Romney Heckled For Mormonism: “You Do Not Know The Lord”
I participated in the comment section of this entry at Huff Po. Here are all of my comments. I had to break the final one up into several pieces to fit the 350 word limit.
Jenny Hatch
Comment #1:
Here is my blog entry on this event.
http://www.naturalfamilyblog.com/archives/000674.html…
Jenny Hatch
Mormon HuffPo Reader
By: jennyhatch on February 17, 2007 at 10:59pm
Comment #2
Someone on page two asked a mormon to respond to her questions, named as facts…..so as a devout mormon, I thought I’d respond to at least one of them before I drop out of political discourse at Huff Po and hide in my kitchen.
The poster claimed that Brigham Young had twelve wives.
This is in fact a lie. Brigham Young had 27 wives.
Jenny Hatch
PROUD mormon
By: JennyHatch on February 18, 2007 at 03:54pm
Comment # 3
Mort,
“Hey Forrester, I think I recognize that great and spacious building Lehi saw. It’s here at HuffPo! ;)”
Hey, I consider it an honor to have the finger of scorn pointed at me and my beliefs. Just lets me know I’m on the straight and narrow path back to Heavenly Father.
Man, it has been a long time since I have participated on a board where so much vitriol was shoved in the general direction of my people.
Do you think they recognize how bigoted they are?
And what exactly does it take to have a post pulled as abusive at Huff Po. I almost never read the comments…you think if this mud slinging was going on towards any other minority it would be tolerated here, or flagged as “ABUSIVE??”.
Happy to meet ya, and have a great day. I choose not to engage…much…with the bigots, waste of time.
Jenny Hatch
By: JennyHatch on February 18, 2007 at 10:25pm
Comment #4
McMetal,
You Said:

“If they don’t appreciate people asking about their religion and feel so attacked, then why do they constantly flock to these threads?………………..because they don’t want to discuss their religion in any meaningful way, they want to rebut with the best answer that will show the world that they are RIGHT……and they see any meaningful questions put to them as cause to feel that they are being attacked, which confirms in their minds that they are on the straight and narrow righteous path to god (check jenny’s post).”

I’m really not afraid to engage in a discussion, just a little wary is all.
Minorities….I’ve thought alot about this, simply because I married a man from southern utah and his family goes back many generations to the beginnings of church history. My family converted in Detroit and I was raised mormon, but I don’t have the psyche of my husbands family and I have spent a long time thinking about them and how they live and see the world.
When you have it blasted into your mind that because of your religion others are at liberty to burn your homes, rape your wives, and then chase you from state to state, that can have an effect on how you see the “gentile” world, as we call it. I have sisters in law who have never been friends with people of any other faiths, they just don’t get outside of mormon circles.
While I believe that is really sad, I can understand the inherent reluctance to branch out in terms of who you spend time with and who you are friends with, just because of that underlying fear, which I am not sure they are aware of.
The cloistering does tend to lend to “groupthink”, but it also provides an amazing strength and community for the little ones to grow up in. As for the institutionalized bigotry against minorities that you refer to, yes I have witnessed it in various individuals I have observed over the years. But to say it is taught by the church is simply wrong. I don’t know why Heavenly Father waited so long for people of color to be able to hold the pristhood, it is a mystery to me, but it does not shake my faith in the church.
One quick story. I was at the temple with a black man from our Boulder Congregation. We served in the temple together, and then came outside and he was sitting on the wall in front of the temple waiting for his ride, and I was walking out to my car. I observed a man in his own car drive very quickly up to this black man, you could feel the fear coming from him in waves, and he started to question him as to who he was and why he was standing in front of the temple.
I thought my black friend handled the situation so beautifully, he was so very patient and kind in return. And I have felt shame for the white man ever since, his obvious fear at being around someone of color and confronting him in front of the temple.
I wanted to go up to him and say, I was just in the temple with that man, he is as good of a man as any I have ever met in my life, why are you such a bigoted loser? But I didn’t. I have thought about this many times since, wondering what it is that causes some people to be afraid and other to welcome with open arms those who are different.
I’m not sure what it is. All I know is that during the short time I have lived and the few people I have known during my life, mormon men and women are some of the nicest, most kind, and open hearted of all.
My husband is an amazing father and a wonderful person to have as my eternal companion. I like to think that by being married to me, he has been exposed to a wide variety of friendships with people from other faiths and backgrounds, where if he had raised his family in Utah and married a Utah Mormon, he would have raised his family as his siblings are raising their own, largely insulated from the gentile world.
As I said, this insular living does tend to bring amazing strength, but it can narrow and dare I say it, even warp a person into only wanting be around people who live like them.
But this warping does not affect just my people. It is human nature to want to be around those who think and believe and live like you do.
One of the things I enjoy most about being LDS is the very diversity that has come into my life. We have this whole army of missionaries who travel around the world, and they are not “traveling” in the sense of going from one five star resort to another, they go and live among the people and eat the native foods, and spend time in the homes of the saints (my husband went to Holland for two years), and they bring back amazing stories.
And then in my own congregation, which has a huge number of progressives (I’m a neo-con), we have this family from Colobia, and that family from Mexico, and this missionary from Mongolia who was the most popular rock star in his country and gave it all up to serve a mission. (not kidding, we have that guy in our missionary force here in Colorado).
The most wonderfully diverse experience of my life has been to be a mormon, where we all have a passion for being disciples of Jesus Christ, but the various political and diverse locations where we grew up force us to learn how to live in peace and love, and overcome the differences, serving each other and attempting to grow one in heart.
As for exclusion of gay and lesbians, it is absolutely false that we kick people out of the church for sexual orientation. Anyone, anyone at all is able to attend our sabbath meetings. Those who have been baptized and made the covenants associated with membership in the church who act on their sexual orientation are excommunicated however.
The bar has been raised very high for those who wish to attend the temple, and only 50% of church members qualify for that blessing. I have heard that tithing and porn addictions keep more people of the temple than any other thing.
And I should say clearly that I support anyones right to question the history of my church, to loudly proclaim inconsistencies, and to even hate us for whatever reason they feel justifies that hate in their heart. It does not shake my testimony of the Savior or the fact that I believe this church is his kingdom on the earth. And you are very right when you say that this slamming of mormons just makes things clearer in my own mind that this church is true.
It is a truism that anything that is widely controversial generally has an element of truth or falsehood associated with it. You obviously believe my religion to be false, and I have a fervant testimony that it is true. Apples and oranges as far as I’m concerned. But yes, those of us on the web who feel the need to defend our faith will at times come and attempt to share and teach what we believe to be the truth about our faith. In my blog post I simple attempted to share the fact that we are Christians, as that was the original claim against Mitt Romney.
Jenny Hatch
WWW.NaturalFamilyBLOG.com