From Main Street Plaza comes this lovely video perfectly summing up one reason I find religion in general and Mormonism in particular so utterly tiring.
As Chino at MSP points out, this "funny" video puts on display the "surveillance culture" at play in Mormonism. When I was growing up, I absolutely saw stuff like this happen. Even just a few years ago, my ex and I (not Mormon) were out shopping and ran into her sister (Mormon). She seemed strangely awkward and uncomfortable, and I couldn't figure out why. It's because she was caught shopping on Sunday. It's not like we cared, of course.
And it's dripping in "listen to the men, they know better" patriarchal bullshit.
Honestly, this video makes me sad. It seems to me that if you have a day set aside for "rest" that you may as well make the most of it. What's wrong with going out skateboarding or fishing? The argument I always heard against shopping was just that it enabled other people to work on Sunday. Not that that is without nonsense hypocrisy too: why does going to a video store to rent a movie enable others to violate the Sabbath, but watching it at home not, considering someone is helping get the electricity to your home.
1 comment:
Even if you want to help others have a day off, why does it have to be Sunday for everyone? Some people prefer to work on Sunday and have other days off. Maybe so they can actually run errands when businesses are open. But the LDS culture tends to pretty bad at seeing things from others' point of view.
I also specifically make an effort to patronize businesses that are open on Sunday, because they help me out when others will not, and I want to reward their willingness to serve their customers while bucking the Utah cultural trend. I appreciate the thought behind not shopping on Sunday, but the execution is not well considered and of course the guilt trips are way over the top.
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