A lot of people have sent me a link to this site Marry Our Daughter. I thought it was a hoax straightaway, but could sort of see how in our current world of purity balls and virginity pledges how people might be hoodwinked into thinking daughter-selling was on the horizon. My thought is that it’s not out of the question that those who want a return to hardcore patriarchy would like to have outright daughter-selling, but there are many more steps to take before they get there. So, knowing it’s a hoax, the next question is what’s the point?
Jessica Bennett, writing for Newsweek, dug around and found out that the site’s owner is John Ordover, a consultant from Brooklyn who does have a point (though he’s probably showing off his viral marketing skills to get new clients, as well). He wanted to highlight the way our culture still has a patriarchal bent that manifests itself in things like overly youthful marriages and purity balls. As the article points out, in a lot of states, the age of consent to marry is lower than the age of consent to fornicate, and with parental consent, you can marry extremely young in some states. The oddness of laws like that reflects the fact that we still live in a patriarchal culture and there’s still some fondness for the ideal of the submissive child bride.
Most people who still get the patriarchal joy flutters at the idea of the child bride won’t outright admit it (though there’s still a few, like Rep. Bonnie Huy of Kansas who voted against raising the age of consent to marry to 16 on the theory that getting married at 13 worked out for Loretta Lynn), but as Ordover discovered running this website, there’s plenty of men out there who were quite eager to buy themselves a teenage bride as soon as they got the slightest hint that they could get away with it.
The site’s creator, John Ordover, a viral-marketing consultant based in Brooklyn, N.Y., gave NEWSWEEK access to that account, and we sorted through hundreds of e-mails—some outraged, others, well, creepy. “Darling Makayla, Seeing your bright smile among the other girls on this site was a joy among joys—to see someone so obviously full of life and laughter made me keep coming back to your profile,” writes one suitor, who identifies himself as Mark B. “I want to provide you with everything you need, I want to have a partnership that will last a lifetime. You love to laugh, and I would love to make you laugh for the rest of our lives … Please consider me as a husband.”
Another wannabe groom, Mike P., writes: “Hi Courtney! Your profile really spoke to me and I think I may just be the man for you. I liked that you are carrying on your family tradition—family values are VERY important to me. I am a one-woman man only and very loyal and caring for a like-minded girl. I love to fish and play World of Warcraft … I am very excited to get to know you!” (When contacted by NEWSWEEK via e-mail, many of these suitors didn’t respond. The ones who did—like Mike P.—said much of the same: “Unfortunately, I have no idea what you are talking about.”)
Attitudes like that are unfortunately why it was so easy for a lot of smart people to happen upon this site and assume it was real.
Well, that and child marriage and rape is still a problem in our country, even if it’s still restricted to small communities of Mormon loonies.* Jeff has a good post on the trial of Warren Jeffs, the polygamous Mormon leader who encouraged the use of child marriages and rape to keep the ladies in line within his community. Jeff has a heart-breaking quote from the testimony of a 14-year-old rape victim who begged for relief from being raped by her assigned husband, but was told that her problem was not the raping but her insufficient submissiveness in marriage. It’s tempting to write off this situation as an anomaly, but the same principles of female submission in marriage that were wielded by Jeffs against this young woman are wielded daily against women in mainstream churches who seek relief from everything from inequitable marriages to domestic violence. Compare and contrast these quotes from non-mainstream religious loony Warren Jeffs and mainstream Christian family guru that has the President’s ear James Dobson.
The woman later arranged a meeting with Jeffs and told him her husband was touching her in ways she did not fully understand.”
“I told him (Jeffs) I was sorry I had failed so severely. … He told me that I needed to repent, that I was not living up to my vows, I was not being obedient, I was not being submissive and that was what my problem was,” she recounted.
Jeffs told her to go home “and give myself mind, body, and soul” to her husband.
In a 1984 broadcast of his radio program, she says, Dobson told his listening audience that he had seen situations where the wife wanted to be beaten up. His hypothesis was that the wife achieved a certain moral advantage from being hit. If she pushed her husband into blacking her eye, the world–and God–would view her as a martyr. This way, he said, she could give herself a moral exit from the marriage, because the Bible says marriage is forever.
Dobson’s comments were essentially the same thing he said in a 1983 book against divorce, Love Must Be Tough. It was revised as recently as 1996, without a word changed about domestic violence.
*For all those determined to misinterpret that, I’m not speaking about mainstream Mormons, whose religion doesn’t strike me as loonier than any others.
67 Responses to “A little too close to home”
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I can’t say I’m all that surprised that the guy got responses, or that, when confronted, the respondees would deny knowing what they’d said. But it’s disturbing all the same. What kind of infantile person do you have to be to think that a relationship–even a dominating and controlling one–with a person in her early teens would be remotely fulfilling? Teens are idiots, even the smart ones.
*For all those determined to misinterpret that, I’m not speaking about mainstream Mormons, whose religion doesn’t strike me as loonier than any others.
I am obsessed with learning about Mormons, because while every individual Mormon I’ve ever met is just the nicest, kindest, most whitebread salt-of-the-earth types I’ve ever encountered, the history of the religion itself is insane, absolutely crazy. And violent. I love reading about it because it’s also the only major religion around that got it’s start at a time when everyone, everywhere was writing stuff down, so there’s all kinds of info on Joseph Smith or Brigham Young that doesn’t exist for say, Jesus.
For me, the first thought is that you wonder what you’d have to read if any other major religious figure lived in an age that kept meticulous, current records, not just where the major events were preserved and sometimes years after the fact. However, my Catholic and Christian relatives never seem to get it when I bring it up.
Under the Banner of Heaven has been brought up before, and it paints a really good picture of life for these girls in the polygamous communities of Utah, Colorado, Mexico and Canada.
The Patriarch Wing needs to promote the idea of arranging marriages to fetuses — nothing fresher than a baby! Teenagers are just too darn old.
The site reminds me of another site which exposed the racism of people, called Rent A Negro dot com by damali ayo, where she set the site up so that unexperienced white people could “rent” black people for parties and events especially if they didn’t know any black people themselves and wanted to look more “diverse” and “hip”. This was a few years ago and she published some of the responses in a Harpers issue and later turned it into a book, How To Rent A Negro, which is totally funny (albeit sad when you think about it).
I will echo Amanda and say it is amazing how people will expose themselves when they think they can get away with something, or when they feel they’re in the company of like minded people.
Though I read the Bonnie Huy excuse and she seems to forget that those cases were about fifty years ago, when it was expected of child brides, then again, these kind of people would love nothing more than a return to that era.
I am obsessed with learning about Mormons, because while every individual Mormon I’ve ever met is just the nicest, kindest, most whitebread salt-of-the-earth types I’ve ever encountered, the history of the religion itself is insane, absolutely crazy.
Really? I’ve always had the impression is a ruse, and that intense judgment is bubbling right below the surface.
I would be interested to know what kind of response “Marry Our SON” would get. Would there be more general outrage? Would it be assumed that most response would come from gay men, or that it would somehow be more wrong for an older woman to want a teenaged husband?
It’s funny and sad that Marry Our Daughter could be close enough to reality that it is so often mistaken for real, whereas Marry Our Son seems a lot less conceivable.
Really? I’ve always had the impression is a ruse, and that intense judgment is bubbling right below the surface.
Maybe closer to Utah, and probably as you get more and more religious, same as all the other religions. But the Mormons I knew in Ohio were all pretty genuinely nice people. And affluent. And white as the driven snow. I am in no way endorsing Mormonism which is a chock full o problems as any belief system there is, it’s just that it’s so well documented as to be fascinating.
As a gay atheist, that’s my impression of most religious (monotheistic in particular) people. I’m going to hell for one reason or the other.
I’m gonna go all nitpicky here because viral marketing is part of my job. This is not “viral”; it’s a hoax and a political statement, but it doesn’t have any traits that inherently encourage people to pass the phenomenon on. The Samuel L Jackson phone messages you could send through the Snakes on a Plane web site were the ideal example of viral marketing - you got a message, figured out where it came from, and decided to pass it on to someone else. That’s viral.
Sorry, I’m just so damn tired of people knocking out a fake blog or hiring some astroturfers and calling it “viral.” Yeah, Sony, I’m looking at you.
realityfighter: But the existence of a popular website is often an indication that a viral marketing campaign existed and was successful.
What the heck is a purity ball? Is it some kind of dance party? ‘Cause what it rings to mind is a chastity belt of some kind.
“Teens are idiots, even the smart ones.”
That’s saddening, Incertus. *is a teen*
But, yeah, we pretty much are.
“Let’s jump off our house!”
“Let’s throw cheese slices on the wall!”
How about not, dumbass.
The best viral campaigns in fact don’t have ways to pass it along, and rely soly on word of mouth to do that for you, IMO. Makes the connection stronger.
All I’ll say about this is thankfully it’s fake. Becase I don’t know how I’d cope with this one.
If that’s really you, JO, I’m boggled that you put up the website *without* knowing what a purity ball is. It is, in fact, a dance party *and* a chastity belt! With bonus incestuous overtones!It’s a formal dance for fathers & early-teen daughters, where the daughter pledges to remain a virgin until and the father pledges to protect his daughter’s purity until it’s time to hand her over to her husband.
Heads up, siteowners: When I googled for “purity ball” and “pandagon” the links to this site came up tagged with Google’s malware warning.
John:
here’s a pandagon post that includes a video detailing the purity ball phenomenon. it’s probably going to be some of the most stomach-turning 7 minutes of your life. :
WOW INCLUDING THE LINK MIGHT’VE BEEN A GOOD START. sorry, john!
http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/06/18/womenreceptacles/
Actually, for as creepy and criminal as Jeffs and the other polygamist sects are, they don’t scare me half as much as Dobson. Dobson has a much greater reach for spreading his misogynist poison. This shouldn’t be taken to mean I don’t think Jeffs is a big problem, and I am not hoping he ends up in jail for a long, long time.
You know what the saddest part of this whole thing is? The only part I found unbelievable was that there were prices attached. I could absolutely see that being a real website, FOR NO CHARGE. Hey, fellas, we just don’t have the dating pool here, wanna take our 16 year old off our hands? Transport costs are yours! Is it really that different from the arranged marriages where the couple have never been alone together? I’m sure there was a post here about that, where the guy talked about how he was interested in one daughter but settled on the other one instead and they were totally soulmates after never being alone together and dating for four months?
OK, and the other unbelievable part was that some of the “girls” said they wanted to go to college and travel the world. No REPUTABLE marryourdaughter.com would settle for THAT kind of heresy!
[I’m going to hell for one reason or the other.]
Bunches of us here are as well- should be a rip roaring good time with lots of good food! Conversations will be interesting…
OT, I can’t imagine how fucked in the head a parent must be to think that your male religious leader should be advising your teen daughter about sex, let alone that her getting married before she can legally vote is fine and dandy. That’s just beyond comprehension.
I’m with you, Bella, on thinking James Dobson is scarier. I run a local mom’s group and every time someone has a problem disciplining their child or in their marriage, Dobson’s name comes up.
When I first saw the “Marry My Daughter” site, I honestly thought for a split-second that it could be real, what with all this purity ball crap and the general trend toward reactionary behaviors. I was somewhat relieved to know it was fake, but only until I realized that the only way this hoax works is because you could actually see it happening.
Hmm… The photos he used were photos from a stock photo website. As we know, photos belong to the photographer, not the person. So the images of those children do not belong to them and have been used in a way that may compromise their safety or at the very least may compromise their sense of autonomy.
Anyone else see a problem with that?
Don’t get me wrong, the idea is interesting and exposes some patriarchy. But this guy’s use of their photos presents other patriarchal problems.
Good article. Disgusting, religious wackos.
As a gay atheist, that’s my impression of most religious (monotheistic in particular) people. I’m going to hell for one reason or the other.
Quakers?
most, not all
hell, the quakers i know are atheists
however, my mother is convinced I’m going to hell because I’m an atheist. What a vile monster she worships.
(Puts on professional photographer hat)
People own the right to their images, if the image is to be published.
Every, legitimate, stock agency demands model releases from those photographers who contract with it. Many (i might even go so far as to say most, want property releases for recognizable buildings/structures.
With children the problem (IMO) is the right to give such release is the parents; and that gift is usually irrevocable, so that a person whose parent gives such a release can’t (when they are old enough to be the person who has to grant such a release) stop future use of their image.
MAJeff: I’d say the Quakers I know are more pantheists, with no belief in an afterlife.
I love the adlines right now.
E-harmony for mormon singles
talking with gary (whoever he is) marriage counseling
And some company offering “christian marriage” to people over 40.
Elaine, how do you know those girls are the age they’re presented to be? Remember, the images are assigned to fictional characters. For all we know, they’re much older.
Wow. Now I feel bad about submitting joke proposals where I claimed to belong to an alien species from across the galaxy.
Well, that’s (very, VERY generally speaking) East Coast Quakers. The roots of Quakerism are indelibly Christian and Quakers east of the Mississippi are somewhere between fundies and liberation types.
I believe that Dobson is by far the scariest of the leaders of the religious right.
This is because Dobson is considerably smoother and therefore considerably more trusted than the rest of them. My experience with Dobson is that most of what he says isn’t crazy at all. It’s just common sense delivered in a folksy, homey style. However, a fair amount of his advice is quite troubling, as we all know.
What makes Dobson so dangerous is that he gains people’s trust with the folksy wisdom, then they are more receptive to the crazy stuff. This gives him far more power than the idiots who only open their mouths to change feet.
I was reading something in Bitch that noted that an activist in Victorian Britain actually bought the rights to a maidenhead to showcase the opposite dilemma - having an age of marriage but not an age of consent protected wealthy women, but not shockingly young working-class girls from sexual exploitation.
This sounds geared to expose Teh Stupid of a similarly misinformed but rather opposite situation - age of marriage being less than age of consent.
Besides, anybody who saw Coal Miner’s Daughter should know that such an early marriage rather did NOT work out so well for Loretta Lynn. I went to see it with my Grandmother, who was 15 when she married, and that was quite an eye opener. Grandma was very very clear with me about contraception and adamant that I not marry early because of her own experiences.
I blogged about this a few days ago, and while, in the comment thread that followed, there was a general consensus that it was a hoax, one of the things that came up was how that particular site URL had been bookmarked on del.icio.us. The tags assigned to this article by users were illuminating; while there were plenty of folks who’d tagged it with terms like ‘funny,’ ‘humor,’ and ‘WTF’ - there were a few users who seemed to have taken the page at face value. User “gnarcotics,” for example, had assigned tags such as ’service,’ ’sex,’ and ’shopping’; “draleaf” tagged it with ’service’ and ‘marriage,’ and “amazingzeljko” had tagged it under ‘culture,’ ‘reference,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘marriage.’
I mean, really. Service! And shopping!
Exactly, Ms Kate. The wedding night scene was not remarkably different from the one described in Jeff’s post.
Mormons tend to be white everyplace except for Hawaii and other Pacific Islands. Somehow, it caught on big with Polynesians, especially Samoans.
The Polynesian Cultural Center is run by the Mormon Church, more or less. We don’t seem to spawn crazy sectarianism or polygamy, though they still have large families.
My mother was raised in the Mormon church but neither she nor her mother were very serious and had no problems about my father and I being atheists.
I had an aunt who was extremely devoted to the church up until her son developed a serious drug problem, and they more or less shunned her for being a bad mother.
Auguste: My, close, experience with Quakers is mostly west coast (living in Calif, and having dated one, 15 years ago, and being engaged to one now [and with her for the past eight years]).
We have friends who belong to FGC, and I’ve spent time with various travelling Quakers, and been an attender to several Meetings.
My online associations are varied, with E. Coast, Mid-West, England and Canada.
My question would be, I suppose, are the quakers you are describing Programmed, or Un-Programmed. If the latter I can see where the fundie notes come in.
But across the country (and some in England too) taking no real position on the nature of deity and trying to see the Light in everyone is the only unifying thing I can say I see in them (well, no, there are some others but those are doctrinal issues, and most Quakers I know are blind, to the point of denying they have any, to the doctrines of the faith, though they understand the practice, but I digress).
When i asked someone about this their response was:
“Remember that in the ’30s British teens could get married at 14. There wasn’t the modern thing people have for pretending that teenagers aren’t sexual beings.”
*sighs* *bangs head*
Unless my numbers are way off, Terry, the majority of California Friends aren’t FGC but FUM/EFI. In fact, there are no FGC yearly meetings in the West, basically, except South Central. Evangelical (read: semi-fundie) Friends Southwest, the YM which includes California, has 11,000 members; the only FGC YM which matches it is Philadelphia.
The meeting I studiously avoid going to is in an EFI affiliated YM and, while certainly way more liberal than your average Baptist meeting, is still very fundie/God-centered compared to your average FGC meeting.
I have no doubt that your experience with Quakers has been of nontheists but I’m pretty sure that the numbers show that orthodox Friends outweigh liberal Friends quite heavily in the US. Google “Guide to Quaker Schism” for a flowchart.
insert ‘Baptist Church’ for ‘Baptist meeting’ above.
Quite honestly, if Amanda hadn’t tipped me off, and I’d somehow stumbled onto this site without any framing commentary, I would not have been absolutely sure it had to be a joke. I didn’t see any clear tip-offs hidden anywhere–no silly names or anything like that.
I suspect that if someone tried to do this very thing seriously, some law enforcement official somewhere would dispute the “Bride Price,” or otherwise seek to apply sex-trafficking regulations of one kind or another. There are after all a lot of jurisdictions in the USA with a range of politics-skewed way to the right of course, but a range exists.
Then again it could be that everything this spoof site claimed to do, is already done in the mail-order bride biz, except perhaps the latter are supposed to all be over 18.
The point is, if it were real and someone wanted to shut it down, it would involve a lot of iffy legal stretches to try and make a case.
But nope, we don’t live in a patriarchy, no way!
[I had an aunt who was extremely devoted to the church up until her son developed a serious drug problem, and they more or less shunned her for being a bad mother]
Marc, that’s really sad. IMO that they would ostracize HER for her SON’S addiction is repulsive. If anything, one would think a church would SUPPORT her!
But that’s a hot topic for me- my sister’s drug addictions weren’t known to the family (including me; she lived 1000 miles away) before her suicide last December for similar reasons. My mother knew- yet kept it covered up. Even after Lil Sis’ death, she still insisted it was not a suicide and because they were Rx meds, that made it “better”. I’ve been shunned by my parents because I refuse to be part of the cover-up for the sake of appearances within their circle.
the majority of California Friends aren’t FGC but FUM/EFI. In fact, there are no FGC yearly meetings in the West, basically, except South Central.
(conjuring Emo Phillips):
Council of 1876 or Council of 1912?
Council of 1912.
DIE HERETIC!
Well, it is not as if there are people trying to marry off their daughters: http://www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com/family_up_date.htm
Well, it is not as if there aren’t actually people trying to marry off their daughters: http://www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com/family_up_date.htm
Teens are idiots, even the smart ones.
How can they be both? Adults use contradictory language, even when they make absolute statements.
My mother thinks the same thing about me. It’s impossible to talk about, because any reasons I give for being an atheist she takes as me saying “You’re stupid to believe in god”, and she gets insulted and the whole thing usually ends up with her crying because she’ll have to die knowing that she’ll never see me again, and that I’ll be tortured for eternity. She begs me to believe, and I say you can’t make yourself believe something, and she says, “Yes you can. Sometimes you have to because a lot of times it seems like god isn’t there”, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying that there’s a very good reason for that feeling.
It’s worse, now, because my Grandmother just died. She’ll ask me why I don’t want to see her again in Heaven, as if wishing something were true is a good reason to believe it’s real. Then there are the weird, long pleas about how Jesus was the most wonderful, perfect, loving person who ever lived, and what’s wrong with me that I don’t love him? I have a thousand different answers for any of these things when I’m arguing with someone online, but I have no idea what to say to my mother when this comes up.
On top of all that, she blames herself for my disbelief. She castigates herself for not being a good enough Christian, and says god will blame and punish her for me being an atheist. And the thing is, in one way, it is because of her that I don’t believe. Once I started thinking about it, it was the only thing that made sense, of course, but my first doubts came from seeing my mother experience Christianity. She’s has a lot of problems with depression, and was miserable for long periods of my childhood. She always talked about how uplifting and loving Christianity was, but I only ever saw it make her unhappy–she wasn’t living up to what god expected of her, god had abandoned her because she hadn’t been good enough, and everything that went wrong was her punishment for this. All I ever saw Christianity do was take a good, loving woman and tell her that she was a depraved, worthless human being that wasn’t deserving of love. She doesn’t know it, but she did show me the true heart of Christianity and belief, and it saved me from it.
I wish there were a support group for Atheist Children of Religious Parents.
And the rivalry between the East Coast Quakers and the West Coast Quakers can heat up at the drop of a hat. Harsh rebukes exchanged, drive-by shunnings, the knocking-off of hats - and it only makes that lifestyle more attractive to the kids.
My mom was forced by her parents to marry at 13–to an abusive f*cktard (her first husband) who, among other kindnesses, kicked and hit her while she was in labor with my older brother. She’s managed to make a life for herself, but with no education and zero family support, it was damn hard. This kind of crap makes me CRAZY. Loretta Lynn?! WTF?!!!
I’m not surprised that men turned out to be interested in buying teenage girls. I am more repulsed that some parents actually tried to sign their daughters up.
I’m not surprised that men turned out to be interested in buying teenage girls. I am more repulsed that some parents actually tried to sign their daughters up.
John Ordover
OH MY GOD.
Is this the former Star Trek tie-in novels editor John Ordover?
Well, if so, he’s neither a stranger to participating or causing Internet wank.
Mothworm - Your conversations/arguments with your mother sounds very similar to the ones I have with mine. A support group sounds like a great idea.
Curiousgrrl, do you really take that seriously? That entry in particular smacks of a 16 year old girl (+ or - her parents) pulling a smart ass me-hoax-too.
United Nations? Radioactive dog whistle, dear, radioactive.
For me, it was the “uppity” that gave it away.
yeah, you’re right.
Auguste: Looking at the Yearly Meetings I’m familiar with (Pacific, Intermountain,) they aren’t members of any larger group (FUM, FGC, or EFI), so I all I can do is lookl at them.
I mention FGC because large numbers of the Quakers I know have attened FGC (esp. in view of the distances/costs).
I’ve never known a monthly meeting which didn’t include words which appear to make them, nominally Christian, but in practice, I’ve never seen one which actually required it.
By inference (since I’ve not attended the yearly meetings) they seem to be much as the montly/quaterlies I’ve attended).
I’m not sure why this is (but then I’m not that tapped into the greater political questions in Quaker churches… talk to me about the Roman Catholic church and I’m on more solid ground).
mothworm & lin,
I’m joining the support group as soon as it’s set up.
I have much the same experience as you, mothworm, feeling no “happiness” eminating from my mother despite her strong xtian belief (although I think if she belonged to a church that actually spoke of God as a loving god instead of one that will toss you into hell for the smallest of discrepancies, she might be OK). In addition, though, I fought off terrible nightmares as a child since the church also told us from a very young age (as young as pre-school) that we were all going to burn in hell if we didn’t believe/do/follow the right path. It took years of work on my part to undo that brainwashing.
I even blame much of my past anger issues on the crap I was fed - it wasn’t until I started studying Buddhism (as a philosophy, not a religion) that I began to feel at all at peace. Needless to say, this adds even more fuel to the fire as far as my mom is concerned…I am going to burn, burn, burn. And she literally will cry and ask what she did wrong to cause me to be such a heretic (truly, I am one in her eyes since I was thrown out of our church at 15 and told not to return).
Terry,
I’m not denying that there are Quakers that fit your description. I’m merely quibbling with your blanket statement about Quakerism “mainly being non-evangelical.” Pacific Yearly Meeting has 1500 members; Yorba Linda Friends Church has 4000 attenders a week.
I actually have a lot of problems with Evangelical Quakerism, but it’s most certainly Christian theist.
shartheheretic, mothworm, lin:
i still feel physically ill if I go to church. My family has finally accepted this and if I’m visiting won’t ask me to go to church anymore (my aunts had me sit in the coffee shop attached to their church, where I sat reading “The God Delusion”)…but I’m still going to hell.
It took quite a while of me saying, “Mother, stop it” at her “maybe someone is trying to tell you something” bullshit when things in my life would happen. (for instance, the car accident we were in on the way to the airport was because I didn’t see the black ice coming up on the road–the imaginary buddy didn’t put it there just to get me to believe, as evidenced by the other cars in the ditch).
It just gets so tiring.
and the weird things is, I like my parents. My friends (and even my cousins) are always amazed at how well we get along, and indeed consider me lucky. They were here a week ago and we had a blast on the North Shore (Marblehead and Salem). But, there’s always that thing…..
auguste,
as above you responded to my statement about the quakers I know being atheists, it’s just because they were atheists looking for an avenue for their social justice work and found the cambridge meeting. If it were some of the evangelical or other things you were describing, they wouldn’t be going. I only know a few quakers.
Not true. Mormons are spreading like wildfire, you just don’t see it here because it’s happening in other countries. I just read about it in Good Magazine. They’re seriously taking over the world.
Here’s how they do it: Going on a mission to convert others to mormonism is part of the religion. Boys basically must do it and girls are encouraged or allowed if they’re not married. They send missionaries everywhere, to places where they’re the only Americans these people have every seen. They act all friendly and provide basic services and speak the language. That’s key - they speak the language.
Every male Mormon I’ve ever met can speak two languages: English and something else. They have seriously good language training programs, even the US military goes to them for some language training.
The article is insane: Mormons are taking over the world. Read it:
http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/the_mormons_are_coming
My mother and I just had nearly the exact same discussion. A few weeks ago, my girlfriend was in a car accident. She was shaken up, but fine. Her car got totalled, though. According to my mom, my girlfriend was OK because she had been praying for her, and the “hand of god” protected her. I just wanted to ask why it was too difficult for him to protect the car, too, or just prevent the accident altogether.
Elaine said: “Not true. Mormons are spreading like wildfire, you just don’t see it here because it’s happening in other countries. I just read about it in Good Magazine. They’re seriously taking over the world.
Here’s how they do it: Going on a mission to convert others to mormonism is part of the religion. Boys basically must do it and girls are encouraged or allowed if they’re not married.”
At the risk of being kind of offensive, there’s a phrase that non-Mormon guys use when talking about dating Mormon girls: they say the girls are “hooking for God.”
Because in order to marry in the Church, the non-Mormon must convert. And most Mormon girls I’ve known refuse to marry outside of the Church.
And it does tend to gain converts. Now how sincere the conversion actually is, I can’t say.
Amazing how the ones who really think of themselves as righteous and famiy values have the most hatred, the most bigotry (what, you didn’t think prejudice against mere women was bigotry?), the most rigidity, the most certainty that they are dead reight, the most suppression of individuals living the lives as they themselves wish (at least female individuals), and the most violence.