Dear HCN,
The
rationale presented by Ray Ring that a proposed BLM to LDS Church
land exchange should not take place (HCN, 9/30/02: This land holds
a story the church won’t tell) is based almost entirely on bigotry
rather than on any real merit.
The primary
reason Mr. Ring gives for not supporting the land transfer is that
he feels the LDS church’s representation of the historic events at
Martin’s Cove is one-sided.
The “story” Mr. Ring
alleges the LDS church won’t tell is that, in Mr. Ring’s opinion,
the Mormons who suffered and died at Martin’s Cove had it coming to
them because their non-mainstream religious practices were
offensive to the religiously intolerant residents of the Midwest.
He says as much with this gem of a sentence: “Violence against the
Mormons was brutal and inexcusable, but they certainly contributed
to their own travails.”
Excuse me, but how
exactly did they contribute to their own travails? By exercising
their constitutionally protected right to religious freedom?
Violence and bigotry are inexcusable, PERIOD.
There is no BUT. No amount of “holier-than-thou zealotry” on the
part of the Mormon pioneers can justify the actions of murderous
mobs who chased them from state to state, until eventually they
sought refuge in the mountains of the West, where many froze or
starved.
What Mr. Ring is really saying is that
somehow the religious intolerance of the Missouri mobs was
justifiable because of the peculiarity of the Mormon’s faith. His
argument is loaded with the same subtle bigotry used by extremists
today to justify violence against Muslims, Jews, women, homosexuals
or anyone else who dares to venture outside of accepted mainstream
Christianity.
Would HCN feel comfortable
publishing an editorial stating that “anti-Semitic violence is
unjustifiable, BUT the Jews certainly have contributed to their own
travails,” or, “violence against women is inexcusable, BUT she
certainly contributed to her rape by wearing that short dress”?
If violence and bigotry are inexcusable, then
don’t make excuses for those who perpetrate them. If HCN is truly a
paper for people that care about the West, it would do well to drop
the bigotry from its
articles.
Lynn
Orchard
Tucson,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline HCN supports bigotry.
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