Letter to the Editor: Defending free speech by attempting to silence others
Mr. Gottfried:
I am writing in response to your OPINION column entitled “Is Mormonism Dying?” Your opinion is “yes it is” mine, “no it isn’t.” We both have a right to express our opinions. I won’t argue with your assumptions … “ex-mormonism is widespread…” and “in a rare and historic event, God allegedly admitted he had been wrong all along,” referring to the church’s abandonment of the practice of polygamy. I defend freedom of speech, which you clearly exploit to your discredit. It gives you the right to make mean-spirited comments about a religion that does a lot of good in the world.
In a day when belief in a supreme being that influences ways of life is increasingly being attacked by political leaders throughout the world, i.e. North Korea and the Islamic state, and active involvement in religion in the United States is waning, I would rather see your OPINION column defend religious ideology no matter what form it takes instead of poking fun at it. Practiced religious beliefs have, throughout the centuries, been fundamental to the security and safety of societies.
Perhaps your opinion is spot on and the Mormon and Jehovah Witness retention rates “are abysmal.” Making this a subject of derision and to make us look misguided, if not disillusioned, can’t be in the best interest of society as a whole, or the circulation of THE INDEPENDENT. Mr. Gottfried, you are the disillusioned one!
Having a business here in Kanab, Zion Pharmacy, and one that has carried your “voice for Utah,” I am pulling your rack and papers from my store as a gesture to all my Mormon customers in a show of distaste for your opinion. The rack and remaining papers will be in the back of my store until the end of March. If not picked up, it will be deposited in my dumpster.
In another effort to rid our community of this written trash, I will alert my fellow business persons to the INDEPENDENT’S anti-mormon content.
Kortney Stirland, Rph Zion Pharmacy 14 E. Center Kanab, Utah 84741
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
Articles related to “Letter to the Editor: Defending free speech by attempting to silence others”
Mormon’s petition demands New York Times apologize and rewrite LDS President Monson’s obituary
How to submit an article, guest opinion piece, or letter to the editor to The Independent
Do you have something to say? Want your voice to be heard by thousands of readers? Send The Independent your letter to the editor or guest opinion piece. All submissions will be considered for publication by our editorial staff. If your letter or editorial is accepted, it will run on suindependent.com, and we’ll promote it through all of our social media channels. We may even decide to include it in our monthly print edition. Just follow our simple submission guidelines and make your voice heard:
—Submissions should be between 300 and 1,500 words.
—Submissions must be sent to editor@infowest.com as a .doc, .docx, .txt, or .rtf file.
—The subject line of the email containing your submission should read “Letter to the editor.”
—Attach your name to both the email and the document file (we don’t run anonymous letters).
—If you have a photo or image you’d like us to use and it’s in .jpg format, at least 1200 X 754 pixels large, and your intellectual property (you own the copyright), feel free to attach it as well, though we reserve the right to choose a different image.
—If you are on Twitter and would like a shout-out when your piece or letter is published, include that in your correspondence and we’ll give you a mention at the time of publication.
Ms. Stirland concedes too much to Mr. Gottfried. His original piece got some very basic facts wrong that undermine his entire argument. Pew reports that Mormons have a 64% generational retention rate. That’s more than most Christian groups (about the same as evangelical, slightly less than historically black churches) and far more than Jehovah’s Witnesses, which he compares to. Facts, Mr. Gottfried, are important.
Again, these statistics refer to people who IDENTIFY as Mormon; furthermore, it is notoriously difficult to remove oneself from the official LDS membership roster, and presumably the church does this to inflate its apparent numbers. Had you read my piece closely you would have gotten this, and so you I surmise that either you didn’t read it closely or you did and are making a dishonest argument.
But let’s assume you’re right and that Mormon retention rates are higher than those of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Congratulations, you’ve outwitted the class retard and outraced a cripple. This statistic taken at face value would mean that the faith loses 36% of its adherents. That is a startlingly high number for The One True Religion.
Here’s a quick rundown for you, since you are so hung up on facts, which I appreciate (you can be forgiven for getting them wrong when the church has worked so hard to obscure them): http://religiondispatches.org/mormon-numbers-not-adding-up/
And that article is five years old. Perhaps you can convince yourself that things have miraculously turned around in five years’ time.
This article is more recent and drives home my point that who we refer to as “Mormons” as a whole are not the disciplined and devoted people the core members make the outliers to be when they include them in their statistics: https://www.religionnews.com/2016/10/05/leaked-worldwide-only-25-of-young-single-mormons-are-active-in-the-lds-church/
Your comment is a distraction from my premise, which stands. The religion, particularly here in Utah, is visibly weakening further every day thanks to demographic shifts, the Internet, and millenials being better informed than their elders.
Wow. “Again, these statistics refer to people who IDENTIFY as Mormon.” The Pew statistics, which I cited and are available at the link below, are for those who IDENTIFY as Mormon. Had you actually read the Pew study, you would have gotten this. It leaves me to wonder whether you actually read the Pew study that you not only cited but arrogantly stated “do not lie”, you would have gotten this, so I must surmise that you either you didn’t read it closely or you did and are making a dishonest argument.
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-2-religious-switching-and-intermarriage/pr_15-05-12_rls_chapter2-02/
“But let’s assume you’re right and that Mormon retention rates are higher than those of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” I am.
“Congratulations, you’ve outwitted the class retard and outraced a cripple.” I’m glad to know that the door to snarky, baseless insults is now open.
“Your comment is a distraction from my premise, which stands.” No, my comment is a demonstration that you are a liar, and your switch to relying on your premise is a deflection of that. But even then, your premise does not stand. Your premise is that Mormonism is dying. The two studies, both of which I am quite familiar with, do not support that premise. The first shows that the Church, while previously growing, is now maintaining its share of the population that identifies as members. Now, that’s a concern for a church that focuses on growth, but it’s a far cry from a church that is dying. Your second source supports the unremarkable notion that young single people go through a phase of inactivity at a high rate. It says nothing, one way or the other, about how they identify, whether they return to the church, or really anything that can be extrapolated to other church demographics.
I know that you think that because you write a poorly edited column for a third-rate newspaper in a podunk town in a rural state, you can play fast and loose with the facts, but there’s really no excuse for this kind of lazy writing.
(Let’s not copy and paste arguments across threads. I’d prefer this article be the one you respond to).