Monday Incident
I saw them walking up the street and harassing my neighbors as I walked up my front porch. White shirts, blue ties, dark pants, hair immaculately cut and combed. I sighed: they were kidding themselves thinking that my African American churchgoing neighbors were going to suddenly abandon their congregations to join a faith that pretty much said they were a cursed race for hundreds of years.
And then they walked up the steps of MY front porch.
“Who are you?” I asked, poking my head out the door and putting on my grumpiest Philly face, “and what are you doing on my porch?”
“We’re from the Church of Latter Day–,” one of the shiny white faces began to say when I cut him off.
“You’re the folks responsible for that awful Proposition 8 crap!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “We don’t support hate in this household. You get the hell off my porch, and don’t you DARE come back here!”
As they turned to leave, I added “And that whole posthumous baptism shit is wrong too!”
But by that time they were talking to my neighbor Caralyn. As I unloaded my car, I could hear her telling them to go away too (albeit in much more polite terms).
I have no problem with anyone’s religion, but once they start shoving their beliefs down the throats of other people, they can go jump in a lake. And if I’d had a bucket of water on hand, they might have walked away just as wet.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Brendan-
I get the whole Prop 8 thing. But I don’t get the anger to the baptism thing. I’m an atheist. If some Christian or Muslim prays for me, it doesn’t affect me. I take it for the spirit it’s offered in. If a LDS claims my soul because they think it helps me, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t have a soul. If a Scientologist cherishes my engrams or saves me from Xenu, I don’t care. It really doesn’t involve me.
Maybe I’m biased. I’ve met a few LDS- they’re easy to convince that you don’t care about changing your beliefs. They never seemed to be as hypocritical as mainline Christians either. Their charity work rivals UPS or Wal-Mart as a model of ‘no fucking around’ efficiency. They were doing worthwhile work in New Orleans when FEMA and the State of Louisiana had their thumbs in their asses.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Brendan-
I get the whole Prop 8 thing. But I don’t get the anger to the baptism thing. I’m an atheist. If some Christian or Muslim prays for me, it doesn’t affect me. I take it for the spirit it’s offered in. If a LDS claims my soul because they think it helps me, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t have a soul. If a Scientologist cherishes my engrams or saves me from Xenu, I don’t care. It really doesn’t involve me.
Maybe I’m biased. I’ve met a few LDS- they’re easy to convince that you don’t care about changing your beliefs. They never seemed to be as hypocritical as mainline Christians either. Their charity work rivals UPS or Wal-Mart as a model of ‘no fucking around’ efficiency. They were doing worthwhile work in New Orleans when FEMA and the State of Louisiana had their thumbs in their asses.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
BOOYAH!
June 18th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
i think it’s highly offensive. it’s a fundamentally dihonest way for them to swell their ranks and make their faith seem larger demographically than it really is. And since the LDS is, IMO, a highly reactionary and dangerous group, I don’t like the idea of that at all.
Furthermore, even though I’m personally irreligious I have a lot of respect for others’ personal faiths. it’s an important thing to a lot of people. Just as i wouldn’t want someone representing me as someone who was a good and devout christian, it’s not right for the mormons to represent people who aren’t mormons as such: do you know they got busted for baptising jews who were murdere din the holocaust? that’s just wrong!
I’m sure they are individually nice people, but their actions to shove their religious beliefs down the throats of other people trump that. And I will throw them off my porch when they come around proselytizing.