Category Archives: blog

blog

“purify to the eyes of the impure”

Leave a comment

“It is one of us women who must speak (now that men have not) of the sacredness of this painful and divine state. If the mission of art is to beautify all, with immense mercy, shall we not purify, to the eyes of the impure, this?” – Gabriela Mistral on pregnancy

she wrote a series of poems after witnessing the harassment of a heavily pregnant woman while traveling. she was criticized for these poems, which spurred her to write this note (of which i can only include the beginning) to defend her work.

Gabriela Mistral herself never had the chance to marry or have children.

I think it’s appropriate to say we’re doing worse at this even than when she wrote. Children and mothers and fathers. It’s what matters. If we cannot do right by them, we have failed beyond recovery.

work is a scam, at least half of ideology is a distraction, all that matters is doing right by families

This is not about Xenoblade 3, but Xenoblade 3 got me thinking about this

blog

Re: The AP article on the sexual abuse hotline for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Leave a comment

The AP article, at least with respect to the legal portion, appears to be flagrant misinfo. This whole situation is distressing, but I write this up because that article actively damages chances of reform and amounts to little more than a distraction.

The AZ law in question states: “A clergyman or priest, without consent of the person making the confession, as to any confession made to the clergyman or priest in his professional character in the course of discipline enjoined by the church to which the clergyman or priest belongs.” A.R.S. § 13-4062(2). The statute even explicitly forbids reporting of sexual abuse admitted in court-ordered/correctional sex offender treatment in A.R.S. § 13-4066, and only makes an exception if, during the course of the treatment, there is a new offense. The statute provides no explicit exceptions for the penitent-clergyman privilege. Now, future or ongoing violent offenses are not covered by these privileges (per judicial interpretation), but that’s why the fact that the article mentions there was no actual knowledge of future or ongoing offenses is legally significant.

Unfortunately, the AP article provides 0 citations for the quotations of law it claims to provide, so I can’t determine why it claims what it does. It just throws phrases in quotation marks out there without explanation or sourcing.

In short, any report made without the permission of the confessor would be illegal. Only the confessor could allow the information to be divulged; the bishop had no discretion and indeed would be under a legal duty to say nothing. This case does not reveal some nefarious pattern in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ conduct; it is a pattern in US law. Every single state and federal law grant some degree of clergy-penitent privilege.

The helpline exists because it is entirely unreasonable to expect bishops or anyone besides lawyers to know how to handle these cases, esp. since law can change at any time. There is genuine legal complexity and significant regional variation. Leaving bishops to handle things by intuition, or or based on a rulebook, or whatever, would produce radically worse outcomes.

Even if the bishop illegally reported, courts would be legally required to ignore any evidence produced by the bishop. And, if the police managed to somehow get enough info anyway to establish probable cause (an uncertain proposition already) to issue a warrant to find admissible evidence, warrants typically don’t produce anything because sexual abuse is hard to get evidence for (this is an ongoing crisis, terribly intelligent people are trying to improve that, prosecutors really want to catch sexual abuse, but it’s a very difficult thing to fix and a quagmire well beyond the scope of this discussion). And forcing a criminal trial without adequate evidence would make things worse; it would almost inevitably grant the defendant immunity under double jeopardy.

That is the state of the law. If we want to prevent this kind of thing from happening/hold victimizers accountable, it doesn’t matter how much you speak to Church members or leaders. They cannot do anything; they are obligated to act within the law. The only people who have the power to change this are the AZ and other state legislatures. This is the takeaway. Hold legislators accountable; only they can change the rules we’re required to live by.

(I would support and I think most would support mandatory reporting for sexual abuse cases within the statute of limitations. I mention the statute of limitations as a threshold because, well, it’s useless to report anything beyond it. But I also note that, if the law were changed, most of these confessions would simply not happen and we’d end up in much the same place as we are now.)

(While this is not the most important issue at hand, I must also confess that the article is unprofessional and reeks of bigotry otherwise. For example, the article violates the AP’s own style guide on referring to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by massively overusing the pejorative/dismissive term “Mormon.” If you are a Latter-day Saint, you know defamation, bigotry, and attacks are common, but in this case, I comment on it mostly because of the serious legal issues in the reporting.)

Addendum: Mandatory Reporting Statutes

A.R.S. § 13-3620, Arizona’s mandatory reporting law, does not abrogate the penitent’s privilege, nor does it confer the privilege, ability to waive, or actual discretion on the clergy member. If a clergy member does not report, it is based on the penitent’s privilege:

“This section [13-3620] does not create a statutory clergyman’s privilege independent of the penitent’s privilege under § 12-2233; rather, they reinstate in child-related litigation a clergyman’s ability to withhold consent on the penitent’s behalf to examination of the clergyman concerning his penitent’s confidential communication.” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Superior Court of the State of Arizona, 159 Ariz. 24 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1988).

In that case, testimony was allowed solely because the penitent waived the privilege by telling police about the contents of his confession. AP alleges no facts that suggest a waiver by the confessor. And even should such facts come to light, what does and does not constitute a waiver is highly fact-dependent, and may rely on information neither the bishop nor the hotline would have possessed at the time.

The second section mentioned in that quote, A.R.S. § 12-2233, is another iteration of the clergy-penitent privilege: “In a civil action a clergyman or priest shall not, without the consent of the person making a confession, be examined as to any confession made to him in his character as clergyman or priest in the course of discipline enjoined by the church to which he belongs.”

The court of appeals reinforced the clergy-penitent privilege because, if interpreted as AP suggests, § 13-3620 and § 12-2233 would create contrary legal duties that could not both be observed. Arizona courts have continued to reaffirm this interpretation, the most recent published decision being in 2018.

(And to explain more of the lack of professionalism on AP’s part, I would point to how they brag about obtaining access to this trove of documents, but they do not produce a single quotation or image about their contents. With that much information, if there were a pattern of problematic conduct, one would think they’d be able to report several cases across a Church with millions of members, or at least point to some document or actual policy that is causing the problem. Instead, all they do with all that information is say that, per their reading, again unexplained, the hotline could be used to divert sexual abuse cases from authorities, not that it is used. Here I note that the Church has also been sued for reporting too much in alleged violations of the privilege and that, as a matter of course, even where the privilege applies and a report is not possible, it is universal policy in the Church to push confessors of serious crimes to turn themselves in.)

Addendum 2: Further Details on Court Interpretation, esp. re: Mandatory Reporting, and Operation of Legal Privileges

You may not tell *anyone* privileged information.[1] Not the police, not a judge, not your spouse. Not in court, nor out of court. The clergy-penitent privilege operates very similarly to attorney-client and other privileged relationships.[2] Imagine an attorney telling anyone outside their office about their client’s confessions to them. Imagine if attorneys were allowed to report their clients. The privilege would immediately fail its purpose and the client would not be able to trust their own counsel. If AZ statute doesn’t explicitly spell that out, then it’s derived from common law, the body of law that corresponds to judicial decisions over history. It’s simply how privileges function (that’s why I don’t bother looking it up).

The clergy member has no privilege to not testify: he or she is compelled not to testify by the privilege of the penitent. The penitent is the exclusive possessor of the privilege in AZ law (most states grant the right to the penitent, not the clergy, as well). If the clergy member speaks without permission of the penitent, the penitent has the legal right to force the clergy member’s silence and obtain damages. And, of course, how many accused are not going to enforce such a thing? Even when it is referred to as the clergy member’s right, what it really means is that the clergy member exercises the penitent’s right on their behalf. So no, the clergy member may *not* testify of his or her own volition.

To summarize, the penitent-clergy privilege is a right that the penitent has *against* the clergy member, conditioned on the clergy-member’s respect of the privilege. Not a right of the clergy member.

That was the court’s decision in Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Superior Court of the State of Arizona, 159 Ariz. 24 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1988). While the statutory language of § 13-3620, read alone, would seem to confer the right on the clergy member, the courts do not interpret it so, because such an interpretation would be incompatible with prior law that § 13-3620 was not intended to replace (per the court’s own examination of legislative history and statutory text). The published decision goes into a discussion of the whys and wherefores if you so wish.

How it works out is that the clergy member may not divulge the privileged information, unless some waiver occurs by the penitent and the penitent alone. If the penitent waives their privilege, then the clergy member would actually fall under the mandatory reporting statute and be required to report (this is problematic because the clergy member doesn’t necessarily know whether the penitent has waived their privilege, esp. in cases of implied waiver).

[1]Unless one of the specific exceptions apply, like the report concerns future violent harm or, say, you’re an attorney discussing the case with co-counsel or a paralegal (and then, cocounsel or the paralegal would be bound by the privilege).

[2] Arizona court decisions have made attorney-client privilege the strongest of the privileges in Arizona, with penitent-clergy being just a tick below attorney-client. Other privileges,

blog

important things 6

Leave a comment

O Brother Where Art Thou

love that film, it goes hard.

complex, understated, bombastic, a very complete human experience all wrapped into something small

with

the iconic:

plus some of my other favs:

it’s a banger 🙂

it’s really likely ill repost things in this series over time and mess up the count. just wonder how long it’ll take lol.

Small recommendation: Zotero. Great app for managing research. Add it to your browser, download the desktop app, and it stores articles and other research sources quickly and conveniently. Also stores metadata in an accessible fashion that makes citations easier. I just use folders to divide things into projects. It’s nice to just look at old folders and be reminded of all the stuff I found back then too.

blog

Pioneer Day 2022 Reflections

Leave a comment

Today’s Pioneer Day in Utah, commemorating the day the first group of Latter-day Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. The move was forced: the murder of Latter-day Saints had been legalized in Missouri and was ignored elsewhere. That we survived as a people was a miracle.

In Missouri, 2 reasons were given to justify our extermination: 1. we were poor 2. race-mixing/impeding the practice of slavery and 3. we were blasphemers. Some Latter-day Saints managed to escape before the onset of winter, while others could not. Many Latter-day Saints lost their properties to arson and vandalism. Many were also victims of assault, theft, rape, and murder.

With little money, they traversed the Midwest and Rockies. Many used shoddy handcarts, pulled by human power, to carry their scanty belonging.

Even after arrival, things were difficult: Utah is mostly desert, famine, illness, poverty, relations with local cultures were complicated (Utes in particular had grown into a powerful slaver culture after centuries of enslaving Shoshone and Paiutes the Spanish Empire).

(small aside: the Ute language is most closely related to the language of the Aztecs in Central Mexico, despite many significant languages and cultures separating them. v fascinating.)

Many people died before the exodus, and many died after. Included several of my ancestors.

While I didn’t grow up with Pioneer Day, I grew up with stories of my ancestors’ struggle to survive. These events still have significant ramifications.

Not the least are the cultural memory of persecution and the generational effects of trauma. Additionally, religious persecution in the US finds its legal precedent in cases against Latter-day Saints from the early Utah period.

Indigenous holy sites, rituals, and religions have been destroyed under reliance on legal principles set forth to harass and control Latter-day Saints. It’s a complex and often tragic history, but people made it work and managed to find their measure of happiness.

blog

Small Thoughts on Aging

Leave a comment

There’s a lot of hatred for aging. And sometimes, quite disturbingly, that becomes hatred for the elderly. But there are a lot of very happy old people. And, while I’m certainly quite young, I have a lot of peers who are already quite distressed about their age. Time is passing fast, and that ain’t gonna change. Looking the other way is much more likely to turn you into a miserable old folk than a happy one. Figuring out how to age when you’re young seems wiser than waiting. Unfortunately, you might have to wait a while to know if it’s helping, but you’ve gotta try.

But getting older can be really cool. And I think, perhaps, finding joy in the following will make growing up very worthwhile:

  • sharing things you love.
  • rediscovering things you love, as memories fade and you get to reexperience things thanks to the passage of time.
  • seeing how people build on what you worked on.
  • fostering crossgenerational relationships (just as important when you’re young, too).
  • build up goodness and kindness and knowledge.
  • watching kids grow up. especially your own if you can have them.
  • teaching. In particular, hoping your pupils outshine you.
  • watching people achieve things you could’ve never dreamed of.

Age brings illness, weakness, and all kinds of things, and I wouldn’t diminish it. But I would hazard to say that this list of things can be genuinely worth the pain. learning to rejoice in others’ achievements and nurturing them may not be something everyone knows how to enjoy, but it is always something worth learning to enjoy.

blog

important things 5

Leave a comment

no reason but grimm’s hollow is a perfect little game, ideal length for a stream, and free. it’s a worthy thing.

//

no tengo razón de mencionarlo, pero grimm’s hollow es un jueguito perfecto, dura exactamente lo necesario para un directo y es gratis. es una cosita dignísima. y es disponible en español 🙂

see also: https://ghosthum.itch.io/grimms-hollow

but honestly may be my fav thing ive ever streamed, esp. of things i played just for stream

blog

Failure to Prove isn’t Proof of the Alternative, and Thoughts About a World of Belief

Leave a comment

What it says in the title. We like to have things proven, and it’s great when we can do that. But proof is hard (and the more you study the underlying principles of math and science, the more true that becomes). I mean, in the strictest sense, it’s probably most correct to say a true proof is impossible. But that’s not the focus tonight.

If you only accept what can be proven, you will miss out on a lot of good in life, and a lot of truth. So to speak, it’s necessary to anticipate the truth.

For example, you may know how calculus was codiscovered by Leibniz and Newton in the 1600s. What you probably don’t know is that neither of them proved calculus. It took 200 years to prove calculus did what Newton, Leibniz, and basically every mathematician said it did (it was Cauchy and Weierstrass who are responsible for the proof). For those two hundred years, calculus was unproven; the arguments explaining calculus literally divided by zero throughout. But calculus worked just fine for those 200 years. The proof was great to have, it enriched the theory for certain, but the world would in no wise have been benefited if it had waited for the proof before it relied on calculus. Indeed, if calculus had not been used, it’s hard to know whether people would have had much urgency at all when it came to finding the proof (while I doubt it would have happened this way, one can imagine a world where the failures to prove calculus led to its abandonment).[1]

It is troubling to see scientific and mathematical methods applied to things for which they are ill-adapted. It’s worse to see people abandon ideas, or hate their holders, because the proof is not there. We do not live in a world of proof and, after any honest study of epistemology, I struggle to see how you could not be full of trepidation about the whole idea of proof. I’m not even sure that a world of proof is desirable in the first place. Trying to create a world of proof, based on the limitations we face as mortals, seems dangerous and in cases ruinous. Efforts to reduce literature and law to science produce more pseudoscience than anything and cheapen the beauty and brilliance of each field.

It’s hard to explain your beliefs to an argumentative society once you give up on proving everything. But that’s the arguer’s fault, not yours. The modern view of argument is fictitious, abusing science and stretching its claims while failing to acknowledge the essential role of belief in science itself. People like Richard Dawkins are confusing because they hate religion so avidly while their beliefs of choice are often not proven at all. One of Dawkins’ darlings: evolution as a history of all life and speciation, is far from proven–it’s natural selection as a source of speciation that’s been the subject of rigorous experimentation. And for all his criticism of dogma, Nietzsche ultimately felt compelled to acknowledge that he had in fact created a new dogma (zealotry is quite visible in his devotees).[2]

Now, the value of belief in the absence of proof applies heavily to religion. Religion is an important field, but a classic example of knowledge resistant to the scientific method. But religion is not the only reason to value belief: It is incredibly difficult to prove:

  • The falsity of every flavor of fascism;
  • The evil in every form of racism;
  • That being good is worthwhile, even when doing the right thing is not in one’s self-interest.
  • Pretty much every debate like these, whether religious, ethical, ideological, or otherwise.

If you tried to prove every theory of fascism wrong, you’ll be amazed how many subtle variations fascists can come up with, each required different arguments and disproofs. It’s a Sisyphean task (it might be closer to the slaying of the hydra if the hydra could not be burned). It is much easier to convince someone to abandon fascism or racism, if they choose to believe in doing good, than it is to convince them that fascism or racism themselves are not in their rational self-interest, scientifically invalid, etc. An anti-Semite can always find a reason to hate, no matter how often you introduce him to wonderful, kind, and good Jews. The anti-Semite will only abandon their hate by choosing to believe in Jews as a people.

And this is where we end up. Belief is the domain of most knowledge, not proof. Proof is seductive because we believe that we can force people to believe us via proof and, to be certain, this does happen once in a while. But such a proof must be unassailable and, more importantly, the audience must be willing to believe, or they will find some way to reject it. We all understand, for our own beliefs, that there are odd things we haven’t fully figured out. But we trust that the problems will ultimately get sorted out, whether in this life or the next. What I ask, or what I recommend, are two things. First, let other people have their beliefs; let them wait for things to get figured out. Give them, as people, the leniency you give your ideas. Second, let yourself believe and grow. Don’t wait for proof, don’t demand it, and, whenever you discover you were wrong, freely believe something new. And, as always, stay safe and take care.

[1] In many ways, this whole article is a rehash of The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician: Wherein It Is Examined Whether the Object, Principles, and Inferences of the Modern Analysis Are More Distinctly Conceived, or More Evidently Deduced, Than Religious Mysteries and Points of Faith by George Berkeley and the history around it. He correctly criticized mathematics for its lack of rigor, even as scientists and mathematicians demanded a level of rigor from religion that they had not achieved for themselves.

[2] While I’ll take Nietzsche’s stated opposition to the Nazis and anti-Semites at face value, I’ll note that it’s not surprising at all that fascists immediately appropriated his work.

blog

dividing online spaces between minors and adults as we do is super irresponsible

Leave a comment

adult-only online spaces are gonna be a fiction as long as the internet is anonymous.

like, imagine securing bars with the question: do you promise you’re not underage? it’d literally be criminal negligence.

children are present.

some notes:

-this is not kids’ faults. they are constantly pressured to act precociously adult.

-adult spaces are often opaque about why they’re limited. they range from “no real reason besides the owner’s dislike of kids” to “literal footage of terrorism.” incoherent.

-kids deserve a chance to participate in society and learn by experience what the deal is. a lot of ‘adult’ content could tweak itself a little bit and be fine, giving kids access to more mature, nuanced, and diverse experiences over the garbage that usually gets peddled to them.

-it’s on adults to accommodate kids and design appropriate rules and systems. we’re supposed to be the responsible ones.

-requiring kids to self enforce is never gonna work.

-kids deserve to be taken seriously. they’re human.

to end: never assume children aren’t present.

blog

RE:The term “mormon”

Leave a comment

For when this comes up.

I am what is most commonly known as a mormon, a member of a minority/nonmainline Christian denomination. Mormon is not a correct term (outside of a limited number of historical events and objects). Mormonism is never correct. To refer to people, Latter-day Saint(s) is correct. For the institution, it’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

See this style guide for more info on how to use the terms exactly. Latter-day Saint and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will always be fine in their respective contexts. I ask you to use these terms rather than “mormon,” “mormonism,” “the mormon church,” or any variation thereof.

It’s easier to remember the name if you understand it’s two parts:

Church of Jesus Christ: Very early in the history of the Church, the entire name was Church of Christ. We follow Christ and base our religion on Him. However, there are plenty of different churches with the same or similar name. Second, we believe in continuing revelation by God and that God requested that the following phrase be added:

of Latter-day Saints: Latter-day Saints is based on two things. Of the periods mentioned in scripture, we live in the latter-days, that is, late in time based on what prophecy covers. Saints is just what we call followers of Christ, because we seek and, by the power of Christ obtain, sanctification (saint and sanctification are related etymologically).

Why “mormon” isn’t great

In the following sections, consider why the term is not accepted. Issues with the term include false association, misinformation/discrimination, and denial of Christianity:

False association: Multiple groups are called “mormons,” of which mine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is the vast majority. Most of these groups separated over 100 years ago and have no influence or relation to each other any more. However, because we are all called “mormons,” people think the activity of any one of these groups applies to all. This has been most problematic because fringe “mormon” groups have garnered international attention in recent years, for their involvement in crimes such as polygamy and child abuse.

Those groups are not associated with us, and we really would like not to be wrapped up with them. Because many of these groups are in Utah, which is majority Latter-day Saint, whenever these crimes are discovered, many of the criminal investigators and prosecutors on the case are in fact Latter-day Saints. Because these groups practice isolation, gathering enough information to support a warrant is difficult. We don’t know that all of them engage in criminal behavior either and people don’t deserve criminal investigation merely for isolation or nonstandard cultural practices. But the point is, when these big cases were discovered, Latter-day Saints were just as appalled as everyone else. We are not “protecting” them; they avoid us too.

There are also some radical altright groups that try to use the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to justify their actions. Properly speaking, they are more ideologically aligned with sovereign citizens than us and rely on cherry-picking and stripping statements of context. Their beliefs have been condemned time and time again, whether it’s antiimmigrant sentiment, antigovernment sentiment, or white supremacism. They don’t listen to the Church. They’re on their own stupid path and we’d get them to cut it out if they actually cared about the Gospel and weren’t just using it to justify their power-tripping. We believe in upholding the law and that everyone is a child of God and a recipient of His love.

Misinformation and discrimination: Latter-day Saints have been victims of false information, exoticization, and alternative facts since the beginning. As many early Latter-day Saints were immigrants to the US, they were victims of intense antimigrant sentiment in the US. There’s also the general hatred for non-Protestant religions rampant in the country at the time. Then our opposition to slavery caused a lot of problems, then our opposition to attacks on Native Americans, etc. We’ve never been popular and yellow journalists have always been happy to profit off that. There’s a good chance you have heard misinfo that dates back to the 1800s and was never corrected. We were literally attacked by the US Army on claims of treason and the government didn’t even bother to verify them first (at least that became a scandal for Buchanan).

Just a handful of stuff my family and I have dealt with: claims that we kidnap children, that we have horns, that our leaders are part of a great conspiracy dating involving Nixon and Eisenhower to form a new state called “Mormonia.” My father has been sued and had challenges to his bar membership solely for being a Latter-day Saint (and while the challenges were easily defeated, they still cost us time and money). That’s some of the more ridiculous stuff, but we’ve been the subjects of deliberate exclusion and hostility. My first experience was when I was 10 or so. It’s also the reason why I don’t necessarily bring up the subject often, because I cannot assume that a random person will treat me as a human if I say I am a “mormon.” Or, more commonly, people will treat me immediately as a villain or undesirable, even if we’ve been civil up to that point. When I see the term “mormon” online, I immediately experience anxiety because, 95% of the time, it’s to call us cultists, insist we’re idiots, spread sensational claims about us, and so on. This happens even in fora completely unrelated to us: many people feel completely at liberty to hate us, even in circles that recognize persecution of other religious minorities is inappropriate.

Denial of Christianity: the term’s original function is to claim we are something besides Christian. Now, I am not remotely interested in any argument to the contrary; I have heard many and not a one was compelling. I will leave it at this: I have spent my entire life studying the words and life of Christ. All I really want in life is to be His disciple and changed by Him, based on the power of His Atonement. In the Church, “we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Ne 25:26). I would like to think we deserve to call ourselves Christians.

History of the term

The word “mormon” itself is in fact a name: Mormon was an indigenous American historian who lived in the 4th Century. He compiled, wrote, and edited the majority of the Book of Mormon. The remainder was either written by his son after Mormon died to genocide or was part of primary documents included by Mormon in the Book of Mormon.

Latter-day Saints don’t really use the term internally (except as a reflection of pressures discussed in the next paragraph). If I’m with other Latter-day Saints, we use some variation of Latter-day Saints. It came to be a label for Latter-day Saint when hostile groups began to use it as a pejorative. While the term is not as explicitly pejorative as it was in the past, it is certainly not divorced from the pejorative sense (and I have had ample encounters with the term being used pejoratively).

Latter-day Saints are in a position where the term “mormon” is much, much more common, in no small part thanks to the aforementioned yellow journalists. So, when dealing with others, we’re kinda forced to use the term or people will have no clue what we’re talking about. Even with the issues of misinfo. Most people are kinda just in the position where they know the term, have picked up a mix of true and false things, but don’t necessarily hate us. It’s also worth noting some Latter-day Saints don’t particularly mind the term.

There have also been periods where we attempted to reclaim the term “mormon.” We are not doing so now. As mentioned, we believe in continuing revelation from God. He recently said that He did not approve of the term “mormon,” that He had given us a name, and that we were to use that name.

Thus, we’ll often mention that we are called “mormons,” but that the term is improper and ask people to use a different name.

Final Thoughts

As a general rule, not even just with respect to us, please use endonyms, not exonyms. Endonyms are names that groups choose for themselves; exonyms are names given to a group by outsiders. Example: you may have heard the name Anasazi used to describe the indigenous Americans who lived in places like Mesa Verde. Anasazi is an exonym, given by the Navajo, that means ancient enemies. Not really a proper thing to call a group. In this case, we don’t quite know what the right endonym is, so we’ve had to settle with calling them Ancestral Puebloans.

Anyway, endonyms > exonyms. Latter-day Saint > mormon. I’d invite you to follow this principle as much as you can. Even with historical groups, people across the planet, and the dead. It’s not just about using endonyms when someone asks you to do so, or when you’re with someone who’s a part of the group in question. It’s about accuracy and truth in ethnic/religious/historical relations.

Using endonyms is about helping yourself and others understand people on their own terms. When you know a group by an exonym, that should be a red flag that this group doesn’t even get to control their own name. Groups like this tend to be victims of serious, enduring misinformation and often serious prejudice. Whether it’s Latter-day Saints, Romani, Inuit, or any other group, switching from an exonym to an endonym is a valuable chance to learn more about one of the peoples who share(d) this world with you (and expunge false information you may have absorbed).

I’ll end by repeating the request, please just don’t use the term “mormon.” I do not like it. It stresses me out. Even for Latter-day Saints who are ok with the term, many’d prefer Latter-day Saint. In any case, take care and thank you for the consideration.

Originally written on Jun. 26, 2022. Small update on Feb. 20, 2023, mostly to add the discussion on exonyms and endonyms.