Many people in the scriptures have been socially stigmatized with disfellowship due to their apostate beliefs and teachings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWithin the scriptures we find many examples of people raising an issue, doubt or question that is then met with some form of persuasion or reasoning.\u00a0 Other times, however, such issues and questions are met with threats of one kind of another.\u00a0 Sometimes these threats come in the form of naked physical violence.\u00a0 Other times, the physical violence comes only indirectly in the form of social and economic sanction and isolation.\u00a0 Still other threats are to be carried out after this life.\u00a0 In none of these cases are timeless principles, evidence or any other kind of reasoned information used to answer or settle the issues, doubts and questions at hand.<\/p>\n
Whatever might be said of these forms of censorship and compulsory speech, they are not at all compatible with the modern (consumer and critical) forms of society.\u00a0 While the consumer model certainly would endorse the church leaders\u2019 freedom to indirectly punish members by way of disfellowship, it cannot so endorse the other ways in which free speech is clearly being constrained.\u00a0 A critical model objects to these examples even more strongly than does the consumer model since the primary purpose of reasoned and impersonal responses to issues, doubts and questions is to not only replace but dissolve the domination which one group exercises over another.\u00a0 All of the cases mentioned above are the exact opposite of what the critical model says is right.\u00a0 Only the feudal model is able to see these cases as examples of rather exceptions to its moral values in that it alone will sometimes accept compulsory threats as a legitimate response to issues, doubts and questions.<\/p>\n
In conclusion, blasphemy and apostasy are sinful forms of speech that ought to be punished in some way.\u00a0 Censorship, by contrast, is the immoral idea that sinful forms of speech ought to be punished in some way.\u00a0 Not only are these two moral values very often in direct contradiction to each other, but they are also typically aimed at the exact same phenomena: sacred beliefs that wield power.\u00a0 One side (feudal) says that such things must not be attacked, even verbally, while the other says that such things either can (consumer) or even ought (critical) to be verbally attacked.\u00a0 In the case of the Nauvoo Expositor, William Law was the blasphemous apostate while Joseph Smith was the threatening censor and there simply was no middle ground between the two.\u00a0 I suggest that we see this exact same tension within the bloggernacle today between those church members who think that some issues, doubts and questions must not<\/em> be raised, those who think they can<\/em> be raised and those who think they must<\/em> be raised.\u00a0 Plainly put, some of us are more worried about blasphemy\/apostasy while other are more worried about censorship.