Careful comparison protects both truth and dignity.

Why this page exists.

A project like this needs moral discipline as well as moral conviction.

If we speak too weakly, the history is minimized. If we speak too carelessly, the history is overstated. If we force comparisons irresponsibly, we risk losing trust and diminishing the suffering of others. If we refuse comparison entirely, we may fail to show the recurring patterns that help people recognize injustice before it grows.

This page exists to hold that tension carefully. It explains how SAFE intends to speak about historical persecution in a way that is truthful, reverent, and resistant to overreach.

What we are not claiming.

We are not claiming that all persecutions are identical.

We are not claiming that the suffering of Latter-day Saints should be treated as interchangeable with every other history of mass suffering, state violence, genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced removal, or systemic oppression.

We are not claiming that one people’s pain needs to be elevated by collapsing it into another people’s tragedy.

That is not the purpose of this site.

What we are also not doing.

We are not minimizing Jewish suffering. We are not minimizing Native suffering. We are not minimizing Black suffering. We are not minimizing the suffering of any people who have endured expulsion, enslavement, massacre, legal exclusion, cultural erasure, or dehumanization.

This page is not here to borrow moral weight from the grief of others. It is here to refuse the false choice between two extremes: either saying the Latter-day Saint story is identical to all others, or saying it does not belong in the larger moral conversation at all.

We reject both mistakes.

What we are naming.

We are naming recurring patterns, not identical events. Across many different histories of mistreatment, certain patterns reappear:

• scapegoating,
• mob violence and organized hostility,
• forced expulsion and displacement,
• legal discrimination and civil disabilities,
• property seizure and economic pressure,
• and dehumanizing rhetoric, caricature, and public suspicion.

The persecution of Latter-day Saints includes all of these patterns, documented in primary sources and preserved in public record. Naming these patterns is not comparison-as-competition. It is comparison-as-recognition.

Where the Latter-day Saint story belongs.

We believe the Latter-day Saint story belongs in the broader American conversation on religious liberty and minority persecution. Not above it. Not beneath it. Inside it.

A people were mocked, expelled, massacred at Hawn’s Mill, driven from Missouri by state order, murdered at Carthage, forced out of Illinois, regulated through federal law, and stripped of civic rights. That is a serious, under-taught American history. Telling it carefully is part of keeping public memory honest.