This Thing Is Not Like The Other: Mormons And “Southern Blacks”

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The Church of Latter Day Saints has caught some flack in California for their fight against gay marriage. It’s what happens when you walk into the political minefield of civil rights. There’s a good chance it could blow up in your face. Well, some in the church don’t like the blowback and one Elder Dallin H. Oaks compared being Mormon and against gay marriage to being a Southern black American during the Civil Rights Movement.

From the Associated Press:

The anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil rights movement, a high-ranking Mormon said Tuesday.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks referred to gay marriage as an “alleged civil right” in an address at Brigham Young University-Idaho that church officials described as a significant commentary on current threats to religious freedom.

Wow! I didn’t know they were lynching and beating Mormons in the streets in California! Why haven’t I heard about these atrocities of police dogs and water hoses and regular beat downs for things like “walking,” “trying to peacefully assemble” and “vote?” This is a TRAVESTY, why I outta …! Wait? You say those things AREN’T happening to Mormons in California or ANYWHERE in the United States for that matter?

“Blacks were lynched and beaten and denied the right to vote by their government,” said Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, which spearheaded the No on 8 campaign. “To compare that to criticism of Mormon leaders for encouraging people to give vast amounts of money to take away rights of a small minority group is illogical and deeply offensive.”

Now why Oaks had to compare them to the Civil Rights Movement, I have no clue. There already was a time when Mormons were getting beat down and murdered in the street and that was around the time of their church’s founding, before the turn of the century, when they were forced to leave Missouri and other parts of the East and Midwest and move to Utah. He could have just compared Mormons to Mormons. The comparison STILL wouldn’t be appropriate, but he could have kept it in the family.

Naturally, when people pointed out that Bull O’Connor wasn’t trying to kill him, Oaks was recalcitrant.

In an interview Monday before the speech, Oaks said he did not consider it provocative to compare the treatment of Mormons in the election’s aftermath to that of blacks in the civil rights era, and said he stands by the analogy.

“It may be offensive to some _ maybe because it hadn’t occurred to them that they were putting themselves in the same category as people we deplore from that bygone era,” said Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice who clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yeah. Um. OK.

Tagged as: California, civil rights, mormons

Article by Danielle Belton

WHO IS “THE SNOB?" She is your very best, better than most since 1977 friend, self-described “nerd girl/hobohemian,” writer and journalist, Danielle C. Belton.Born and raised St. Louis, Mo. on a healthy diet of news programming, pop culture, black history and “snark,” Belton is best known as the woman behind THE BLACK SNOB. A pop culture-meets-politics blog, THE BLACK SNOB takes a look at irreverent side of life, finding the funny, freaky center of every issue. http://blacksnob.com.

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