Hinckley gone, and I'm not rejoicing

A decade ago I was a tremendous critic of prophet Hinckley for what I
perceived as his abandonment of mormonism in order to appease the
press and garner better media coverage for the church. A newspaper
article I read about him today even mentions my criticism of his
rhetoric about plural marriage.

I thought I would rejoice at his demise, but these days I simply don't
care one way or the other about mormonism or it's leaders.

The only bother that mormism is to me these days is that the Mormons
of Utah are using the ballot box in order to impose their religious
ideals upon me. I believe that mormonism teaches that it is wrong to
use government/violence in order to coerce the actions of peaceable
non-believers. I believe that in general mormons are more than willing
to deny the precepts of their faith in order to pass laws to coerce
non-believers. It doesn't matter to me if every other religious body
in the world is also wrong on this topic. I think that mormons aught
to know better and to behave better.

And for those glorious mormons out there that truly believe in
allowing other people the freedom to wor****p how, where, or what we
may, I congratulate you for every time you vote to increase the
freedom of non-believers, especially when that freedom means we will
be sinning. I believe that violence inherent in government
prohibitions is a greater evil than any peaceful sin someone might
commit.

I loved prophet Hinckley's attempts to get the church to treat non-
members better. I'm sad they were not heeded where it really matters.
As far as I can tell, mormonism aught to create the freest government
in the world, but in practice it seems to me that, non-believers are
heavily oppressed in mormon controlled areas.

Love,
Absalom