“Idaho State Sued by Athlete for Anti-Mormon Bias”

Last updated on: May 29, 2016 at 4:00 pm by Dan Peterson

“Idaho State Sued by Athlete for Anti-Mormon Bias” 2016-05-29T16:00:47-06:00 Dan Peterson

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On the campus of Idaho State University, in Pocatello, Idaho
(Wikimedia Commons)

When I first saw this headline, I thought to myself that it was most likely a case of a young Latter-day Saint’s oversensitivity. I’ve been out and about in academia a bit myself, and have occasionally been snubbed, mocked, insulted, or otherwise inappropriately treated on account of my religious affiliation. It’s never risen to a level, though, where I would have considered suing.

When I read this story, though, I swiftly changed my mind:

http://www.postregister.com/articles/news-daily-email-todays-headlines/2016/05/23/ex-if-tennis-star-sues-isu-discrimination#

Orin Duffin absolutely had grounds for formal complaint, and Nate Gross and Bobby Goeltz unquestionably deserved to be given the boot by Idaho State University. (Whether, beyond that, there are specific grounds for suing the University, I’m not qualified to say.)

For a little general background, you might find this item (written in 2007) of interest:

“Idaho’s Dirty Secret: Anti-Mormonism”

Back in mid-March, by the way, I participated in a dialogue on Islam and Mormonism in Idaho Falls with a Muslim professor from Idaho State, as well as in certain Interpreter-related activities in Rexburg. The professor told me of some quite distasteful anti-Muslim happenings in Pocatello, where Idaho State is located — particularly on the part of a specific Evangelical Protestant church there that also engages in anti-Mormon activities. And, during my visit in the area, I spoke with a fairly high-ranking government office holder in the state who also happens to be a Latter-day Saint. Unbidden, he told me that anti-Mormonism is still alive and very well in Idaho, with palpable results.

I don’t doubt it. Quite a few years ago, I engaged in another Muslim-Mormon dialogue there, in Pocatello itself. It turned out to be something of an ambush. My “dialogue partner” had been brought in specially for the event from Canada, and he was loaded for bear. (The president of the ISU Muslim Students Association apologized to me, afterwards. He had turned the event over to somebody else who organized it, and he, too, had been blindsided.) Anyhow, the much larger audience for that occasion was made up almost entirely of Muslims (no surprise there) . . . and of very hostile Evangelical Protestants. (That did surprise me.) There was, as it happened, a huge dance at the LDS Institute that night, one that they had been planning for over a year, and so, apart from two or three former students of mine, there were no Latter-day Saints in attendance.

It was an extraordinarily long and unpleasant evening.

But here’s the weird part about that night: The angle of attack chosen by my “dialogue partner” was against the deity of Christ. I had to improvise quickly, because I hadn’t anticipated that topic, or his aggressively polemical approach, at all. (I had prepared a simple little opening statement about commonalities between Mormons and Muslims; within the first two or three minutes of my opponent’s speech, though, I had scrapped it and had begun to throw notes together for a response to his assault.) You might imagine that the Evangelicals in the auditorium would have been on my side, given the topic, for at least that one evening. After all, both Mormons and Evangelicals believe that Jesus is divine. But they weren’t. I was perfectly astonished.

Back, though, to this most recent case at Idaho State: While I’ve never myself had Orin Duffin’s experience, something similar did occur at my high school in California many years ago. It occurred when I was a freshman. A member of my ward who was between her junior and senior years enrolled in an American history class over the summer. Her teacher turned out to be an obsessive anti-Mormon. For the first week or two, he never let a day pass in his summer course without starting off with a rant about Mormonism and the Mormons. We were superstitious fools, racists, devotees of a fraud, and so forth. She came home in tears almost every day. Her parents finally persuaded her to tell them what the problem was. To their credit, they immediately secured a meeting with the school principal, and, to his credit, the principal summoned that teacher in and read him the riot act. What the teacher was doing was utterly inappropriate — particularly for a public, tax-supported institution — and the teacher was informed that if it happened a single time more, he would be summarily fired. The incidents stopped.

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