How are we to take D. Michael Quinn's writings?

[Guest]

I recognize that this threads purpose is a focus on Quinn. However, I'd like to add that I found the literary method Farms went about to "review" books negative to the church was deplorable.

I read only a few of their slight of hand reviews. One of which was the review of "In Sacred Loneliness". I had not even read the book. Their bent was not to refute the testimony or the accounts of Smith's women, but to spend an inordinate amount of time arguing the exact number he had married, how old they might not have been etc. It was petty and transparent. The most damning of statements remained unchallenged.

At the time I was looking/searching for a reason to respect Smith. Reading these few reviews at Farms was one of the last reasons I chose to disassociate myself with the church.

When I think of those that would endorse Farms or sympathise with their organization, *****'s ********* ********'s words in the pre-1990 temple endowment come to mind:

"*** ****** ***** ****** ** ** ******* *** *** *******"

Edit (non temple content):

I recognize no authority solely on the merits that Farms may be more learned (or informed) than some. Being "learn-ed" has never equated to mean inspired.

Where is a prophet of God to interpret by revelation what has been the mind and will of the Lord of his predecesors? Joseph Smith didn't have a problem doing this.

Has God done His work and has left it to men (Farms)? If so, truly there is a famine in the land.
[MODERATOR NOTE: Please do not A) use the "H" word or B) reveal Temple content in the Celestial Forum. Thank you!]

(Thank you for catching my indiscretion, Sorry, I'll reread the rules and try to work within them)

[_Livingstone22]

Then what you are saying is that Quinn's papers on homosexuality are really about how men loving men in a non-sexual manner is prohibited by the Church. Wow, that would be a radical interpretation of Quinn.

The Church DOES NOT reject those kinds of feelings. Most Priesthood blessings I've been involved in end with hugs all around....including if the recipient is male. I'm not sure where you are going here.

This thread is the first that I've heard of Joseph Smith "being gay"--I don't think an actual homosexual would have married so many women....just my opinion. I'm not sure what the essay or writing we're talking about here...that "Joseph Smith was gay," but perhaps it contained somewhat like what was in Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans--which was a book not entirely on homosexuality but on same-sex relations of all kinds--the homo-emotional, homo-tactile, homo-pastoral, etc. (in fact little of the book actually dealt at all on homoerotic [actual sexual] relations). To what I've read on Joseph Smith (as well as many men of the time) was that they used wording (like "intimate," "passionate embrace," etc.) and practices (like men sleeping in the same bed, dancing with each-other, etc.) in a way not uncommon at all for the time--but that did not point necessarily to sex with other men ("buggery"). Today, on the other hand, it is seen as not acceptable for such things to be had among men, unless they are "gay"--which is, by the way, among conservative perspectives, a defaming charge. I was in a college class one time here in Utah County, when the professor said that there was evidence that Abraham Lincoln may have also had sexual relations with other men...and one student shouted out to the professor: "you're just saying that because you hate republicans"....like it was a horrible charge (which may be for conservative Mormons--but not for the liberal professor). But, I digress; my point it that the acceptable dynamics (relationship practices) among people of the same-sex in the nineteenth century are different than they are now, and that "embracing passionately" or even kissing were more acceptable, but that doesn't necessarily draw the conclusion of homoerotic relations* (which perhaps Quinn was hinting at--which is bad practice of the study of history--drawing unnecessary conclusions to fit an argumental viewpoint, and that I would disagree with Quinn about).

For example: I read once of how John Adams and George Washington were very "intimate" during their years of acquaintance, but since the connotations of such word have been culturally changed over time, perhaps a better "translation" to get the idea across in contemporary lexicon was that they were "close."

[_Daniel Peterson]

Tell us what you think of Quinn directly, or stay the h*** out of the discussion.

Question for the board management:

Does Scratch speak for you officially? If so, I'll happily discontinue participation on this and any other thread in which he deems my presence inappropriate. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy to discontinue participation here altogether. Please advise.

[_harmony]

Tell us what you think of Quinn directly, or stay the h*** out of the discussion.

Question for the board management:

Does Scratch speak for you officially? If so, I'll happily discontinue participation on this and any other thread in which he deems my presence inappropriate. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy to discontinue participation here altogether. Please advise.

Oh don't be silly. And please answer the original question without reference to FARMS or Sunstone. Your animosity towards Quinn in the stuff of legends, and I've often wondered why.

[_Bond...James Bond]

Question for the board management:

Does Scratch speak for you officially? If so, I'll happily discontinue participation on this and any other thread in which he deems my presence inappropriate. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy to discontinue participation here altogether. Please advise.

Moderator Note: No Scratch doesn't speak for the board management. He can't keep you from posting on this thread or any thread. But he can continue to ask you to answer his question. It is of course your choice to answer or ignore his question, as it is your choice to post here.-Bond

[_CaliforniaKid]

People are frequently chastised here for "uninviting" LDS posters. My understanding is that the management is very opposed to uninvitations.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Thank you for the clarification.

As to the "questions": I've explained that the various reviews that I've cited, including the one that Stephen Ricks and I wrote and published in Sunstone, offer quite sufficient grounds, in my judgment, for distrusting Mike Quinn's academic work. Opinions will differ, of course. But I think my explanation suffices to account for my position. I will not be lured again into an interminable discussion (which will inevitably end up focused on my defective personality and deficient character) with my stalker.

[Anonymous]

To read any support at all for homosexual activity in Joseph's sermon would bring into question the person's sanity. I've read it, never once did it cross my mind that it could mean such a thing. The only way I think the passage could even be noticed is if the person doing the reading is desperately looking for homosexual references in everything they read.

I think you need to read Quinn's book more carefully. He cites an 1843 sermon where Joseph says that "two who were vary friends indeed should lie down upon the same bed at night locked in each other['s] embrace talking of their love & should awake in the morning together. They could immediately renew their conversation of love even while rising from their bed"--this according to Wilford Woodruff's account--and he concludes that even the much-married Prophet enjoyed sharing a bed with close friends. But he also takes pains to point out that "very few people regarded such homotactile experiences as erotic, despite the physical intimacy involved." Indeed,

for the vast majority of Americans [and this presumably includes Joseph Smith], such same-sex sleeping arrangements were nonerotic, yet affectionate experiences of physical closeness. As Robert Brain asserted in his cross-cultural study of friendship: "It is maligning friendship always to associate it with sex, and silly to assume that physical contact is in itself evidence of homosexuality."

-- D. Michael Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1996), 89.

Certainly Quinn does not make this assumption: he never claims, as you suppose, that Joseph Smith was a "homosexual" or that he endorsed "homosexual activity."

[_Mister Scratch]

As to the "questions": I've explained that the various reviews that I've cited, including the one that Stephen Ricks and I wrote and published in Sunstone, offer quite sufficient grounds, in my judgment, for distrusting Mike Quinn's academic work. Opinions will differ, of course. But I think my explanation suffices to account for my position. I will not be lured again into an interminable discussion (which will inevitably end up focused on my defective personality and deficient character) with my stalker.

Bull. This is not an answer---it is another dodge. Or is it a veiled smear? Just tell us flat out why you think Quinn is, academically speaking, a liar. Go ahead, Prof. P. I dare you.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Scratch will assume that it's a veiled smear no matter what I say, so I won't bother responding to his pathological nonsense except to say that (a) I have no idea (apart, of course, from his incessant desire to depict me as evil) why he wants to regard my comment as a smear, (b) I don't really care what Scratch thinks, and, just for the record, (c) it isn't a smear, veiled or otherwise, and wasn't intended as such.

And I've never called Mike Quinn a liar, nor do I regard him as a liar. If I wanted to call him a liar, I would say so.