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Old 04-14-2007, 05:13 PM   #17
Solon
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Happy Valley, PA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SeattleUte View Post
By expanding your outlook and placing Mormonism in a larger context the scales fall off of your eyes and it becomes very clear that Mormonism is just a more recent revolution in an age old cycle that has been repeating for 3,000 years and is slowly expiring of its own weight.
To define someone as an "anti-Mormon" requires a definition of Mormon to which this someone can be placed in opposition. It's a semantics argument similar to defining Pro-Choice and Pro-Life in the abortion debate: nobody would choose to define him/herself as anti-life or anti-choice. Similarly, the LDS church membership casts certain (perceived or real) opponents as "anti-Mormon" in order to take advantage of the word's (literally) negative connotations. I'm not saying it's always an unjustified designation; rather, LDS are just as prone to use rhetoric to defend themselves as others are to attack them. All is fair in love, war, and religious dispute, I suppose.

To respond to an earlier post, I don't see SU as an "anti-" anything (if I may take such liberties in describing his persona). To define him in such a derivative way is overly simplistic and hardly does justice to his advocacy for placing Mormonism in a broader context. Those who define themselves by opposing Mormonism (or anything else) merit the label "anti-". Those whose ideas, research, and opinions touch LDS topics tangentially, albeit in a so-called detrimental way, are something else. Seattle's pro-secularism is hardly anti-Mormonism, strictly speaking.
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