White Salamander, Deception, and the Suppression of Truth in the LDS.

Yesterday The Salt Lake Tribune released a letter Mark Hofmann, the famed White Salamander forger, wrote to his parole board. Many might not know who Mark Hofmann is, or what this White Salamander bit is. What it is, is a most intriguing story of black mail and deception done through the art of forgery. Mark Hofmann would write up potentially embarrassing letters, make them look as if they were authentic to the period he was claiming, mimic the handwriting and signatures of historical LDS figures, and then con the LDS church into buying them so that the contents could be suppressed.
This isn’t the first time I have read up on this absolutely astonishing story. Mark Hofmann came to the conclusion that the LDS was made up like many kids in Utah do at around the age of 14 when you really can’t stop a kid from thinking for himself. At about the same time he learned he had a great gift for forging. He did go on a mission for the church. This in itself is nothing but a brainwashing technique of the church. Send a kid to go tell lies door to door for two years, see if they can win a convert or two for icing on the cake, but the cake is the fact that the kid is now too emotionally invested to back out and question anymore. But then you get a personality like Hofmann’s which doesn’t care. Hofmann according to the letter released yesterday enjoyed deceiving people. Friends of his have hinted that he went on mission due to social pressure, and there is plenty of that sort of thing around here.
Eventually he was found out, three car bombs and two murders later he was arrested and tried. Of course the media had a hay day at the time. I wasn’t around for that. In 1985 things of that nature didn’t interest me near as much riding bike and swimming in the lakes of Minnesota. Neither am I sure how much the media outside of the Mountain West paid attention to it. I have found since moving to Utah, that the news here has a seriously skewed sense of attention. Much of the Media is even owned outright by the LDS, who live by the mantra that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and they have learned to play victim very well. I doubt the Vatican Media pays as much attention to the Pope, as KSL does their current “prophet.” But somehow throughout all this the LDS managed to survive, by yet again playing victim and screaming about “Mormon bashing.” (Ever the cry from those who would question anything about their religion.)
It is interesting though that they were Christians, the Tanners, who for a long time have run a ministry exposing the inconsistencies and unchristian nature of the LDS church, who first cried foul and said that Mark Hofmann was running forgeries. And it pleases me to no end to see that Christians were not willing to go a long with a lie in order to bash Mormons. If this was Mormon bashing, it was their own children bringing the chickens home to roost.
I tend to think Hofmann got off a little easy. It’s hard to sympathize with a man who makes his whole living deceiving people, and to cover his tracks and save face with his friends and family decides that murder is an acceptable diversion. I think I would have given him the death penalty. But if it is hard to sympathize with him, then it is even harder for me to sympathize with a supposed church and the leadership there of, willing to spend close to a million dollars for forged documents that might undermine their own credibility. And that is what is amazing. Sure the LDS Church was a victim of Mark Hofmann, but only because they wanted to keep the wool pulled over the eyes of their own victims. Here you have a man claiming to be a prophet, who can’t see that the document in question is a forgery when you have a couple no bodies down the street who can see that it is nothing but a deception. But the “prophet” has the gall to call foul? Why don’t those involved in this admit to their own culpability in the matter. How would this have played out differently if these texts that Mark Hofmann forged were forced to go public earlier? But when you know that your religion is based on a lie, you are left with no choice but to continue lying, continue deceiving, and suppressing truth wherever you can. One is left wondering what other items might be found in the archives of the LDS, purchased and found over the years, scurried away never to see the light of day? But then one doesn’t need to search their archives to figure out that their religion is based on lies. Honestly all one really needs to do is read the Book of Mormon, and then see the spin FAIRLDS tries to put on the anomalies and doctrines.