"Latter Days", a movie about the struggles of a young,
gay Mormon, was another good movie that did not
attract nearly the attention of "Brokeback Mountain".
There is a long, ugly history to the Mormon Church's
oppression of gays, that continues to this day.
They used to practice electroshock of gays
at Brigham Young University, which is named after
the Mormon founder/prophet. They defend themselves
by saying that they did not force electroshock on gays,
but only did this for gays who "wanted" it.
However, in reality no one in their right mind "wants"
to be electroshocked unless they have been indoctrinated
and brainwashed with religious hate propaganda
and believe that they are "going to hell", otherwise.
What they did to our bodies is one grievance.
What they did to our minds is simply another.
They succeeded in making gays loathe themselves, to
such a pathetic degree that gays were willing to torture
themselves.
The Mormon governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney donated
a million dollars to Brigham Young. His son attended there, and
had a lovely wedding ceremony that I'm sure was very
important to him.
Mormons have donated millions to the anti-gay
marriage crusade.
Mormons used to follow gays into gay bars, and take
pictures of them with cameras. It was part of a pattern
of harassment at Brigham Young.
There are still high-ranking Mormon clergy who preach that it
is OK to beat up gays, saying that they deserve it.
You will not find the media mentioning this.
The CIA likes Mormons, I have read, because they
are so "wholesome". That is one of the more interesting
things about the human race- the irony of how it becomes
so completely damned in its pursuit of "wholesomeness".
I do believe that is what the Nazis wanted, at their heart.
Their own propaganda posters look so much like
Norman Rockwell or 1950s America. Germans are strong, clean,
rosy-cheeked, hard-working. The only problem is that
others are in comparison "sickly", "evil", "ugly","immoral"-
like the gypsies, the Jews, the gays.
It is just like the Mormons and Catholics and other Christians-
their inflated image of themselves as "good" and representing
everything virtuous is contrasted by their deep loathing of others
for whom they have inflated perception of being just
the opposite. In the end, the self-love and the hate go
like hand-in-glove, to turn them into perfect, little
monsters.
The Mormon Church, of course, hated "Latter Days."
The young Mormon in "Latter Days" is perhaps the
only kind of cautionary example, why not simply
to judge and hate them all. At first, his later-to-be
lover regarded him with contempt, just a game,
but later understood that he was a real human being,
not just a sex object. This path of discover was
major part of the message of the movie.
Most gays would luck ever to find someone as sweet, idealistic and
innocent as that young Mormon fellow.
As refreshing as he was, I do not know if his like outlook
represented truth, or just an appealing fantasy.
I couldn't really believe, I'm afraid, in his uplifting concept,
that if you could "connect all the dots" and see the big
picture of life, that it would really be warm, funny and good.
I think that seeing the Big Picture would probably be
a shocking horror show of random suffering in a
universe that is completely blind and uncaring
as its innermost nature.
What should we want? To be correct or to be content?
This is perhaps the purpose of religion- to give comfort
as a balm for the pain that is life. I could forgive its being
that, at the expense of Truth, if the package had not come
combined with its tendency to act as a justification for
the natural human tendency to hold others in contempt.
Tom Keske
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