My Revenge on Temple Square

I hate most pictures of myself, but here's one that I don't. The composition is perfect, and if I do say so myself, it belongs in a history book next to the famous one of the Capitol police acting all concerned the words "Eat the Rich" scrawled in chalk after the first big protest (documented in this post.) This is the sign that I always take to ICE protests after someone let me keep it after I offered to hold it while she drew on the sidewalk. I never saw her again.

Yesterday I went straight from an ICE protest at Home Deport to a conversion therapy protest at the Capitol, so I still had this sign with me as I passed through Temple Square like I usually do to get to the Capitol. I was reminded of an incident from my first protest against Trump's Muslim ban in 2017 (which started at the very same federal building in the picture), when I was still Mormon and had to commute from a different city. Here's the relevant excerpt from the relevant blog post, with its horrible grammar intact:

Then with my remaining time before the bus departure I wanted to see Temple Square. I recognized that the powers-that-be probably wouldn't appreciate me parading a controversial political slogan around, albeit one that ten out of ten General Authorities would agree with, so I turned it around so that the blank side was showing. The weather was still beautiful, there was a wedding going on and I just wandered around and looked at the statues and read the plaques and didn't go into the visitors' centers because I was still carrying food. There were sister missionaries everywhere, maybe a dozen, just targeting the tourists who didn't have that "Mormon glow", I suppose.

Ten or fifteen minutes into it I saw a couple of guys in suits in my peripheral vision. Oh, male missionaries, finally, I thought. I ignored them. Then one of them called out, "Sir?" and I looked again and they weren't missionaries but security guards. One of them hung back and didn't say anything, while the other was unnecessarily curt and vaguely threatening, as if he thought I might pull a gun on him. He began, "We don't allow any -" And I thought, what is it, my food? My laptop? Do they want to search my Styrofoam container or my laptop case? They can be my guests. He continued. "- signs on the property. Even if you're just walking through. We've already received multiple complaints. You'll have to leave through there." And he pointed to the nearest exit. And while he was talking I said "I'm sorry" a couple times and he gave no response or reaction to that at all. I felt like an "It's all right" or at least some sort of acknowledgement would have been a normal person's response to an apology for an honest mistake that didn't affect anyone, but no one asked me.

I have no problem with the Church instituting certain rules on its property. That is not the issue. My problems with the situation as it unfolded are that a.) the rule is not posted anywhere, b.) the security guard was unnecessarily a jerk, and c.) multiple Mormons were so traumatized by the blank side of a sheet of poster board that they bothered to call security. So I retract my apologies. I'm not sorry for not being psychic and I'm not sorry for bothering people who apparently deserved to be bothered. The last time someone called law enforcement on me was a few months ago for having autism. I kid you not. I was swinging in the park on a Saturday afternoon, and some people thought I was acting weird and might have autism and might need help, so instead of asking me if I needed help, they called the police. And the police told me exactly that. They were real nice and cool about it, though. Too bad they can't arrest people for not minding their own business and leaving me alone.

Ah yes, I remember when that was my most traumatizing encounter with police. Ha. Ha ha.

Actually, until I looked it up just now, I had forgotten about the "Even if you're just walking through," but if I had remembered it, that wouldn't have stopped me from intentionally keeping the "Oh Boy... Nazis" side of my sign facing out as I walked through Temple Square both ways. Since I'm not Mormon anymore, I can say "Fuck those guys" without feeling guilty. Fuck those guys. Anyway, attendance was sparse this time, and I don't think any of the ten people I saw took any notice of me. On the way down Capitol Hill before I reached Temple Square, though, I saw several companionships of sister missionaries walking up to their apartments, and I thought it would be kind of funny to make sure the words on my sign were visible to them as we crossed paths. Most of them took no notice of me either, but I got a mumbled "Have a good day," a cheery "Hello!", and a head silently turned for a good look at my sign. Or maybe my ass, but probably my sign. This is just the part of my weekly political activism that I chose to share because it took little time or effort to write about.