“The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good” — George Washington

I’ll give you your point about MSNBC. That station has tried to play the role of Fox News but on the left instead of the right. Fox certainly has been just as guilty of slanting the news to fit an agenda.

Perhaps if we all got our news from PBS we would have a better chance at hearing the truth.

Well, what do the media know? Our Mormon majority has fallen below 61 percent, an all-time low. Utahns decisively rejected private school vouchers in favor of funding our public schools. Salt Lake County voted for Obama.

OK the media are right about Utah, but they’re less right than they think they are.

Ah yes, here we go. If something bad happens because of a Democrat, then talk about something bad that a Republican did! I’ve said something similar to this in several replies to you already, but here goes again: I did not agree with Bush, his heavy-handed and pseudo-fascist tactics, or, well, pretty much anything he did. I agree that the free speech zones enacted at the RNC and all other forms of controlling the message were repressive and flagrantly unconstitutional. That George Bush did something along these lines does not mean that we cannot focus only on this singular event with President Obama as part of this discussion. Leave it alone, already!

(2) I think it’s fair to say the LDS Church discriminated against black people until 1978.

I am not against discrimination. That said, the conventional understanding of discrimination is far too emotionally charged to have a reasonable discussion with most people. A private organization (such as the Church) is entirely within its rights to exclude or regulate membership and access to certain organization-provided privileges. That doesn’t mean I agree with how it happened or what it entailed, but the Church had every right to do it. Carrying your argument forward, the Church is discriminating against women today for denying them the ability to hold the Priesthood. So?

(3) The First Amendment guards against the establishment of religion (i.e. theocracy) in America– which means the LDS Church’s support for Proposition 8 is at odds with the Constitution.

Read it again. It prevents the Congress from passing any law to that effect. Thus, your accusation in entirely inapplicable; it also inaccurate. The Church’s support for the proposition had nothing to do with any single religious entity dominating, regulating, or controlling anything related to it. There was a broad coalition of churches and people of faith involved in maintaining the definition of marriage; this is hardly an establishment of religion. Nice try, though.

(4) People have every right to protest when persecuted and deprived of their civil rights by theocrats. The persecutors cannot claim victim status, that’s ridiculous.

You have altogether missed the point of this post and are instead using it to further your own arguments that have little to nothing to do with the subject at hand. Thus, I will not respond here; I have rebutted such fallacies on other posts already.

(2) I think it’s fair to say the LDS Church discriminated against black people until 1978.

(3) The First Amendment guards against the establishment of religion (i.e. theocracy) in America– which means the LDS Church’s support for Proposition 8 is at odds with the Constitution.

(4) People have every right to protest when persecuted and deprived of their civil rights by theocrats. The persecutors cannot claim victim status, that’s ridiculous.

MSNBC was unlucky in this particular case – the other networks showed in-context footage of the man and I think I recall CNN even interviewing him. Another lie in this case was the implication that the man was AT an Obama rally, when in fact he was some distance away and left long before the President even showed up. Combining these two things together created the impression the studio wanted, something that probably correlated with their actual opinions when reality just didn’t match up in this case.

The media sometimes thrives on depriving its viewers of context, and while I’d blame the same bad tendencies that cause them to trumpet cancer cures far too early or turn celebrity scandals into more than they are, it’s pretty clear that the racial undertones simply made a better story in their eyes.

Nevertheless statistics show that our President is receiving an unprecedented number of death threats, and gun sales spiked immediately after his election, primarily among caucasians (not to imply that they personally advocate or are planning to attempt violence against him, but I think it would be foolhardy to argue that some of the often-ridiculous, disproportionate backlash against our President, even among individuals who don’t subscribe to supremacist ideologies, isn’t factored at least partially on race).

Oh, and the Church thing is just ridiculous. While comparisons must be made appropriately, Elder Oaks’ were more than appropriate. To say what he did does not equate civil rights struggles with the comparatively minor harassment sometimes given to church members (and the LDS church in general) on this issue, but to underscore a similar ideological opposition that sometimes results in anger and backlash rather than reasoned discussion through appropriate methods.

Some members assert a sort of immunity to criticism due to the fact that our church participated through legal, populist methods, something I don’t agree with. Nevertheless angry or ad hominem attacks cannot accomplish anything.