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Comment by lalaland1125 | Hacker News Reader

The writer of this piece is either naive or disingenuous. The NYT is primarily focusing on how this person's actions have affected their readers and at the end of the day the LDS's homophobia and misogyny are the ways in which the LDS has most affected NYT's readers in New York and Americans nationwide. That's why the NYT leads with those sections and focuses the most on them. There isn't an "agenda" here trying to dirty the image of the Mormon church: the church earned that reputation through actual actions that harmed millions of marginalized Americans.

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fish, water etc. everyone thinks their weltanschauung is simply reality. a wise writer knows that reality is complicated. the focus on politically convenient grievances and total ignorance of conflicting information should give you pause.

But how does homophobia and misogyny within the Mormon church affect people who aren't in the Mormon church?

Also I find it telling that you say "the church earned that reputation". Yes, the church, not a single man. The leader of a church is rarely a king who can change doctrine on a whim. If this man had repented of homophobia and misogyny, he may well have been supplanted by someone else the very next day. So among the many things wrong with the wording of this obit, the fact that they call him out personally as homophobic/misogynist rather than something more accurate like "under his leadership the CHURCH was homophobic/misogynistic" is a big one.

> [H]ow does homophobia...within the Mormon Church affect those outside the church?

Prop 8 is perhaps the prime example of how it affects those outside the church. The LDS church was the main financial contributor to the yes on prop 8 campaign.

We could also mention the Boy Scouts here too. I was a scout, but some of my valued peers were gay and the Mormon church led a witch-hunt against gay scouts, as well as atheists (as I personally identify). My friends felt essentially forced to quit scouting due to the policies attributable to the Mormons.

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