Washblog

Lay Mormons nationwide have to be uncomfortable with all this indignation coming their way as a result of the Institutional Church's self-insertion into California's legal and political life with Proposition 8.

It has become quite apparent that should the California Supreme Court declare the initiative unconstitutional and throw it out, those opposed to gay marriage would be left with no option but to concede the inevitable or attempt another initiative presumably in a form invulnerable to legal overturn.

In other words, another call to that rigid social conservative political activism complete with more requests for millions of dollars in contributions and sacrifice in order to continue the war on gay marriage.

Only this time do you think the LDS Church could raise $22 million as it just did? More so do you think that all those lay Mormons pushed to donate and agitate would be oblivious to the growing sense of national disgust and outrage at what they and their Church have already done?

Do you think that the sentiment in Olbermann's special comment has not struck chords in millions of voters who've grown weary beyond apathetic tolerance of this issue and now want it to end?

But ... in the spirit of teaching empathy to those lacking empathy, perhaps a new initiative might go a long ways toward awakening conscious awareness currently buried beneath self-righteous pride and rigid Biblical literalism.

Perhaps the LDS could be reminded of their own history as victims of partisan legislation aimed at directed discrimination based on discrimination and political partisanship..

Only this time I'm not suggesting an inititative about polygamy.

There's a different sort of controversy that for some citizens is fully loaded with the emotion and outrage. It has to do with how the LDS Church arrogantly ignores the feelings of non-Mormons for whom ancestors are more than a respected memory.

How about an initiative banning Baptism for the Dead?

As a former Mormon, I held a temple recommend and participated in many a rite of being baptized for the dead. I did so aware of that powerful sense of "being-righteous-in-the-temple" that gets aroused when duty and spirit are stirred inside sacred walls - where obeying the will of God includes making sacred the lives of deceased unknown human beings who never got to hear about Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon.

Back then I had no awareness whatsoever about whether or not modern descendants of historical human beings would even care whether or not their supposedly out-of-sight-out-of- mind ancestors were baptized vicariously and placed on the path toward the exclusive LDS Celestial Kingdom.

I remember feeling somewhat dazzled when as a young missionary having gone through temple for myself the first time and afterward was told that every one of the founding fathers had been baptized for the dead. Wow! I could imagine how - if i remained faithful - I would one day embrace brothers Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams etc in the Celestial Kingdom.

Why not? Being founding fathers, those early political patriarchs would certainly in the after life be wise enough to see the truthfulness of the LDS Gospel as taught by missionary angels in the spirit world.

Ignorance was blissful in that context. I had no sense of how cruelly selfish and naive that thinking was as I drove to early morning temple sessions (including sessions in Bellevue) on more Saturdays than I care to count.

What right do LDS temple-goers have to invade the space of living non-Mormons today by baptizing their ancestors via proxy into a promised Celestial Kingdom exclusively populated by Worthy and Righteous Mormons in the hereafter?

Read this excerpt and click on the link to read the entire AP article.

NEW YORK - Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must "implement a mechanism to undo what you have done."

"Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable," said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.

"We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion," Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. "We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough."

Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, have ended. He said his group will not sue, and that "the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion."

In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that allow for the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims. Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City.

"We don't think any faith group has the right to ask another to change its doctrines," Wickman said. "If our work for the dead is properly understood ... it should not be a source of friction to anyone. It's merely a freewill offering."

Michel's decision to unilaterally end discussion of the issue through a news conference leaves the church uncertain about how to proceed, Wickman said.

Baptism by proxy allows faithful Mormons to have their ancestors baptized into the 178-year-old church, which they believe reunites families in the afterlife.

Using genealogy records, the church also baptizes people who have died from all over the world and from different religions. Mormons stand in as proxies for the person being baptized and immerse themselves in a baptismal pool.

Only the Jews have an agreement with the church limiting who can be baptized, though the agreement covers only Holocaust victims, not all Jewish people. Jews are particularly offended by baptisms of Holocaust victims because they were murdered specifically because of their religion.

I read Elder Lance Wickman's quote above as a hypocritical attempt to say that what the LDS considers appropriate and sacred takes precedent over what anybody else says is appropriate and sacred.

In effect Elder Wickman - speaking for LDS leadership - is admitting or declaring that the LDS are among those who believe they own the one true definition of what should be untouchably holy.

This of course to honest spirits requires the admission that the LDS consider themselves the exclusive stewards of what is sacred and what is not; of what is worthy of respect and what is okay to diminish.

But should folks stop with merely being outraged into action by presumptuous LDS leadership and members playing God with the lives of non-Mormon ancestors?

Olberman again:

Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry.

What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

What if somebody did pass a law like that?

What if someone proposed even another initiative banning all LDS Temple Marriage Ceremonies?

What if James Dobson, John Hagee, Tony Perkins and the rest of the Christian Right Wing Fundamentalist Evangelical club suddenly decided that they and they alone own the definition of marriage?

Since their churches and societies - along with most other Christian churches - do not have rites that marry and seal a man and a woman forever, they might disagree with Salt Lake City.

What if they began sending tens of millions of dollars to an initiative campaign to outlaw Mormon Temple Marriage?

What if that particularly powerful God-talking Club decided on an initiative that establishes that marriage is exclusively and absolutely limited to one man, one woman and one mortal lifespan and that all Temple-married Mormons, regardless of when they were married in the Temple, were no longer married?