Holly, I honestly found your comments as well as those of other bloggers to be very derisive. I didn’t post here today because I had nothing better to do. I was offended.

If you tell me that this was unintentional — that I’m too sensitive and reading too much between the lines — then in the spirit of reconciliation I’ll believe you. I never enjoy internet arguments. I think that lacking all the communication provided by body language and vocal inflection there is too much room to assume the worst.

carry on.

We have some real gems from Holly. They include:
1. A discussion of menstrual blood and seminal emissions as they relate to Mormon underwear.
2. The fact that (unlike Mormons) Jews don’t worship objects (Mormons obviously worship their underwear!)
3. An argument that if the photos are in wikipedia that they must not be offensive. (Try a search for “Muhammad cartoon controversy� and see what you find. Did those get posted here?)
4. The fact that she has a personal gripe against the Mormon church due to her father being in the LDS genealogical database.

We have Shaun talking about how Mormons “parade their religion all over the world, primarily Africa.� I assume that this somehow implicitly justifies an attack on the Mormon religion.

And lastly, we have Greg saying that the comments policy was really only intended to apply to anti-semitic language and that he thinks religious sensitivity is a bad idea anyway.

We also have Greg posting (trolling?) on a Mormon blog site that, “since you have some unusual religious practices and don’t kill people, you’re fair game.� Until I saw this post I had no idea what was going on, but I have to admit that the aggressive tone of his post piqued my curiosity.

For those wondering about the response from the Mormon community, these are some of the reasons.

We all react differently to challenges to our beliefs. Some over react and some under react.

I do believe that you can’t just tell someone “you don’t have the right to be offended”. Sorry but offence is hardly something you can control. I appreciate how sick everyone is of false outrage, but it looked to me as if the LDS folks writing (and I guess they linked from an LDS blog, lots of new names) were honestly offended. That’s fine, and if you are offended you have the perfect right to say so and ask to have the offensive material removed or apologized for. The “offending” party has the right to not do so and then you have the right to leave or try to garner support from others to preasure the offender.
Little suggestion though; “That picture is offensive to my faith because it appears to be a joke about a sacred garment important to my people. I think you can make your point without it and would appreciate it being removed” is going to work better than “You are a bigot and could care less about offending my people, while you make sure to treat other faiths with care. This blog is so slanted as to be worth nothing!”

Everyone has their sacred cows. I once asked (and got) the removal of a picture of the train bombings in Madrid because they weren’t needed for the post and caused me personal pain. Michael understood and removed the picture, but when I asked I didn’t call him an insensitive jerk and expressed that I understood why others wouldn’t be bothered by the picture.

Can’t please everyone. Keep doing what you’re doing.