Tyler Perry
Note:
I get a little sweary at the end. But it’s
fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine here. How are you?
Because
2020 sucks, Jacob Hess has delivered a Part 2 to his eloquent and well-written dissertation
on Mormons Building Bridges (MBB) and their ilk that is certain to convince all
wayward souls to return back to the fold of Mormonism. In an absolute stunning display of excellent
pacing, smooth prose, and entertaining education, Jacob Hess has solved Mormon
bigotry, cured the divide between LGBTQ people and the church, and offered up a
stunning solution to world hunger. He
also included the chemical formula to a 99% effective COVID vaccine that is going
to be available on the market next week.
The
above is what sarcasm looks like.
Sarcasm is my defense mechanism when I have decided that beating my head
against the wall until either the wall breaks or I do is an improper strategy
for coping with ignorance, condescending behavior, and an essay so boring it
makes me want to read Steinbeck.
Yes,
English majors, Steinbeck is the worst and you are all wrong for thinking that he
is a good writer in any way. Seriously, Of
Mice and Men is like 60 pages long, and it is honestly 50 pages longer than
it should be. How in the world did this
guy get added to the list of required reading for high school English
classes? I am fairly certain that
Steinbeck was read to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to get them to talk.
But
I digress.
What
we have in Part 2 is a major misunderstanding of the purpose of the story of
Nehor, a hollow call to repentance, and terrible epistemology.
I
am going to make every attempt, as a fully grown, adult human person, to
minimize my Nehor jokes. However, I
still giggle whenever I talk about Beaver Dick Park in Rexburg, so I would not
recommend setting your expectations very high.
Epistemology
I
am going to just go wild and crazy here and start with the end of Hess’ essay. Hess ends his essay with what may be the worst
bit of epistemology imaginable. He
suggests that there is a chance he may be wrong about his assertions (he is),
and that the only evidence that either side can bring to bear is how they “feel”. Spoken like a man who has used “feelings” to
determine truth for far too long (this guy has a PhD! HOW???).
He
then asks the correct question. If all we
have to go on are feelings, and someone can feel the opposite of what he has
said is true, then how do we determine who is correct? The answer?
Well, Hess suggests “peace” is the answer.
Get
a job, you dirty hippie!
Now
that I have put Spencer W. Kimball back in his box, let me explain why this is
bad reasoning for Hess to use.
First,
there’s the obvious issue that “peace” is not something that we can hold or
observe any more clearly than “feelings” can be. This makes peace just as useful for determining
what is true as feelings are. A thought
experiment: Let’s say that Hess and I are sitting in a room and Joseph Smith
walks in with an opaque jar of cookies.
Brother Joseph shows us that there are cookies in the jar, and says, “In
this jar is a certain number of cookies.
That number is either even or odd.”
Being rational people, both Hess and I agree that it is true that the number
of cookies in the jar is either even or odd.
I say that the number of cookies in the jar is even. Hess asks me why I think that. I answer, “I feel it very strongly, and that
feeling brings me peace.” Should Hess
agree with me that the number of cookies in Joseph Smith’s opaque cookie jar is
even?
No!
Why?
Because
Emma was a perfectionist who always baked an even number of cookies, but Joseph
was a problem child who would steal one and eat it when Emma was not looking,
resulting in an odd number of cookies in Joseph Smith’s cookie jar. The answer was obvious from the start.
In
seriousness, the answer is because “feelings” and “peace” are not sufficient
justification to accept a position as being truthful. Hess should only accept that the number of
cookies in the jar is even or odd after a measure has demonstrated that the
number of cookies is even or odd. Until
that time, he should make no affirmative statement about the quality of the
number of cookies in the jar.
Are
we clear on this example? I hope so because
we are moving on.
The
second problem has to do with “peace” itself in Mormonism. When I was on my mission, I had trouble
sleeping. Part of it was the fact that the
schedule does not work well with my natural rhythms. I am a night owl, and 10:30 P.M. is much too
early for me to be going to bed most nights.
The other reason I had trouble sleeping was because I had some spooky
dreams. There was the “death by tornado”
dream, the “my companion is a creeper” dream, and the classic “spooky Mormon Hell”
dream.
As
an out and proud gay man, I have had exactly zero of those dreams. This begs the question, does being an out and
proud gay man bring me peace, or did being an active Mormon bring me peace?
There
is also the fact that Muslims will say that the Quran brings them peace,
Scientologists will say that Dianetics brings them peace, and Hindus will say
that the Bhagavad Gita brings them peace.
So, are Mormons right? Are
Muslims? Scientologists? Hindus?
It seems that “peace”, for an outside observer, is not a good metric for
determining truth. And if two Mormons cannot
agree on what brings them peace, then we have an even bigger issue to address
here.
But
that is another issue for another essay.
The
point of this is that the epistemology that Hess asserts at the end of his
article is asinine. Allow me to offer a
real alternative. The view that we
should go with is the one best supported by the data. I have shared that data in previous posts. I suggest going to the Trevor Project website
or reading Evan Smith’s Gay Latter-Day Saint Crossroads for a solid collection
of data on the subject. And do additional
research on the data, as well. See who
is able to read the data with the least amount of inferences and interpolations,
appeals to supernatural authority, logical fallacies, or dismissals of data that
they do not like.
Like a Bridge Over No Water
What
does Hess actually suggest as the bridge, like he promised he would reveal to us
in Part 1?
Are
you guys ready for this?
No,
really? Are you ready for this biting
insight? Are you sitting down?
Okay,
here it goes.
Repent.
Holy
motherforking shirtballs! How did I not
think of that? Repent? What insight!
What wisdom!
I
mean, I have literally never once ever heard a homophobic Christian tell me to
repent, ever. In all my life. At all.
Even once.
See,
kiddos, there was the sarcasm, again. I would
say that I am trying to be better about that, but the truth is that I am just
leaning into it more and more.
And
then, it just gets better. This expert
on LGBTQ issues suggests NorthStar, that organization with strong ties to the
old Evergreen International, ya know, that organization that advocated for
conversion therapy and murdered (not a legal, but rhetorical allegation) LGBTQ
kids who just needed acceptance [1].
Yeah, that organization. Yeah,
survey says hell no, Hess.
And
Hess has the audacity to drag Tom Christofferson into this. Tom Christofferson is not someone who I agree
with, but I hear that he is a wonderful person.
He does not want his story used like this, Hess [2]. He would probably be appalled at how he was used
in Hess’ vapid arguments.
Do You Wanna Build A Straw Man?
According
to Hess, we are all just a bunch of Nehors.
I mean, my boyfriend would call me one, and you can interpret that
however you want to (this is the only Nehor joke I will make, I don’t promise
that at all).
Nehor
was this guy in the Book of Alma, in the Book of Mormon, who preached a
doctrine of universal salvation and priestcraft. Hess asserts that we can just ignore the
priestcraft, the part that Alma and company were really upset about, and focus
on the universal salvation. I am going
to dive into both issues and why this was not a smart story for Hess to bring
into his argument.
First,
it is interesting that universal salvation is discussed in the Book of Mormon
at all. The Book of Mormon is a peculiar
book when treated as a literal translation of historical, divine text. One of the things that is so interesting
about that is how much the text addresses the questions New England Christians
had in Joseph Smith’s day. Questions
like: Where did the American Indians come from?
If God loves all his children, why did they not have prophets in the Ancient
Americas? What happened to the Lost
Tribes of Israel? Is universal salvation
correct, or are we saved by grace?
Yeah,
that last question was a pretty big deal in Joseph Smith’s day. And the Book of Mormon seemed to favor the “saved
by grace” approach. But Mormon doctrine
found in the Doctrine and Covenants presents more support for the universalist
approach [3].
First,
let us get a couple of definitions out of the way. “Salvation” is defined as the rescue from death,
the condition introduced to mankind by the Fall of Adam. “Exaltation” is the state wherein saved souls
become like God the Father. Mormons tend
to conflate those two words, and, in standard Mormon dialogue, that is fine. However, the distinction is important. Everyone who comes to Earth will be “saved”,
in the sense that Jesus died and was resurrected and now he has gone full Oprah
with resurrected bodies. The overwhelming
majority of people who have lived on Earth will also be saved from spiritual
death, since only those cast into Outer Darkness will not enjoy the presence of
a member of the Godhead for all eternity [4].
That’s right, folks, Mormons are, in a manner of speaking, universalists,
just like Nehor.
Look
at you Hess, being a filthy, filthy Nehor, just like us gays.
Exaltation
may not be assured, but, since the Nephites were practicing the Law of Moses, at
the time of Nehor, there is no reason to believe that Nehor was speaking of
exaltation. In that sense, Nehor was
correct. As Obi-Wan Kenobi taught, “Many
of the truths we cling to depend on our point of view.” Also, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” But really just that first thing.
Doctrinally
speaking, Nehor was not wrong. Thus, Hess’
point is what we call “a bad argument”.
Then
there is the fact that Hess consciously ignores the priestcraft
discussion. And this is going to seem
like maybe I am spewing “anti-Mormon garbage”, but this is just the truth. The Q15 receive sizable stipends for their
positions as prophets, seers, and revelators.
It is only because of Mormon Leaks that we know about that [5]. They have not been transparent in those
dealings. It is also only because of a
whistleblower that we know about $100 billion in liquid assets [6] that the church
has that it is not using to support research into a COVID vaccine [7]. Justify that however you need to. That idea just does not bring me any peace at
all.
HULK ANGRY!!!
Which
leads me to the last point, and the point that Hess spends most of his essay
complaining about. This all makes me
kinda angry. The Book of Mormon has this
big issue with anger except when it does not (it’s cool for Captain Moroni to
do it, trust me). Hess ignores that time
that Jesus flipped over tables and chased people with a whip because they were
using the temple to make money [8]. I
suggest that we accept that there are times when anger is justified and times
when anger is bad.
I
am angry because kids are killing themselves because God will not send an angel
with a flaming sword to tell the Brethren that the current teachings are wrong
and, frankly, evil. They have blood on
their hands, and God is complicit in that, since angels and flaming swords have
been a viable option for compelling prophets in the past [9]. I am angry because so-called Christians
continue with this “love the sinner, hate the sin” bullshit that justifies
their homophobia, because their best way of loving you is to tell you to repent
of your sins. I am angry because I was
bamboozled into fighting against my own interests (Prop 8). I am angry because the church continues to
harm people like me just for the identities that they have struggled and
agonized over (November policy, BYU Honor Code February 2020).
And
I am angry because pretentious pseudo-intellectuals like Jacob Hess assume that
I take any of this for granted. You have
no idea what I, or any other LGBTQ+ person has been through. You are being little more than an ignorant,
malicious asshole, and MBB is going to be better without your stench anywhere
near it.
I
hope you repent, Jacob Hess. I hope you
become an ally. But right now, you embody
the worst of what humanity has to offer: bigotry wrapped in compassion.
I
am sure that that has never caused any harm.
References
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_International
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism_and_the_Latter_Day_Saint_movement
[4] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/salvation?lang=eng
[6] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/18/us/latter-day-saints-charity-funds-complaint/index.html
[7] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/08/feds-spending-more-than-9-billion-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/5575206002/
Essentially, the church could spend around 1% of its liquid assets on COVID vaccine
research and be competitive with what these companies are receiving from the
government. They are saving that money
for an emergency, I guess…
[8] https://gephardtdaily.com/local/lds-church-releases-plans-for-residential-community-near-tooele-valley-utah-temple/
Draw your own conclusions here.
[9] https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Joseph_Smith/Polygamy/Did_Joseph_Smith_coerce_women_to_marry_him#Question:_Did_Joseph_claim_that_an_angel_threatened_him_with_a_.22drawn_sword.22_or_.22flaming_sword.22_if_a_woman_refused_to_marry_him.3F
Always good when I can use apologist sources to prove my point.
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