Unsettling Mormonism
an archive of unsettling histories, mythistories, and mystories
from U.S. & Mormon settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism
from U.S. & Mormon settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism
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i won’t say much, I think the video says enough
I don't know this video’s name yet. I'm not even sure it is done The video was arranged a few months ago, the audio was arranged over 3 years ago This audio has been in my phone all those years, while in shuffle it has come on a lot in those months, so maybe it was ready to come out. I also want to acknowledge the vast influence Latter Day Labia's work has had on me and this piece and to appreciate the work she does in that valuable archive 💙
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 Nephi preparing to cut off Laban's head, an illustration for the Book of Mormon On Sunday June 12, 2022, thirty-one white men as members of a U.S. American white nationalist and neo-fascist hate group called Patriot Front loaded up their weapons, shields, and selves into a Uhaul to go terrorize a northern Idaho Pride event. Six of these men are from Utah and ten of them are said to be Mormon.
In 2014, the second leading cause of death in Utah for people 10 to 24 was suicide, which is higher than the national average. LGBTQ youth are at least three times more likely than heterosexual youth to attempt suicide and about four times more likely to make a medically serious suicide attempt. At least 40% of the 5,000 youth who are unsheltered in Utah are LGBTQ and 60% from Mormon homes. Some folks "wonder" if the history of anti-queer violence in Utah and Mormonism has influenced these young men who travelled to Idaho to commit hate-based anti-queer violence. I don't. I know that Mormonism is a deep source of anti-queer murderous rhetoric. And as a Lafferty brother from "Under the Banner of Heaven" says, the religion, "breeds dangerous men." At the beginning of the Book of Mormon, the main character, Nephi, is commanded by God to murder a leader named Laban. Nephi is told by God, "Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief." Thus, from the very beginning of Mormondom murder has been an acceptable practice when done in the preservation of righteousness, like protecting the world from the gay agenda and the "national suicide" Mormon leaders teach will come from "one generation of homosexual marriages." Jacob Smith on Twitter claims that "Maybe if you’d really pay attention to the talks given and the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you would know that there isn’t any anti gay doctrine." Well, I also read through some talks and found a lot of anti-LGBTQIA2s doctrine. And much of it encourages suicide, physical violence, and murder against queer people. Here's a timeline of anti-queer openly violent rhetoric from this church (including some anti-queer "national suicide" fear mongering which directly aligns with "white genocide" rhetoric from white-nationalist groups like Patriot Front and Mormon anti-queer activists like Ayla "Wife with a Purpose" Stewart & the DezNat folks: “Illicit intercourse shall be punished with death.” Future Prophet, George Q. Cannon, 1857 The only way to stop homosexuality, this "filthy…nameless crime," was through “the destruction of those who practice them … if a little nest of them were left ... they would soon corrupt others" - Mormon President George Q. Cannon, 1897 General Conference, “I would like to hear a little more musket fire (against queers) from this temple of learning.” - Apostle Jeffery R. Holland to BYU faculty in 2021 “For homosexuality, (the Old Testament punishment) was death." - J. Reuben Clark 1957 Gen Con. “Sexual sins are ‘most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost.’ (Alma 39:5)” "Better dead clean, than alive unclean.” “Many (a) faithful Latter-day Saint parent…has sent (a child) into the world with the direction: ‘I would rather have you come back in a pine box with your virtue than return alive without it’” - Bruce R. McConkie, “Mormon Doctrine,” 1958 "Molesters, rapists, killers, homosexuals ... are emotionally sick and disabled creatures. ... They are waiting. They are hunting. They are seeking .... The deviates prowl that jungle." - Apostle Mark E. Peterson, Church specialist on homosexuality, Deseret News editorial, 1961 “There are moves… to ease up on…homosexuals and other deviates…This is one of the greatest evidences of apostasy of mankind…They which commit such things are worthy of death.” - Apostle Mark E. Peterson, Gen Con, 1965 “We are constantly pressured to understand and help murderers, rapists, thieves and now the 'poor, sick, misunderstood homosexual.' ... The believers of the Bible know what the Bible has to say of homosexuals, and that it states the penalty is death for this act." - Deseret News, letter to the editor, 1966 “Homosexuality was made a capital crime in the Bible (Lev. 20:13) and the wage of sin is death. (Romans 6:23).”- Apostle Mark E. Peterson, Church Specialist on Homosexuality, Gen Con 1969. “The glorious thing to remember is that [homosexuality] is curable … How can you say the door cannot be opened until your knuckles are bloody, till your head is bruised, till your muscles are sore? ... Your virtue is worth more than your life . . . preserve your virtue even if you lose your lives.” - Miracle of Forgiveness, Spencer W. Kimball, 1969 From 1971-1980, BYU President Dallin H. Oaks had security spying on BYU students which led to many queer student deaths by suicide. After a missionary told Apostle Packer that he’d punched his companion who was coming on to him, Packer said: “Well, thanks. Somebody had to do it, and it wouldn’t be well for a General Authority to solve the problem that way…You must protect yourself … Boys are to become men—masculine, manly men” - To Young Men Only, Boyd K Packer, 1976 Gen Con “We see evil and crime and carnality covering the earth. Liars and thieves and adulterers and homosexuals and murderers scarcely seek to hide their abominations.” Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, 1980 Gen Con. “Families are under a more serious attack today than at any time since the beginning of the world, with the possible exception of the days of Noah, because of birth control, abortion, and sterilzation, as well as homosexuality.” - Gen Authority Hartman Rector Jr., 1981 Gen Con. “Today we are aware of great problems in our society. The most obvious are sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, drug abuse, alcoholism, vandalism, pornography, and violence.” - Ezra Taft Benson, 1982 Gen Con "One generation of homosexual 'marriages' would depopulate a nation, and, if sufficiently widespread, would extinguish its people. Our marriage laws should not abet national suicide." - Apostle Dallin H. Oaks 1984 The AIDS epidemic is “a plague fueled by a vocal few who exhibit greater concern for civil rights than for public health, a plague abetted by the immoral … Where is Wisdom?” - Current Mormon Prophet Russell M. Nelson, 1992 Gen Con The three main dangers facing the church are “the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement,... and so-called scholars or intectuals.” - Apostle Boyd K. Packer, 1993 "Homosexual activity is a serious sin … sexual sins are more serious than any other sins except murder and denying the Holy Ghost” - Mormon Church, True to the Faith, 2004 “Evil that used to be localized and covered like a boil is now legalized and paraded like a banner.” - Apostle Dallin H. Oaks 2004 “As a Family Law professor concerned about the dangers of legalizing same-sex marriage, I sometimes feel like Moishe the Beadle” who tried to warn his people of the dangers of Nazis, but “they refused to listen.” - BYU Law professor Lynn D. Wardle, 2007 World Congress of Families in Warsaw, Poland. "Others may not be free [of same-gender attraction] in this life" but "our bodies, feelings, and desires will be perfected in the next life so that every one of God’s children may find joy in a family." - "God Loveth His Children,” 2007 official church publication In 2009, current Prophet Russell M. Nelson warned of the dangers of “national suicide” as a result of marriage equality at the fifth World Congress of Families conference. “I know that the history of the church is not to seek apologies of to give them.” - Apostle Dallin H. Oaks in an in interview In January 2015 "Less than a year ago, right here in Washington, DC, my friend killed himself. He was Mormon and gay. You've gone on record that the church does not give apologies. Does religious freedom absolve you from responsibility in the gay Mormon suicide crisis?" asked Andrew Evans. "That's a question that will be answered on judgment day. I will be accountable to a higher authority for that." Apostle Dallin H. Oaks, 2016. “We are confronted by a culture of evil…(including the) phenomenon of lesbian, gay, and transgender lifestyles and values.” - President Dallin H. Oaks, 2019 BYU-Hawaii devotional “I would like to hear a little more musket fire (against queers) from this temple of learning.” - Apostle Jeffery R. Holland to BYU faculty in 2021 Days later BYU students drew pro-LGBTQ chalk art on the corner of campus and another BYU student poured water on the chalk and told onlookers "faggots go to hell". In 2021, Hank Smith, BYU religion professor called a gay BYU student Korihor on twitter. Korihor is a Book of Mormon anti-Christ prophet who was punished for his “wickedness,” by losing his speech and then trampled to death. The gay student then received death threats from others, but there was no public action against the professor by BYU.  Colonization destroys culture, which is a form of genocide, as it seeks to “Kill the Indian. Save the man.” Mormonism, with its Indian-fetish-fic alternate history (the Book of Mormon) and pan-Indigenous race theory (Lamanites), has altered Indigenous cultures in this continent and across the Pacific Islands (like the Church-owned Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii or the Maya Disneyland Richard Hansen is trying to build in Guatemala). Here are three songs that address the ways Mormonism seeks to shape Indigenous, Lamanite, and US Mormon-settler identities. This first one, I learned as a child. Book of Mormon stories with its “Indian”-fetish stereotype hand gestures is straight outta Disney’s “Peter Pan”’s “What makes the Red Man red?” I’d learned and sang repeatedly as a group of children at Church regularly throughout my childhood. The second, Indian Tribes of Utah, I learned at Utah public school as a child. My peers and I sang it for our Utah Sesquicentennial Celebration children’s choir performance. Notice the ways this song repeatedly place Indigenous people in the past even as they still live in these "mountain valleys." The third (as far as I can tell) was created during the “Indian / Lamanite Student Placement Program” as part of a BYU program, called “Lamanite Generation” (later changed to “Living Legends”) which grew from the Placement Program. (I personally don't think "Living Legends" isn’t much of an improvement as it perpetuates this “vanishing-Indian,” “settler-progress” narratives rendering Indigenous People as relics of the past--as Legends.) The song, Go My Son, is Indigenous assimilation propaganda about joining the Placement Program to “get an education” and “make your people proud of you.” The Placement Program, like all assimilation schools, discouraged Indigenous students from practicing their Peoples’ cultures as part of their efforts to Christianize Indigenous children, thus committing genocide by destroying Indigenous culture.
I don’t know for sure where this last song comes from. BYU Recordings claims it was written by Indigenous students at BYU. But a commenter on this last video says it’s an old Lakota song. and the video of the song performed at Grand Canyon National Park calls the songs a “Native American sign language song." Why is the Mormon church shaping Indigenous culture when their beliefs about Indigenous culture are white-settler-supremacist Indian-fetish fantasies?  White, Mormon, Archeologist Richard Hansen wants to make a Mayan Mormon Disneyland with U.S. taxe$ at El Mirador in Guatemala. “The BYU department of archeology and mesoamerican archeology as an academic profession was started by Mormons trying to find proof for the Book of Mormon.” - Kobi Hansen is part of a lineage of Mormon archeologists who focus on so-called Central America, because this is where Mormons believe the Nephites (ancient Mormons) built their cultures. In this way, Mormonism is Zionism. They see themselves as the descendants and rightful heirs of this “Promised Land,” their “Zion.” Through the Tribes of Israel (Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh), Mormons believe that they are related to Indigenous peoples. So, they imagine a Divine responsibility to return whiteness, Christianity, and Mormonism to this land and it’s Peoples, which was lost in the genocide of the white Nephites, enacted by the dark skinned Lamanites, who Mormons believe “are among the ancestors of the American Indians.” Hansen is another move in this settler-imperial project. A documentary set in Maya lands of so-called South and Central America put out by the Mormon church and BYU showing archeological "proof" of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. This church has seen walked back many of these views. But many Mormon archeologist continue to believe. Vice News documentary on Richard Hansen's work in Maya lands of El Mirador Guatemala In an “Open letter to archaeologist, Richard D. Hansen” folks “from diverse Maya Nations” write: “We know that you and your people are used to dividing up the world and to plundering with impunity and as a result journalists give you ownership of the “Maya Empire” as if it were property. This is especially obscene since you know full well that Maya peoples still exist. “You graduated from BYU, which belongs to (the LDS Church), known for ‘hunting for treasure’ in the ‘Third World.’ “You and John E. Clark, (head of anthropology at BYU and of the New World Archeological Foundation (NWAF)), have generated pseudo-scientific arguments that propose that the ancestors of Mormons (Nephite Israelites) built sacred sites in Mesoamerica … Theories like these are not only absurd and laughable, but they also increase the probability of actual looting. “Denying our greatness and submitting us to misery are old strategies of those who steal our history because they themselves have no roots, since they only exist while they colonize and plunder us. “Respect our territory, our Big House, they belong only to us, the Maya Nations. "Enough with stealing our territory and looting our ancient cities!” - “Open letter to Richard Hansen”   “There’s no such thing as an egalitarian society. Somebody can always run faster, somebody’s always the better shot, the better fisherman–they’re the ones that are going to excel. When you see changes in society, they’re never done by society. They’re done by charismatic individuals.”
- Richard Hansen ------------------------- Richard Hansen sees himself as a “charismatic individual” manifesting the destiny of El Mirador in his battle against Maya and Ladino communities. I see Hansen as a common result of the US / Mormon capitalist, anti-socialist, imperial culture in which he grew. Of the Mormon-influence in his work Hansen nearly shouted, “It’s irrelevant!” Yet, every step of his archeological journey is founded in his religion. Hansen started as a child looting arrowheads from his father’s farm on Shoshone Bannock lands stolen by our People. He studied archeology at BYU, was invited to this project because he spoke fluent Spanish from his mission in Bolivia and his work in Guatemala is funded by The BYU Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. As he seeks to privatize lands collectively owned and managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, his work is directly rooted in the anti-communist, extractive-capitalist, U.S. military and CIA backed oppressions in Guatemala. From the 1954 U$-backed coup against Guatemala at the behest of the United Fruit Company (Chiquita) to Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” these projects are seeded in the U.S. imperialist Monroe Doctrine (and Mormon Apostle / U.S. Ambassador J. Reuben Clark’s “Clark Memorandum.”) While Eisenhower signed off on this anti-socialist coup to end Guatemalan agrarian reform, anti-communist, John Bircher, and Mormon Apostle Ezra Taft Benson, was Secretary of Agriculture, cutting aiding to farmers here. Hansen was a youth during the Ezra Taft Benson era with his anti-communist, anti-civil rights, U.S. Nationalist, racist rants. Now, deeply embedded in these ideologies Hansen perpetuates them. His determination to make Maya lands private-property under the banner of “protecting the forest” is a literal continuation of this Mormon / U.S. settler-colonial, capitalist, imperial, anti-Indigenous, anti-socialist, neoliberal project. |
AuthorI am nicholas b jacobsen, an artist, researcher, historian, educator, and organizer. I am a trans-non binary Euro-settler raised in the Nuwu lands of so-called Utah. My family has been Mormon and Utahn for as long as either of those concepts have existed. My ancestors sacrificed everything--their identities, homelands, jobs, health, & safety to become Mormon, Utahn, U.S. American, & white--to settler their Zion. I take it as my personal responsibility to unsettle what my ancestors settled. and to help my fellow settlers do the same through writing, art, and community building. ArchivesCategories
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