not up on mormon history but i'm guessing that was over 100 years ago? It is like being african american and demanding things b/c our great great great grandparents were sold as slaves. And you want to play a persecution card... ok how about 100 years before the mormons (guessing on time) the christian churches were persecuted so badly that they left their homes and went accross a giant ocean, dying along the way to get to a god forsaken place with mesquitoes, natives that didn't want them here etc. leaving their family, homes etc.  If you play a persecution card that is over 1 maybe 2 generation old I think you need to look in the mirror and realize that most of us have some history somewhere of persecution by being part of a religeon. persecution can't be defined by your small timeline, if its that old gotta include everyone else or give it a rest.

we cant decide what our forefathers did we can only choose how we act today, and how we treat other humans. Yes mormons seem to only hang out with other mormons, they use euphamisms that only other mormons understand and trying to crack into a mormon friend groupd is D* near impossible even at work it is hard with the few mormons i've worked with...its weird to the rest of us and I feel its closest to how my jewish friends are... a decade of my life in the south taught me that baptist paresnts are just as strict as the mormon parents I've met so saying i'm rediculous for thinking they are similar is a little off base... from my perspective there are more similarities than you may think.

BYU is different and what makes it different than a state school is the reason I love it.  I've been to BC, ND, played and been many times at Gonzaga, spent a lot of time at Baylor and there ins't a whole ton of diff (ND,BYU,Baylor) in campuses, rules (outside of a few odd ones BYU has like caffiene) but dude they are so similar.  I do think mormons that are also BYU fans have a harder time when someone chooses elsewhere than others have and I think its offputting.