This is going to differ quite a bit from my usual content, but there are three things that have popped in the past week that involve Mormons, and I didn’t see anyone else here at W&T posting about them, so I figured why not. They fall into three distinct camps that are incredibly familiar:

  • The Secretary of “War” excludes Mormons from the Christian category.
  • Utah’s Gov. Cox thinks he’s being clever and not just homophobic and inconsistent by announcing June is “Fidelity Month.”
  • Mormon leader (church historian Kyle McKay) being racist. If you want to be generous you could just say “rambling and tone deaf,” but wowzers does this guy need a stage manager or at the very least, someone to unplug his mic.

What we are really seeing in the two political stories is that punching down is the one core requirement to be acceptable to MAGA. Oh, and NOT BEING A MORMON. Leopards, meet face.

Wife Beating Alcoholic Warmonger Says Mormons Aren’t Christian Enough

MAGA looooves Mormon votes, just not actual Mormons. Their preachers fill their heads full of bad faith arguments and bigotry, and they eat it with a spoon and ask for seconds.

Of course, Mike Lee comes in swinging, demanding to be included in the club, and apparently Trump agreed that it was bad politics to piss off the LDS vote that is 70% unwaveringly behind him (especially since Trump DGAF at all about this internecine Christian BS), so the compromise is that the Department of Defense / War no longer designates any sect as Christian, which feels very “Fine! Are you happy now, losers? We hate letting you say you’re Christians so much we will just not call anyone Christian. Babies.” (read that in your Colin Jost as Pete Kegsbreath voice).

Most of the responses to this have been about what you would expect:

  • “We’re NOT Christian . . . according to their definition, so I don’t care.”
  • “It doesn’t matter what some random politician thinks. God will judge us.”
  • “I wear it as a badge of honor to be singled out for my beliefs.”

The real story here is that they cut the list of religions down from around 180 to 30. I’m not hearing a lot of clamoring about the 150 that didn’t make the cut. I also haven’t heard a lot of Mormons noticing that JWs got the Christian label. J freakin’ Ws. Their beliefs are far less mainstream than LDS teachings.

And the real story behind all of that is that this is a part of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to favor Evangelical Christianity and remake our nation according to its very specific values that the majority of the country does not share. Evangelical Christians: 1, Pluralism: 0.

Just for funsies, I’ll drop this video of Colin Jost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHo9alvGm5w

Gov. Cox Decides Pride Goeth Before (his own political) Fall

As we all know, June is Pride month, as Governor Cox formally recognized every year until 2024 when he suddenly started realizing MAGA might not like it. Cruelty was back in vogue. Don’t believe me? Consider what some LDS people are saying about Pride Month:

I am once again forced to ask the obvious question: are the straights alright? This move reminds me when I was a kid and heard the joke: “We have mother’s day and father’s day. When do we have children’s day?” and the reply from their wise elder was “But EVERY day is children’s day.” In this analogy, the straights are the coddled children.

When I see such unhinged comments as the above, I am reminded of the old adage that some “straight” people think more about gay sex than gay people do. As my sister once observed, the bigger the prude, the bigger the perv. Or as Jung put it, “That which we resist persists.” When I read these comments they just look like projection to me. Will the real demented, uneducated, deluded weirdos please stand up? Conflating homosexuality with pedophilia is particularly rich given that they are totally fine with ignoring what we know about the Epstein Files.

If we are going to have a Fidelity Month, doesn’t that imply that you get a hall pass the other 11 months? Is this like making a “Honesty Month”? It feels like Lent. Rats, I was going to cheat on my spouse, but now I can’t because it’s June.

I can’t wait until next month when Cox announces Julyteenth, which is Juneteenth but for white people. Which brings us to . . . our next Mormon moment.

This Guy’s Little Light is Shining Way Too Much

If you didn’t watch the clip of Kyle McKay rambling about the spectacle of Mormons who are WHITE singing “This Little Light of Mine” which is a BLACK song (according to him), well it’s something to behold. He seems to be implying that it’s silly a ridiculous for a white person to do a thing he considers “black,” which honestly reminds me of my mom referring to movies, TV shows and neighborhoods as “a black one.” Yikes. Here’s a link to the video in which he also says he had a conversation with another leader in the stand who is imagining he’s in an African slave ship while singing it. White people LOLZ, amiright?

Just to clarify, the song was written in the 1920s, well past abolition, although it was first sung in American black Christian churches, likely starting with the AME (African Methodist Episcopal church). It was popularized during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, probably also something our boy Kyle would consider a mark against it (Civil Rights aren’t for white people, after all–that’s just silly). Fun fact: I guarantee you that Kyle McKay wouldn’t consider himself racist. He probably also thinks we live in a post-racial country because . . . Obama.

And let’s not forget that he started that horrifying ramble with a throwaway reference he apparently thought was charming and universally relatable to his childhood enjoyment of torturing and incinerating grasshoppers with a magnifying glass.

  • Had you seen all three of these stories? What did you think when you heard these stories?
  • What reactions are you seeing or hearing from people you know?
  • Do you think MAGA Mormons understand that they are carrying water for people who don’t respect them and will never accept them?
  • Will racism ever be a disqualifier for white Mormon men to be given a microphone?
  • Do you think less of Gov. Cox who used to get a lot of attention for his “disagree better” initiative?

Discuss.