Originally Posted By jonvn The thing is the Mormons have a lot of odd folks in them like every group. Some go totally bonkers with this stuff, and create splinter cells. Very cultish behavior. Mollysmom may have brushed up against a group tending towards that end of the spectrum.
Originally Posted By utahjosh <Some go totally bonkers with this stuff, and create splinter cells.> There are very few groups like this in the LDS church anymore. Especially in the last several decades - very few groups have splintered off, and those groups are less than .01% of the general LDS population, would be my guess. The vast, VAST majority of the LDS church's active membership do not act in with "cultish behavior" as Jonvn is describing in post 181.
Originally Posted By Mr X I read a little about those groups. Some are still practicing polygamy illegally no? (I actually think polygamy is kinda cool, but I'm pretty kinky that way...interesting that you can have sex with as many people as you want to, but try marrying 2 of them and you're in BIG trouble!)
Originally Posted By jonvn "Some are still practicing polygamy illegally no?" Yes, in fact one guy just got a couple lifetimes worth of prison tossed his way for marrying off young teenaged girls to their cousins or some such. I think they are called fundamentalist mormons. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_fundamentalism" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M ormon_fundamentalism</a>
Originally Posted By Mr X **The vast, VAST majority of the LDS church's active membership do not act in with "cultish behavior" as Jonvn is describing in post 181.** Honestly Josh, I think he was being nice in separating things out...even some of the stuff that Mormons have described here is in line with the definition of a cult (ostracism, secrecy, degrees of knowledge up the ranks and so on..). I read that the splinter groups are a bit more widespread than you are claiming, as well, but of course I could be wrong.
Originally Posted By utahjosh Yep. Some of those old groups are still around. They have no ties to the LDS Church today.
Originally Posted By ncnike7 Wow Mollysmom, that is pretty bad. But I have to add my experience with the Mormons on here that I have never seen nor heard of anyone being asked to leave and LDS church for what they were wearing. One of my best friends had a cross that she wore all the time that her mother had given her and no one ever said anything about it. We even had a foreign exchange student from Japan in the ward that wore a jacket with the "F" word on it and no one said anything. Of course I don't think she knew what she was wearing, she didn't speak English very well. I am very sorry to hear that those people treated your daughter so poorly, I assure you that it is not Church policy to turn away anyone for such a thing as a necklace, it was just the stupidity of the people in that ward.
Originally Posted By jonvn That's is something I heard of that is actually kind of a fad in Japan, wearing shirts with english words on them, some of which can be quite obscene.
Originally Posted By Mr X Yes, it's true. Worst I've ever seen is a little girl wearing a shirt that read "Father {f-word}er". At Tokyo Disneyland no less! Funniest, though, was an unfortunate overweight girl who obliviously wore a shirt that read "corn fed".
Originally Posted By ncnike7 Thst's what I kinda thought. I didn't know if I should tell her or not. She definitely wasn't the kind of person that would wear something knowing that it was offensive, but I didn't want her to be embarrased either.
Originally Posted By jonvn You probably should have told her. I would have said something, for goodness sake. "Do you realize what your shirt says?" Do these people wearing these shirts not know about them being obscene? Or do they just not care?
Originally Posted By Mr X They don't know. They just think English looks cool (just like some in America might wear a shirt with Chinese characters as a "design"). Speaking of that, I bought a shirt that read "Kamikaze" in Japanese (in Japan)...I knew what it said, and thought it was funny. Well, I got a lot of chuckles but also a lot of people coming up to me saying "do you realize what that shirt says?". I'd say you should definitely let them know. Japanese generally do NOT want to be wearing something that was shocking or offensive.
Originally Posted By jonvn Actually, are people offended by the kamikaze shirt? Do the people in Japan feel badly about the war, or do they think they were ill treated?
Originally Posted By Mr X I didn't get the impression they were offended by it. They serve kamikaze drinks in Japanese bars, so I figured it was okay. They neither feel badly about the war nor ill treated, they don't think about it at all. If you bring it up, in general they just say "ancient history, who cares?".
Originally Posted By Mr X Of course...it makes perfect sense for the Japanese culture though...they'd rather bury their heads in the sand than face up to shame and embarrassment.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< They neither feel badly about the war nor ill treated, they don't think about it at all. If you bring it up, in general they just say "ancient history, who cares?". >>> Except when you push a bit and let on that you know how they treated Koreans and Chinese, in some ways even today. Remember the bartender at Planet Hollywood that night, when I brought up Governor Ishihara's infamous gaffe? That was priceless.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< Worst I've ever seen is a little girl wearing a shirt that read "Father {f-word}er". At Tokyo Disneyland no less! >>> There was a best-selling book by that title in Japan in the 1990's. Perhaps the shirt was a reference to it, although still certainly inappropriate for anyone let alone a kid to wear.
Originally Posted By Mr X Yikes! I didn't know that. And yes, of course SD is correct...if you push them on it (I try not to in general) they get pretty steamed. Basically, they don't want to think or talk about it. At least that's been my experience. And they are taught strange things in school so I really don't know WHAT they actually believe.
