LaMar Going, you can stop sending me private notes. It’s not necessary. If you can’t say it to me in public, don’t say it.
To reply to your private note in which you once again dredge up the matter of my having accused you of calling me a bigot or bigoted in private notes, I have told you in public over and over and over and over again that I must have misremembered that that conversation.
I believe you.
You’re right.
I don’t know how saying that in private will be different from saying it to you in public. It’s all I’ve got. It’s all there is. There isn’t anything else I can tell you. I remember one thing. You remember another. I am telling you sincerely and honestly — where everyone can see me — that I believe your recollection and not my own.
I also feel like you’re using this to avoid talking about the issue we keep raising and that you keep ignoring.
You keep ignoring me, alto, and Saoirse when we ask you to address the problem of the Mormon Church being a powerfully evil force for organized persecution against LGBTQ people in the United States.
That matters. It matters deeply and critically to us, and it resonates with us on a very sincere human level.
You can’t pretend that Mormons are good and decent to us when the Church you belong to and that you support is one of the most powerful forces in the United States working to stop us from enjoying full civil equality.
It’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation without your at least acknowledging that, and preferably apologizing for it. Whether you want to be or not, you are actually and effectively complicit in our persecution because of your membership in and your support of the LDS Church.
That matters to us.
It also matters, as Saoirse keeps pointing out to you, that the official LDS website compares us to any number of vile criminals. That’s horrible, LaMar, and you won’t talk to us about it or even acknowledge that we’ve said it.
I don’t know why. I can’t understand. One guess is that you don’t want to have a sincere conversation.
That’s too bad.
Please don’t send me any more private notes. I’m not interested in communicating with you that way.
Jim
