Elie Wiesel calls out Mitt Romney on dead Jew baptisms.

[grumbler]

The same way you are born into anything.  It is often also a matter of culture, ethnicity and tradition.

I have no idea what you are arguing here.  You appear to be saying that you are "born into a religion" like you are "born into a family" (since one is "born into a religion" "The same way you are born into anything").  In my case, that is just wrong.  I was clearly born into my family, but my father was catholic and my mother Methodist, so which religion was I (and my sibs) "born into?" One sib is catholic, one Mormon, one Methodist, and the rest nonreligious.  For the nonreligious, is "non-religion" the "religion" their kids are "born into?"

I do not get this stupidity act you play sometimes.  You know damn well how people are born into religions.

I know nothing of the kind; that you "know damn well how people are born into religions" and insist that it is thus a universal truth says nothing about religions, and nothing about me, but everything about your own thought process. I don't understand rejecting thought processes as intolerant as yours constitutes a "stupidity act."   

Maybe people don't just blindly "know" all these universal truths like you, and thus ask questions.  But maybe, just maybe, that it isn't us that are stupid.

[Admiral Yi]

How is it in any way "the same"? 

It offends them yet we keep on doing it.

[crazy canuck]

The same way you are born into anything.  It is often also a matter of culture, ethnicity and tradition.

I have no idea what you are arguing here.  You appear to be saying that you are "born into a religion" like you are "born into a family" (since one is "born into a religion" "The same way you are born into anything").  In my case, that is just wrong.  I was clearly born into my family, but my father was catholic and my mother Methodist, so which religion was I (and my sibs) "born into?" One sib is catholic, one Mormon, one Methodist, and the rest nonreligious.  For the nonreligious, is "non-religion" the "religion" their kids are "born into?"

I do not get this stupidity act you play sometimes.  You know damn well how people are born into religions.

I know nothing of the kind; that you "know damn well how people are born into religions" and insist that it is thus a universal truth says nothing about religions, and nothing about me, but everything about your own thought process. I don't understand rejecting thought processes as intolerant as yours constitutes a "stupidity act."   

Maybe people don't just blindly "know" all these universal truths like you, and thus ask questions.  But maybe, just maybe, that it isn't us that are stupid.

You were born into the mixed religious beliefs of your family.  Even you can see that right?

[Razgovory]

What about babies given up for adoption?  My God, we aren't born into anything.  We may not even be on this earth.

[Berkut]

Mormons have the right to posthumously baptize anyone they want, and people have the right to find that offensive.

Seems kind of simple to me.

I wish the Mormons told the Jews to kiss their ass, they were going to baptize every single holocaust victim. Not because I like to offend Jews, or Holocaust survivors, but because I think these kind of bizarro religious exercises are pretty funny and deserve more attention. It's not like the Jews don't have their own set of religious functions that are just as logically bizarre, if not so outwardly offensive to non-Jews.

Heck, I actually have to give the Mormons some props - I think they are the only ones to at least try to answer the logical dilemma of salvation for the innocent but ignorant.

[Maximus]

One is born into one's faith, one follows his faith if he wishes, one lives his life according to his faith if he chooses, he weds under the sanction and brings his children into the world under his faith.  That is the choice of faith.

For another faith to come around and say, "Meh, we're putting you on our books" and co-opting you into their faith postmortem is offensive, invasive and perverse. It's the delegitimization of an individual.  That's not a choice of faith.

It's even more abhorrent that they're doing it with Holocaust victims;  those Jews were murdered during the Holocaust specifically because they were Jews:  that's just not a deligitimization of a person's Jewry, it's a deligitimization of the Holocaust itself.  They agreed to not do it in 1995, and they're still fucking doing it. 

And yeah, Marty:  they're doing it with fags--dead fags are baptized into the faith, too.  So you'll be remembered as a straight Mormon 300 years from now.  When we search "cock-nibbling antisemitic toe suckers" on Ancestry.com, we won't find you.

My paternal grandmother was a devout Catholic, and my grandfather spent many, many years involved with the Knights of Columbus;  I attended both their Catholic funerals, which were celebrations of their lives embracing their Catholic faith, and I know they'd be incredibly pissed if they were baptized into the Mormon faith post-mortem for some bullshit plan to retroactively baptize every person that ever lived.  It's not just a Jew thing;  it affects everybody the Mormons are co-opting in death.  Even the Sioux.  Dances With Wolves is now christened Mitt With Wolves!

And for the rest of you atheist/agnostic fuckwits and antisemitic homo-fuckers with hang-ups that condescendingly look down your noses on those wishing to follow their faith, and to be remembered as a member of that faith, go fuck yourselves and your over-educated, cynical, secular-sanctimony.
   
You may not have a problem with your own shit being connected to the Mormons after you're dead, but don't give Jews and others shit about it.  Your cynicism does not void their validity.

First of all a minor quibble: no one is born into a religion, they are raised in a religion.

That being said, I agree with most of this. If nothing else, one lives on in the imprint they left on the world. One has the opportunity, while alive, to alter that imprint. Once you are dead you no longer have control over it. To then alter someone else's imprint after death is akin to slandering one who cannot speak up in his defense.

Dances With Wolves is now christened Mitt With Wolves

Dances Mitt Wolves?

[grumbler]

Have I said anywhere that I hold the Mormon Church, or Mitt, accountable? You are adressing arguments I'm not making.

Yes, i am addressing the issues raised in the thread, not just issues you have raised in the thread.  Not everything I write will be about you.

I am merely addressing the issue that *when* Mormon people - whether on their own initiative or not - baptize *other people's* dead, Jewish relations, it is no mystery why it's offensive to the living relations. In the case cited in the OP, someone attempted to list someone who is still alive for "posthumous baptism"!  Obviously this is not a case of folks listing their own relations.

Here, again, you are using terms I am not sure I understand.  "Other peoples' dead" is one of them.  Who owns the dead?  At what point to they get to say that prayers (or other religious observances) for their dead are "offensive" in more than the "I am personally offended" sense?  What if the "other people" disagree?  What if some are offended by the religious rite and others are not?  Is one offended person enough to make the religious rite "offensive?"

I don't much care if people are offended by actions of others that are not intended to offend, and would not offend the "reasonable person" on whom we hand so much of our law.  It will happen whether I care or not, of course.

Hell, the Mormon Church agrees with me. They say it's against their policy and have issued an apology.

Exactly the point I made!

Moreover, I merely find posthumous baptism somewhat boorish and offensive, nothing even approaching having sex with minors in terms of severity.

Quite so - and both practices have been rejected by the respective churches.

[grumbler]

You were born into the mixed religious beliefs of your family.  Even you can see that right?

I was?  Didn't know that.  I have never had any religious beliefs of which I am aware.  But if you say I was born into them, then I must have been, because you know a hell of a lot more about my family and my beliefs than I do, right?  Even you can see that right?

[crazy canuck]

First of all a minor quibble: no one is born into a religion, they are raised in a religion.

I understand the distinction you are making.  But that distinction is not true of all religions. Some Jews would say that to be a Jew you must be born a Jew.  A particular distinction a person I know who converted to that faith finds bothersome to say the least.

[crazy canuck]

You were born into the mixed religious beliefs of your family.  Even you can see that right?

I was?  Didn't know that.  I have never had any religious beliefs of which I am aware.  But if you say I was born into them, then I must have been, because you know a hell of a lot more about my family and my beliefs than I do, right?  Even you can see that right?

down the rabbit hole with semantics again.

[Viking]

It is an insult for the simple reason that this is a deliberate violation the most fundamental values of the individual being baptized and is intended as such by those performing the ritual. The person being baptized was not a mormon in life so this is a violation of the deceased's personal values during his lifetime and, for those people who belive crap like that, it matters to them.

The only thing the dead have is their reputation, actions like this attempt to sully that reputation and show a monstrous disregard for the dead.

Violation of fundamental values?  This is just PC-babble Puffin.  Not like you at all.

Well yes. And referring to Joan's perspective comment; this is equivalent to giving a Jew and Christian burial when it was well known that a Jewish burial was wanted. It is an issue of religious freedom to allow each person to choose his or her own rituals. I think this is an issue not only as a matter of mere desecration but for the people that actually believe this shit this is a real violation of their freedom of religion as well as an intentional violation of their wishes in life.

[grumbler]

First of all a minor quibble: no one is born into a religion, they are raised in a religion.

Exactly, except I would say that it could be multiple religious or none at all.

That being said, I agree with most of this. If nothing else, one lives on in the imprint they left on the world. One has the opportunity, while alive, to alter that imprint. Once you are dead you no longer have control over it. To then alter someone else's imprint after death is akin to slandering one who cannot speak up in his defense.

I am not sure how one "alters an imprint," but I don't think that what the LDS is doing constitutes any change in any imprints.  You used to be a member, though, IIRC, so I'll take your word for it if I am wrong.  My understanding that this "baptism" thing is supposed to just allow (but not force) the deceased's spirit to accept salvation.  It seems pretty inoffensive to me.

[grumbler]

You were born into the mixed religious beliefs of your family.  Even you can see that right?

I was?  Didn't know that.  I have never had any religious beliefs of which I am aware.  But if you say I was born into them, then I must have been, because you know a hell of a lot more about my family and my beliefs than I do, right?  Even you can see that right?

down the rabbit hole with semantics again.

  You got caught saying something stupid, so you are acting the weasel again, I see!  Even you can see that right?

[The Brain]

Mormons have the right to posthumously baptize anyone they want, and people have the right to find that offensive.

Seems kind of simple to me.

Yeah.

[Neil]

Being associated with the LDS isn't much better than being insulted post-mortem by the Westboro clowns.