The lead singer--Dan Reynolds I think; mostly I thought he sorta looked and sounded like Chris Pratt--is a Mormon and got his wife to convert. This brought up some problems because his wife had lesbian friends and the Mormon church was big into Proposition 8 in California to keep gay people from getting married. The lesbian friends refused to even go to the wedding. Then once his group started to hit the big time he started to hear from some gay fans who were feeling suicidal because their Mormon families wouldn't accept them.
Around the same time the Mormon singer of the group Neon Trees came out as gay and found that not all his family and friends were all that supportive. This guy talked to Dan Reynolds and they came up with the idea of putting together a music festival. It seemed like a slam dunk; Imagine Dragons was routinely selling out stadiums and the other group was doing well too. So together they should be able to sell out a park or something, right?
Well first there was the issue of finding a location. It took a while before someone agreed to let them hold the show on a baseball field that could hold about 20,000 in Provo, Utah. And then ticket sales were pretty sluggish. Imagine Dragons could sell out the basketball stadium in Salt Lake but they could only sell 7,500 tickets for this. Hurm...
It wasn't until the Mormon church gave its OK that the show sold out. You basically had 11,000 people who couldn't decide on their own to go; they needed some old guys in a temple to say it was OK. Were they afraid that Mormon spies would rat them out and get them excommunicated? I guess it could happen with social media or whatever. But if your church is that anal, maybe it shouldn't be your church?
Despite singing some songs and some testimonials from LGBTQ Mormons, nothing changed. The old white guys in charge said it was this generation's challenge to resist "temptation" and whatnot. So I guess they're going to have another festival this year.
The documentary shows the ways that a religion that can otherwise be fine to bring people together can become toxic. Mormons who come out are basically shunned by the rest of the church and can be excommunicated. I'd say six of one, a half-dozen of the other, just find yourself some other church, but to these people it's a big deal. It gets to the point that many of them attempt suicide, if not actually succeed. Suicide rates at Brigham Young University are well above other schools.
Religion should be about bringing people together, not pushing away. And sure as hell not killing them. That's why there's been fighting in the Middle East for about 4000 years now. If you're more concerned with words in a book than actual people then there's just something wrong with you. Books are great--except when they justify hatred. As I said before, if your church is this anal, maybe it shouldn't be your church.
Something I like to remind smug Christians of: they're the minority. Christianity in all its forms is the largest religion but even that is only about 1/7 of the world population. You have a billion plus Chinese, nearly a billion Indians, and almost that whole Middle East and Africa that aren't Christian so before you're so sure you're on the winning team, maybe you ought to do the math. And then maybe not take it so fucking seriously. It's not worth anyone's life.
2 comments:
Many years ago, I quit a church because it was too fear based. It was too demanding in meetings like bible studies and if you missed them you were looked down. When I was pregnant, I had bad morning sickness and couldn't go. Hardly any of them even visited or asked about me, so that lead to me quitting and I don't go to church hardly at all now and I don't care..lol.
It's been interesting to see how things have softened since Prop 8, and LGBTQ panels are quite popular at conferences where you just didn't see them before, however I'm kinda seeing the same thing happening again with marijuana being on the ballot this year. Takes time to change minds, sometimes.
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