{"id":7939,"date":"2026-05-06T10:59:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/?p=7939"},"modified":"2026-05-06T10:59:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:59:35","slug":"oh-the-places-youll-sue-a-seussian-take-on-the-lds-church-vs-mormon-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/2026\/05\/06\/oh-the-places-youll-sue-a-seussian-take-on-the-lds-church-vs-mormon-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, the Places You\u2019ll Sue! A Seussian Take on the LDS Church vs. Mormon Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

If Dr. Seuss taught anything\u2014between the rhymes, the nonsense, and the brightly colored absurdities\u2014it\u2019s that systems obsessed with control, image, and hierarchy eventually tell on themselves.<\/p>\n

The Sneetches, after all, were so consumed with status markers that they couldn\u2019t see their own ridiculousness. The Lorax stood as a lone, inconvenient voice warning an empire too busy expanding to listen. Horton, against mounting pressure, insisted on a simple, stubborn truth: a voice is a voice, no matter how small.<\/p>\n

And now, improbably but fittingly, we get a 21st-century remix of all three.<\/p>\n

Because when the LDS Church responds to John Dehlin and Mormon Stories Podcast with legal force, it lands less like measured leadership and more like a Seussian plotline unfolding in real time. There\u2019s the institutional obsession with maintaining the right kind of \u201cstars upon thars.\u201d There\u2019s the attempt to silence a persistent voice that refuses to disappear. And there\u2019s the unmistakable irony of power revealing its own insecurity the harder it tries to assert control.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to overstate the mismatch: a global religious institution with immense resources on one side, and on the other, a podcaster whose primary weapon is conversation. Yet instead of diminishing him, the effort to rein him in has only amplified the very thing it seems designed to suppress.<\/p>\n

Which is exactly the sort of irony Seuss built entire stories around.<\/p>\n

One can almost imagine him\u2014somewhere beyond mortality, where no legal brief can reach\u2014looking on with a raised eyebrow and a half-smile, recognizing the pattern instantly. Because he\u2019s seen these characters before. He\u2019s written them before. And he\u2019s already told us how these stories tend to end.<\/p>\n

As for Dehlin, he fits squarely into that familiar Seussian role: the inconvenient voice that doesn\u2019t go away. Agree or disagree with him, he\u2019s done something many won\u2019t\u2014kept the conversation going in a space that increasingly tries to manage it. For that, he earns a straightforward, unambiguous two thumbs up.<\/p>\n

What follows reads like whimsy. But like the best of Seuss, it isn\u2019t really for children\u2014and the lesson, for those willing to hear it, is hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n

Green Eggs and Subpoenas: When Questions Won\u2019t Go Away<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In a court down in Zion (or so it was said),<\/em>
\nWhere the suits all wore smiles and the papers were red,<\/em>
\nThere fluttered a fuss with a legal ker-fling<\/em>
\nOver podcasts and questions and one noisy thing.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOh who is this Dehlin?\u201d the Big Voices cried,<\/em>
\n\u201cWith his chatty-chat shows and his guests far and wide?<\/em>
\nHe zigs and he zags! He asks this and that!<\/em>
\nHe won\u2019t stay quite still like a good, quiet cat!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Now the Hall of Tall Filing (with scrolls stacked in heaps)<\/em>
\nSent a squad of Brief-Beasts who don\u2019t giggle or peep,<\/em>
\nWith injunctions and motions and stern little frowns,<\/em>
\nAnd a thumpity-thump as they marched into town.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll hush up the Hubbub! We\u2019ll squash every squeak!<\/em>
\nNo more of this chatter that pokes and will peek!<\/em>
\nWe\u2019ll tangle his tangle! We\u2019ll snip every thread!<\/em>
\nWe\u2019ll tidy the talk that he\u2019s daring to spread!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But out in the air, past the stiff, starched decree,<\/em>
\nFlew the Words that were wilder than courtroom decree,<\/em>
\nThey bounced and they boinged, they zipped and they zoomed,<\/em>
\nThrough earbuds and inboxes\u2014room after room!<\/em><\/p>\n

For questions, you see, are quite tricky to tame,<\/em>
\nThey wriggle and giggle and won\u2019t play your game,<\/em>
\nYou can stamp and you clamp and you file them away\u2014<\/em>
\nBut they sneak out at night and go laughing all day.<\/em><\/p>\n

So the Brief-Beasts grew baffled. \u201cThis isn\u2019t quite right!<\/em>
\nWe\u2019ve written! We\u2019ve cited! We\u2019re winning this fight!\u201d<\/em>
\nYet the more that they pressed with their thud and their shove,<\/em>
\nThe louder it echoed with pushback thereof.<\/em><\/p>\n

And some in the crowd (once so quiet and neat)<\/em>
\nFelt a rumble-rum-thump from the soles of their feet,<\/em>
\n\u201cIs a question so scary? Is talk such a crime?<\/em>
\nWhy fear all this chatter, this rhythm, this rhyme?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

So remember, dear reader, when Voices grow tall<\/em>
\nAnd declare what is proper for one and for all,<\/em>
\nA question\u2019s a creature that won\u2019t stay confined\u2014<\/em>
\nIt slips every lock in the halls of the mind.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Closing Reflection<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

If there\u2019s a reason Dr. Seuss still resonates, it\u2019s not just the rhythm or the rhyme\u2014it\u2019s the uncomfortable clarity hiding underneath the whimsy.<\/p>\n

The Sneetches eventually learn that status games are hollow. The Once-ler realizes\u2014far too late\u2014that silencing warnings doesn\u2019t stop consequences. Horton never backs down from the simple idea that a voice, however inconvenient, still matters. These aren\u2019t subtle lessons, but they are remarkably durable\u2014and, apparently, endlessly repeatable.<\/p>\n

Because here we are again.<\/p>\n

An institution determined to manage its image. A voice that won\u2019t stay quiet. And a response that, in trying to contain the message, ends up magnifying it. It\u2019s the same old Seussian arc: control tightens, absurdity rises, and the moral becomes unavoidable to anyone willing to look.<\/p>\n

What makes this particular episode stand out is how unnecessary it all feels. Nothing about open conversation requires this level of force\u2014unless, of course, the conversation itself is what\u2019s feared. And when that\u2019s the case, no number of filings, motions, or carefully worded statements can quite put the genie back in the bottle.<\/p>\n

Seuss understood that instinctively. You can dress things up, redraw the lines, and insist everything is in its proper place\u2014but if people keep asking questions, the whole illusion starts to wobble.<\/p>\n

And that may be the most quietly devastating part of this story: not that the effort to silence a voice exists, but that it so clearly misunderstands how voices work in the first place.<\/p>\n

They travel. They multiply. They echo.<\/p>\n

And, as one elephant once put it\u2014rather memorably\u2014they matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction If Dr. Seuss taught anything\u2014between the rhymes, the nonsense, and the brightly colored absurdities\u2014it\u2019s that systems obsessed with control, image, and hierarchy eventually tell on themselves. The Sneetches, after all, were so consumed with status markers that they couldn\u2019t see their own ridiculousness. The Lorax stood as a lone, inconvenient voice warning an empire…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47,44,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-of-mormon","category-latter-day-saints","category-mormonism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Gemini_Generated_Image_xhxldfxhxldfxhxl.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7941,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions\/7941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novus2.com\/righteouscause\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}