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t witch hunts still happen every year more than 1 000 people around the world are tortured expelled from their homes or killed after being charged with witchcraft it may seem impossible that this would occur in the present day carl sagan would disagree if we re absolutely sure that our beliefs are right and those of others are wrong that we are motivated by good and others by evil that it is wicked to challenge conventional doctrines or to ask searching questions then the witch mania will recur in its infinite variations down to the time of the last man carl sagan the demon haunted world page 413 sagan s expanded use of witch hunt refers to an unjustified hysteria or fear independent of facts that unjustly targets vulnerable individuals and populations american witch hunts of the 20th century have included anti german and anti japanese sentiment during wwii mccarthyism hunting down suspected communists during the cold war the lavender scare attacks on homosexuals as a subset mccarthyism just to name a few today s witch hunts take shape in the form of anti immigration and anti transgender hysteria in the public discourse fearmongers today are no less ignorant and no less hysterical on these issues than they were with any of the previous witch hunts the conservative george w bush presidential center s studies found that the benefits of immigration far outweigh the costs it s not the problem politicians on both sides want you to believe it is sure there are downsides as detailed in the center s report but overall immigration isn t they problem they want you to believe it is the recent hysterical claims of dog eating haitians are merely a manifestation of this ignorant witch hunt in addition to just being cruel and simple minded further downsides of witch hunts are the opportunity costs associated with focusing on irrelevant and imaginary issues rather than solutions to actual problems take the anti transgender witch hunt currently sweeping political rallies and social media the preachers of transgender danger want us to believe that our children are in danger the same anti lgbtq groomer myth showed up in the lavender scare when lgbtq witches were accused of converting and molesting children in schools churches and other public spaces the same thing is happening with the current transgender scare the data according to whoismakingnews com shows a child is 142 95 times more likely to be sexually assaulted by a politician than by a transgender person republicans are 67 of the offenders btw a child is 804 07 times more likely to be sexually assaulted by an ordained member of the clergy than by a transgender person so while we run around screaming about illegal immigrants and trans issues no one is addressing the real sources of crime job loss or sexual assault in our communities if people really cared about sexual assault on minors they d be looking at our politicians clergy rather than carrying their torches for immigrants and transgender human beings i know i ve skimmed over a lot of detail in the issues i ve brought up here i haven t fully covered all the details that folks use to justify their hysteria around immigration and transgender topics there s a lot i don t understand about either issue but i ll merely say neither do you your hysteria isn t justified by the facts and you re merely another witch hunter in our human timeline i merely hope one day my 9th great grandson will read this and be proud that i looked the current witch hunt in the face and said you re wrong this is wrong share this share share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on reddit opens in new window reddit print opens in new window print email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest like loading the one where i discover why my dad s utah family weren t mormon 14 wednesday jul 2021 posted by dadsprimalscream in critical thinking skills mormonism religion leave a comment tags church of jesus christ of latter day saints mormon mormon temple mormonism sexual abuse sexuality temple trigger warning the following contains some discussion of sexual abuse sometime around 1890 at the age of 27 jens peter pedersen and his wife inger marie arrived in america from denmark with their 4 children in denmark they had converted to mormonism i think it s safe to assume that giving up one s home country traveling to the opposite end of the world at great financial cost with 4 children in tow in pursuit of one s religious belief is an incredible act of faith jens peter pedersen inger marie pedersen unfortunately we don t know much more about jens and inger marie after that except for a one paragraph comment in a distant relative s life history i ll get to that in a second i do know that the pedersen s grandson randall wasn t very mormon at all in fact although he lived his whole life in utah randall could best be described as agnostic neither his parents nor his siblings appear to have been religious let alone mormon to any degree randall was my paternal grandfather and growing up i always found it curious how my paternal relatives exhibited very few mormon traits in spite of their generational utah residency i don t even think the term jack mormon would accurately describe them they were an odd bunch of messy gentiles among polished mormons completely devoid of the mormon smiles niceness cheeriness and religious fervor that so personified my mom s family before meeting my mom my dad randall s son the pedersen s great grandson had very loose ties to mormonism having participated in youth activities as much as anyone might who grew up in utah in the 1950 s he married my mom in the temple but he pursued the religion only to the extent that it was all he knew and that it made my mom happy my seven siblings and i were always very aware of this religious ambivalence in our family i naturally take after my mom s people the actively participating mormons i hate contention i can t handle conflict and avoid it at all costs i m naturally cheerful and even when i m not i d never express it outwardly i grew up on the notion that obedience was the first law of heaven and that god had a plan for me which meant following parents prophets and church leaders always accepting callings never saying no my mom s mother had also immigrated from england around 1921 she was the illegitimate result of her mother and her abusive uncle her aunt s husband oddly enough that same aunt and uncle raised her while her mother my great grandmother struggled desperately to survive on her own like many families we grew up naturally closer to our mom s side than our dad s i have always wondered what made my dad s family so so not mormon i can make a pretty good guess at what attracted my mom s ancestors to the latter day movement as a victim of poverty and sexual abuse my maternal english great grandmother grew up orphaned and was likely attracted the doctrines of eternal families redemption forgiveness and worthiness there s no shame or weakness in any of that she eventually married converted to mormonism and became a pillar in her english mormon community the majority of her descendants stuck with it from what i can tell why didn t jens and inger marie s posterity remain mormon a few weeks ago i happened upon one paragraph in a distant relative s life history that changed this narrative of the two sides of my family in that life history a distant paternal cousin describes meeting jens and inger pedersen in the quote below i ve changed the other names but for context todd s parents would be my great great grandparents the pedersens from denmark janice remembers that lucy and her children actively attended church as members of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints this activity slowly fell away as todd was bitter toward the church his parents had emigrated from denmark after accepting the gospel into their lives upon being sealed in the salt lake temple they were distressed by the temple ordinances and turned away from the church influencing their son did you catch that they were distressed by the temple ordinances and turned away from the church most modern day mormons would read that and agree with the tone of the author what a shame that they didn t understand the significance and sacred meaning of the temple ordinances twenty years ago i would have thought the same thing i would have seen the pedersens as weak and faithless but let s be frank about what jens and inger marie experienced in the temple in the 1890 s in salt lake city utah after having uprooted their little family and moved to a strange land they had likely been living in utah for 3 4 years as new member immigrants anticipating the completion of the salt lake city temple in 1893 i won t describe the entire temple ceremony here but only those parts that might cause a reasonable person distress the ceremony has also been significantly modified since that time so i speak of it in the past tense as they would have experienced it first the jens and inger likely knew very little about what actually happened in the temple before they immigrated from denmark or even before they entered the temple themselves in utah like all mormons they entered blind and naïve in spite of years of mormon membership when i participated in my first temple ceremony in 1984 i was told almost nothing about the actual ritual it was just discussed in very vague but glowing terms upon entering they were asked to remove all their clothes for the initial ceremony of washing and anointing which was performed with patrons completely nude temple officiants would touch various parts of the participant s body in order to wash and anoint them not genitals but it s still a violation of personal space and boundaries by the time i participated in the ceremony we were nude but given ponchos open at the sides so that the officiants could still do their touching at the end of the washing and anointing ceremony the temple officiant helped the patron clothe themselves in new special underwear called garments which they were then expected to wear 24 7 for the rest of their lives removing only for bathing sports and sex next as the audience of a large group mini play called the endowment patrons would be given tokens signs and penalties as part of their participation tokens were special handshakes the signs were gestures and hand movements which pantomimed various death penalties the patron would suffer if they revealed the handshakes to anyone as patrons pantomimed the death signs they would recite a penalty that their life would be taken for violating the expectation of complete secrecy temple participants took an oath of vengeance to avenge the deaths of their charismatic leaders joseph smith and his brother hyrum smith there was a lecture at the veil discussing the adam god doctrine something which they had probably never previously heard women and men were treated differently they sat separately during the endowment ceremony while the men were directed to obey god the women were directed to obey their husbands at one point women veiled their faces during a group prayer by the end everyone is clothed in green and white costumes with unusual baker hats for the men and veils for the women during the prayer portion at the end there was a chanting segment where patrons recited pay lay ale a gibberish phrase supposedly from the language of adam several times as they raised and lowered their arms in the front of the room a curtain called the veil symbolized the passageway from our current mortal state into the afterlife at the end of the ceremony patrons were tested at that veil it was a review of the handshakes and key phrases that they had learned during the ceremony there were men on the other side who quizzed the patron s knowledge of the handshakes and phrases culminating in the two individuals embracing mouth to ear shoulder to shoulder hand to hand knee to knee foot to foot in spite of the curtain separating the participants it was an incredibly intimate position to be placed in man or woman in summary nudity touching new regulation underwear death threats and violent imagery oaths of revenge unequal treatment of the genders chanting strange and unfamiliar doctrine intimacy and touching beyond what one would normally experience with anyone but a spouse now tell me which is more admirable and moral the vast majority of people who participated in this ritual and welcomed it as their new normal a new way of life that they would then later introduce to their own children or the people who were horrified in the face of such an experience and immediately walked away and possibly felt abused bitter or deceived today knowing what i know about the temple ceremony in 1890 i honor the courage and moral fortitude of my ancestors praise to jens and inger petersen i can t imagine what it took to pivot and walk away from something that you had already sacrificed so much for there s a human tendency to react to such an experience by succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy this is a human impulse whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it most mormons who have entered the temple including myself have rationalized the temple event in glowing terms giving very little space for an honest reaction to what would and should normally trigger alarm bells and a fight or flight response by the time any individual has walked through a temple door they have already invested so much time money and emotion in their mormon strategy that their acceptance of the event is almost a foregone conclusion it s rare that you ever hear of someone like the pedersens who have the moral courage to stop and change course after such a heavy investment i am super proud that i have that legacy in my family heritage how does one learn that courage and moral fortitude how do the mormon church and other religions manage or discourage that impulse to say no and what about my maternal family what was it about them that made them accept the sunk cost and lie down and take it i think i know at least one element that contributes to this lack of resistance and it s exactly the same process by which a sexual predator grooms their victims let me preface what i am about to say by clarifying upfront that there is no overt acceptance of sexual abuse in mormonism there are however generations of policies doctrines procedures and cultural practices which create an environment where members are left without the skills or practice of standing up for themselves and saying no morality isn t taught as a personal prerogative or a guiding personal compass accessible to everyone but it s only what church leaders say it is members are taught obedience placid acceptance of uncomfortable and just plain wrong policies they are taught to comp...