“Anti-mormon”

Can someone explain to me what it means?

Personally, my definition is “Anything that was made up, is false, or intentionally distorts the true history and doctrine of the church.”

Got that?

If a person’s definition is “Anything that disagrees with me,” or “Anything that makes me feel bad,” there is a good chance they are going to call me anti-mormon. Those definitions aren’t really fair.

I mean, by this definition, learning that Joseph Smith had 33 wives could make the person declare the claim anti-mormon, even when the person making the claim is pro-mormon:聽BYU professor talks about Polygamy.

You could, in fact, claim anyone is anti-mormon, including Brigham Young (like when he teaches that Adam is God. You don’t like it? Well, it is anti-mormon!).

So let’s just standardize the definition. 聽If you are going to call me “anti-mormon,” you need to point out where my history is wrong, or where something is “intentionally distorted.” 聽Otherwise, it’s just name calling. 聽If someone is going to cite a source as “anti-mormon” in a comment, that’s fine, but I’m going to press them for the same information.

I hope to correct anything that is inaccurate or intentionally misleading so that this site can in no legitimate way be called “anti-mormon.”

This entry was posted in Current issues, Housekeeping. Bookmark the permalink.
Last edited by EmmaHS on January 23, 2013 at 12:03 am

2 Responses to “Anti-mormon”

  1. I was just looking at links on your site and saw “Housekeeping” I can always use those tips.

    Just a few hours I has posted this in response to a friend that was writing about the huffingtonpos article on “How the Mormons Punked the Press” and how the article sounded “Anti-Mormon” like that of early anti-mormon writers against Joseph Smith.

    I commented on B’s post. 10:53 am 2/2/2015

    Anti-Mormon is a label that is often used to totally discount information from a source that contains an unflattering message…..

    Over the years I’ve heard people refer to Todd Compton’s work as anti-Mormon and maybe even a few have thought your books are also anti-Mormon in disguise without having read them.

    Both sides spin history where they can. Not sure that labels: invite us to dig in and separate truth from spin…..

    Maybe you should have said you noticed a similar ‘tone’ in older works and modern works critical of the church….

    As you know ‘tone’ is the new ‘anti Mormon’…….. 馃檪

    ====

    The way back machine shows my early LDS church history web site, going back to about 1998.

    https://web.archive.org/web/19990218174722/http://www.xmission.com/~plporter/lds.htm

    I had one of the earliest pages on the web to talk about Polygamy and Polyandry, many thought I was a closet fundamentalist or anti-mormon.


    bigamy (big路a路my) n. 1. The criminal offense of marrying one person while still legally married to another.

    plural marriage n. 1. See polygamy. [In Mormon terms it not just more than one spouse, but Celestial marriage (or more than one wife) through special permission, authority, sanction, vow, covenant and sometimes command, by or on behalf of God.

    polygamy (po路lyg路a路my) n. 1. The condition or practice of having more than one spouse at one time. Technically this could mean more than one husband, but most people think it only means more than one wife.

    Polygny (po路lyg路y路ny) n. 1. The condition or practice of having more than one wife at one time. Poly = many, gyno = Females.

    polyandry (pol路y路an路dry) n. 1. The condition or practice marrying or of having more than one husband at one time. Poly = many, andro = Males. [See the story of Joseph Smith, Adam Lightner and Mary Elizabeth Rollins.]

    15 + years later the church is finally talking about Polyandry and Post Manifesto Polygamy, that I had learned about in graduate school in History at BYU in 1979, I was in graduate school with Ken:

    Kenneth L. Cannon II, “Beyond the Manifesto: Polygamous Cohabitation Among LDS General Authorities After 1890,” Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (Winter 1978): 24-36;

    Yea, try calling Ken an Anti-Mormon as well… 馃檪

    • Mithryn says:

      I remember that website. I found it in 2000, maybe 1999. I am guilty, personally, of thinking it anti-mormon and closing the browser. Glad I could apologize to you formally.

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