December 30, 2008

Mormon Lesson of the Day: How the Threat of Losing Tax-Exempt Status Resulted in a Sudden, New “Revelation” About African-Americans

A fascinating little history lesson — and one both the Mormon church and equal-rights advocates would do well to heed — by Dave Zirin, author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States: From Bull-Baiting to Barry Bonds:

Latter Day Protest? Proposition 8 and Sports

As supporters of Gay Marriage have discovered, it’s never easy to be on the Mormon Church’s enemies list. The Church of Latter Day Saints backed the anti-Gay Marriage Proposition 8 in California with out-of-state funds, and gave the right a heartbreaking victory this past election cycle. But the Mormon Church has been challenged in the past. Just ask Bob Beamon.

If you know Beamon’s name it’s almost certainly because he won the long jump gold medal in legendary fashion at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. …

But you may not know that Beamon almost never made it to Mexico City. Along with eight other teammates, Beamon had his track and field scholarship revoked from the University of Texas at El Paso, the previous year. They had refused to compete against Brigham Young University. Beamon and his teammates were protesting the racist practices of the Mormon Church, and their coach at UTEP, Wayne Vanderburge, made them pay the ultimate price.

They weren’t alone. …

On June 6th, 1978, as teams were refusing road trips to Utah with greater frequency, and the IRS started to make noises about revoking the church’s holy tax-free status, a new revelation came to the Book of Mormon.

Whether a cynical ploy to avoid the taxman or a coincidence touched by God, the results were the same: Black people were now human in the eyes of the Church. African Americans were no longer, as Brigham Young himself once put it, “uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable, and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.” The IRS was assuaged, the athletic contests continued, and the church entered a period of remarkable growth. …

Hit the link for the rest — it’s a quite satisfying read.

When you’re done, ask yourself if the anti-gay hysterics screaming about Prop 8 boycotts would hurl the same insults (and downright lies) at Beamon and all the other athletes who stood up against the Mormon church for its racism.

And when the Mormons, or their fair-weather defenders, start screaming that the “real” goal of the marriage equality movement is to restrict religious freedom, or at least strip churches of their tax-exempt status, or simply destroy religion altogether (all common arguments from the reality-impaired world of the religiously insane), tell them the story of Bob Beamon — and remind them that the Mormon church never lost its “right” to discriminate against blacks, or continue preaching any hateful thing it wanted (such as Brigham Young’s declaration that blacks were “uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable, and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind”).

No, the church never lost any right to practice its religious bigotry as it saw fit — it only lost the privilege of practicing the kind of discrimination that is unequivocally illegal in the public sector, on the taxpayer’s dime.

And that’s when Mormon grand poobah Spencer W. Kimball suddenly experienced the “revelation” that blacks were equal to the white man. (Was Brigham Young wrong? Or did God suddenly change His mind about the race He purposely created as “inferior”? These are questions no Mormon can answer directly, although many will expend extraordinary efforts to talk around the issue in the apparent hope that the old saying is true: “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit.”)

Funny how that works: The threat of losing something the church wants very, very badly — such as statehood — inevitably leads to a new “revelation” that changes the whole game, and leaves the faithful scrambling to come up with excuses for their god’s unpredictable caprice.

Below is a story from one of my favorite books, Zen Flesh Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings.

Zen Flesh Zen Bones was recommended to me when I was 19 years old, by one of those people who appear in your life briefly, and then vanish without a trace — and leave you wondering why you invested any energy at all into a relationship that was not only obviously destined to be transient, but was ultimately unsatisfactory.

Well, that’s how I saw it when I was 19. And when I was 19, and thought I knew everything, I cracked open the slim volume and began to read. And I didn’t understand any of it. “The sound of one hand clapping”? What kind of idiocy was that? And why don’t any of the stories in the book have a point — or, in lieu of a point, so much as an ending?

Nearly twenty years would pass before I plucked Zen Flesh Zen Bones out of its spot amidst the other several thousand books on my shelves and read it again. This time, I got it. All of it. The stories moved me — to laughter, to tears, to periods of brooding introspection from which I emerged clearer and calmer.

Was I suddenly enlightened? No. More open to enlightenment, certainly, but I will never expect to be enlightened. That defeats the whole purpose of enlightenment, you see — striving for enlightenment, or even expecting it. What is is, you know, and when you exist in complete harmony with what is, no matter what is, then you’re there.

Me, I’m way too flawed to even dream of achieving that state of consciousness (see? enlightenment is not something to be “achieved”), but I get the concept, completely. Just like I finally “got” Zen Flesh Zen Bones.

So, here is my favorite story from Zen Flesh Zen Bones — and anyone who has to ask why I’m including it here… well, if you have to ask, then you probably won’t care much for the story, either (although I can almost guarantee you will remember it for the rest of your life). If it doesn’t make sense, come on back in twenty years or so, and it will:

Three Days More

Suiwo, the disciple of Hakuin, was a good teacher. During one summer seclusion period, a pupil came to him frim a southern island of Japan.

Suiwo gave him the problem: “Hear the sound of one hand.”

The pupil remained three years but could not pass this test. One night he came in tears to Suiwo. “I must return south in shame and embarrassment,” he said, “for I cannot solve my problem.”

“Wait one more week and meditate constantly,” advised Suiwo. Still, no enlightenment came to the pupil. “Try for another week,” said Suiwo. The pupil obeyed, but in vain.

“Still another week.” Yet this was of no avail. In despair the student begged to be released, but Suiwo requested another meditation of five days. They were without result. Then he said: “Meditate for three days longer, then if you fail to attain enlightenment, you had better kill yourself.”

On the second day the pupil was enlightened.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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