Posted on 04/30/2002 10:25:50 AM PDT by summer
They must not have gone to the one Catholic High School, Judge Memorial, in Salt Lake City that my husband attended. He said the Catholics were discriminated against by Mormons.
I guess in all your raising, nobody ever told you about Brigham Young saying this:
Now, suppose that we were to issue our edicts to the whole world of mankind for them to obey the Gospel we preach, and had the power to compel them to obey, could we do it according to the dictates of our religion? We could not. We could invite them, and could tell them how, but we could not say, and maintain the faith that we have embraced, you must bow down and profess our religion and submit to the ordinances of the kingdom of God. . . . It would prove that God is in fault in not making them do so . . . . If we become Godlike we will be just as full of charity as he is. We would let pagans worship as they please, and to the Christians and Mohammedans, and all sects and parties in the world we would say, "Do just as you please, for your volition is free, and you must act upon it for yourselves before the heavens." Our religion will not permit us to command or force any man or woman to obey the Gospel we have embraced.
In Salt Lake City, if the "Mormons" had supreme control—I say "Mormons," I ought to say Latter-day Saints—if they had supreme control from our northern boundary in Idaho, to the southern boundary, Arizona, and from our eastern boundary, Colorado, to our western boundary, Nevada; if we had supreme control and undisputed possession of this land, without the right of dominion over us being questioned, we would have no authority under the constitution under which we live to say to any human being within these confines how he should worship, what he should or should not do in order to please the Creator. If the Chinaman should come here and build a Joss house and burn incense to Joss, if he prostrate himself in adoration before the images that he thinks represents his deity, we have no right in the world to interfere with him. If an Ingersoll should come here and say that he did not believe in any God at all, and he could carry his feelings into practice, we would have no right to interfere with him.Under the circumstances I have described, he would have a perfect right to believe in God or not. We would have no right to interfere with a man who, believing his priest has power to remit his sins, would enter the confessional chamber for the purpose of having them forgiven; or with the Episcopalian who may choose to sprinkle his infant, or the Jew because he believed in circumcising his infant child, or with the Baptist because he believed in baptism by immersion. But supposing that a man should come along that believes it his right and in accordance with his religious convictions to marry more than one wife, and he takes care of his wives and provides for them properly according to his religion, believing that in the eternity to come he will dwell with them. Some of us may think that his ideas of heaven are very materialistic; we may think him a very foolish man for having such a belief, and especially for going to the expense of keeping three or four wives; these may be the popular ideas about him, but if he carries out his belief from a religious standpoint, he has a perfect right to do it in the face of God and even under the constitution of our land. The Parsee and fire worshipper and men of kindred belief may yet come to this land of liberty; and I tell you if the spirit of the Constitution be maintained, as the Latter-day Saints will yet maintain it, they will have a perfect right to worship their God according to the dictates of their own consciences without any to molest or make afraid. The only time that these men can be interfered with will be when their religious acts interfere with the rights and liberties of their fellowmen.
Hear it, ye Latter-day Saints! When John Chinaman comes in your midst, teach your children to respect him. When any other man of any other creed, race or color takes his abode among you, teach your children to respect this form of worship. And if they go to the church of the Catholics or that of the Presbyterians or of any other sect, teach them to behave themselves and treat everybody with civility and kindness, and that it is none of their business how these sects worship, teach that they violate good order and good law when they in any way make light of religious exercises. I would whip a boy for it quicker than for anything else. That is the freedom I believe in; that is the freedom I mean to teach to my children and to all men so far as my voice and influence extend; that is the freedom I mean to contend for and, as I have said hundreds of times to leading men of this nation, I will, if necessary, take my sons and make them swear that they will stand by and maintain this liberty as long as they live and contend for it and teach their children after them to contend for it also. I believe in the fullest liberty upon these points.
We have been accused of exclusiveness. Our hearts have many times warmed towards "Gentiles," as they are called. We have extended the arms of kindness thousand and thousands of times to them, as our history has proved. We have been full of that disposition. But how have our advances been met? Let those in this tabernacle and those who are familiar with such matters read the newspapers. I have had people visit me at my house where every attention and courtesy would be shown them, and they would leave and perhaps through reading newspaper articles consisting of abominable lies, would go away and betray those who had received and treated them kindly and hospitably and so often has this been the case that I have almost sworn I will never do it again. It is not because we have unkind feelings. The time will come when we will have power; at present we are in the minority, and it pays for scribblers to write about us and hold us up to ridicule.
But suppose the Latter-day Saints had control; suppose their ideas were fulfilled, that is, that we, as it is destined we shall be, were the people who uphold Constitutional government upon this continent, who restored the government to its primitive condition when all the political parties shall have fallen into chaos; would we feel at liberty to say that none but the Latter-day Saints should be elected to offices of trust and responsibility? No. Joseph Smith set the pattern; he taught the brethren who were with him better ideas; you well-informed Latter-day Saints know that there are two powers which God has restored in these the last days. One is the Church of God, the other the Kingdom of God.
A man may belong to the Kingdom of God and yet not be a member of the Church of God. In the Kingdom of God, using it in a political sense, there may be heathens and Pagans and Mahommedans and Latter-day Saints and Presbyterians and Episcopalians and Catholics and men of every creed. Will they legislate for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alone? Will the laws that they enact protect us alone and not protect others? No. Why? Because God is the Father of the Latter-day Saints as well as of every human being; God is the father of all, is the father of the Chinaman, the Hindoo, the African, the European, the American; is the Father of all the races of men and of every creed and nationality. When he establishes his kingdom it will protect all in their equal rights; I as a Latter-day Saint, will not have power to trample on my fellow-man who may not be orthodox in my opinion, because I am a Latter-day Saint; nor will my fellow-man to whom I am heterodox, have the power to trample upon me. Does not that look right? That is the kind of kingdom we have to contend for; that is the kind of kingdom we have to establish, and it is already provided for in the Constitution give unto us by God, and through the glorious labors of the fathers who aid the foundation of this government, who were inspired and raised by our Almighty Father for this express purpose.
There is no liberty that a human being can desire, neither is there a right that can be exercised properly, that we do not have under the Constitution of our land. It needs no amendment about it; it is broad enough, if interpreted in its true spirit, to cover the individual, the continent, and the entire globe and furnish freedom for all.
To which I say, Amen.
Exactly. I'd like to see anyone try teaching Utah history without any "Mormon" history.
Ok, so some Mormon I mean relig, well um, anyway some people came and settled in Utah. They came to Utah because some other people were opposed to their relig didn't like them and used their homes for firewood and their bodies for target practice.
So anyway they chose Utah over California and Oregon because Utah was such a nice desert and nobody believed that crops could be grown there. It just seemed like a nice challenge after all the lazy years they had spent so far.
Well, some of those people still didn't like them and tried to send an army to control them but it didn't work out.
During the early years there were many setbacks, including some crickets that tried to eat all their crops. The settlers tried a few tricks such as making themselves look shorter by getting on their knees and saying some words. This spectacle eventually attracted thousands of seagulls who were hungry for crickets. Not only were these seagulls hungry but they were bulimic seagulls. After engorging themselves and looking in the mirror at how fat they were they found public restrooms and vomited. Being hungry again they came back for more. Eventually the crickets conceded defeat to the seagulls.
Well, to make a long story short, the settlers eventually discovered skiing and built some ski resorts. Eventually they attracted the Olympic Games.
And that, Johny, is how Utah became a state.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.