LDS tired of the atmosphere of ZLMB, for various reasons. There were some who were very vocal in their discontent with the moderating style and felt that believers were left open to unfair attacks. One of those who were very discontent with ZLMB left and created FAIR – Juliann. Although it was known by most, I don’t remember it being so openly admitted at FAIR that Juliann was THE prime mover and founder of the board. She advertised it quite heavily at ZLMB, inviting believers to the more protected environment of FAIR. The results was an abandoned ZLMB, as believers fled for the preferential moderating style of FAIR/MAD.
It’s been an open secret that, with minor exceptions, Juliann has a free reign as far as her personal behavior is concerned on the board. She does need that preferential treatment, since she is so often rude and condescending, to questioning believers as well as critics. This behavior resulted in chastisement from ZLMB mods more than once. Her personal crusade, as Analytics aptly labeled it, is to engage in some sort of sociological analysis of exLDS who are critical of the church, with the clear objective of discrediting any statements they may make about the LDS church. This is so clear that her recent statement on MAD is the height of irony:
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... opic=25185
The banner of the anti-Mormon or countermopologist has been that the church hides information and punishes members for speaking their minds, a.k.a."telling the truth". However, since Mormons have begun to speak their minds publicly and have successfully invaded the cyberturf of the antis, speaking ones mind is suddenly not so appealing when the other guy does it. It used to be that we would have a war of words, depending on the board it could get very nasty but it was always words. Mormons cleaned up their apologetics and started relying on scholarship as they started acquiring PhDs in religion. This hasn't gone over well since the antis have few professors who are willing to put themselves out there as anti-Mormons.
So we are now seeing an increase in the new tactic for silencing the competition. Sue them and try to destroy them personally. This is expensive and does not have a good track record of success, however, because courts are not as eager to interfere with freedom of speech as antis and some countermos are. So a new tactic is growing in popularity, the email bombing where unsuspecting scholars are emailed by people pretending to be interested students of their work. Typically, the scholar is "warned" about some rogue Mormon who is doing something improper. The sender then brags about his exploits and posts selected emails or portions of them with great bravado and mockery. There is no concern whatsoever for the scholar who has been set up to play a part in this.
I expect we will see more of this because it is intended to do real life damage to the targeted Mormon professionally and personally. The Mormon is expected to be too embarrassed to continue on the topic. This is not happening, obviously, so there will be an escalation in the attempt to shut down those who would speak against the antis. There would never be a need to go to this extreme if there was not a need to silence the target.
What do my fellow Mormons expect to see next? Any guesses as to what the next tactic will be as they lose confidence in their words alone winning their war for them?
This accusation of attempting to “silence” apologists is extremely ironic given Juliann’s clearly apparent attitude that the only acceptable exmormon is either a silent one, or one who, despite no longer believing, remains positive about the LDS church. It is also ironic given the LDS’ church’s long history of trying to silence critics with personal attacks on their character. Since it would be unbecoming for today’s LDS to actually call critical exLDS “whores from their mother’s breast”, or some such nonsense, they instead often resort to insinuating or flat out stating that critical exLDS are psychologically disturbed.
But this post of Juliann’s is outright hilarious in view of the post by Chaos:
I am going to post this and close the thread in case anyone who knows Ritner wants to warn him about what kind of person he is dealing with. The quotes were provided on Mormon Discussion Board. Mr. Graham has been engaged in personal destruction since 2002. It doesn't matter if Kevin Graham is Mormon or anti-Mormon, his tactics remain the same so caveat emptor.
QUOTE
I emailed Ritner yesterday and asked him how long he has been employed by IRR and when Luke Wilson tracked him down as a tool in his anti-Mormon polemics. He hasn't responded as of yet.
QUOTE
Well I just heard a rumor that he might be gay, and that he didn't appreciate the LDS stand on homosexuality. Not sure how accurate this is though, but it would prove interesting if true.
QUOTE
I didn't invent this rumor out of thin air. It is a well known fact that homosexual writers have a tendency to write against the LDS faith by any avenue possible. Actually, when I heard this rumor I was skeptical since I have seen Ritner referred to online with his wife Karen. But the rumor stated that he just recently "came out of the closet." This would explain why he "just now" decided to write anti-Mormon propaganda. That, along with his recent association with Luke Wilson and IRR.
http://p079.ezboard.com/fpacumenispages ... 6&stop=140
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... opic=25202
Well, my goodness. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that “Chaos” was inviting people to email Dr. Ritner and “warn” him about some rogue critic doing something improper.
Kind of like email bombing?
A similar thread is here:
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... 25189&st=0
Juliann stated that:
And that is the point. They can't win the war of words so they have now gone to personal destruction. I have never seen a more ugly and intellectually impoverished group. That is why I wonder what they are going to come up with next because there will always be those who will commit the crime of speaking their mind.
They can’t win the war of words? Oh, obviously. I mean, really, who would ever imagine that the critics actually have strong cases when they point out, for example, the problems with the Book of Abraham translation, or the anachronisms of the Book of Mormon, or discuss the problematic polyandry of Joseph Smith? Isn’t it obvious that is a war they could never hope to win? What kind of fool would imagine they could win a war of words about Joseph Smith’s ability to translate Egyptian, or the existence of a mass Christian civilization in ancient Mesoamerica, or Joseph Smith’s secretive polyandry????
But now to loop back to the evolution of MAD, Juliann states in response to cksalmon:
QUOTE(cksalmon @ Jun 10 2007, 09:25 AM)
That's okay, though, right? I mean it's your board.
Guess what! Before this was turned over to the new admin it was my board, CKS! I started it and I paid the bills. This board wouldn't' be here had I not done that. Grow up, stop whining and stop hanging around if you and your pals don't like what I created.
So who is going to step up and tell us what they think of the new tactic? Do you approve? Are you capable of stating the truth before changing the subject?
Yes, Juliann, it’s always been obvious this was your board.
Then chaos:
I hardly know what to say because this is very disappointing. I am going to shut down this thread until people are home and can participate if they want to and moderators can get together. If you want to be rude to our founder, CKSalmon you are not going to do it on our board. This is our board, our people and our community and when they want to say something this is the place where they get to say it without being insulted, intimidated or told to shut up. That is what Juliann started the board for [a big thank you goes here]and we have been more hard nosed about it than she ever was. We are shocked, or maybe I should say stunned by the numbers passing through who think they are entitled to tell us how to run our own board and treat our own people when they do not mean us well.