves appear more important " I'm a [ward] historian, I know what I'm talking about, this is history"

Hmmm, I was persecuted by being a called a "Mor-mon" (rhymes with "moron") during high school. It was hard, man.

Actually, there probably is one situation in which I was possibly persecuted for being Mormon when I was 12 or 13. I was in a play at a Christian-focused theater group. When the other kids in the play found out I was Mormon, I could tell it changed their perception of me.

Independently, I would occasionally steal a candy bar from the snack bar, which I recognize was naughty, but I was a dumb kid! In retrospect, this place was making money and blatantly proselytizing using often-underage volunteers. The occasional candy bar is the least they could have provided us.

Anyway, I got called into the owner/director's office one day with four or five other kids my age. I remember saying, "I'm glad you guys are here, it means I'm not in trouble!" Then the owner got there, proceeded to tell me that each kid had come to him independently to say I was stealing candy. Each kid in turn told a story in which they caught me, witnessed me, or stopped me from stealing candy.

Every. Single. Story was a fabrication. I always made sure there were no witnesses. Where I was not so smart (I guess) was in actually eating the candy in public, and they must have figured out where I was getting it.

This is like three lifetimes ago, but I still think about it. On one hand, I was guilty af; I was totally stealing candy. On the other hand, straight-up lies were told about me. Those kids created stories that were nowhere near events that actually happened. Did they do it because I was Mormon? I thought so at the time. Maybe they were just so sure of my guilt that they felt like some additional "evidence" would be warranted. They're probably all highly effective dirty cops today.

Here is a story of two children. My son was born with no medical issues, has never broken a bone nor had a major injury. My daughter was born with severe club feet and spent the first two years in casts up to her thighs. She has gone through several very painful surgeries and learned to walk with a walker. Both have a very different tolerance for pain than the other. If my son gets a sliver, he cries. If my daughter falls and scrapes up her legs and bruises her face, she doesn't even complain. Their pain is relative to that which they experience and have learned to tolerate.

I think persecution is much the same way.

When I was a kid, I felt very persecuted as a Mormon because people would show up at church on rare occasion with signs saying we worship the devil. When I was a missionary, I was violently attacked with a liquor bottle merely because I was a Mormon missionary (they yelled, "get out of my town, Mormon!"). I _then_ felt like I had experienced persecution and what I experienced as a kid was not persecution. A few years later I was at church (not LDS) and my priest opened a death threat, because she was a Christian who proclaimed that "love your neighbor as yourself" extended to gay people, too. The letter was a copy of her letter (written to the local paper) with the words "Watch your back, you apostate whore!" written in red ink. I _then_ felt like she had experienced persecution and what I experienced as a missionary was not persecution.

My mother always laughed at Mormons in the Western United States and their concept of persecution. Two young women waited outside of a Mormon church in her home country and stalked her for a few blocks after she left. They pulled her into an alley and ripped off her dress down to her underwear (she was unendowed at that point). One yelled out, "Where are the Mormon pants (underwear)?" and they ran off. They literally mugged her and stripped her to see her garments. A year afterwards she was a survivor of the Birmingham pub bombings, which is rooted in the Catholic/Protestant violence that has been going on for centuries. She knew persecution, these silly western Mormons who felt persecuted over a bunch of people carrying signs was crazy!

To me, as I get older and hopefully a bit wiser, when someone claims persecution because someone on Reddit disagrees with them, or they become unpopular for a viewpoint, my thoughts are, "how lucky you are that you consider that persecution". It doesn't lessen the effect upon the person, that they feel the outsider. Persecution to some means a picket sign, to others it means having your son kidnapped and decapitated.

My son has a low pain tolerance, and that is OK. I feel sorry for my daughter that she has a high pain tolerance because that has come through a horrific experience. While it has made her stronger (I can't help but tear up when I think of her strength), and she is the strongest little 7 year old you'll ever meet, I wish that she never had to experience the bone drillings, or when the severed his Achilles tendons, or when she was in a wheelchair, etc.