sweet baby space jesus

The full text of the very quickly infamous Dallin Oaks BYU-I speech has much more crazy in it that just the extremely racist, homophobic, ethnocentric statements about the post Prop 8 Mormon "persecution" being the same as blacks in the south in the 60s. Just as crazy, and perhaps more dangerous are his arguments about religious freedoms, and how they apparently trump the freedoms of the non-religious or gays (who apparently are all non-religious).

The problem for him is that Oaks is stumbling into dangerous waters with his religious vs. gay framing of the debate - because it's a false dichotomy. There are quite a few religions which strongly favour gay equality, gay marriage, total equality for all. His arguments therefore lose their potency because the only grounds upon which he has to argue against gay rights are religious, and indeed, are the only grounds upon which he even tries to argue, in this particular speech. What he forgets to mention is why his specific, Mormon, religious beliefs should be able to trump, in secular society, the religious beliefs of the UU, Church of Christ, liberal Quakers, or Episcopalians, etc., let alone non-Christians.

Because of the constitutional issue of separation of church and state, the state cannot favour one religion over another. Even if we were to allow it to favour religion over non-religion (which we don't allow, or are trying not to at least), it still could not constitutionally or legally allow conservative religions to overrule liberal religions on this or any other issue.

And I just can't believe he's stupid enough to not have realised this - though perhaps I'm over estimating his intelligence - but I have to assume he knows how fundamentally flawed his entire argument is. I am forced to conclude he's only using it to cynically manipulate those who won't question his words or fault him for his massive illogic. Oaks, Hafen, et al. are just not so cleverly or subtly giving the faithful ways to not feel guilty about being homophobes. They are making the members perform their dirty work by filling their heads with lies and half-truths and faulty logic, and then telling them it's their godly duty to oppose equal human rights for all.

I think it is also clear that Oaks believes (or at least says he does) that gays shouldn't be allowed to even protest. The church clearly believes they have some imaginary right to be immune to all criticism. They seem also to think that they have a right to fund votes on which minorities get which rights, and receive no legal or social consequences, simply on the basis that they're a religion. This mentality stems from the idea Mormons are brought up with that they're special, better, and more righteous than EVERYONE ELSE EVERYWHERE, EVER. They have the "ONE TRUE TRUTH" from sweet baby jesus, and that gives them the right to lord it over everyone else. They simply don't comprehend why society can't function when people act or think like that, or why they should be subject to the same secular laws as all the heathens and fags. They just don't understand that their apostles aren't in charge of the country, that their imaginary space-jesus isn't really running things on earth from his perch on Kolob, and that they're on the very, very wrong side of this issue, as so often in the past.

If we were to give into his and the church's ideas of religious "rights" (and the evangelicals', etc.) we would swiftly have several fundamentalist Christian theocracies warring with each other, rather than a free, democratic, secular, and pluralistic society where individuals and minorities have (at least some) rights.

And that is why Oaks is full of shit, why his ideas are dangerous, and why I hate him and his ilk.