Criticism of Mormonism - Criticism of Response To Internal Dissent

Criticism of Response To Internal Dissent

See also: Academic freedom at Brigham Young University and September Six

The Ostlings say that the LDS Church retaliates against members that publish information that undermines church policies, citing excommunications of scientist Simon Southerton and biographer Fawn M. Brodie. They further state that the church suppresses intellectual freedom, citing the 1993 excommunication of the "September Six", including gay LDS historian D. Michael Quinn, and author Lavina Fielding Anderson. The Ostlings write that Anderson was the first to reveal the LDS Church keeps files on LDS scholars, documenting questionable activities, and the Ostlings state that "No other sizable religion in America monitors its followers in this way".

The American Association of University Professors, since 1998, has put LDS-owned Brigham Young University on its list of universities that do not allow tenured professors sufficient freedom in teaching and research.

Richard Abanes lists the following as church members excommunicated or censured for views unacceptable to the church hierarchy:

  • Journalist Deborah Laake, for her book Secret Ceremonies: A Mormon Woman's Intimate Diary of Marriage and Beyond
  • BYU English teacher Cecilia Konchar-Farr, for her views on abortion laws
  • Writer Janice Merrill Allred
  • English Professor Gail Houston
  • Anthropologist David Knowlton

Read more about this topic:  Criticism Of Mormonism

Famous quotes containing the words criticism, response, internal and/or dissent:

    “It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.”
    —Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

    “It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.”
    —Henry Miller (1891–1980)

    “I maintain that I have been a Negro three times—a Negro baby, a Negro girl and a Negro woman. Still, if you have received no clear cut impression of what the Negro in America is like, then you are in the same place with me. There is no The Negro here. Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!”
    —Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)

    “The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.”
    —Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)