“Extortion or coercion by threats
especially of public exposure or criminal prosecution.” Such is the dictionary
definition of blackmail. Since threats of criminal prosecution of the Church or
its general leaders are ludicrous, we will concentrate on “coercion by threats
especially of public exposure.” These types of threats are also absurd, but
have still become increasingly popular among desperate anti-Mormons seeking
publicity for their grievance or cause. The reason I say absurd is because in
order for blackmail to work, they have to have something substantial—some
leverage—behind their threat—and anti-Mormons don’t.
A couple
more definitions should be reviewed: “Whistleblower”; “a person who informs on
a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity.” (Note that illicit is
usually equivalent to illegal, though not always.) And also “traitor”; “a
person who betrays a friend, country, principle, etc.” I mention these words
because people fitting these descriptions are often involved with blackmail
schemes. Whistleblowers, those who expose illicit/illegal activity, are
sometimes thought, even begrudgingly, to be principled, even heroic, people for
enduring the risk of exposing such activity. Traitors, on the other hand, are
thought to be among the lowest forms of humanity; no principles, only deceit and
money (or fame) motivate them. They are thought or spoken of like Judas or
Benedict Arnold. Often, alleged whistleblowers are simply traitors, designated
so because they just didn’t like something they found out about and are using
illicit/illegal means to expose something that may be quite innocuous, ethical,
and/or legal.
Having laid this groundwork, let us examine
some examples of anti-Mormons trying to blackmail the LDS Church with various
schemes. First, we quickly review an incident from Mormon history. David R. Seely
gives us this narration:
On 16 September 1911, the Salt Lake Tribune published an account
of certain individuals who had secretly taken pictures of the interior of the
Salt Lake Temple and who had attempted to sell them to the church. The
headlines read: "Photographs secretly taken of Mormon Temple's interior;
sent for sale to Church chief. President replies: 'Church will not negotiate
with thieves and blackmailers."' The blackmail scheme was perpetrated by
Max Florence, who was at the time in New York City trying to sell sixty-eight
unauthorized photographs of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple. Florence had
employed the help of a recent convert to the church, Gisbert Bossard, who,
disenchanted with the administration of the church, had, assisted by a gardener
for the temple grounds, gained access to the Salt Lake Temple and had taken a
series of photographs of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple. Apparently
motivated by money and "revenge" on the church, these individuals had
taken the pictures when the Salt Lake Temple was closed for renovation during
the summer of 1911. Florence and Bossard had sent a letter to the First
Presidency with a proposal of blackmail—that the church would give them
$100,000 and the photographs would be
returned; otherwise. they would be shown publicly. President Joseph F. Smith,
the recipient of the letter, was outraged, and his response was, "I will
make no bargain with thieves or traffickers in stolen goods. I prefer to let
the law deal with them."[1]
Instead of
capitulating to the blackmail, Pres. Smith commissioned James E. Talmage to
write a book about temples, which included many superb photographs of the
interior of the Salt Lake Temple, and the plot was foiled (not to mention the
birth of the book House of the Lord).
President Smith’s emphatic declaration has remained the policy and course of
the church ever since; it does not bargain with thieves, blackmailers, and
those who deal in stolen goods.
The reason
the historical incident given above is so relevant is because, as I have said elsewhere,
it applies to the owners of the anti-Mormon website Mormonleaks. This one-horse
outfit has become known for its use of deception about how it presents its true
purposes. Run by bitter former members (now atheists), they proclaim themselves
heroes of the people, willing to run great risks to expose that dastardly
Mormon church. (We have heard all of that nonsense before, ad nauseum.)
One of
their cleverest deceptions has been to portray themselves as whistleblowers
instead of vengeful critic-traitors. Their ruse is aided and abetted by their
allies who give them the carefully crafted presentation to the public they need.
Salt Lake City’s two anti-Mormon newspapers, Salt
Lake City Weekly and the Salt
Lake Tribune, have both helped to increase this website’s visibility and carefully
spin its purposes. One, for example, said this about the site owner’s goals:
they are “…publishing sensitive documents sent in by whistleblowers.”
This is
manipulation of uninformed readers, purposely using the word whistleblower
instead of traitor. In order to be a whistleblower, a person needs some kind of
illicit/illegal activity involvement to publicly divulge. Since the church is
not involved in such activity, and since their ultimate goal is to bring people
to Christ, the blackmailers have tried to use the church’s confidentiality policies
as their leverage—but this hasn’t worked either.
For those who may not know, the
church produces two kinds of material, those meant for public consumption, for
members to consume to improve their lives and develop greater faith in Jesus
Christ and a host of other worthy and wonderful things. Secondly, and on a
vastly smaller scale, they produce materials for internal use only—meaning
materials created to help teach and train church leaders and employees, run a
support corporation, etc. These are the kinds of allegedly “sensitive” materials
that this anti-Mormon website seeks to obtain from traitors and publish to the
world. They claim their lofty purpose is to promote transparency and do away
with corruption. The overwhelmingly obvious problem with this is that there is
no corruption to expose. Having found no corruption, they turn to confidential
items from traitors, and that simply hasn’t worked. Even some of their fellow
anti-Mormons have noted what boring and uninteresting stuff they have posted;
no smoking gun anywhere.
Their whole strategy is built on a
misnomer; being deceitful themselves they see deceit in others where there is
none. Yet they take advantage of disgruntled former (or even current) employees
or ecclesiastical leaders, and use these traitors to supply them with the
internally (confidential) created materials that they then make public. Their
effort was doomed to failure before it started. If these people were employees
of a business or corporation being paid to be effective and successful in their
stated goals, they would have been fired for ineptness and incompetence long
ago. Their solution?—blackmail by negative publicity.
Their attorney wrote the following
in a letter to the Church Intellectual Property office: “Whatever it is you
wish to keep a secret will now be not only disseminated on a few websites, but
will become a matter of public record. Further, this document will become a far
more important story than it was previously. In fact, those who found the story
of minor interest will now find the attempt at censorship even more
interesting.” This is plain bald-face blackmail, using negative publicity as
leverage. Claims of pure intent just can’t mask the lies and deceit: illegal
copyright infringement, blackmail threats, and unethical use of other unethical
websites.
It is the same with the anti-Mormon
Salt
Lake Tribune, which wrote of Mormonleaks that they “post documents,
recordings and videos secretly provided by church leaders, employees, sources,
whistleblowers or other moles from within the Utah-based faith.” Here we have
David Noyce, the Tribune’s
anti-Mormon editor, (probably) purposefully mistaking the word whistleblower,
which we have already defined. “Mole,” as used here, is a synonym for traitor.
This fading newspaper is doing all it can to publicize/promote the work of the
critical website. Nothing has changed since 1911 when the Tribune was used as part of the (above mentioned) temple-photograph
plot; the Trib still supports
deception and blackmail. I suggest that while a certain website may claim one purpose, their true ulterior
motives may actually be something
else entirely—in this case, to harm the Church while wearing a benign smile of
feigned innocence on your face.
Another
recent attempt at blackmail is by one Sam Young, (allegedly, as of this writing)
still a member (in name only) who is attempting to force changes in some church
policies. His leverage was a hunger strike publicity stunt. The problem?—you
can’t hold yourself hostage to force someone else to do something against their
will. As Forrest Gump once said, “stupid is as stupid does.”
This kind of blackmail is akin to
that of the LGBT anti-Mormon activists, who loudly proclaim that church
doctrine, also known as the gospel of Jesus Christ, must be changed so that certain
depressed and confused LGBT church members won’t commit suicide. As badly and
sadly as (both general and local) church leaders feel for those who choose to take
such a course, they cannot allow misled or disturbed members decision’s to harm
themselves to dictate doctrine and policy instead of revelation.[2]
If the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve caved in to such
blackmail, it would mean that any time some severely depressed or angry person
didn’t like something the Church did, they could simply threaten to kill
themselves to get what they want—only a short step away from suicide-bomber
ideology. Yet by using such blackmail, and by leveraging public sympathy, is
how many gay activist organizations seek to force change.
Sadly, there are many church members who have
become ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ and who therefore have left the
ranks of loyal faithful members, and have allied with anti-Mormons or formed
their own anti-Mormon activist groups. Some have used their own form of
blackmail—“signed” online public letters asking the church to change its
doctrines and policies. Here again, negative publicity, meant to generate
public antipathy against the church, is their meager leverage.[3]
When the church clarified its
policy that people living or being married in a same-sex relationship were formally
considered apostates, at least three score dissident, (allegedly) “Mormon”
bloggers wrote an open (publicity-seeking) letter to the Church, condemning the
decision. I would rather have a millstone hung about my neck and be drowned in
the depths of the sea than have my name attached to such a blackmail document.
The issue is whether we stand with the prophets and apostles who know the mind
of Christ, or with the voices of the telestial world/society we live in and
have become ashamed of the gospel.[4]
These bloggers chose their place and will receive their reward.
Finally, we note that an
anti-Mormon woman filed a lawsuit against the Church, in which she asked the
court to coerce the Church to change its internal ecclesiastical policies. In
this case, both the lawsuit and the attendant negative publicity became the
blackmail leverage. But yet again, the leverage was insufficient to accomplish
her strategy, and the judge threw out that portion of her suit (actually, the
judge threw out all but one small segment).
In the end, that fact is what
defeats all of the blackmail schemes that anti-Mormons use against the Church—when
you are doing nothing illicit or illegal, and instead are seeking to do good
and convert the world to Christ, there is no leverage to enable blackmail plots.
One methodology that the devil has
been working on for some decades now, is to convince the world that good is
evil and evil is good. If such a result can be achieved, the devil hopes that
the world will point the finger of scorn at the prophets and apostles and good
faithful Latter-day Saints, and blackmail them by virtue of societal pressure/publicity.
Such will not succeed because Satan’s devices are known and recognized for what
they are.
I would suggest that we should
expect anti-Mormon activists, of all stripes, to continue to employ blackmail schemes
(often under other names), in increasing measure, as a tool or weapon in their
quest to harm or slow the growth and progress of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.
[1]
https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/review/12/2/S00018-51b9ed342ed3e18Seely.pdf
[2]
As this piece was being written, the Church issued a letter/directive with
accompanying information on how to deal with and help those who are considering
suicide or those who are grieving the death of a loved one. It is abundantly
clear that the Church is trying to do all it can to help those dealing with
this issue.
[3]
While writing this piece, I did a google search for “open letters” addressed to
Church leaders by online anti-Mormon/Mormon activists, and lost count and
interest in counting such letters after a dozen. The bandwagon seems full for
this form of (thankfully) ineffective blackmail. I suppose their publicity
leverage hardly moves the needle and goes unnoticed.
[4]
Really now, how hard is this question to answer—would we rather have our
scripture interpreted by the First Presidency and Twelve, or by activist bloggers?
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