Fun Facts To Know And Tell About Mormons

Regular readers know that Buster is not a religious person.  It's fine if you are, but it's not my cup of tea.  No offense, but I think all organized religions are silly, and Mormonism certainly must rank among the wackiest.  At less than 200 years of age, it has the added fascination of being relatively new, and of being an all-American creation.  And, oh yeah, a certain Mormon guy is running for president.

What follows is inspired by and, in some cases, excerpted from "The Ghosts of Mormon History", by Mikal Gilmore in the 10/25/12 issue of Rolling Stone.
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Joseph Smith

In 1820, a 14 year-old boy in upstate New York had a vision.  Young Joseph Smith said God appeared to him, along with his #1 son Jesus.  They told Little Joe that all the Earth's churches were corrupt and advised him to avoid all of them.

Moroni and the golden plates

A few years later, Smith said an angel named Moroni (an Italian angel?) led him to a box full of golden plates inscribed with lost ancient scripture.  Smith was granted the ability to translate the message, which in 1830 he presented to America as the "Book of Mormon".

The Book says that the first Americans were actually a group of Israelites, instructed by God to leave Jerusalem.  They built ships (in Jerusalem?), sailed off and wound up in America.  These travelers were comprised of two adversarial groups -- good-guy Nephites, descended from the righteous, and bad-guy Lamanites, who came from evil.  They battled it out over here for 1000 years, with the Nephites eventually gaining a tenuous upper hand.

When Jesus shows up in The Book, he indiscriminately kills bunches on both sides, just for the hell of it.

The Book says the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.

The Book paints Smith as a new American prophet, with new religious insights.  Shortly after its publication, Smith founded his new church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Little Joe was Top Saint, of course.

The Mormons built churches and towns for themselves.  But everywhere they went, they were met with hostility and persecution.  Making up a new version of Christianity and calling yourself a saint and a prophet did not go over well with most people of the day.

And there was that polygamy thing, too.  Smith was evidently a serious horn-dog as well a world-class hoaxer.  He claimed that God personally told him to take multiple wives.  Smith had 20 wives and said it was OK for other selected churchmen to do the same.  Men, not women.


A Mormon polygamous family, 1800's

Smith also said his revelations told him that God was once human, and in the LDS, men could become gods on earth.  Men again, not women.

Smith said he would run for president so he could "overturn the present government and overturn every other form of religion in the country."  That was the last straw.  In 1844, Smith was imprisoned and murdered in jail by angy Illinois citizens.

Brigham Young led the flock to the Great Salt Lake in Utah.  In those days, this territory was outside  the U.S. borders.  The Mormons had fled the country and were in exile, primarily so they could practice what they called "plural marriage".

Parley Pratt

Out there in the wilderness, Brigham Young's right-hand man was one Parley Pratt, who was Mitt Romney's great-great grandfather.  Pratt had 12 wives and 30 children.  Wife Number 12 proved to be a poor choice, because Pratt convinced her to leave her current husband and come to Salt Lake City, which she did.  But her old husband tracked down Pratt and, in 1857, killed him.

Miles P. Romney

Romney's great grandfather, Miles P. Romney, was also an associate of Brigham Young and a devoted polygamist, a habit which kept getting Mormons in trouble whever they went.  So in 1885, church officials sent Miles P. and his 3 wives to Mexico to establish a polygamous colony down there, Colonia Juarez.


It was in that polygamous Mexican Mormon colony that Mitt's grandfather Gaskell Romney and father George Romney were born.

George Romney at a civil rights march

Father George was by far the best of the Romneys.  George Romney ran American Motors in the 1950's.  He became the Republican governor of Michigan in 1962.  He was an outspoken advocate for civil rights and an opponent of hard-right conservatism.  In 1964, he refused to endorse Barry Goldwater.

"Dogmatic ideological parties tend to splinter the social and political fabric of a nation."  -- George Romney

Mormon officials did not appreciate an atypical free-thinker like George Romney.  Check out these words-to-live-by from of church magazine of the time:  "When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done.  When they point the way, there is no other which is safe.  To think otherwise, without immediate repentance, may cost one his faith, his testimony, and the kingdom of God."  (So just shut up, go to sleep, and let other people think for you.)

Their holy book, the Book of Mormon, essentially codifies racism.  Remember the bad-guy Lamanites?  Joe Smith's book says they were the ancestors of Native Americans and Africans.  God cursed them with dark skin, and only by constant repenting and church-going could they ever again make their skin "white and delightsome."

In 1968, a future president of the LDS Church, Ezra Taft Benson, wanted to be George Wallace's running mate.

Until 1978, the Mormon church totally banned membership by black people.  Then, under pressure, they had another of their revelations and totally eliminated the ban, calling it a "limited understanding."

(One of the slimmest books ever published:  "Black Men I've Met at the Mormon Tabernacle")

Obviously, Mormons have long viewed women as subordinate beings.  The church hierarchy is the Old Boys Club.  Mormons fought aggressively against the Equal Rights Amendment, claiming that ratification of the ERA would result in "an increase in homosexual and lesbian activities, which could alter natural, God-given relationships."

The Tao of Mormonism is this oft-repeated advice to the faithful:  Be in the world, but not of the world.

Would-be president Willard Mitt Romney is directly descended from the Mormon aristocracy -- a very peculiar people, I'd say.

"I am in the world, but not of it."

When Mittens veers from one position to the other and then back again, he makes plain that he may be in the political world, but is truly not part of it.  His shifting viewpoint is like Joseph Smith's magic -- a means to a big payoff, which for Mormons means attaining eternal life for themselves, but not necessarily any others.  That's why he'll never be accountable to any secular morality.  It's part of his Mormon hubris -- they are gods on earth, with special insight and no need to explain themselves.  It's what grants Mitt the right to withhold specifics about both his political vision and his deeper beliefs.

But if you hold yourself apart from the world, how can understand those who do not?  And how can they ever understand you?

And how about those "temple garments", a.k.a. Mitt's Magic Mormon undies, which protect the faithful from the rest of us?  What's up with that bizarre shit?  (See the archives, "Mitt's Magic Undies", 10/9/11.)  I'm sorry, but we simply cannot have as our president someone who wears supernatural underwear.

Mormon temple garments

C'mon, man!  Get real!