Orson Scott Card: Big Love? Big Deal

National Review Online ^ | March 13, 2009 | Orson Scott Card

[neverdem]

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March 13, 2009, 4:00 a.m.

Big Love? Big Deal
Yes, Mormons are targets, but let’s not get too excited about it.

By Orson Scott Card

In the aftermath of Proposition 8, it’s open season on Mormons, and the producers of HBO’s series Big Love are in the best position to give the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) a big slap.

The series focuses on members of one of several splinter groups that have left the Mormon Church over the issue of polygamy. To understand what this means to Mormons, it’s worth indulging in a little history.

When the Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff declared in 1890 that it was God’s will that Latter-day Saints no longer take multiple wives, some Mormons clung to the “Principle of Plural Marriage” and rejected the authority of the president of the church.

This is akin to what happened when Protestants declared that they would no longer follow the pope, and polygamist sects are about as Mormon now as Baptists are Catholic.

The fastest way to get yourself excommunicated from the Mormon Church is to advocate plural marriage.

But the polygamist sects still do most of their recruiting among Mormons, and there is a constant struggle between the church and the polygamists.

Many of these polygamists still believe that it is in Mormon temples that their marriages must be solemnized. The temple is a focal point in their religion — but if they admit they’re polygamists, they can’t get in.

So it actually makes artistic sense for episodes of Big Love to center on their effort to get into the temple. It reflects the real concerns of some polygamists, and it is accurate to show the official church as doing its best to keep them out.

You’re not supposed to enter the temples, once they’re dedicated, unless you’re a member of the church who is keeping the major commandments — which polygamists most flagrantly are not.

Big Love is not doing anything new. Anti-Mormon groups have been describing, depicting, or showing ersatz versions of the temple ceremonies for many years. Anyone who wants to know what goes on in the temples can find out with very little effort. So why are we Mormons upset about Big Love’s foray into anti-Mormon “exposé”?

It’s offensive when believers in one religion hold up the sacred rites of another religion to public ridicule. So we’re hurt — but we’re not surprised.

Mormons have always been the exception to America’s policy of religious tolerance. Throughout our history in America, Mormons have been oppressed by government, killed or driven out by mobs, slandered, and libeled — always by fellow Americans who professed to believe in religious tolerance.

So while we don’t like what Big Love is doing, we’re not doing much about it. We’ve learned by observation that protests and boycotts merely increase the publicity, and therefore the viewership, of such hostile productions as the Big Love temple episode.


So the church’s official advice to its members is: Ignore it. (See this, for more.)

My favorite response came from Terrance D. Olson, a Brigham Young University professor who does research in family studies. His essay in Meridian Magazine is a lovely explanation of how tolerance works and why it elevates everyone. Those who refuse to respect other people’s sacred things, he says, hurt themselves most of all.

My own essay at MormonTimes.com, published by the church-owned Deseret News, strongly urges my fellow Mormons not to write angry letters, because anger never persuades anybody, and expressing it isn’t particularly Christ-like.

Most Mormons are seeing the Big Love temple episode in the context of the recent outpouring of hatred and bile from those who most vehemently opposed Proposition 8. Mormons have been targeted for business boycotts; some have lost their jobs because they contributed to the campaign to defend marriage.

The result is that few of us have any desire to act as the worst of our opponents have acted. After someone has boycotted a friend’s business, it makes it a bit harder for you to want to call for a boycott.

By and large, while we’d prefer that everybody handle differences of opinion peacefully, we’d rather be persecuted than be the persecutors. The few times in our history when we have departed from that principle, the results have shamed us for generations. Tolerance works better.

What Mormons keep foremost in mind is this: We’re a worldwide church. We might be going through a rough patch in America right now, as we butt heads with the oppressive New Puritans of the American Left, but that has nothing to do with how the Mormon Church is growing in Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, or Taiwan.

Big Love is just an entertainment; nothing they do will diminish the sacredness of what goes on inside our temples.

Our primary work is helping people in and out of the church to live a more Christ-like life. Now and then, when a deep moral issue is involved, we get involved in political action. But when we do, we expect that others won’t like it, and we take our lumps.

The more they attack us, the more people they bring to us as allies and, occasionally, as converts to our faith. So rave on, brothers and sisters!

— Orson Scott Card is a novelist and critic. For his take on Proposition 8, as a Mormon and prior to its passage, go here.

[BlueStateBlues]

Good for him. I loved his Ender books, and apparently he’s a sincere person of faith.

[Moose4]

It would be an interesting comparison to see HBO do a series about polygamy in the Muslim world. Something tells me the reaction of the “moderate Muslims” wouldn’t be nearly as restrained as that of the Mormons.

}:-)4

[absolootezer0]

why would any man engage in polygamy?

on mother in law is enough!

[Marie2]

Yes, produce a “Hijab Love” or something, profile a year in the life of a typical Taliban family.

I think I’d get cable just to see that. They could have the lash the grandma episode, the acid in the face episode, the kill the rape victim episode. . .

[astyanax]

Orson Scott Card on NRO?!
Does this mean his conversion is complete?
He’s had some excellent articles recently.
(BTW, just finished the Shadow series. Great writer!)

[Tolik]

Orson Scott Card - PING  [please freepmail me if you want or don't want to be pinged to Orson Scott Card political articles]

Links: his articles discussed at FR: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/orsonscottcard/index and archived here (it is a must go place for all new to OSC political writing): http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/index.html

His fresh articles appear in the Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC: http://www.rhinotimes.com/greensboro/  (before being posted permanently on his The Ornery American website). Read his books/movies/and everything reviews: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/ 

His "About" page: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/about.shtml

[Moose4]

He still considers himself a Democrat, amazingly enough. He’s kind of in that Southern vein of populist socially-conservative Rat that kept the South as the “Solid South” for so long—the Zell Miller type.

}:-)4

[azcap]

“Hijab Love”! That would get a great reaction. I imagine the Muslim fundamentalist vote in CA was even more for Prop 8 than the Mormons. I know a handful of Mormon libertarians who would vote against it but there don’t seem to be many Islamic libertarians. I am sure Tom Hanks is getting ready to produce “Hijab Love” any day now.

[Vigilanteman]

why would any man engage in polygamy?

I've heard the Mormons stopped it because they decided it was against the Bible teachings in Matthew 6:24

"No man can serve two masters . . . "

[reaganaut]

Ping to article

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[AppyPappy]

“We just want to be left alone and practice our religion as we see fit”
“Then why did you knock on my door?”
“Because I want to talk to you about my church”

[Mr Inviso]

Victor Davis Hansen is still a Democrat, too.

[astyanax]

the Zell Miller type.
It would be nice if we had a few more of those types (Democrats that actually know something about the Constitution.)
Heck, it would be nice if we had a few more Republicans like that!

[SERKIT]

I have an idea for a reluctant, tightwad, polygamist with 5 wives, who hates kids called “Big Glove”. He is too cheap to buy condoms so he uses a rubber glove.

[Skenderbej]

One wife is enough!

[sheik yerbouty]

There are times that I think one is too much!

[greyfoxx39]

Mormons have always been the exception to America’s policy of religious tolerance. Throughout our history in America, Mormons have been oppressed by government, killed or driven out by mobs, slandered, and libeled — always by fellow Americans who professed to believe in religious tolerance.

FMA: Persecution of the Mormon Church

"The True Church is always persecuted, and the Mormons have always been persecuted."

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     Mormon claims of persecution as evidence of truth must founder on these facts:

• Persecution, however intense, or even martyrdom, cannot prove the truth of the victims' beliefs. Every religion has its martyrs, and yet no Mormon would accept the persecution of Islamic martyrs, or the persecution of the Baha'i or the Falun Gong, as evidence that those religions are true.

• Although history shows that Mormons were persecuted, history also shows that it was not for their theology, but for their goal of establishing a Mormon theocracy wherever they settled, to the justified resentment of the non-Mormon population.

• Mormons have never suffered persecution such as was visited upon the Jews of Europe, the pagans of the fourth and fifth century Roman empire (where Christianity had recently become the official state religion), the native religions of America during the European conquest, especially by the Spanish, or any number of other persecutions where one group forcefully imposes its religion on another. At the present time, the Baha'i in present-day Iran and the Falun Gong in China have suffered much greater persecution than Mormons. Nowhere have the Mormons been forced to abandon their religion under threat of death or harm. (The Mormon abandonment of the practice of polygamy in 1890 merely "forced" them to follow their own Article of Faith stating that they believe in obeying the law.)

     Their claim of persecution generally ignores the persecutions inflicted by the Mormons themselves on their opponents. This is usually because the source of information about their "persecution" is the Mormons themselves. They make much of the Haun's Mill Massacre, but say nothing about the Mormon mob burning the town of Gallatin. They say nothing about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where Mormons slaughtered 150 innocent and unarmed immigrants. They don't tell you how they drove David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery and others from their homes under threat of death. They don't tell you about their persecution of the Godbeites in Utah.

     Mormons also seem to believe that disagreeing with them and pointing out the errors of their religion is a form of persecution. This very attitude shows that they really know nothing first-hand about being really persecuted.

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[pappyone]

Yeah, but then wouldn’t he have to have five...