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Further reaction to the New York Times obituary of President Monson

Further reaction to the New York Times obituary of President Monson

Last updated on: January 5, 2018 at 10:42 pm by Dan Peterson

Further reaction to the New York Times obituary of President Monson 2018-01-05T22:42:24-07:00 Dan Peterson

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At the White House, President Barack Obama is presented with a history of his family prepared by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From left to right: Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), a man unknown to me, President Thomas S. Monson, President Barack Obama, and Elder Dallin H. Oaks. (U.S. Government public domain image)

Not a few Latter-day Saints were displeased to read the obituary published by the New York Times the other day in response to the death of President Thomas S. Monson.

I was among them, and I posted a blog entry on the topic:

“Fidel Castro, Hugh Hefner, and Thomas S. Monson”

Here’s another response from a Latter-day Saint:

“Friday Traditio: Thomas S. Monson”

At least two Jewish observers also noticed and were displeased by the approach taken by the Times:

Ben Shapiro, in The Daily Wire: “The New York Times Proves It Hates Religious Americans With This Obituary”

Bethany Mandel, in The Federalist: “New York Times Memorializes Mormon President Less Charitably Than They Did Fidel Castro: The New York Times obituary was taken as an opportunity to demonize a leader who has spent his life and influence trying to better the world through charity and the word of God.”

(Thanks to Kyle Pratt and Cody Quirk, respectively, for alerting me to these two pieces.)

In support of Ms. Mandel’s take on President Monson, I share this tribute to President Monson, excerpted from an October 2014 talk delivered by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in general conference:

“House Slippers”

A somewhat more positive reaction than that offered by the Times came from National Public Radio:

“The Private Prophet: Mormon Church President Thomas Monson Dies at 90”

However, as my friend (and Interpreter colleague) Mike Parker has observed, it is The Atlantic that has shown the Times how such things are properly done:

“The Death of a Prophet: Thomas Monson, the late Mormon church president, stressed the importance of community in an increasingly atomized nation.”

Finally, with his permission, I share the entirety of a Facebook post by Steve Smoot, exiled in a foreign country far to the north:

There has been a lot of uproar over the New York Times’ respective obituaries of Thomas S. Monson and Fidel Castro. Here’s something that I found interesting.

In addition to the lede, the obit for President Monson repeatedly brings up Mormon involvement with Proposition 8, the November 5 policy, the falling out with the Boy Scouts, etc. The church’s stance on same-sex marriage is one of the defining issues the NYT evidently felt necessary to highlight for President Monson’s decade as church president.

By contrast, here is what the single line buried in the long NYT obit on Castro has to say about the regime’s heinous treatment of LGBT persons:

“Thousands of dissidents and homosexuals were rounded up and sentenced to either prison or forced labor.”

So there you have it: Mormon political and moral conservatism on same-sex marriage is worthy of repeated mention (almost fixation) in the obituary of President Monson, but Castro’s violent homophobia gets the journalistic equivalent of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here’s the thing fam. You do not get to be outraged at Mormon involvement with Prop 8 while at the same time shrugging off the horrendous legacy of communism’s treatment of LGBT persons. You can be outraged at both, of course, but it is rank hypocrisy to castigate President Monson while handwaving away Castro.

(And one more thing is for damn sure, in case anyone had any doubts: encouraging church members to democratically vote for same-sex marriage’s outlaw in a state and enacting a policy for church membership that one may voluntarily follow or not is galaxies apart, morally speaking, from forcefully sending gays to concentration camps.)

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