Minorities Behind the Zion Curtain

I really should apologize for all of these harsh words, stereotypes and unsympathetic statements I have cast upon the entire Mormon population. They are in fact the most genuine and loving people on the planet so long as you are not gay, lesbian, atheist, black, brown, tan, or any other conceivable form of minority. The fact is that it’s very hard to believe a Church that is almost completely of a single skin color that preaches the word of kindness and acceptance. The exact opposite comes to fruition when these minorities are judged by the Mormon rules and teachings in place

Gotta love that acceptance and understanding

One of the most prominent opinions that the LDS church has is that homosexuality is an unnatural and evil behavior. As stated in the book or Mormon, homosexual actions and practices are one the “serious transgressions” against God and the Church. Other serious transgressions that homosexuality is equated to include rape, murder, sale of narcotics, and sexual abuse. Really now? Homosexual feelings being considered as dangerous as murder and rape seems far more than excessive. But the Church has reformed their complete intolerance of homosexuality as recently as the mid 1960’s when they began to accept openly gay and lesbian individuals into the Church. That is so long as they never show, practice, or express these feelings and make every conceivable effort to hide, and smother them through intensive therapy, prayer, and reform. The Church frequently cites individuals who have “reformed” and “given up homosexuality”, but fail to acknowledge the frequent suicides that occur by gay and lesbian persons within the church who are forced to internalize their feeling and thus deal with intolerance and severe inner turmoil.

Protest against same sex marriage at an LDS Temple in Los Angeles

But it would seem that those with homosexual feelings have it easy since they can still rise to any level within the Church so long as they are able to hide and conceal any natural inclinations they may have. This is not so easy for individuals of nearly every race and nationality other than Anglo-Saxon Caucasian westerners. It has been the view of the church from the birth of its existence that anyone with skin of a color other than white was born that way because God decreed them ‘evil’ or ‘sinful’ in a past life and thus marked them with dark skin. This idea is expressed in several stories within the Book of Mormon where Native Americans were considered to have been made ‘red’ by God because they didn’t accept the second coming of Jesus in North America as a reality. If you thought that was intolerant of the Mormon Church than you are going to love what they think of the rest of the world.

Magazine cover depicting the struggle for minorities to rise to higher levels in the church due to discrimination and lack of acceptance

Additionally persons born in third world or struggling countries are viewed as being placed there by God through fault of their own in a past life. In other words it is a fairly common belief within the Church that God ‘segregated’ the world by placing all of these people in different places because of their ‘true nature’ and ‘sinful practices’. These views and beliefs directly tie into why the modern Church only aids individuals in other countries who adopt the LDS religion as their ‘chosen’ faith. The result of these practices have long caused the Church to be predominantly white, and members to have a minor phobia of other races at the least and full on violent actions against them in the worst case.


As a result of all of this, Utah has long been one of the most Caucasian states in the United States, but recently out of growing diversity within urban areas of the state, the Church has adopted various policies of ‘acceptance’ towards minorities. These include reaching out to aid minorities and struggling populations as well as allow non-white persons to become missionaries or ‘elders’ within the church. Unfortunately it seems that these policies didn’t come out of the good intentions of the modern church but rather the need to increase membership and conversions into the church. In most cases whenever a large population of non-white persons are converted to the LDS faith only a small percent remain in the church as they find that the initial acceptance they received was only a means to get them to convert and simply transforms into racial tension and discrimination soon after. If you can take nothing else away from this, simply remember that the LDS Church and Jesus love and accept you, just so long as you are a straight pure blooded celibate white male who only associates with other straight pure blooded celibate white communities.