International policy advocacy: Does the Church support Alliance Defending Freedom or any of these groups?
Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:42 pm
Hello, I was reading this thread by an American 2SLGBTQ+ activist-
https://Twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/163 ... 45315?s=20
- and I was wondering whether the church supports Alliance Defending Freedom or any other organization that contributes to growing hatred and criminalization of gender and/or sexual minorities?
One of the things that frustrates me about how we view the church is our tendency to assume that the church’s advocacy regarding minorities in the Global South will take its cue from how it behaves in the the Global North.
Progressive and post-Mormons, as well as nonmembers with an interest in Mormon Studies remain largely unaware of what the church is advocating in both the Global South and non-English-speaking countries. These latter two categories aren’t necessarily the same but speak to where the majority of Mormon-critical voices stem and the places where they remain largely ignorant of the church’s activities.
Even in nearby, liberal democratic countries such as Canada we remain woefully ignorant of how the church interacts with the political and cultural establishment in order to promote its interests. It took careful study of the church’s newsroom and lobbying to realize that it was one of the main organizers behind the resistance to a federal ban on so-called ‘Conversion Therapy’ up here in Canada.
Local nonmembers simply underestimate the church’s influence, and don’t realize the connections that someone more familiar with Mormonism would- especially as the church often tries to obfuscate these interests and influences.
This problem is exacerbated in areas of the world that lack institutional transparency and other liberal and social-democratic norms taken for granted in my country at least.
So is the church influencing the rise of anti-lgbtq+ hate elsewhere even as it preaches peace among the few places reconciling with gender and sexual minorities? Turkey. Uganda. Baltic States. So many more countries and regions are experiencing democratic backsliding.
If they are, what’s the endgame? What advantage does it bring them? My suspicion is that the church either hopes it can halt or slow down the development of ideas and values antithetical to their interests, and even turn the tide of places where they’ve so called ‘lost the culture war’, by turning the global momentum against (what they consider to be) the most dangerous ideas re: non-traditional families, sexuality, and gender.
Edit: removed assumption that the church supports the ADF. I confused the ADF and WCF.
https://Twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/163 ... 45315?s=20
- and I was wondering whether the church supports Alliance Defending Freedom or any other organization that contributes to growing hatred and criminalization of gender and/or sexual minorities?
One of the things that frustrates me about how we view the church is our tendency to assume that the church’s advocacy regarding minorities in the Global South will take its cue from how it behaves in the the Global North.
Progressive and post-Mormons, as well as nonmembers with an interest in Mormon Studies remain largely unaware of what the church is advocating in both the Global South and non-English-speaking countries. These latter two categories aren’t necessarily the same but speak to where the majority of Mormon-critical voices stem and the places where they remain largely ignorant of the church’s activities.
Even in nearby, liberal democratic countries such as Canada we remain woefully ignorant of how the church interacts with the political and cultural establishment in order to promote its interests. It took careful study of the church’s newsroom and lobbying to realize that it was one of the main organizers behind the resistance to a federal ban on so-called ‘Conversion Therapy’ up here in Canada.
Local nonmembers simply underestimate the church’s influence, and don’t realize the connections that someone more familiar with Mormonism would- especially as the church often tries to obfuscate these interests and influences.
This problem is exacerbated in areas of the world that lack institutional transparency and other liberal and social-democratic norms taken for granted in my country at least.
So is the church influencing the rise of anti-lgbtq+ hate elsewhere even as it preaches peace among the few places reconciling with gender and sexual minorities? Turkey. Uganda. Baltic States. So many more countries and regions are experiencing democratic backsliding.
If they are, what’s the endgame? What advantage does it bring them? My suspicion is that the church either hopes it can halt or slow down the development of ideas and values antithetical to their interests, and even turn the tide of places where they’ve so called ‘lost the culture war’, by turning the global momentum against (what they consider to be) the most dangerous ideas re: non-traditional families, sexuality, and gender.
Edit: removed assumption that the church supports the ADF. I confused the ADF and WCF.