Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exmormon here who has spent significant time with relatively larger names in that org. No, Clay was pretty unique in my view. With due respect to him, the tolerance of conflicting belief often portrayed by his co-adherents is typically extended as a proselytizing or marketing tactic and isn't offered to former Mormon congregants terribly often (see reddit.com/r/exmormon for thousands of documented experiences, or the…
Marketing tactic or not, if that is the behavior, that's the behavior, it's unfair to ascribe intentions and discount the behavior. There are definitely some LDS that fall into the trap of taking offense when someone leaves the religion and then don't treat that person well. They take it as a personal slight that someone else is claiming their religion is wrong. Either by actions or in words. But I have also noticed…
They got caught the first time and it was minorly bad PR. They haven't been caught since.
Note this is what the central organization does, of which most of the congregants are naive or deliberately uninformed. When I taught missionaries how to be Mormon missionaries several decades ago, "BRT" was part of the sales principles--build a relationship of trust. Why? To get people to buy what you're selling. This is also taught to congregants not actively serving missions, though not as deeply. Consider the calls of "Every member a missionary" (McKay, 1960s), "Lengthen your stride" (Kimball, 1980s), "Hasten the work" (Bednar, 2010s) where membership is exhorted to use sales practices on their neighbors.
It's not ascribing bad motives or pretending to know what motivated people, it's having grown up in it and now seeing it outside the organization, objectively and after years of therapy and deprogramming.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150219201604/http://www.bonnev...
[1] http://johnlarsen.org/podcast/Archive/MormonExpression250.mp...