The Church of Diversity, J.K. Rowling and the Golden Plates of Joseph Smith

This article is an opinion piece from Bill Lockwood. Catch American Liberty with Bill Lockwood weekly at 11 a.m. Saturdays on NewsTalk 1290.

Get our free mobile app

Having rejected any objective standard of morality, western culture is in the ethical throes of anguish on many levels. But to those who despise biblical ethics, the new woke religion presents them with a dizzying maze of perplexing, disorienting and ever-changing standards with which no one can be consistent.

Consider the recent case of J.K. Rowling, the famous British author of the Harry Potter novels. She is a radical feminist who became a woke icon across the globe, especially when she revealed that Dumbledore (a character in her Harry Potter books) was a homosexual. That conformed to “wokeness” standards.

At the same time, although she claims she has always supported “transgender persons,” her views on biology is that a person’s sex is a biological fact that cannot be changed. That view on transgenderism immediately demoted her in wokeness eyes. The diversity movement does not accept diverse views.

According to the Scottish Daily Press, Rowling herself was “cancelled” by kids at an “ultra-woke Scots school” over her position on “transgender rights.” According to the article, students in Glasgow have removed her name from a school house.

Where It All Began for Rowling

In 2019, Rowling supported a Tweet from Maya Forstater.

Forstater lost her job for that opinion and Rowling “received a lot of ire from trans activists” as well as from Harry Potter fans.

Modernists believe one can change their sex by making a simple declaration to that effect and anyone who disagrees, for example, that a biological male is really a “female” is afflicted with a “phobia.” On June 10, 2020, Rowling released a statement on her website explaining her reasoning for speaking out on sex and gender issues. In her statement, she wrote: “For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected by law. Judge Taylor ruled that it wasn’t."

After “Judge Taylor” adjudicated that common sense is no defense, author Sasha White enters the picture. White is a self-described radical leftist and feminist and she expressed solidarity with J.K. Rowling for her views on biological sex.

But the Tobias Literary Agency did not “heart” White nor Rowling and it fired White for her loving tweet. In his book, "Woke, Inc.," author Vivek Ramaswamy gives us a re-cap: “Maya Forstater lost her job because she tweeted that transgender women aren’t really women, J.K. Rowling lost her fans for tweeting in support of Forstater, and then Sasha White lost her job for tweeting in support of Rowling." The lesson here is that the leftists in this country have not only confused an entire generation regarding sexual morality but they also destroy their own. Ramaswamy writes, “This internecine squabbling for ideological control makes perfect sense under the view that wokeness is a religion.” Woke corporations are firing people for violating unspoken woke articles of faith. But there’s more to the Rowling saga.

Rowling and the Golden Plates of Mormonism

Rowling gives us another angle. Mormonism. As an example of her so-called “anti-trans” views, she wrote: “It’s like when Joseph Smith found golden plates and nobody else was allowed to look at them.” This was plainly suggesting that the “golden plates” really didn’t exist just as transgenderism does not really exist.

But now the Mormons as well as “transgenders” are upset with Rowling. Both are “simultaneously aggravated.” Odd bedfellows. I am not in the habit of quoting Pink News, but it summarizes accurately the history of Joseph Smith’s fanciful tale of golden plates:

In 1823, when Smith was 18 years old, he claimed he was visited by an angel Moroni, who told him the location of a set of golden plates. The angel told him that the plates were buried in a hill near Smith’s house in what is now New York State, and after taking four years to dig them up, he was tasked with translating them from an ancient language he called ‘reformed Egyptian.’ However, he also said that the angel had said he was forbidden to show the plates to anyone else, and he dictated his translation to a scribe without looking at the plates, and instead getting the words from a stone inside a hat. He then returned the plates to the angel Moroni so no one would be able to ever see them again. In 1830, Smith published the translation as 'The Book of Mormon,' the basis of the anti-LGBTQ+ religion.

When there was a Mormon backlash at this illustration, Rowling said she 'looked it up” and that there “were 11 people who claimed to have seen the golden plates but some of them [were] related to Smith, but there’s debate as to whether this was a metaphysical experience or they genuinely saw them.” To those familiar with Smith’s history, there is reason to doubt this as well.

It all illustrates that regardless of what position one takes, there are those who will be offended. As Rowling puts it, “It isn’t hate, to speak the truth”— regarding transgenderism or Mormonism.