A Gentle Nudge

Why Rick Perry's Noble Experiment is Doomed

2011-08-06T02:26:00.001-07:00

Rick Perry thinks the nation is in crisis, but Perry's idea of a crisis is quite different from the American mainstream. You can tell what Perry thinks the real "crisis" is by looking at the featured speaker roster for his 7-hour-long fasting and prayer service scheduled for today. To get to root of Perry's intentions I personally find myself looking at his event, with its catchy title, "The Response," in the context of how many American's responded to a news story of a week ago. No, I'm not talking about the debt crisis. I am talking about the headline, "Alex Trebek sleeps in the nude."

The connection between the scandalous idea of a naked Alex Trebek and the prayers of the pastors at Perry's "Response" event needs some history, so let me fill you in on the back-story.

A century ago, here in America, there was another religious-based furor going on. How that made-up "crisis" played out should be a lesson to Perry, his pastor friends, and their fundamentalist Christian sheep. That crisis has now become known as the "Noble Experiment," and history has judged it to be a colossal failure. Most people know it as the period of Prohibition, or the doomed Eighteenth Amendment.

American Prohibition traces its roots all the way back to 1657 when the first ban on the sale of liquor became law in Massachusetts. There were other fits and starts as states and cities toyed with some kind of a ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol, but the move toward a Constitutional Amendment was finally kick-started by Carrie Nation. She earned her place in history by becoming a one-woman-posse as she went into saloons across Kansas to break their liquor bottles with her hatchet.

My point is, it failed! In truth, it never worked. Not even for a day. The abolitionists were in complete denial about it. But it was the fodder that the preachers needed to fill their pews. Nothing fills a church as quickly as having a powerful enemy, and liquor had become the common enemy of the 19th century. Finally, on December 18, 1917, the Senate officially declared that the enemy would be conquered as they proposed the Eighteenth Amendment. After 36 states gave it a nod of approval, Prohibition became the law in January 1920.

And nobody stopped drinking.

Like alcohol of a century ago, human sexuality became the "enemy-of-choice" for the latter part of the 20th century. Pastors have learned that nothing fills church pews better than a willingness to talk "dirty" to a congregation. And just as was true with the pastors of the Prohibition period, few people are bigger hypocrites than the pastors. Names such as Ted Haggard and Eddie Long come to the forefront of epic failures as it relates to homosexual dalliances, and on the heterosexual side we have the Jimmy "I-Have-Sinned" Swaggart and Jim Bakker.

And so, we arrive at last week when Canadian-born-and-raised Alex Trebek felt no compunction about mentioning that he needed to grab his underwear before chasing his intruder down a hotel hallway. For three days, millions of American prudes went all a-flutter and news commentators like Mika Brzezinski giggled and blushed as they told the story. Was this because they all secretly imagined themself with a naked Trebek, and then felt guilty at the thought? This would at least explain what drives them to church, full of guilt, every Sunday morning. And so the pastors reap the benefits of more money in the collection plate. Using Eddie Long as the most recent example, this money will then buy trinkets, toys, and trips for the boys on the down-low.

Returning to today, Rick Perry's "moral experiment" of 2011 is going to follow in the long-established tradition of other Southern Strategies. It will be full of code so that can stir up the fear that drives the sheep of the religious right to the polling booths in 2012. It has been their strategy-of-choice since 1976 when Jerry Falwell laid the foundation for what would become known as the Moral Majority. It needs to be mentioned that this movement would never have found this kind of traction anywhere else but in the South with a deeply entrenched anti-intellectual mentality.

Rick Perry and Texas come to the forefront in the battle to keep human sexuality as a taboo topic because of their heavy influence on designing elementary and secondary school textbooks and curriculum. And as one of the nations leading forces for abstinence-only sex education, Texas provided the rest of America with a model of failure in how pretending that something is not a problem actually exacerbates the problem. Take the following quote from a Washington Post story:

"In the seven years since their schools began teaching abstinence-only, young people here have been anything but abstinent. Teen pregnancy rates in the state remain above the national average, and Lubbock County consistently has one of the highest rates in the state. In addition, the number of Texas youths with sexually transmitted diseases has risen steadily."

I am a big fan of tracing a problem back to its roots, so let's not get caught up talking about sex education. Let us instead back up one layer and talk about human sexuality. Let's talk about what it is that makes an American blush when a foreigner (one of the proverbial "others") can be so casual about human sexuality that they find nothing wrong with telling a reporter that they had to grab their undies before chasing an intruder.

Actually, hold on a second. How about instead we talk about the state of denial that has to be in place to even be having this conversation in the first place in the year 2011.

Since you are already on a computer reading this, enter the search parameters, "nude male" or "nude female," into your search engine of choice. Now tell me whether an eight-year-old would have any trouble finding porn today. Even with parental control software we are kidding ourselves to think that we will be able to "protect" our children from images of the naked human body, so why don't we instead embrace it as an inevitability, like teenagers having sex? Why don't we instead educate our children about the difference between healthy nudity and unhealthy pornography? After all, nobody is born wearing underwear, so why pretend otherwise?

Maybe it is because of my Canadian birth and Scandinavian ancestry, but I too like sleeping in the nude. Heck, I like being nude every chance I get. I keep the house warm enough during the day so that I never have to get dressed. I do try to leave a pair of shorts by the door so that I don't embarrass the mail lady and other delivery people because I certainly never want to force my nudity on anybody who does not want the memory of seeing "all" of me. But trust me, I am really quite harmless - dressed or naked!

So, like Scott Brown, if I ever run for politics there will likely be a pictures of me in the buff that surface from the dark recesses of the Internet. I dated enough gay men before I met my hubby to know that they have probably kept some of their favorite photos of me on their computers. I have also been naked on enough beaches to know that somebody, somewhere, will likely recognize me and come forward to say that they saw me on said nude beach.

My question is, why is that such a big deal?

It is a "big deal" because Rick Perry and his pastors want to make it their business, and they will continue to fool themselves into thinking that their children will never have a sexual thought. They will continue to fill their church pews and the ballot boxes by having people think that nakedness is the gateway to a life of sinfulness.

And like the last "Noble Experiment," this effort too will fail. But this time it will not fail because of the proliferation of "Speak Easy" establishments. Instead it will fail because of Google.

Rick and Michele, knock yourselves out as you consider your runs for president and imagine an America under a Christian version of Sharia Law. It won't change the fact that all men really do have a penis, and women have a vagina; and that's a good thing! Too bad you won't teach that to your children.

It's Official: Actions During Prop 8 Campaign Qualified Mormonism as a Cult

2011-02-28T11:24:00.000-08:00

On February 25, 2011 Mitch Horowitz, with the Wall Street Journal, wrote a piece entitled: "When Does a Religion Become a Cult?"

He starts by explaining how the Mormon faith was born in the exceptionally weird climate of the "Burned-over District" of central New York in the early 19th century. He then goes on and writes the following:

Many academics and observers of cult phenomena, such as psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo of Stanford, agree on four criteria to define a cult. The first is behavior control, i.e., monitoring of where you go and what you do. The second is information control, such as discouraging members from reading criticism of the group. The third is thought control, placing sharp limits on doctrinal questioning. The fourth is emotional control—using humiliation or guilt. Yet at times these traits can also be detected within mainstream faiths. So I would add two more categories: financial control and extreme leadership.

Prior to Prop 8 I would have stopped at the first four of six qualifiers, but on June 28th, 2008 the Mormon Church qualified for "extreme leadership" by requiring that members side with the church on political issues or face disciplinary action, and with repeated satellite broadcasts both inside California and in the Inter-Mountain Region they qualified for the "financial control" element, where several families that I have heard of emptied their children's college funds to donate the lion's share of the $24 million that went into passing Prop 8.

Yes, the Mormon Church has now qualified with 6-out-of-6 prerequisites as a cult, according to experts.

Then Horowitz closes his article with these words (emphasis is mine):

Yet every coercive religious group harbors one telltale trait: untoward secrecy. As opposed to a cult, a religious culture ought to be as simple to enter or exit, for members or observers, as any free nation. Members should experience no impediment to relationships, ideas or travel, and the group's finances should be reasonably transparent. Its doctrine need not be conventional—but it should be knowable to outsiders. Absent those qualities, an unorthodox religion can descend into something darker.

Hello temple ceremony, secret handshakes and magic underwear! Strike Seven and you are DEFINITELY out! I was excommunicated for writing in my memoirs that I felt that I was born gay, and the Mormons could definitely not prove me wrong (I broke the second qualifier and at age 46...for the first time in my life...I consulted science about homosexuality), but they sure could excommunicate me fast! In less than 2 weeks I was gone, and no support materialized from my five older siblings to appeal the decision (they were trapped by the third qualifier...sharp limits on doctrinal questioning).

Too bad there isn't a law requiring that cults place a sign on their door, "Enter at your own risk." As noted in the final point, it is far easier to enter than it is to leave...unless you do something they don't approve of I guess.

Lethal Endearment

2011-02-26T02:31:00.001-08:00

I received an email this week from a family member that, once again, forced me to deal with the realization that any contact with my siblings elicits a nauseating, visceral reaction in me that can only be equated with that penetrating sadness that one feels when they hear of a child that was kidnapped as a preteen and kept locked in a cell under the garage for a dozen years without ever seeing the light of day. And then, after being free for just a short time, somebody comes up and tries to defend the person that did the kidnapping by claiming that the young person somehow provoked the event.

It is in this way that contact with my family reminds me of how cruel siblings can be. What makes it worse is that when this kind of cruel behavior is taught to really young children they just don't seem to understand the importance of changing their behavior as adults. Instead, they live out their lives in denial that their behavior is even inappropriate and hurtful.

This is how it works in my family. Just so you know, I am 51 years old and I am the youngest of six, so this behavior is deeply entrenched. My problem is that I only started calling my siblings out for their cruelty in 2008, so they still seem shocked that behavior which used to be tolerated for decades is now being cast in a different light.

If you can't remember the final fight scene from X-men: The Last Stand, you might want to refresh your memory with this video. At the 4:50 mark is where Kid Omega (the porcupine guy) holds the female doctor close, and after whispering something gentle into her ear he pops out all of his spines and kills her with hundreds of spikes.

That is what it is like with my 5 Mormon siblings, but the difference is that I survived the first three times that they did this to me. The problem is, and this is the cruel part, they keep pretending that it has never happened before. In ever-so-subtle ways they keep trying to draw me in close enough so that their spines can penetrate my heart at the moment that I become most vulnerable. Examples of this behavior over the past while have come in the form of an invitation to participate with them in flowers for an uncle's funeral, a son's wedding, a phone call on my birthday, an invitation to a family reunion, and a short note that my sister's husband is going in for very dangerous surgery; stuff like that.

You might say, "Oh, there's no harm in what they are trying to do. That's normal family stuff." It might be normal for you, but when it comes being gay and a 7th generation Mormon, there is nothing that can ever be normal so long as the church stays in the mix. You need to understand the cult-like hold that Mormonism holds on its members."

Let me tell you about the three times that I was stabbed in the heart before I came to understand the tactic that almost every Mormon family will use on a gay sibling, son, or daughter. Luckily I'm still alive to tell the story so that other's might be saved. Other gay Mormon's have not survived the rejection by their families.

June 2006

The first time that my family sent a spike into my heart was when I was excommunicated in June of 2006. I had never been intimate with a man, but I had come out and said very publicly that I felt that I had been born gay. In spite of that (and this was an integral part of my very public message) I was intending to stay faithful to my wife of 25 years and somehow make our mixed-orientation marriage work.

Within weeks of finding out I was "gay" my stake president excommunicated me for apostacy. Because there had been no immoral act I appealed that decision. I was very open and honest with my siblings and asked them to send letters of support to the prophet on my behalf. While each of them, to a one, told me that my stake president had "gone rogue," there were no letters of support. In spite of the lack of tangible support from my siblings, I still won my appeal. In January 2007 the prophet ordered my excommunication proceedings vacated. I forgave my cowardly brothers and sisters and the dozens of nieces and nephews who were old enough to understand what had just happened. With their words of support over the phone they had pulled me in close for an embrace, making their failure to provide any tangible support that much more difficult to take. Their words had been empty, and the embrace felt contrived.

Strike one.

June 2008

After a year of muddling through, my ex-wife and I decided that we were still young enough to pursue authentic and more fulfilling relationships, so on her advice I started dating men. By April of 2007 I had met a man that would eventually become my husband, and over the next year my family continued to claim to support me in my desire to have a loving, authentic relationship. Their acceptance reached the point where most of them agreed that if my husband I were to visit we would be given the guest bedroom, just as they had done for the prior 25 years when I had visited with my ex-wife. My heart soared! This was amazing progress, and once again I allowed them to draw me in close in an "embrace," but within weeks fervor of the Prop 8 battle reached a fever pitch in California. By June 2008, two years almost to the day from my excommunication, my siblings had once again hit my heart with spikes. The turning point came when a letter from the Mormon prophet was leaked to the media. The letter was to be read in every Mormon congregation in California, essentially ordering all Mormons to give money and donate time to ensure that Proposition 8 would pass on the November 2 presidential election. I asked my siblings if, in a show of solidarity, they would walk out of church when the letter was being read. If not that, at least tell me that they disagreed with the church getting that involved in politics, and promise me that they would not donate time or money to a campaign that would directly impact my ability to have any kind of equal treatment in this country. I could not see how any good could come of what the Mormon Church was doing. In spite of my appeals, to a one each of my siblings said that they could not oppose the prophet with even a dissenting opinion, even in secret. They were still buying into the old axiom, "When the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done."

Strike two.

October 2008

Well, during the Prop 8 campaign, Mormon insiders were heavily involved in the Protect Marriage coalition that had designed a deceitful ad campaign that came to be known as the "Six Lies." It was the brainchild of Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint. The coalition, propelled by the Mormon insiders, ensured that my siblings were pressured into being heavily involved in spreading these lies.

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.
The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California...were assigned two ZIP codes to cover.

Maybe Fred knows the fellow from San Diego who was cited in a news story after he was on a conference call with Mormon leaders:

Robert Bolingbroke, a Mormon who lives near San Diego, said he and his wife decided on their own to donate $3,000 in August. Later, he was invited to participate in a conference call led by a high church official, known as a member of the Quorum of Seventy. Mr. Bolingbroke, a former president and chief operating officer of The Clorox Co., estimates that 40 to 60 Mormon potential donors were on that call, and he said it was suggested that they donate $25,000, which Mr. Bolingbroke did earlier this month. Mr. Bolingbroke said he doesn't know how he or the other participants on the call were selected. Church leaders keep tithing records of active members, who are typically asked to donate 10% of their income each year to the Mormon Church.

I've already posted in a previous blog post a complete reduction of the "Six Lies" that explains, and completely refutes, the ad campaign that would eventually be supported with over $24 million dollars in donations. Furthermore, the "Six Lies" proved to be completely indefensible in the subsequent (victorious) court challenge of Prop 8. Over this period of time I held conversations with each of my brothers and sisters to explain this to them, but there was no getting through. As evidenced by my brother's October 22, 2008 blog post, he and my siblings had bought into the "Six Lies" lock, stock, and barrel. They had gone door-to-door and donated money to deny me any form of equal treatment.

Strike three, and they were out. They had drawn me in close for the last time.

The Funeral

A short time later an uncle passed away, so my sister calls and asks me if I would participate in buying a flower arrangement from "the six of us" to represent our family at the funeral. Well, I wasn't exactly feeling the love at this point, so I told my sister that before I would be sacrificing my hard-earned money I would like to have first seen some evidence of solidarity. I didn't see any benefit to me of demonstrating any kind of "belonging" to a group of siblings that only wanted to be seen as a family when it was convenient. I had given my five brothers and sisters three chances to "claim" me as part of this "family," but in three out of three times they had shut the door on me and left me outside in the cold. It felt like this was an attempt to just "move on" without addressing the "three strikes" that had just happened.

The Wedding

By the following summer it was obvious that my son was getting serious with his Mormon girlfriend, and we knew that a wedding was likely in the works. In spite of advice from my husband and my other three children, I could not expose myself once again to the temptation of an "endearing hug." In a June visit with him when he came out to Florida I explained to him that if he was going to insist on a temple wedding in the Mormon Temple I would not be attending his wedding. I was not going to fly out to San Diego just to be a lawn ornament at the temple, where I would be expected to wait politely for the photo op. This was my "Rosa Parks Moment." I was no longer going to settle for the back seat on the bus and allow the Mormon propaganda to dictate what kind of a relationship I would have with my family. If I were going to have a relationship with my family, including my son, it would be on common ground that we could share between us. It would certainly not be at a wedding where everything was dictated to me by a Mormon prophet...through my own son.

A Birthday and a Family Reunion

This brings me to my birthday last October when my sister called. After wishing me a happy birthday and cheerful catching up, she said the family would all love to see Mickey and I at the family reunion in January. I asked if there would be any awkwardness in talking about what was happening about gay marriage and civil unions for same-sex couples, to which she responded, "Well, there will just have to be some topics that we will agree not to talk about." I chose to hang up rather than beat a dead horse to get it to go one more time around the block.

Cancer

And that brings us up to this week, when my sister's husband sent me an email to advise me that he was in Seattle, preparing for prostate cancer surgery in two weeks at one of the nation's leading hospitals. The contrast between the worries and concerns that he and my sister do not have, and the worries and concerns that my husband and I would have, were just too much. They take for granted the following rights that "marriage" naturally has granted to them:

That a spouse from out of state will just naturally be allowed next to his side throughout the entire procedure and the recovery. My husband and I were married in Connecticut and have a domestic partnership registration in Broward County (a very progressive county in South Florida...like an oasis in a desert). However, a feature of DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act that was passed in 1996), that the Mormons supported in order to avert any consequences from the battle in Hawaii over same-sex marriage, was passed in order to prevent a same-sex marriage or civil union or domestic partnership of one state from being recognized in another.
That if my sister's husband dies from the surgery, or if his life is not prolonged by the surgery, his estate will pass seamlessly to my sister. If my husband were to die, these are the consequences of DOMA in our lives:
1. His brother could easily challenge the will, forcing me to defend it in court. It would cost thousands of dollars and it is often done by antagonistic family members who just want to be malicious against a gay sibling's lover, somehow blaming him for their sibling falling into temptation. In some states the courts rule in favor of the family members, leaving the widower a tenant in his own home. Thankfully, Mickey's brother is not likely to do this, but it still happens far too often.
2. I would have to pay an estate tax to IRS on anything that I get from Mickey. Because of DOMA the federal government sees me as an arms-length stranger to my own husband. Clause 2 specifically states that "spouse," wherever it is used in any law, has to mean a person of the opposite sex, which nullifies our perfectly legal Connecticut marriage certificate, and further precludes civil unions from being validated should a state not go after the word "marriage."
3. I would not get any of Mickey's survivor benefits from his Social Security, in spite of him paying into it his entire life, once again nullified by Clause 2 of DOMA.

And so I find myself as the child who just escaped a basement cell in 2006. In my short five years of freedom I have found wonderful and supportive people who remind me that my captors were not horrible, awful people. No, my friends remind me constantly that my siblings were themselves victims of a captive childhood, and that they carry all the same scars that I do. My husband and my friends remind me that, like Jesus, I should just say, "Lord forgive them for they know not what they do."

And so I try, but then they reach out to me. At first it seemed genuine. It felt nice to hear their reassuring words in my ear, but then, three times in a row, right after whispering support in my ear, all of their poisonous barbs come out. The pain is unbearable.

It would be far better if they just kept to themselves until they find the courage to get counselling to help them see the world as it really is, instead of looking at it from the windows of their basement cell.

Opportunities Missed vs. Opportunities Denied

2010-12-01T08:33:00.000-08:00

Five Words

The professor’s instructions were clear enough. “Use all five words in some kind of creative writing piece,” she had explained.

She then proceeded to write the words on the whiteboard:

Crow Cripple Silver Mud Regret

“You can use them in any tense,” she added.

A few kids in the class expressed some concern about finding a starting point, to which the professor explained that some people find it helpful to just stare at the words. Within seconds, Regret had started searing its way out of the locked chambers of my subconscious mind and was soon blazing in red neon on a billboard that blocked my vision of everything else.

With it came a flood of conversations from two years ago that had taken place over a ten month period with a volunteer therapist from a gay community center. That therapy had been followed by six months of group therapy, and it had all helped me redirect the anger that was now resurfacing.

Regret, for having spent 35 years in a prison where the door had never really been locked, but because I had been told that the door was locked I had never once even tried the doorknob.

Regret, for the rotten luck of having been born into a backwards family who lived in a backwards village that held onto a backwards belief system that should have died out more than a century ago.

Regret, for having condemned myself just for recognizing my own identity when I was 11 years old.

Regret, for suppressing thoughts that were as natural for me as eating, sleeping, and breathing.

Regret, for all the harm that I had caused in the lives of innocent people by perpetuating the lie that had been fed to me.

But I’m still in my English class, and the professor has only given us ten minutes for this writing exercise. What were the other words, and what do they mean in my context of Regret?

Crow…Matthew 26:34 “…before the cock crows you shall deny me thrice.”

Cripple…John 5:5 “…and a certain cripple was there who had an infirmity thirty and eight years.”

Silver…Matthew 27:5 “…and he cast down the pieces of silver and went and hanged himself.”

Mud…John 9:6 “…and he spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the mud.”

My involuntary recall of the Biblical verses was instantaneous, and with it came a new flood of anger. I knew at this point my writing was going to come out as a rant, but since this is only an exercise in creativity I proceed to write in a larger-than-life cursive script that reflects the magnitude of my growing rage. I quickly decide that my audience will be the other kids in my class. Most of them are in their twenties.

Yes, you should have regrets. You were lied to for more than 20 years. Perhaps ‘lied’ is too strong of a word, but you were definitely not given an opportunity to find your own truth.

As a preschooler the stories were easy to believe. It’s nice to think that a man can spit in the dirt and stir it into mud, and then heal a blind man by rubbing it on his eyes. Or that a cripple can be made to walk just by hearing a magical voice.

And then you grow up. Now you have an expectation that things make sense, but when you dare to doubt the miracle, you are told about Peter, who denied knowing the miracle worker three times before the cock crowed. Peter is said to have ‘wept bitterly.’

And if that doesn’t scare you righteous, the coup de grấce is the condemnation of Judas, who snitched on the miracle worker for 30 pieces of silver. He went out and hanged himself.

As the good book also says, ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’

Well, don’t you think it’s about time to grow up and stop believing in fairy tales? How about thinking for yourself now that you are out from under your mother’s thumb?

At this point the professor announced that the ten minutes were up.

Even as I wrote I realized that this kind of writing would not meet my own new standards, but it was out there now, as ink on paper. It matched the kind of writing that I used to do when the famous Mormon author Carol Lynn Pearson had responded to one of my emails with the gentle words, “Lester, you need to learn how to create light, not heat.”

She was right, of course, so I brought up the problem to the class that my piece had emerged as a rant. The professor confirmed that a rant is really not a recommended format for creative writing, but she did indicate that a rant can be a good starting point.

That brings me to this point, where I now find myself. When speaking of Regret, what advice would I give to Christian young adults today…without going into a rant?

Well, to put it simply, I would tell them that the dualism of religious fundamentalism has already caused the death of 400 million people in the history of the world.

I would tell them that the Christian Bible, the Torah, and the Qur’an have been adapted to be instruments of war by creating a tried and true mechanism for “othering.” This has been done with the sole objective of dehumanizing people of other religious beliefs so that they can be murdered at the whims of dictators.

I would explain to them that this tactic has worked in the past because the populace has been uneducated and were easily fooled into believing that a mortal man could become a “mouthpiece for god” if he would just recite the platitudes from the nation’s so-called scriptures.

I would ask them if they are so gullible as to believe that a so-called “loving god” would still perpetuate this idea that some races and classes of people are less worthy of life than others, or that an accident of birth is enough to doom a soul to eternal damnation.

I would remind them that on November 22, 2010, right now, during their lifetime, a United Nations committee finalized a resolution that would protect certain named people, and classes of people, from “summary execution.” This United Nations committee was successful in removing homosexuals from the list of “protected persons.”

The resolution passed because it found enough support to form a majority within the Christian nations of Africa and the Islamic nations of the Middle East. These are nations who do not want any political fallout for codifying a six thousand year old fable that they call “the word of god.”

Yes, I would ask these young adults to make a clean break from their past and help form a new consciousness in the world that is not rooted in foolish traditions, but instead would be rooted in an all-encompassing humanism.

In that kind of a world, and within a single generation, the Regrets that a gay young man will have might just be something as innocuous as having missed his senior prom because he was too shy to ask out that cute boy who would later become his boyfriend in college, and then his husband for life.

Regrets should be reserved for missed opportunities, not for opportunities that society entirely denied you.

The Gorgon in the Mirror

2010-11-30T16:06:00.000-08:00

Medusa was a Gorgon, and according to Greek mythology the gaze of a Gorgon was so terrifying that it is said to turn a person who returns that gaze into stone. The version of the story that I remember saw Perseus slay Medusa by following only her reflection before striking his fatal blow. I grew up thinking that I was a Gorgon that everybody would despise, so I justified in my own mind the idea that people would want to be rid of me if they ever saw me as my true self. I was even afraid that my parents might suffer permanent and lasting harm if I was exposed. Following Perseus' lead, I survived by only having relationships with others through mirrors.

After first hearing this metaphor of the mirrors, some might argue that because I could only control what others saw of me, then it would imply that these others in my life were living in reality and I was not. I disagree. The truth is that I knew very well who I was; I was a Gorgon. If in fact these others were living in reality then they too would have been able to see me as a Gorgon, but they could not. So you see, the one who is doing all of the deceiving is really the one in control, and the ones being deceived are therefore living in an alternate reality that I created for them.

It is for this reason that I use the metaphor of the mirrors when I talk about my relationships. The mirrors, that only I control, have trapped these people in a kind of prison where I get to pick how they relate to me. One of the powers of a modern Gorgon like me is that I get to place a mirror as a stand-in for me with anybody of my choosing. It becomes a matter of semantics at this point to debate who was real and who was a mere reflection, but from my perspective I only had relationships with mirrors, not people. I specifically want to talk about the relationship that I had with my mother-mirror and my father-mirror.

I discovered the need for mirrors at the age of eleven. It was at that point when I knew that I was evolving into a Gorgon-like creature, and in order to protect my parents I knew that I would have to prevent them from seeing me for who I truly was. I have only myself to blame for having substituted a mirror in the place of my mother and my father, but I only did what I thought was necessary to protect them. I was, after all, just an emotional, irrational kid, but the fact remains that I kept the mirrors up for the next 30 years. By then, both of my parents had passed away, leaving me with a problem that will never be resolved. You see, every time I look at the portraits of my parents on the wall of my den I realize that I only have memories of the relationships that I had with my mirrors.

The demarcation point of when I went from having a relationship with my real mother to a relationship with my mother-mirror is kind of blurry, but I do remember that my real mother loved to nurture "lost sheep." When I was very young my sisters would bring home boyfriends that did not believe in our particular mythology. I would see how my real mother would go out of her way to try to convert these boys to our belief system, and if they would not convert I would see how my real mother would encourage my sisters to be nothing more than “good friends” with those kinds of boys. Like me, my sisters had been taught from a very young age that there was nothing more important to our family than our mythology. That meant that if these boys...the lost sheep...would not convert, it necessarily placed them outside of our culture.

When I realized that I was becoming more and more like these lost sheep that my sisters would bring home I awoke to a hard truth. I knew that my unbelief, if ever uncovered, would place me outside of the culture that my real mother and father believed in. That was when I realized how useful the mirrors would be.

My real parents had become strangers to me by the time they died. My mother was 61 years old, and my father was 73. I knew my mother-mirror and father-mirror intimately, but before I could get to know my real parents I would have to shatter the mirrors and expose myself as a Gorgon. I couldn't find the courage to do that. The risk of rejection was too great. It was the frightened 11-year-old inside me that demanded that I maintain the relationship with the predictable mother-mirror and father-mirror.

It would be another decade before I would stop using the mirrors around my five brothers and sisters. What were the consequences of that decision? As it turned out, they all preferred the lies of the mirror over the reality of the Gorgon. They've had four years now to get used to the idea, and still, just this past month my sister invited me to send my mirror to the family reunion in six weeks so that they could all pretend that nothing had changed. My sister made it very clear that the Gorgon...the real me...was not invited. They won't admit it, but in the mythology of my family...that same mythology that ranks higher in importance than family ties...Gorgons will always be seen as a threat. Their mythology has evolved to the point that it no longer calls for the mortal assassination of Gorgons, but it leaves no room to doubt that their god will undertake a systematic elimination of Gorgons in the after-life. It is because of this dogged adherence to their mythology that it is easier on them if I just send my mirror to the family reunion instead of coming as a Gorgon.

So what is the moral of this story? In order to understand the fable you have to see it from the perspective of a teenager. That is when Gorgons begin to see themselves as different from the rest of their family and society.

Religious and cultural traditions are tough on teenagers. It is the very nature of adolescence to challenge traditions, but when a mythology cannot stand up to the rigorous questioning of a young person then one of three things will happen.

The first outcome, which is the one that every culturally devoted parent hopes for, is that the teenager will embrace the idea of living under the shroud of unanswerable questions and stop challenging authority. Under this option the parents perceive that their mythology has won the day, but society invariably suffers a loss when truth is suppressed for yet another generation.

The second outcome is that the teenager could rebel against authority and refuse to conform to the traditions of his or her parents. This places the parents in the awkward position of having to choose between their mythology and their own flesh and blood. If a teen chooses this option, and is old enough or mature enough, then the chances are good that they will find an authentic life. This is a win for the youth and his or her future descendents. In rare circumstances the family will actually follow the rebellious youth and leave their cultural roots in favor of truly authentic lives as well. This would be a win for everybody, but that outcome is rare. All too often these youth lack the maturity to be left alone, but nevertheless they either run away or are kicked out of their home. These teens then fall into a subculture that is all too eager to take advantage of the vulnerable, and this becomes one of the worst tragedies imaginable.

The third outcome is the one that I chose in the late 1970’s, which forced everybody involved into an alternate reality. The teenager lives a dual life and the parents are blissfully unaware that their child secretly no longer believes in the cultures or traditions of the family mythology. In this option everybody is a loser and scores of innocent people get dragged into the lie before it is exposed for what it is.

Is the fault all mine because I opted for the predictable outcome of a relationship that I could control with a mother-mirror and a father-mirror, instead of taking the chance on being rejected by my real parents?

Or does the fault lie with my mother because she adopted this rigid mythology where anything outside of our culture held a diminished value? I do not have to wonder much about where my real father would have been in the continuum of love because when it came to matters of the heart I am confident that he would have followed the lead of my mother.

The hard truth is that the slightest movement on the part of any one of the three of us would have shattered all of the mirrors. The real tragedy is that none of us, not a single one, had the courage to take that chance. And to this day, neither do my brothers or my sisters. The mythology is still ranked higher in importance than blood.

And so the tragedy continues, more than 30 years later. I can honestly say that I don't give a damn about my brothers and sisters. I saw their hypocrisy for what it was four years ago, and I had no hope that it would evolve back then. It would be nice to still see them and catch up on life, but I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of dealing only with my mirror. It is now time for them to grow up and accept me as a Gorgon. That means that they need to find a way to respect my rights, and to see me and Gorgons like me as their equal. We now live in a modern society where mythology has been trumped by science.

But unfortunately for my siblings, and because I am more like a Gorgon than I care to admit, I still find a perverse pleasure in poking them in the eye with a stick, just to see them twitch. No, I do not seek or need the approval of my family to be a complete and authentic gay man, and an atheist. Instead, what I care passionately about is what they are symptomatic of in the 21st Century.

Gay teenagers and non-believing teenagers alike still fear that they have become Gorgons when they realize that they cannot uphold the mythology of their family. As vulnerable and frightened teenagers, in order to cope, they first will try anything in order to please others. This is most easily done by adopting relationships with the predictable mirrors. This way they have complete control over every important relationship in their life. The only requirement is that they sustain the lie of their closeted lives.

My experience is far from unique. Conservative parents continue to choose an existence in an alternate reality where teenage atheism and homosexuality is something that happens to other less-than-perfect families. And so they deny themselves the authentic relationships that they could otherwise have with their teenagers; relationships where humanity triumphs over cultural dogma and narrow ideology. These parents have no idea that their children are constructing mother-mirrors and father-mirrors with whom they relate on their own terms.

These parents do not know who their real children are because they don’t want to know, and they make no effort to find out so long as the mirrors are reflecting a favorable storyline heading into their fictitious future. I now live in a community of Gorgons. They are my adopted family. I literally have hundreds of brothers and sisters, and among us it is still...by far...more common to send a mirror home for the holidays and family reunions than it is to go in person.

When parents and siblings are willing to question the dogma of their own mythology and embrace the authentic lives of their children, brothers and sisters, however they turn out, then and only then will they shatter the mirrors that are used to maintain inauthentic but predictable relationships with them.

As for myself, I will forever wonder as I stare at the images on the wall of my den. I will never know if the faces are real or reflected. I will also never know who should ultimately be held responsible for the actions of that frightened young teenager.

My Brother Doesn't Think He Is Estranged from Me

2010-09-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

In a recent Facebook wall post I referred to my brother with the generality of "your kind." I did this because he lives in California and he and his kids were out knocking on doors most Saturdays spreading the "Six Lies" about what the "gay agenda" supposedly was during the Prop 8 fiasco. He is also an avid Glenn Beck supporter, which further puts him into a "your kind" category as an ideological opposite of the world in which I now make my life.

The blog post originated over a hokey "letter to the president" from a doctor who had just treated an African-American woman who was going to be paying for her emergency room treatment with Medicaid. The doctor's complaint was that his taxes were supporting this woman who was not making enough sacrifices in her life to the point where she could pay for medical insurance.

This was my response to my brother's bewildered reply on the Facebook wall in which he wondered out loud why I never call so that we can have a chatty conversation about how wonderful our lives were back in the "good old days" before I became a non-Mormon liberal.

The definition of Estrange: to arouse especially mutual enmity or indifference where there had formerly been love, affection, or friendliness.

Fred:
[In spite of my repeated pleas to tread carefully going into the Prop 8 campaign,] you made a choice over Prop 8 that placed you squarely in the camp of a group of citizens willing to spend $24 million to spread six lies about gays and lesbians. You make choices that put yourself politically in direct opposition to the kind of legislation that would allow me to participate as your equal in society; where my new "family of choice" could serve openly in the military, adopt children, be married to protect our family assets, and file joint tax returns.

And you wonder who I am referring to when I say "your kind?" You are squarely aligned with a community of bigots that make no apology for your bigotry, but rather wear it as a badge of honor for your god.

Your complicity (and for 44 years, mine) created this culture that you now find yourself in, and it is so comfortable to "your kind" that you think of it as normal and accepted behavior. Your ideology of white privilege (and your complicity to not end it) has warehoused Blacks and the "others" into marginalized neighborhoods where education is supported with $1,000 less per pupil than the school your kids went to. In these marginalized communities, higher paying jobs are scarce and opportunities for self-betterment are deliberately suppressed. Zero-sum thinking justifies this because the "good" jobs out there are meant for "your kind."

"Your kind" see anything different from your behavior through the lens of Glenn Beck where anything "liberal," "progressive," or having to do with "social justice" for minorities of any kind as tyranny worthy of 2nd Amendment remedies.

No, I do not regularly make a habit of telephoning people with whom I have nothing in common other than some memories that originated only because I was living a fake life. No, I was raised in a culture that would have systematically "othered" me if I had been authentic to my birthright as a gay man. Out of fear I projected the image of a person that I knew would be accepted in a family of bigots and a community of zealots.

Until I see somebody demonstrate a willingness to open their mind and foster a climate where change becomes possible, there will be no chatty telephone conversations.

I peek in from the sidelines every once in a while and look for evidence of this open-mindedness, but to date, none has been found. You see, I associate with people who are supportive of "my kind." To date, my siblings and the majority of my nieces and nephews have failed to qualify, and that is no surprise. It is not hard to see why they make no effort to be supportive of equal rights for "my kind:" In June of 2006, before I had ever been intimate with a man, I became supportive of the plight of gay men. For that moment of enlightenment, I was excommunicated for apostacy.

Enjoy your church!

Bobo Dolls, Prop 8, and the Media

2010-08-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

The fundamentalist and evangelical Christians (including the Mormons), who together comprise less than 18% of the US population, are among the most media savvy group of people in the world. The know about the 1961 "Bobo Doll Experiment," and they know how to apply the science that has risen out of the hundreds of studies that have been based on it over the last 39 years. Yes, the media consultants of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians used the tactics of the Bobo Doll Experiment to teach hate to a class of people who, like the children in the Bobo Doll Experiment, instinctively knew to avoid hate.

In 1961, psychologist Albert Bandura did an experiment to study how children responded after witnessing violent behavior in adults, and in particular, on television or in a movie. Last semester my Advanced Media Theory class studied this experiment in detail because the experiment was conducted in the earliest years of television. Here are three slides from the film. The child is holding the Bobo doll down and hitting it repeatedly, throwing it across the room, and hitting it with a hammer.

The experiment has become a landmark event in psychology because of how many other studies were inspired by it. It resurfaced in my mind recently because of a post by one of my Facebook friends who attended the APA (American Psychological Association) Conference in California. I guess a booth or workshop at the conference gave some prominent exposure to the study, or at least to a Bobo doll.

In the experiment there were actually three sequences of film. One just showed an adult being violent against the Bobo doll, another showed the adult being praised for the same violent behavior, and the third showed the adult being punished for the same violent behavior. In the first two instances, the children showed a dramatic increase in how violent they were with the Bobo doll as compared to the group that saw the adult being punished for violent behavior.

Most people, especially moderate Christians (at 66% of the population), would have been deterred by the fact that 50 years of undisputed research has underlined the tangible and harmful consequences of "learned violent behavior" that is taught through media, so you would think that if you were going to spend $40 million on advertising to attract this large voting block of moderate (and educated) Christians you would stick to material that was accurate and truthful. But media savvy fundamentalist Christians knew full well that the truth would not sell their idea to the far more numerous (and did I mention educated) moderate Christians that they needed on their side in order to pass Prop 8. They knew that they had to go further than just "education." As I stated in my thesis, the media consultants of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians used the tactics of the Bobo Doll Experiment to teach hate to a class of people who, like the children in the Bobo Doll Experiment, instinctively knew to avoid hate. And it worked.

Proponents of Prop 8 spent an unprecedented $40 million on a media blitz that not only used television and newspaper ads, but went even further. In the true spirit of the Bobo Doll Experiment, their campaign had the equivalent of door-to-door evangelists who did the equivalent of "praising the violent behavior." For the most part, we have the missionary-minded Mormons to thank for that as well.

It would have been different if the material that was used in the Prop 8 campaign had been truthful, but as the recent Prop 8 Trial has shown, the "Six Lies" of the Prop 8 media blitz were just that....they were lies. They had been tailor made by the media savvy Christian groups for a very special purpose. Those lies were designed to not only teach hate, but also to instill fear!

Zero-sum thinking is a fear tactic that has a history of success here in America and around the world. It is based on "us" vs. "them" logic. It basically tells one class of people (almost always the majority), that if another group of people (the "others") gain anything at all in society, it will mean that the desirable class ("us") has been harmed. The fundamentalist Christians knew that in order to build a media campaign to a fever pitch, it needs to instill fear, and nothing instills fear as much as the idea that somebody is taking something away from you.

This is what the Prop 8 media campaign did, and it used blatant lies and the proven tactics of the Bobo Doll Experiment in order to do it.

How do I know it was all lies? Because during the Prop 8 trial the defense did not produce a single witness that could support the material that was used during the campaign. They danced around the "Six Lies" of the Prop 8 campaign and instead produced a witness to support other claims that were not an integral part of the media hype of the period. Early on, when Perry vs. Schwarzenegger was first announced, the defense had promised a "parade of witnesses" that would prove the harm that gay marriage would do to society. They were going to prove that gay couples were inferior as parents, and if the Prop 8 media material was to be believed, this would also mean that homosexuality would be "taught" to school-aged children as a "lifestyle choice" for when they grow up. Worse yet, according to the Prop 8 media, if gay marriages were recognized it would mean that the religious freedoms of America would be lost because churches that failed to perform gay marriages would lose their tax-exempt standing.

So what did this "parade of witnesses" look like when the defense had their day in court? The defense produced one "expert" witness and one non-expert opinion to bolster their claim that gay marriage (and by extension, the "gay lifestyle") was inferior to heterosexual marriage. They deliberately sidestepped all of the "Six Lies" from the media campaign, either because they recognized that none of those claims could withstand cross examination on the witness stand, or because every witness that they approached refused to appear.

If the Florida lawsuit challenging the ban on gay adoption is any indicator, the second option is the more likely of the two. In Florida, after an exhaustive nationwide search, the attorney general could only find one "expert witness" who was willing to attach his or her good name to the support of an unsubstantiated lie. Within a year, this "expert witness," George Rekers, was caught at the Miami airport returning from a 10-day European vacation with an escort that he had found on RentBoy.com. (Link to story.)

As Florida's Bill McCollum found out, expert witnesses who have published peer-reviewed papers in reputable trade journals are hard to find (George Rekers had only ever published with NARTH, which I touch on below). It is one thing to embellish a doctrinal point over the pulpit or to a faith-based audience when you are intent on misleading a congregation, but when, in your heart, you know it is just an opinion and not a fact, nobody wants to swear on a Bible and perjure himself/herself by stating the same sentence in a court of law.

Judge Vaughn Walker was so sympathetic to the defense (after dismissing the testimony of one witness as inadmissible) that he gave them a second chance during closing arguments to produce a better argument. He wrote in his instructions: "Seven million Californians, 70 judges and this long history that you described...why did you present but one witness on this subject?" (Excellent link here to a postmortem on the case.)

History will be the judge on that question, but another question still lingers in my mind on this topic of the Bobo Doll Experiment and fundamentalist Christianity.

My Facebook friend who prompted this post is a psychology student. He is also still attending the Mormon Church, and lives in California, so I watched him closely during the Prop 8 campaign, which he did NOT support. Now, in defense of my friend, he is likely just a Shadow Mormon, which means that he goes through the motions of being a good Mormon because it works for him, so this essay probably does not indict him as it does other Mormons who donated $24 million and testified door-to-door in support of the "Six Lies," but the idea that a university would grant a psychology degree or something akin to that to somebody from the Christian fringe really bothers me. (For an excellent study on Shadow Mormons, there is an excellent documentary: "In The Shadow of the Temple.")

A case in point about granting a religious bigot a degree rooted in scientific research: Augusta State University, a state institution in Georgia, recently refused a degree to a girl who wanted to be a school counselor. They refused to grant her the degree because she refused to take diversity and sensitivity training. She had spent her years at university spouting her opinions about homosexuality as though they were fact and trying to convert her classmates and professors to her version of Christianity, and then she wondered why the university would not give her a degree, and their blessing, to go out and tell school kids that it is okay to marginalize gays. After all, in spite of all she had learned, this student still did not see homosexuality as an immutable trait, but rather as a degrading and immoral lifestyle choice. (Link here for more details on this story.)

Three cheers for Augusta State, but what about the thousands of other students who hold the same beliefs that this girl does, but just hold their tongue and get to walk the stage wearing a mortarboard? These students will just go through school and become psychologists while silently thinking that the APA was wrong in 1973 when they declared that homosexuality was an immutable trait and that attempts to "treat it" were causing irreparable harm. Since 1973 that ruling has been challenged dozens of times by organizations like the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Meanwhile, a dozen other organizations have now joined the APA in supporting their 1973 findings. In all, there are now 148,000 licensed professionals across the nation who believe that reparative therapy is not only wrong-headed, but dangerous (link here). NARTH, in the meantime, has been reduced to a mere 38 practioners, who, by the way are so discredited that their "expert witness" testimony was deemed inadequate for the Prop 8 trial. George Rekers was the 39th, but they booted him out after his "European Vacation."

NARTH, for their part, is out of money, and as evidenced by the Prop 8 trial, out of ideas. They are only able to continue as a group through direct support from none other than the Mormon Church. Their offices were moved from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City to take advantage of the fact that the CEO from the Mormon supported Evergreen International ex-gay group would now serve as the COO for NARTH. I have not checked into the lease arrangements for office space, but Evergreen International is on the 3rd floor and NARTH is now on the 4th floor of a building that is likely owned by a Mormon controlled affiliate organization. The building is within blocks of the Salt Lake Temple and the church-owned City Creek redevelopment mega-project. (The Mormon Church has systematically been buying up downtown Salt Lake City in order to prop up the inner-city area around the iconic Salt Lake Temple from urban decay.)

But back to the idea of a psychologist that tries to hold onto a connection with a homophobic belief system. There are literally thousands of psychologists like my Facebook friend who will not publicly disavow themselves of their religious roots in order to truly comply with the ethics guidelines of their professional association. When you use the word "ethical behavior" in one sentence, and the term "Shadow Mormon" in the next, the contradiction just seems to slap you in the face. What is ethical about pretending to be a "good Mormon" when you know that you don't believe in the infallibility of the prophet? Just because it isn't a bold-faced lie does not mean that it is unethical to allow others to believe something that is not the truth. It is deliberate deceit. I know, because I did that for more than 30 years in order to stay in the good graces of my Mormon family and community.

To the credit of the APA, their ethics guidelines (and those of other similar professional associations) require that a therapist who adheres to fundamentalist Christian beliefs recuse himself/herself in instances where a client has stated that they are convinced that their so-called "same-sex attraction" is immutable. The problem is that up until that instant in time (when the client declares that they are no longer going to try to "overcome" homosexuality) these therapists can get away with trying to help their client adhere to a broken, and ultimately harmful, belief system. This, in the face of the fact that the psychologist has spent upwards of six years or more being taught that study after study has proven such belief systems to be wrong. Essentially, in spite of a stellar education, some fully accredited therapists are still telling gays and lesbians that what they are struggling with is a mere "temptation" rather than nature's call to live authentically as the person they were born to be.

And we wonder why Utah has the nation's highest teen suicide rate?

I guess the APA approach, however imperfect it might be, is working. Forty-nine years after the Bobo Doll Experiment we can look at the success of the Prop 8 trial in overturning the ban on gay marriage as a witness that this country may be willing to stand up against organizations that try to use media to advance violence against others.

As for those psychologists who try to negotiate a "middle ground" for themselves between research-based best practices and their faith-based archaic doctrine, while they may still placate their clients by telling them what they want to believe about homosexuality, they at least now understand that it has no standing in fact. This we know because not one of them dared take a stand against the science of their field in a court of law. The ethics guidelines of the APA have enough teeth as they stand that the consequences of such an act would have been felt financially.

History will be the witness. In her book, "The Fall of the Evangelical Nation," Christine Wicker writes that more than 6,000 people a day are leaving evangelical Christianity. Her findings are supported by the Barna Group, a group that has been studying Christianity in America for decades. Most who leave fundamentalism are becoming "moderate Christians (66% of the population) and skeptics (11% of the population), and that gives me hope for the plight of a gay teen who is faced with the same prospects today that I faced in 1978. Back then the climate was very different, but at the rate of 6,000 a day, the reach of the evangelical is getting smaller very quickly.

I thank Judge Vaughn Walker from the bottom of my heart for the part that he played in this drama, but before Judge Walker there was Ted Olsen and David Boies. History will now remember them for something far more significant than Bush vs. Gore.

The year 2010 was the year that fundamentalist Christianity went on trial in America, and lost. It was also the year that the Mormon Church placed their entire fortune on a single number at the roulette table. The wheel may still be turning, but one thing is for certain. Even if they don't lose their future on this gamble, they lost their credibility by even daring to make such a bet in the first place. It exposed them to be very un-Christlike in how they conduct themselves as a good neighbor and citizen in a nation founded on the principle of separating church and state.

PS. Mormon's are not supposed to gamble. It is one of their 4,300 commandments. (Yes, that is a real number supported by research.)

Only Two Words Have Been Altered in This News Story

2010-08-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

Read the following story and see if you can figure out the two words that I substituted with "Taliban" and "Christian" consistently throughout the story.

Georgia Grad Student Sues University Over Suppression of Her Taliban Beliefs
Jennifer Keeton Says She Was Told to Change Her Taliban Beliefs or Be Dropped From the Program

Original Story By SARAH NETTER
July 27, 2010

A Georgia student studying counseling [to be a school counselor for youth] says her university went too far in requiring her to change her Taliban beliefs on infidels before she's allowed to graduate.

Backed by the Alliance Defense Fund, Jennifer Keeton has filed suit against Augusta State University after, she said, school officials threatened to dismiss her from its counseling program when she refused to participate in a "remediation" plan to increase her tolerance of infidels after she made it known that she believed Christians were lost souls.

According to the lawsuit, filed earlier this month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, school officials told Keeton that she was failing to conform to professional standards because she saw Christians as infidels.

"Jen has voiced disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the Christian 'lifestyle,'" read the university's remediation plan, as quoted in the lawsuit. "She stated in one paper that she believes Christian 'lifestyles' to be identity confusion."

"Faculty have also received unsolicited reports from another student that [Miss Keeton] has relayed her interest in conversion therapy for Christian populations," the lawsuit's quotation of the plan continued, "and she has tried to convince other students to support and believe her views that the only path to salvation for a Christian was through Islam."

The remediation plan, according to court documents, included attending three workshops on diversity, a monthly two-page reflection on what she has learned from research into Christian counseling issues, and increased exposure to Christian populations. The latter action came with the suggestion that she attend one of Augusta's diverse Christian churches.

A second portion of the remediation plan includes more work to improve Keeton's writing skills.

David French, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund and also director of its Center for Academic Freedom, told ABCNews.com that the lawsuit on Keeton's behalf is one of about a half-dozen similiar cases involving counseling or social work students in the last few years.

"It's an emerging issue, without question," he said. Requiring a student to change his or her beliefs [in a known terrorist organization] to graduate is "punishment of free speech."

"That is not the role of the state and it is not within the power of the state," he said.

Augusta State University declined to make school officials available for comment, and did not immediately provide a statement.

The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund has advised Keeton not to speak publicly about her education at Augusta State or the pending lawsuit, but she stood up for her beliefs in a video produced and distributed by the Fund.

"While I want to stay in the school counseling program, I know that I can't honestly complete the remediation plan knowing that I would have to alter my beliefs," she said. "I'm not willing to and I know I can't change my Taliban [state of being]."

According to the lawsuit, Keeton had said both in class and in writing assignments that "she believes Christianity is the result of accountable personal choice[, and that after she graduates and is working in the field that if she were to allow her counseling clients - school-aged youth - to continue unchallenged in that 'lifestyle,' she would be a participant in them losing their soul]."

"Further, she has expressed her view that Christianity is a 'lifestyle,' not a 'state of being,' [like her own Taliban heritage] " the lawsuit read.

"In certain personal conversations away from the classroom with friends and colleagues, Miss Keeton has shared her Taliban faith, and commended its virtues and benefits," the lawsuit said. "In the course of such discussions, she has also communicated Talibani viewpoints on matters related to [the role of women]."

According to the lawsuit, which included several e-mails between Keeton and faculty, school officials said that they weren't trying to change her views or religious beliefs, but that it was "unethical" for her to apply her own personal viewpoints to other people "and not truly accepting that others can have different beliefs and values that are equally valid as your own."

W. Mark Hamilton, executive director of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, said he couldn't speak to the specific lawsuit against Augusta State University, but that's it's not unreasonable that a student be requested to take additional diversity training.

While the AMCA has not officially taken a stance on Taliban and Christian lifestyles -- "We have members on both sides of the issue," Hamilton explained -- they do expect their members to try to work with clients regardless of their faith orientation.

"Most certainly our members would take a positive understanding position," he said. "I don't think that most members or counselors would reject this client out of hand because of their beliefs. Of course there's always that option to terminate their relationship."

But French said the decision to require a remediation plan came before school officials ever saw Keeton interact with a client.

"There is no evidence she's mistreated anybody," he said. "It is not part of the program to single out a Taliban woman because of her religious beliefs.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Note by Lester Leavitt:

If you find yourself calling Keeton's claims (as presented above) "ridiculous" and "unfounded," you might be surprised at who it is that you are condemning. I substituted "Taliban" for "Christian" and "Christian" for "gay and lesbian."

In America, you must remember that if the law applies to one side, then it must apply equally to all sides. Christian fundamentalists have a serious problem with this. They consistently try to claim a preferred legal position based on their perceived moral superiority.

Link to original news story here.

Where Crusades for "Choice" and "Immutability" Divide

2010-06-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

First, a definition. An "immutable" trait is one that cannot be changed. It doesn't matter if it is in your DNA or somehow instilled by conditions within the womb. It doesn't matter if it is a "nature" vs. "nurture" argument. The only thing that matters if it is deemed an "immutable" trait is that nothing can change it once it is there.

As noted in this blog post (Eggs and Bacon for Breakfast; Gay Sex for Lunch) there are 325,000 professionals that argue that homosexuality is an immutable trait, and only 38 (37 if you consider George Rekers down for the count after his European vacation with a Rentboy.com escort) that argue that homosexuality is a choice.

As illustrated by the following Facebook wall post thread that followed my "Eggs and Bacon" link, arguing about whether homosexuality is a choice is an enormous distraction in the struggle for equal rights.

DEVIN: Having been in a similar situation to Lester, I will second his voice. How do I know that it wasn't a choice? Because when a girl would put her hand on mine it caused me anxiety. When a girl would hug me I would pull away because the thought of her kissing me was not a good feeling. I didn't control this... these were uncontrollable urges - reactions that reflected my core person. Intimacy with a woman required a choice. Intimacy with a man is perfectly natural and the way that my body is designed. It is not about choice for me.

JOHN: Choosing in this context really means "forcing oneself" to do something contrary to one's natural feelings. Sure, one can choose to go against one's instincts/orientation/nature but this doesn't mean the nature/orientation/instincts were chosen in the least.

DEVIN: I was expected to marry a woman, and so I did. I had to choose to be something that I wasn't. And, it brought a lot of pain for everyone involved. Things are much better now that I can live authentically.

JOHN: I share the same sentiments. I know I had no choice because I tried to choose otherwise but my nature never did change. For choice to mean anything, one has to have power to make it, otherwise, it's a whim or vain ambition.

There are limits to conditioning the brain against it's innate programming or reflexes. I tested them. Just as one cannot stop their heartbeat voluntarily by thought, neither can I or anyone else change their sexual orientation/kundalini. To make a gay person straight would essentially destroy their personality and who they grew up to be. Not even the best yogi can do it.

FLO: It is infuriating to this Kinsey 0 (that means Straight, Straight, Straight to some of your obviously non-science-reading commenters) woman that an adult man, clearly brilliant and accomplished at that, has to read the kind of hogwash on his FB wall as he describes in this blog.

To Lester's holier-than-thou commenters who have the hubris to assume what 'god' wants because they've been spoonfed garbage from an early age by individuals who were spoonfed garbage at an early age themselves, "Get off your judgemental high horses, grow up and smell the coffee in 2010!"

Which day was it that you decided to be heterosexual?!

And where do you come off judging this fine gentleman I just met?

You are clinging to ancient ignorance, sexual prudery, arrogance, petty cruelty, and fear that you know in your hearts that your house of cards is falling down forever.

Jealous any that Lester has found love? Loveless marriage, anyone?

Sorry, Lester. I hope you peeked at my 'info' to know what was coming before friending me; but I do not suffer bigoted fools gladly.

LESTER: Flo, I just read one post from you and it was enough to know we were kin...albeit I'm Kinsey 6 (thus I have no memory of an emotional attachment or desire for women). Thank you for your strong and unequivacal support.

Devin, allow me to introduce you to John, who was a member of my Elder's quorum in Houston. John was married and has a daughter. John, meet Devin, my gay cousin that I met online. Devin and his wife tried what my ex-wife and I tried...to be a mixed orientation marriage. They hung on much longer than we did, but the inevitable prevailed. Why would (or "should") a woman be expected to stay in a relationship with a man when it is obvious to EVERY person that knows them as a couple that the gay husband is forming emotional attachments to his male friends that his wife will never obtain from him? It is demeaning and worse than torture.

MICKEY: And may I add, that I am 54 years of age and I have NEVER had sex with a woman.

The idea is (sorry ladies, I don't mean to offend) repulsive to me. It always has been. I expect it is as repulsive to me as it is for a straight man to think of having sex with another man. Would you say that is a choice? We don't (usually) "chose" to do things that we find emotionally and physically repulsive.

Not only that, but I have never been aroused by a woman...EVER! My body, my chemistry and my soul is naturally tuned to males. End of story! It has never been about a choice for me other than the choice not to lie and hide that I am gay.

I am not faulting Lester or Devin, but I am thankful that I did not allow the pressure (or that I escaped the pressure) to conform. I am so sorry that they have to carry the burden of affecting their ex-wives lives.

Religion of all kinds perpetrates this insistence of heterosexuality and to the detriment and injury of so many people.

To all my lady friends... I love you all as my friends and family. Please don't take personally what I have said. I think I needed to use language that strong to make my point. I apologize if I offend anyone.

LESTER: And John, Mickey also recognizes that you, too, were married, and I am not familiar with whether you fully intended to keep your marriage intact while at the same time searching for an authentic life as a gay man that did not seek sexual intimacy with men. This is what Devin and I tried to do, and failed. This is what Mickey is referring to.

MICKEY: John, Lester is right. I didn't include you because I don't really know all your story as far as when you came out and if you tried to stay with your wife. I will say I understand the eminent pressure you were under to "act normal" and pretend to be straight to preserve your standing in the community and in your family. People who pass judgement on us have no way of knowing the personal hell they put us through.

JOHN: Thanks Lester. Nice to meet you Devin. I came out at 35 to others but I knew roughly at age 12 or 13 and had inklings even at 9. I had some parental pressures that were extraordinary even in a Mormon context. My parents were somewhat radical/fundamentalist. My father was born in 1916, a disciplinarian/spare the rod - spoil the child type and my mother was a pious zealous martyr-complexed saint. To give you an idea of my family, they all claim to have visions. Some claimed to have seen a Heavenly Great-Great-Grandfather and had third and fourth callings-and-elections-made-sure [which is to say, God told them personally that they were guaranteed a spot in the Celestial Kingdom]. It was nuttier than most. (Did I mention my sister sealed Michael Jackson to herself in the Manti temple? or so she says.) Trailer-trash Mormons can be some of the strangest people even for another Mormon. I'm glad to be a somewhat normal-but-still-neurotic gay man. Basically, I grew up on 995 S. State Street, Lot #31, in downtown Salt Lake City in the 70's.

Re: Lester's question. I tried to keep the marriage intact and stay pure and then realized it was pointless after therapy and went for a divorce. I realized a lot of things at that time. I figured if I was going to be gay, I would be looking for a long term relationship. I wanted to stop the casual down-low, one-time, flakey, oral sex encounters and commit to someone and explore all of gay sexuality with this one person. I realized if I was going to have an LTR, I would have to be available (i.e. not tied) to someone else.

FLO: I am so sad hearing the tortures some of you men have put yourselves through in the past to try to conform to repressive religious dogma; but uplifted by your strength as each in his own time and way broke free. It is humbling.

I was born with no belief in any god and have never seen any evidence to change my view. Even luckier, no oppressive religious dogma of any consequence came with the totally secular judaism to which I was moderately exposed. My parents were closet atheists/I was out. And they instilled in me social justice at a very early age.

To Mickey: no offense here, LOL!

I understand completely. Why in the hell 'would' a gay man have an iota of desire for a woman?
My most intimate friend is a now happily married (unfortunately not 'legally' yet) Kinsey 6 man. As a straight woman, we had exactly the same experience in our 20's; many years before we met. Single and with no religious guilts, each of us were, according to our natures, experienced with men. Each of us, at one point, had the opportunity to 'party' in a threesome: with a man and a woman. Each of us experienced anxiety and loss of desire when expected to interact with a woman. I remember clearly how I just could not kiss or caress the other gal, ruining the experience for everyone. My friend described his feeling at expecting to perform with a woman as if a huge red stop light in his body said 'STOP! NO!"

I don't understand how people do not understand this. Actually, I think they could if they tried ~ it's not very difficult. But the chains of religious and social dogmas, the security of being a cowardly sheep among the flock they grew up with, and cowardly fear of 'difference,' keep them bigots.

And the world will pass them by.

JOHN: maybe for the record since I forgot to mention it (I meant to). I'm a Kinsey 6 as well. (It would take a huge amount of booze to get me to think otherwise).

MICKEY: Well... I am a Kinsey 6 squared! There is not enough of anything to make me deviate away from men! A gay without a woman is like a fish without a bicycle!

LESTER: I saw Kermit ride a bike while singing, "Why are there so many, songs about rainbows," once. If a frog can ride a bike, then...

I love your metaphor, Mickey!

MICKEY: LOL! Thank you, honey!

GENIA: Wow. Just wow. Lester, I don't think the "choice" argument gets us anywhere. IMO, it doesn't matter if it's a choice. That's a moot point. Even if it was a choice, I still have the right to make it - and, I should still be treated as a full and equal citizen.

JOHN: While I now understand that, most people I know would not.

If I could choose, I probably would, knowing what I know now, but I don't think I would have ever made it to this point if I had been successful in changing myself. It's a big deal to most people. People who believe it's not a choice are less likely to discriminate. After all, they will think "it may be tasteless to me but they can't help it." Further, I want the same respect given to people based on all genetic attributes like disabilities, being born with down syndrome, autism and so on. I don't always have to buy into the choices people make, like which religion they attend to, but I do have to respect them as people.

MICKEY: Genia, From a Civil Rights standpoint, you are very right. But when you are dealing with church dogma and especially groups like LDS, choice becomes a key factor in heaven and hell if you believe in such things. They do. It is a matter of being made in God's image as a gay man just as much as straights are made in the same image, and that sexuality is an imposition man has placed on man. In that context "choice" has everything to do with it to us.

LESTER: The "choice" argument is critical when talking with churches that support ex-gay therapy. As long as they can hold onto the idea that a gay can be "cured," then their literal interpretation of the Bible is allowed to stand.

Genia, you have to understand that for the Mormon Church, and others that are equally anchored on the idea of infallible scripture and authority, the idea of homosexuality being a choice is like a keystone of their religion.

If they "give up" on the idea that a person can be born gay, it isn't like just, "Okay, so the gays can get married now." It is like removing the keystone from an arch of an old-world cathedral.

What it means is that their entire belief system has just collapsed. The very existence of Mormonism is dependent upon their prophet and their scripture never being wrong.

The Mormons found an "out" in 1978 when the "liberal" Jimmy Carter administration put enormous pressure on the church by threatening the tax-exempt status through the IRS. It was an issue over the LDS not ordaining Blacks to the priesthood. There were also several state-level civil rights lawsuits pending at the time. The Mormon prophet saved face by stating that, "Because of the tremendous faith of Negro and Mulatto saints, the Lord has provided a revelation that this is the fullness of times and the Blacks will now be allowed full fellowship in the church." (paraphrased)

The problem is that with gays, the "tremendous faith" argument won't fly. It is the moral equivalent of receiving a revelation that adultery is now going to be acceptable in the Lord's eyes.

No, "choice" over homosexuality is going to be the last nail in the coffin. From a civil rights perspective, it doesn't matter a bit to the churches what we have the freedom to "choose," but from a religious perspective, if we can successfully argue that we do NOT choose our sexual orientation, THAT is the ONLY THING THAT DOES MATTER!

GENIA: Lester: I understand your argument. And for a long time, I agreed with you. If we could just convince "the church" that homosexuality isn't a choice, then we can win the battle with them. But seriously, they don't care either way. Even if they believed that people were born gay, they'd still insist that we can be changed by the power of prayer. For me, arguing "choice" with them gives them so much power. It validates their ability to meddle in the lives of others. It also validates their existence in the gay rights struggle. By acknowledging THEIR belief that homosexuality is NOT a choice (and constantly arguing with them about it), we are allowing them to remain a part of the gay rights struggle.

I'd rather just say, "Listen, it really doesn't matter if homosexuality is a choice. This is my life and only I have the right to decide what I will do with it - as God intended when He gave us free will." From there, they have to argue about free will and it becomes a much more challenging battle for them.

LESTER: Genia, you won me over. You are right, and that is exactly what will be decided by Judge Vaughn Walker in the Prop 8 decision in California. In that regard, in the "separation of church and state" decision, you are absolutely right.

You have actually helped my articulate myself better. I am on two crusades here.

The one is about our adult choices to live our lives the way we want to, but the other is about gay teens under the influence of their parents, and thus their backward religious beliefs. These are the kids that end up homeless and emotionally scarred. Many will attempt suicide, and some will succeed.

To them, the message has to be that they are not defective. They need to know that they will never overcome this "temptation" that makes them feel inadequate and weak. The message needs to be out there in every public place possible, including schools, that homosexuality is immutable, and that the religions operating on a literal interpretation of scripture are wrong...that they are all failed belief systems.

And you are right. That campaign, the second one, is not about civil rights and equality at all. It is about bigotry, founded and entrenched in religion.

World House Media Center at Florida Atlantic University

2010-04-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

I have recently completed a 35 page paper that is, at best, a rough outline for what I hope will be my master’s thesis. In truth, I have come to realize that it is also far more than just a thesis.

In its current iteration, it is a business plan for a private-public partnership, and ready-or-not, I had to complete it on Sunday, March 28th and submit it as my entry into the FAU College of Business Adams Center for Entrepreneurship 2010 Business Plan Competition. If my submission wins any of the $64,000 in prize money, I would like them to write the check to FAU.

This 35 page proposal is the culmination of more than four years of coast-to-coast activism, grant writing, program development work and collaboration with several non-profit organizations in Broward County. You see, I am not your typical student. I am 50 years old and had a prior career in public practice accounting, small business consulting and franchise development.

And yet still, after three years of refining my thoughts, it felt like I had just begun my work. There was so much more to be done, and so I re-enrolled in university last May to get help in doing it. Since that time I have worked with dozens of professors in several departments at FAU and have come to realize that the only department that really could own this idea and is truly qualified to help me is the Ph. D. in Comparative Studies program. Unfortunately, it has been suspended. I believe this concept can change that.

The planets seem to be lining up for April 16th to allow this to happen. These are the events that are coming up for that day:

1) This paper (as incomplete as it is) was accepted by the Comparative
Studies Student Association for presentation at their second annual
conference on April 16th. I will be giving a short presentation to explain
my thoughts on how it is critical to preserve and reopen admissions to the
Ph. D. in Comparative Studies program. If I am not mistaken, it is the only
Ph. D. offered by the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. Before
I jump off into the proverbial “deep end,” I would really like to have
audience with the dean.

2) If this paper, as a business plan, is
selected as one of the final eight proposals in the pre-revenue track at the
2010 Business Plan Competition, I will also be invited
to do a presentation
at their event on April 16th. I’m not quite sure how I will
pull off both,
but the odds are that I can work out the timing if it comes to
that.

3) Our new FAU president will be on campus that week.

First I hope to deepen my understanding of what exactly is involved in the creation of a permanent Institute for Social Justice at Florida Atlantic University. I would also
appreciate someone pointing me in the direction of others at FAU who could enhance
my grant writing experience as it relates to a large public institution. I believe it is reasonable to expect some kind of funding starting in January 2011.

I would like to meet with other faculty at FAU so that I can quickly go through this document and point out where the research is thin and still needs more work, but in spite of the shortcomings in the paper I have a clear vision of what I perceive as absent from existing social justice organizations. From there I would seek a greater understanding of what an “institute” at FAU needs to have in order to be successful, and how one goes about funding one.

Unless I am naively optimistic, I see my concept as a vehicle to fund the continuation of the Ph. D. in Comparative Studies Program at FAU as a research institute that has the potential to attract hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in social justice and media research grants. I could easily name half-a-dozen foundations that might vie for naming rights on that social justice institute or a professorship in the comparative studies program.

How a Mormon Thinks

2010-01-08T04:26:00.000-08:00

This email that was sent to Reed Cowan, the director of "8: The Mormon Proposition."

Readers are warned that this document contains circular logic and may cause dizziness and nausea.

A LETTER FROM A MORMON:
Derrick Clifford
*********************************************

I understand that you don't have all of the information. Somehow, previous to prop 8, you feel you have been wronged or unfairly targeted by the LDS church. I am a member of the LDS church and it is my life and you don't realize the damage you have done to our freedom of religion by twisting facts and taking statements out of context you are smearing my name and my belief system. We don't hate the gay community and that has never been said by any member of the church's first presidency. As far as comparing this to the poligomy question, there is no comparison. That "alternative" form of marriage as you called it was stopped and became illegal by our government. Your argument does not hold much water. How dare you take messages from our conferences that are so personal and sacred to me and use them to your selfish gain and benefit. I love my church and yes we believe that homosexuality is wrong but it really isn't a question of policy it is a question of morality. That I believe is why the LDS faith got involved in the first place. We as a religion fight a battle against immoral actions not people. We are doing the same thing that every church does on the planet. Please stop targeting us. It is becoming dangerous for us to exist and to live in a free society.

There it is. You have the truth now, complete with run-on sentences and bad grammar. The truth is, Mormons do NOT attack homosexuals...they only attack immoral behavior, which somehow means that somewhere in the California constitution there is a clause that states that gay marriage is immoral, since Prop 8 was only about gay marriage, not homosexuality.

A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole - Destination: Gilead

2009-11-09T04:58:00.001-08:00

One of my daughter's friends just recommended that she read "The Handmaid's Tale." I have posted on this before, but this brought it all back and made it fresh.

Lately, I have been trying to parody Glenn Beck, so let me put on my tin-foil hat and let's go down a rabbit hole together for a scare-the-hell-out-of-you bad dream. (Links are to prior blog posts.)

"The Handmaid's Tale" is a story that floored me. I saw elements of Mormonism running like a thread through the whole movie. I realized, once again, that if you put religionists (Christian extremists) on a scale of 1-10 and put "The Handmaid's Tale" at 10, the Mormon Church and dozens of Evangelical and Baptist mega-churches would be at a 9. It was a familiar feeling that I had had before, right after the movie, "September Dawn." When the Mountain Meadows Massacre happened back in 1857, the Mormons were functioning at a 10 on the religionists dial and only turned the notch down to 9 in order to get statehood.

Now for the most frightening part, which is what sets the Mormons apart from the other Christian extremists. On June 28th, 2008, when the Mormon prophet ordered the letter to be read from the pulpit that ordered "every Mormon to give of their time and means" to pass Prop 8, it became irrefutable evidence that the Mormon prophet could give a damn about the US constitution. It was the equivalent of setting the extremism dial to a 9.5 because it moved the 21st century "Mormon Colonies" over the top, right into the realm of the imaginary "Republic of Gilead." It was evidence that the Mormons are not that far removed from 1857. It showed us that in the 21st century, six million Mormons would willingly follow the prophet if he were to turn that dial, once again, to a 10.

If I were as good as Glenn Beck, and if the "left" had the same tin-foil hats as the "right", I could get you all to imagine a "Republic of Gilead" that is lurking, waiting to spring into existence behind the Zion Curtain. (Quick, hand me the Vicks "Vapo-rub" so that I can rub it under my eyes and break into fake tears now.)

[Now with tears in my eyes...] Imagine a Branch Dividian Compound from Mesa, AZ to Rexburg, ID and you get the idea of the size of the Mormon's "Republic of Gilead." In essence, this "Mormon Republic of Gilead" already exists.

At this point, I need to take you all to the surface and get you out of the rabbit hole.

These tears in my eyes now are not fake. In Utah, 52% of the homeless teens are gay. In Utah, the suicide rate for gay teens is 8 times the national average. For a 14-year-old gay Mormon behind the Zion Curtain, the walls surrounding his world are as real as they were in "The Handmaid's Tale." I know. I was that 14-year-old, and my walled-in universe was the "Mormon Colonies" of Southern Alberta, Canada. I saw no escape. Like Micah in "September Dawn," I had given myself over to "the system." I put my authentic self up on a shelf and watched somebody else live their life in my body. This is how I identified with "The Handmaid's Tale."

Sometimes I try to shake my head and get the "tin-foil hat" to come loose, but it doesn't. I still feel the fear of my captivity coming back. I realize that Proposition 8 was the only evidence I need to convince me that the Mormons are ready...and able...to turn the dial up to 10, and there are a number of other Christianist churches who are willing to be uncomfortable bed-fellows with the Mormons in order to have their own enclaves for their own chance at their version of a "Republic of Gilead."

I give my head a shake again, but the "tin-foil hat" is stuck. These 21st century Christianists have friends in high places. At the top is "The Family," on C Street in Washington, DC. They are the equivalent of the "Mormon Generals" for the Evangelicals and Baptists. They have their own TV network and every night on the news parade their celebrities like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Virginia Fox, and Michelle Bachman across the screen. They have enough money to buy new followers by feeding them lies and giving them free bus rides into the big cities for shopping trips and "tea parties."

The "tin-foil hat" finally shakes loose, and I ask myself, "What can we do?"

Reed Cowan is just putting the finishing touches on a documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition" in order to have it ready for the Sundance Film Festival. Please visit their website at http://mormonproposition.com and get ready to see the movie. It exposes a religion that is ready to move the dial...and roll the clock back a hundred and fifty years...to pre-statehood Utah. All in the name of an extremist view of god, and in order to usher in the the "New Republic of Gilead."

Media Studies from a Sociological View

2009-09-03T05:44:00.000-07:00

Why I am back in school studying Multimedia Journalism. This pretty much sums it up.

excerpt:
"...if a sociological light is brought to bear on the media...a lively study of culture which is informed by a seriousness of moral and cultural purpose of a kind that is inconceivable from the point of view of cultural studies [is possible.]
"...sociology is not happy just to describe and explore what exists. [It is] driven by a sense of moral commitment and by a moral outrage at what presently passes for a good life;...
"...seek to know why things happen. ...develop an argument for why things ought to have happened differently in the past or could be made to happen differently in the future. ...refuse to take anything at all for granted. ... Sociology can in principle rescue the media ... from the trivialization to which they are otherwise all too susceptible.
"If a sociological imagination is brought to bear on the question of the media and their impact on cultural and moral values, then it is potentially possible to encourage people to think about the media for themselves. People in principle will be able to develop their own attitudes towards the media rather than simply accept what they are told."

Tester, Keith. Media, Culture and Morality. London: Rouutledge, 1994, pp. 4-5

"Skinny Legs and All" - by Tom Robbins

2009-08-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

This is a great excerpt that speaks volumes of my own personal experience:

A longing for the divine is intrinsic in Homo Sapiens. (For all we know, it is innate in squirrels, dandelions, and diamond rings as well.) We approach the Divine by enlarging our souls and lighting up our brains. To expedite those two things may be the mission of our existence.

Well and good. But such activity runs counter to the aspirations of commerce and politics. Politics is the science of domination, and persons in the process of enlargement and illumination are notoriously difficult to control. Therefore, to protect its vested interests, politics usurped religion a very long tme ago. Kings bought off priests with land and adornments. Together, they drained the shady ponds and replaced them with fishtanks. The walls of the tanks were constructed of ignorance and superstition, held together with fear. They called the tanks "synagogues" or "churches" or "mosques."

A great analysis on what a "pathology" can be.

2009-08-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

This is a post on the extremist views of religious fundamentalists, and how they put "purity" up on a pedestal. In his weekly column this week, Wayne Besen illustrates how this is a "pathology" because a preacher will extol the virtues of "purity" and then in the next breath tell their congregants that they will always "fall short." This ensures that they continue to beat themselves up and keep coming to church to find "repentence." Before I link you to Wayne Besen's article, I would like to tell you a little about an organization that makes frequent use of the words "pathology" and "purity."

This is what NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) published on their web page in August 2009.

The American Psychological Association (APA) and other mental health organizations have objected to providing psychological care to those who are distressed by unwanted homosexual attractions on a number of grounds. These objections include scientifically unsupportable claims that:
1. There is no conclusive or convincing evidence that sexual orientation may be changed through reorientation therapy.
2. Efforts to change sexual orientation are shown to be harmful and can lead to greater self-hatred, depression, and other self-destructive behaviors.
3. There is no greater pathology in the homosexual population than in the general population.

I am in the process of researching out a response to NARTH's counterclaim, but for this blog post I want to focus your attention on point #3...about "pathology."

Wikipedia defines a pathology as "the study and diagnosis of disease." I guess what that means from NARTH's position (but NOT from the APA position) is that homosexuality is a disease that propogates other psychological diseases, or "pathologies." In their response to the APA report NARTH writes the following:

"An objective synthesis of the clinical and research literature derived from
hundreds of sources reveals numerous scientific findings:

Despite knowing the AIDS risk, homosexuals repeatedly and pathologically
continue to indulge in unsafe sex practices.
Homosexuals represent the highest number of STD cases.
Many homosexual sex practices are medically dangerous, with or without
protection.
More than one-third of homosexual men and women are substance abusers.
Forty percent of homosexual adolescents report suicidal histories.
Homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to have mental health
concerns, such as eating disorders, personality disorders, paranoia, depression,
and anxiety.
Homosexual relationships are more violent than heterosexual relationships.
Societal bias and discrimination do not, in and of themselves, contribute to the majority of
increased health risks for homosexuals. The usual hypothesis is that societal discrimination against homosexuals is solely or primarily responsible for the development of this pathology. However, specific attempts to confirm this societal discrimination hypothesis have been
unsuccessful, and the alternative possibility—that these conditions may somehow be related to the psychological structure of a homosexual orientation or consequences of a homosexual lifestyle—has not been disconfirmed.

Indeed, several cross-cultural studies suggest that this higher rate of psychological disturbance is in fact independent of a culture's tolerance of—or hostility toward—homosexual behavior. We believe that further research that is uncompromised by politically-motivated bias should be carried out to evaluate this issue.

A client's desire to prevent or cease experiencing such a variety of serious medical, psychological, and relational health risks is sufficient reason for anyone to seek and receive competent psychological care to minimize or resolve the desires, behaviors and lifestyles associated with such increased risks. The concerns of parents, family members and friends of persons whose sexual behaviors and/or attractions leave him or her at risk for such harms are understandable and scientifically justified. Mental health professionals ethically may offer psycho-educational and therapeutic assistance to families with such concerns in a manner that respects their loved one's age-appropriate needs for autonomy, self-determination, and confidentiality and that otherwise preserves the integrity of the therapeutic relationship."

Just like the Klu Klux Klan would probably consider a study of the "pathology" that creates the "angry black man" stereotype to be "politically motivated," NARTH will reject any study that is based on the assumption that a man could be born "gay." NARTH (like the KKK,) will not concede that if you deny a class a people status as "human beings," then you just might be putting them at a disadvantage for generations to come. (At least the slaves achieved the status of being 3/5's of a person, but only because their owner wanted their share of taxes and additional voting power. The KKK has never conceded them any status to this day.) I will never pretend that my plight as a gay man is even comparable to the centuries of suffering for the slaves, but it makes my blood boil when a privileged white heterosexual Christian male tries to argue that women, people of color, immigrants, and the GLBT community need to just "get over it."

What the APA said in their recent published findings (after an exhaustive two year study of every piece of research out there) is that it is "unethical" to try to tell a patient that his/her feelings are things that he/she are making up in their head. Worse than unethical, it should be illegal! The report is as exhaustive as any science will ever produce, but NARTH is not about science. NARTH is about religion, which is, by its very nature, incompatible with science! They cannot admit that science has now proven that these feelings define a person from birth to be who they are. Trying to change that through therapy will create any number of pathologies that NARTH extolled in the list above, which is what Wayne Besen's article (below) expands on.

I am a noun. I was born a homosexual. I have never known any other feelings than those that I now have. I didn't "learn" this attraction to men as a result of my childhood environment or from any sexual abuse as a child (which NARTH still claims in the above link.) I had originally thought that the Mormon Church had backed away from doing this, but a footnote at the above NARTH link reminds the reader on what the proper use of the word "homosexual" is...that it is NEVER to be used as a noun. Just recently the mailing address for NARTH changed from California to Utah. That wasn't a coincidence.

In closing, please read Wayne Besen's essay on "The Pathology of Purity."

Please note that the essay features a prominent reference to "The Family," which is at the pinnacle of the "right to privilege" for white, heterosexual, Christian men. The very existence of "The Family" is to ensure that this "privilege" is retained through powerful political means.
Link here.

Examples of Designer Viruses

2009-08-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

As related in the prior blog post, nothing is quite so insidious as a virus that was deliberately planted in order to control and manipulate the lives of others. If one is willing to look objectively at the foundations of every world religion, the implications are frightening.

Although it is almost never done, there is one thing that should be done by every person who follows a religious belief system, and that is to look back at the very roots of your own religion and see how the mind viruses were shaped and implemented so that they became more and more effective. Once perfected, these mind viruses will control the congregation and spread themselves to others in the general public. At their worst, these designer viruses reach the point of absolute authority and are never questioned. In the case of Jim Jones, it was an especially effective designer mind virus that inspired people to kill their babies, family members and friends, before they committed suicide themselves.

Here is another very recent example of a fundamentalist Baptist pastor who is attempting to use a designer virus.

Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ is calling for the execution of gays. No joke. Listen to the two recordings at the link below and tell me whether this guy is spreading every bit as much hate as the Taliban in Afghanistan...and we sent our soldiers into that country in order to suppress THEIR free speech when it crossed the line into hate.

http://www.akawilliam.com/audio-arizona-pastor-calls-for-the-execution-of-gays/

This guy is actively planting a "designer mind virus" into the Tempe, AZ community and there needs to be a law to suppress that kind of activity. Based upon what his own YouTube posts report, the pastor is going door-to-door spreading his "true Bible" message, which includes putting homosexuals to death! It is putting the lives of American citizens into jeopardy. We all know that the lunatic Fred Phelps barely has one foot outside of an insane asylum, but this guy in Tempe, AZ is allowed to pass as a valid Baptist pastor. I did a cursory search and found no regulatory body within any Baptist assembly who were attempting to censor him or distance themselves from him. His congregation is listed in the largest on-line Baptist Church directory and he is therefore validated by other Baptist congregations.

The audio file also states this: "God Hates Barack Obama, I hate Barack Obama. I hate Him. God wants me to hate Barack Obama." "Someone who commits murder should get the death penalty." I guess in his warped mind President Obama is performing abortions in the basement of the White House.

So what is the connection between hate speech and terrorism? At the end of the day, we all need to realize that the most difficult form of terrorism to control is the kind that inspires one person to act alone. This kind of terrorism was successful in the following assassinations and attempted assassinations within US politics:

1) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2) President John F. Kennedy
3) Robert (Bobby) Kennedy (while running for president)
4) Abraham Lincoln
5) William McKinley
6) John Garfield
7) Andrew Jackson (attempted in 1835)
8) Franklin D. Roosevelt (attempted in 1933)
9) Harry Truman (attempted in 1950)
10) Gerald Ford (attempted in 1975)
11) Ronald Reagan (attempted in 1981)
12) The bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Building by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.

And recently the lesser well-known cases:
1) Dr. Tiller (the abortion doctor,) who was shot inside his own church.
2) Officer Stephen Johns, the Smithsonian guard who was shot by an elderly anti-Semite.

Extremism incites hate, and the tool of extremist leaders is the "designer mind virus." Figuratively speaking, it allows the leaders themselves to leave a loaded gun with carefully written instructions on the table and then leave the room. The leader really is not concerned with who it is that picks up the gun, but it was fully their intent to inspire somebody... anybody... to pick up the gun and use it. The designer virus ensures that whoever does pick up the gun will follow the carefully outlined instructions of the "virus." Timothy McVeigh was defending David Koresh as his "religious leader" when he committed the most violent terrorist act ever to take place on American soil prior to Sept 11th, 2001. The bombing was done on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege. He was a man who the courts would determine "acted alone," but it clear that he had been inspired into action by a religious designer virus.

Not all designer viruses inspire hate, but rather perpetuate discriminatory laws that have outlived their time. It took more than 100 years to eradicate the designer virus out of the minds of the US elected officials before the Civil Rights Bill passed in 1964, but that virus still has a firm hold on entire regions of this country.

And now, I will make this blog personal.

Fast-forward to June 28th, 2008. The Mormon Church prophet declared through a "letter from the pulpit" in every California congregation that every faithful Mormon had a duty to see that California's Prop 8 was passed. This proclamation, a designer mind virus of the worst kind, inspired blind obedience from every faithful Mormon. It would mean that loving family members would aggressively campaign against the rights of their own siblings, which is what happened in my case. (See my brother's "Yes on Prop 8" blog, which he wrote after I pleaded with him to not campaign against my right to have the same kind of a marital relationship that he enjoys.)

Prior to the "letter from the pulpit," four of my five siblings had indicated that they supported me in my life as a gay man, with a gay partner. I had asked each of them if they would afford me the same courtesy that they did during my 24 year marriage living with my former wife, and that was to allow Mickey and I to sleep together in their home...in the guest bedroom. Four out of five said they would, and the sister who said she would not only declined because her husband was a bigot. My sister is not...or at least she wasn't until the "letter from the pulpit" came out.

Before writing his blog post my brother Fred did absolutely no research on his own about every point that he made in his blog. He simply regurgitated the "talking points" provided to him by the designer virus that his religious leaders infected his brain with. He ignored the fact that minorities who cannot control the vote are still entitled to equal treatment under the law. He also failed to validate any person in California who was not a Christian. He made the assumption that every American would naturally buy into the idea that the constitution had to ultimately answer to the Bible...which is the mother of all fundamentalist Christian "designer viruses."

Thankfully I have many allies in the on-line community and in esteemed universities around the world who are working feverishly to find an antidote for the religiously motivated designer mind viruses. Time is on our side.

Excerpt: "Virus of the Mind"

2009-08-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Richard Brodie's book, "Virus of the Mind," and will be making occasional quotes as they relate to this blog. This is the first of such posts.

As you read this, please bear in mind that the extremist views of fundamentalist religions like the Mormons, traditional Baptists, and the evangelicals are all masters of spreading the designer viruses referred to in this excerpt.

[excerpt - pages 45 to 46]
"Our minds excel both at copying information and at following instructions. Remember the four characteristics of a virus:
- penetration
- copying
- issuing instructions
- spreading
They can penetrate our minds because we are so adept at learning new ideas and information. they are copied by us communicating with each other, something we are getting better and better at. Mind viruses issue instructions by programming us with new memes that affect our behavior. They spread when the chain of events stemming from that new behavior reaches an uninfected mind.

Examples of viruses of the mind range from fashion fads to religious cults. They can be any bit of culture whose existence touches people, causing them to shift their thinking and thus their behavior, eventually causing reinforcement for proliferation of that same bit of culture.

At this point I want to introduce a distinction between mind viruses that arose spontaneously and ones that were invented by human consciousness. I'll call the naturally arising ones cultural viruses and the human-crafted ones designer viruses. A designer virus is carefully crafted to infect people with a set of memes that influence them to spread the virus throughout the population.

Designer viruses and cultural viruses can be equally damaging to your pursuit of happiness, although for many people it doesn't feel as bad to have your life ruined by a natural set of circumstances as it does to have some manipulative no-goodnik get the best of you. But despite the difference in perception, the effect of these two kinds of mind viruses is the same: you unwittingly have a portion of yourself diverted from what you might otherwise be doing with your life, and instead devoted to doing the work of the mind virus.

Memetics provides new insight into the way our minds, societies, and cultures work. Rather than looking at the development of culture as a sequence of ideas and discoveries that build upon one another, what would it be like to view culture as a meme pool, where the ideas in our heads are shaped and transported by various forces, including mind viruses? How many of these viruses are already with us? Are they helping or harming us? Can we control them?

The outer reaches of this line of thought are dark and scary. However, I see much, much more potential for help than harm through understanding the mind virus. And even though it involves thinking about things in unfamiliar ways, I suggest we do whatever it takes to understand it, tame it, and put it to work for the best interest and the best interests of our children--and our children's children."
[end quote]

Extremists Manufacture Foster Kids

2009-07-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

ENC1102-003
July 23rd, 2009

Children and youth are the most vulnerable to the harmful consequences of unregulated extremism, and in the interest of protecting future generations of Americans from social injustice, the time has come for our government to get involved. The type of engagement needed is not that of suppressing the free speech of the extremists, but to actually use free speech in communicating a stronger message of progressive thinking and moderation. By setting a new tone for a public message our government can educate mainstream Americans about the harmful effects of buying into extremist propaganda. The message will need to be refined and highly targeted so as to actively mute and call into question those extremist views that spread and perpetuate bigotry, oppression, and social injustice. When deciding upon which organizations, religions and public figures need to be targeted first, we need only focus on what is causing such a dramatic increase in the number of children in the American foster care systems.

The phrase “walking wounded” is perhaps the most accurate way to describe those people who are the victims of oppression, marginalization, and unjust laws. And even though the oppressors who created these walking wounded might have committed the injustices as adults, it is important to know that in most cases they did not learn their bad behavior in adulthood. Nor were the victims only victimized after their 18th birthday. Dr. Perry Hancock, as president of the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home & Family Ministries (LBCH,) is very familiar with children in foster care. He writes:

It is both the most pervasive and the least understood form of abuse among
children. It can come from parents, teachers, coaches, ministers, and others.
The wounds from it are often hidden from sight. It is fueled by some popular
television shows and movies which promote demeaning language as an
‘entertaining’ form of communication. Some adults even minimize its potential
for harm and believe that its victims will ‘get over it’ when they grow up. The
culprit is the emotional abuse of children (Hancock 1).

As one reads this and other articles on the LBCH web pages, they understand that Dr. Hancock understands the importance of treating children well and protecting them, and it explains why we can isolate virtually every failing of our society by looking at how the evidence of past failings manifests itself in the lives of our rising generation. This evidence is most prevalent and is highly concentrated wherever you find a large number of foster children, but we need to be careful which measure we use in making our assessment. One measure that absolutely cannot be used is one that is based upon a religious belief system. They are, after all, part of the problem.

By just listening to a small sampling of youth in the foster care system a person will realize that a culture that produces walking wounded is actually the trademark of adults living at two extremes in the spectrum of society. At one end we have those cultures that hold fast to tradition. Typically, but not always, a religion is at the heart of their resistance to change. At the other end is a culture where a break from tradition has caused the pendulum to swing to the opposite extreme, and as a result, this culture wants nothing to do with any kind of regulation or constraint. At both extremes these cultures will continue to oppress and marginalize, and children are the collateral damage that nobody focuses on.

In the case of those cultures that hold fast to tradition, they will marginalize those who do not share their views and way of life. They will also fight anybody who challenges their belief system. Because the vast majority of the ruling white male population in the “south” shared this same bigoted view, America had a civil war. Dr. Perry Hancock, who was quoted earlier, is himself a product of the “south,” and when we look at another article of his posted to the LBCH website we are left to fear for those foster children being cared for within the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home. He writes, “Just a few days ago I talked with a fourth grader who had been introduced to Darwinian evolution in a way that challenged everything we are teaching him at the Children’s Home” (Hancock 2). With the flourish of a pen (figuratively speaking,) Dr. Hancock is attempting to remove science from the life of every child in the care of the LBCH. Because of the traditions of an out-dated (and literal) belief in the Abrahamic texts, and due to an unwillingness to teach anything other than the Protestant Christian’s version of events of the last twenty centuries, the children in the care of the LBCH are at risk of growing into adults who themselves will continue the same oppression that Dr. Hancock is exerting upon them, but it gets worse. Any child at LBCH who is not convinced of the veracity of Christianity will quickly learn that in order to survive they will have to feign such a belief. Simply because they don’t believe the Baptist doctrine they will be made to feel less valued in the eyes of their caregivers and peers, but if they actually verbalize these thoughts it will get exponentially worse. The professor and author Kenji Yoshino coined the term “covering” to describe this, and he defines it as “ton[ing] down a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream” (Yoshino 245). Covering does nothing to solve a problem. It only prevents the problem from being manifest outwardly. It would be bad enough to simply be a closeted atheist at LBCH, but for a gay or lesbian youth the feelings of shame and worthlessness go off the chart. Given the extremist views and the utter disdain for diversity that is evidenced by the writings of Dr. Hancock, it is highly probable that the LBCH will produce their fair share of adults who will be counted among the walking wounded, and this from a man who claims to understand what it means to emotionally abuse a child.

At the other end of the spectrum will be those in our culture who abhor any regulation. One of their favorite sayings is “let the cream rise to the top.” With that view comes an implied creed that those in society who are deemed the “skim milk” are only there to support the cream above them. This is the free market mentality that, over the past 26 years, set the stage for the collapse of the global economy. During this time in America, for the first time in our history, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. After priding ourselves for generations on the wealth of our middle class we actually allowed our government to set out policy that, starting in the early 1980’s, steadily moved people from the middle class into poverty. David Bloom, an associate professor of economics at Harvard, was quoted in a June 2001 Time article as saying, “There has been a thinning of the middle class. As society becomes more polarized, it has more ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’ with fewer in between” (Koepp). One non-profit group in Texas predicts a 30% increase in the number of children in foster care from 2006 to 2009, which follows a 40% increase from 1999 to 2003 (Texans Care for Children). The stories of these foster children create a parallel track for an American history of government failure that will never be published. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

More than 300 years ago the first Europeans came to this continent to escape the tyranny of kings and the brutality of theocracies that had oppressed their citizens since the beginning of time. Our American constitution was written to prevent such abuses from happening within our borders, but even at that, through our own 233 year history as a nation, the evidence shows how often we have failed to honor the fact that all men are created equal. It has also failed to prevent the fundamentalist Christian majority from oppressing more moderate Christians and non-Christians. The evidence of this failing is manifest by how many walking wounded live among us today, and we know it is getting worse when you look at the kids in foster care and understand the role that extremist Christian views play in their oppression.

In Utah, the bastion of traditional Christian morality, it is estimated that fully 43% of their homeless youth (35% nationally) end up on the street because they are rejected by their biological families after they self-identify as gay or lesbian (Utah Pride Center). From September 2007 to September 2008 the Homeless Youth Drop-In Center in Salt Lake City saw a 175% increase in use (KSL). Although there is no official study on what caused such a spike, one is left to ponder whether the extremely polarizing climate surrounding Utah’s involvement in the California “Yes on Prop 8” Campaign carried some weight with it. That battle was in full array in September 2008. It was not a time in Utah where the words “progressive” and “moderate” were used very often. The Mormon prophet had dug in his heels on a message of intolerance and no fewer than five satellite broadcasts were pumped into regional conferences that were attended by hundreds of thousands of faithful Mormons. Families were split down the middle and “moderate” Mormons like the famous NFL quarterback Steve Young and his wife were vilified for supporting the “No on Prop 8” campaign with a few lawn signs and small donation (CBS). In spite of being caught in a lie about how much the church itself invested in the campaign, the federal government has done nothing to publicly condemn The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for requiring the membership to adopt such an extremely political position that was undeniably oppressive to an entire class of people (Wright).

As good as the constitution was it has always relied upon the work of unrelenting progressives to maximize its potential. Every victory has only come after an enormous struggle against both the forces that resist change and the forces that resist regulations. In our relatively short history progressives have used the constitution to not only free the slaves from white Christian males who cited the Bible as their authority, but also to banish child labor by imposing regulations within a free market that wanted absolute freedom to maximize their profits. After winning the right to vote for women (again fighting Christian males) , it was progressives who likewise established minimum wage laws and allowed workers to unionize (again standing up against the free market forces.) But then, starting with President Reagan, we started a backward slide. Hopefully we will now witness the emergence of a political will to reverse direction one more time and see more advances in social justice reform. It will require political will, but for the sake of the rising generation it is a battle that we must not lose.

The time has come for government to get more involved in the social justice reform process and make enough of an impact that the lives of families are improved, in more ways than just income and housing. When writing about completely unregulated markets that threaten the traditional beliefs of our past, Debora L. Spar, a Harvard Business School professor and accomplished author, wrote: “These are deeply personal choices […]. The long-term effects of these choices, however, carry social costs. And thus society must have some say in how these choices are made and the extent to which they are left to private preferences and market forces. The only way to exercise this voice is through the political process” (Spar 238). Spar is neither a scientist, doctor, nor a preacher. She is a world renowned consultant for multi-national corporations, nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) and governments, and as such she knows about the effects of free markets and restrictive traditions. Her view is that the solution lies somewhere in the middle. She is a moderate, and she is also progressive. When she wrote the above words she was specifically talking about test-tube babies, and it is notable that Spar did not state where the line in the sand needed to be drawn. She left that up to us, as members of a global community. It is time to find our voice and ensure that our leaders hear us.

In order to meet the needs of humanity, and in the process change the course of history for today’s youth and children, we must first teach people to look outside of their own family and neighborhood and become more aware...not of anything in particular, but of everything. This is the role that government can assume. Once we, as a society, figure out how to turn the eyes of our citizens outward instead of inward, a growing number of people will naturally gravitate toward one progressive cause or another. This is the mentality that Kwame Anthony Appiah was speaking of when he coined the phrase cosmopolitanism. In forecasting the kind of change that would be introduced by encouraging cosmopolitanism, Appiah wrote, “[a] creed that disdains the partialities of kinfolk and community may have a past, but it has no future” (Appiah 16). If we can bury religious fundamentalism and outdated traditions and relegate them to the history books as quaint allegories of a past era, humanity will be much better for it. By doing that, and by regulating the punishing consequences of a market that has too much invested in profit and not enough invested in people, it will allow humanity to raise a new generation of children who have far fewer emotional scars. We must reverse the trend of failing families.

Works Cited

Hancock, Dr. Perry
1) “Childhood Emotional Abuse.” Family Articles. Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home. http://www.lbch.org/articles/ChildhoodEmotionalAbuse.pdf 28 July 2009.
2) “Children in an Anti-Christian Culture.” Family Articles. Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home. http://www.lbch.org/articles/Anti-ChristianCultureDoc.pdf 28 July 2009.

LBCH.org. www.lbch.org/RCC_2009.htm 28 July 2009.

Yoshino, Kenji, “From Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (244-254).
Koepp, Stephen., “Is the Middle Class Shrinking?” Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,143633,00.html 24 Jun 2001, 28 July 2009.

Texans Care for Children. “A Closer Look at the Issues.” http://www.texanscareforchildren.org/files/fostercare_reimbursement.pdf

Utah Pride Center. “Homeless Youth Pride Walk 2009 – Utah Shine.” http://www.utahpridecenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=300&Itemid=128 28 July 2009.

KSL. “Number of Homeless Youth in Utah is Growing.” KSL News. http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4885505 24 Nov 2008, 28 July 2009.

CBS. “Steve Young’s Home Displays ‘No On 8’ Signs.” CBS5 News. http://cbs5.com/local/steve.young.prop8.2.853885.html 1 Nov 2008, 28 July 2009.

Wright, Jonathan. “Proof that the Mormon Church Broke IRS Rules?” Dallas Voice. http://www.dallasvoice.com/instant-tea/2009/01/15/proof-that-the-mormon-church-violated-irs-rules-on-prop-8/ 15 Jan 2009, 30 July 2009.

Spar, Debora L., “Designing Babies: Fixing Flaws and Pursuing Perfection.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (212-243).

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. W. W. Norton, 2006.

It Takes a Village

2009-07-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

English 1101: Paper Two
June 5th, 2009

We are likely all familiar with the saying “it takes a village to raise a child,” but there is another byproduct of a village that is much less helpful to the health of a region, province, or country. Salem, MA was a village back in the 1690’s when their leaders ordered that the so-called witches be put to death, and so was Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978 when hundreds of unwilling citizens were forced to drink the purple KoolAid. Prior to September 2001, the Taliban government in Afghanistan used the isolation of their villages and the absence of technology to their advantage because their primary tool in their oppressive regime was message control. The above three examples serve to illustrate instances where outside cultures threatened the very continuance of the power and privilege that the village cultures had willingly (albeit blindly) bestowed upon a select few, and in each instance, larger and more civilized outside cultures were required in order to free the oppressed villagers and depose the self-serving leadership. Writing about cosmopolitanism, Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote “[a] creed that disdains the partialities of kinfolk and community may have a past, but it has no future” (16). While cultural heritage is important, even if only from a village, not every village culture should be allowed a continuance, and two deciding factors will always be to ask whether first, the culture in question has within it a framework that allows it to coexist with intersecting cultures, and second, is it oppressive to the lives of the people under its control.

A student of history can find examples of tribal villages on virtually every patch of land in the world. In North America, the Native Americans survived solely by governing themselves with a village style of leadership. The intersections of the diverse tribal cultures occasionally resulted in wars, but for the most part each tribe knew where they could travel, hunt, and settle without initiating such a conflict. In this case, the cultures were mostly symbiotic to the surrounding tribal cultures, and tribal members were well-served by their membership in the community. This scenario played itself out on every continent for centuries, but as time marched on clear winners emerged as an imbalance set in, with tyrannical leaders of the more powerful tribes and nations pursuing ever more power and dominion. The defeated tribal leaders had been doing nothing wrong and had only the best interests of their people at heart, but the invading forces seldom had any intention of ever allowing another culture to coexist alongside of theirs. There was no sense of a global humanity and every scenario was one of us vs. them.

Today, the struggle for survival wages on for what remains of these First Nations tribal villages. In the movie Whale Rider, writer/director Niki Caro deftly lays bare the generational conflict of an aging chief who is trying to hold onto a very different vision for his Maori village than his two sons and his grandchildren hold (Whale Rider 2002). The old chief is waiting for a prophet to come who will bring the tribe together behind him, and because his two sons failed to live up to this vision he was desperate for a grandson that could be molded into this role. Instead, he ended up with only a granddaughter. The story is resolved as Pai, the pre-teen female grandchild, wins a regional speech contest that outlines how it would not require a prophet to lead the village, but simply a desire for all of the villagers to join together behind a single purpose…not a single leader. It would be nice if every village had such a vision for themselves, but some of us are not so lucky to have been born into a winning village.

Today, in America, First Nations villages are adapting to the modern world and finding innovative ways for their cultures to coexist, but the oppressive Christian cultures that invaded them over the past centuries are not. While most Christian-centered communities have stopped burning their witches it does not mean that Christian extremists have stopped controlling the lives of people living in small towns across America. Speaking metaphorically, many de-facto “village dictators” have retained a frightening amount of control over their “towns”, declaring their own version of a jihad and nurturing an environment where misguided adherents will shoot an abortion doctor in the lobby of his own Christian church (CNN.com 2 Jun 2009). Of course, in this jihad their weapon of choice is the same Abrahamic text used by other religious terrorists and likewise, the leaders are anointed as infallible. In the Mormon villages of Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Northern Mexico and Southern Alberta, Canada, the stake president is this appointed leader. While there is a mayor who ensures that the infrastructure and administrative duties are attended to, the “message control” is fully relinquished to the will of the church, through the stake president, and it is he who can destroy lives with a word.

Perhaps the most striking example of this village mentality since the Salem Witch Trials is the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre in Southern Utah where 120 innocent pioneers were slaughtered. With the help of Brigham Young in far-off Salt Lake City, the village bishop and presiding stake president successfully sheltered the Mormon Church from being directly implicated, but their involvement was undeniable and it could have only happened through an enormous amount of message control. The patriarchal order of the Mormon Church is similarly powerful and it still oppresses Mormon women with a level of control that harkens back to the late 1800’s when the permission for a man to practice polygamy was a reward for a select few Mormon men who found favor in the eyes of senior church leaders. Add to that the near-literal interpretation of the Bible and you have a recipe for oppression against homosexuals and cosmopolitan freethinkers as well. Thankfully, in exchange for statehood in 1896, the Mormons gave up on the idea of a theocratically governed homeland like the Taliban had in pre-9/11 Afghanistan, but the Mormon modus operandi is identical to that of the Taliban and the consequences for disobedience are almost as severe. An unrepentant Mormon who is excommunicated would find it virtually impossible to remain in one of these villages and live a normal life. Being an “out” gay Mormon is perhaps the most visible example of such treatment, but a whisper campaign of marriage infidelity, teen pregnancy, or even drinking coffee or alcohol has destroyed thousands of lives and careers in these small Mormon towns. In the Fall 1997 edition of the Harvard University Nieman Reports, former Mormon and Arizona Republic’s Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Steve Benson wrote the following:

Look at an average group of Mormon followers, and what does one find? People who dress the same way down to the same underwear, follow the same leader, think the same thoughts, believe the same things, read the same books, obey the same commandments, vote the same way, fear the same enemies, oppose the same ideas, condemn the same people who don't think the same way, pay the same church, avoid the same movies, eat the same food, associate with the same people, marry the same kind, and give the same reasons for believing that God and Mormonism are one-in-the same (Benson 1997).

Any adult Mormon can tell you that a threat of mortal harm is not the only way for a powerful religious leader to exact obedience from a member of the community. Their authority is never questioned. Control within these oppressive villages is inextricably connected to the belief system, and to escape that control one is often faced with a choice of family or church. When one of Steve Benson’s cartoons in the Arizona Republic rightfully targeted then governor of Arizona, Ev Mecham, for making racial slurs, Benson’s own sister-in-law dis-invited Benson’s family from the family Thanksgiving dinner simply because Governor Ed Mecham was “one of us,” meaning he was a Mormon (Benson 1997). Forget the fact that Mecham was the first governor in history to face simultaneous onslaughts through impeachment hearings, a recall election, and a felony indictment, which was ultimately successful. Though thoroughly disgraced, his fellow Mormons were still willing to claim him as their own and come to his defense (Wikipedia). With such an over-arching reach, leaving one’s hometown and moving to a big city is not enough, and families are taught that a loved one who leaves the church has also chosen to leave the family because he will be lost to them for all eternity if he leaves the faith.

As evidenced by Steve Benson’s experience in Phoenix, AZ, the term village can also be used interchangeably for communities or classes of people within a large city, metropolitan area, or even an entire country, and even without control over the physical geography of a village the control upon the members of that group can be just as oppressive. It still boils down to us vs. them and all it takes is a carefully crafted message that one defined group is somehow worth less than the larger, more powerful group. It is this mentality that allows the mistreatment of others to take place, as expanded on in Mark Bowden’s “The Dark Art of Interrogation”. If the message is crafted well to the villagers, then it is easier to pit our largest unified class (American Christians) against the terrorists (Islamic extremists,) which in turn gave Bowden license to tolerate the use of coercion and dismiss it with a “wink” (Bowden 65). Appiah also captured this us vs. them mentality in another article entitled “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway?” In this essay he shares an account of how Lord Baden-Powell wrote in a history of his life work that “the work of collecting the treasures [of the Asante palace] was entrusted to a company of British soldiers, and that it was done most honestly and well, without a single case of looting” (Appiah 2). Perhaps it all depends upon who it is that gets to write the official version of history. It is virtually certain that the Asante people have a record of history that tells about the looting of their palace by Lord Baden-Powell and the British soldiers.

Within our own culture, and through another carefully controlled message, we continue to marginalize certain minority groups by allowing a message to spread that these disadvantaged groups have somehow chosen to remain in the slums in spite of numerous assistance programs available to them. In the impoverished Miami communities of Overtown and Liberty City the barriers to escape are almost insurmountable because nobody wants to leave their family behind. In this example, as with the example of the Mormon villages above, family and culture are interchangeable words. For the slums of our large cities in America, without broad-based support from the population outside of these oppressed enclaves, the cycle of poverty, poor education, lack of opportunity, and poor health will continue. The young people who are trapped in such a “village” are easily swayed by the sense of community promised by gangs, and yet the gangs themselves are often more rigidly defined by geographical boundaries than the slums themselves.

On the opposite end of the sliding scale of wealth you have the security of gated communities where the homogenous features are enforced by both written and unwritten codicils. These “villages of choice” allow those with money to buy their way into a culture that will provide them with the privileges that governments are unable to secure for them. When these communities want to eliminate the working class, they pass bylaws that prohibit commercial vehicles from entering the community after 6:00PM, thereby preventing somebody who owns a landscaping business from actually living there unless they can also afford the additional expense of commercial rent and a storage yard. When real estate agents want to secure the multi-million-dollar listings of an exclusive neighborhood, they are at the mercy of the homeowners to actually get those listings. If the homeowners themselves decide that prospective homeowners cannot be Jewish, African-American, Catholic, or Hispanic, they don’t actually have to write those discriminations into the bylaws. They just need to list their homes with real estate agents who share those same prejudices, and suddenly potential home showings for realtors who represent those less-desirable classes of people don’t get their phone calls returned and appointments are always missed or postponed until the other real estate agents in the area get the message as well. These exclusive neighborhoods will actively campaign against any kind of public transit expansion into their area because buses would allow the riff-raff to travel to the area.

When parents are successful in creating these controlled communities or villages, or in the case of slums, when a major city ignores the oppressed long enough that one of these “villages” are created to warehouse the poor and keep them segregated, then the true victims are the children. As noted previously, the true purpose of these villages is to control the message that penetrates into the community. Parents and other village forces control the movies that are shown in the theater and the TV and radio channels that are allowed to be turned on in the home. The electorate chooses the school board, who in turn hires the teachers and set a large portion of the curriculum. If it is a religious village then church on Sunday is elevated to the status of a mandatory activity and in the case of the Mormon villages, the week is filled with activities for the children and youth that keep their lives centered on the church. In every case the message is identical, and that is that there is a world out there that is dangerous to “us”, and we cannot succumb to the lies of “them”, which is to say, the outsiders. The threat that is constantly reinforced to the children is that the stakes are so high that to lose the battle for control of the message would mean the total loss of the village.

Works Cited

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. W. W. Norton, 2006.

Whale Rider. Written and directed by Niki Caro, Produced by Tim Sanders and Jim Barnett South Pacific Pictures, 2002.

CNN.com, “Doctor Who Performed Abortions Shot to Death.” http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/31/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html?iref=newssearch 2 Jun 2009. 5 Jun 2009.

Benson, Steve, “Good-bye to God: Editorial Cartoonist’s Journey from Jesus to Journalism – And Beyond.” Originally published in Nieman Review. Harvard University. Fall 1997 http://www.lds-mormon.com/benson2.shtml%20web%2031%20May%202009.

Wikipedia, “Evan Mecham”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham%20web%2031%20May%202009.

Bowden, Mark, “The Dark of Interrogation.” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed. Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (31-65).

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway?” Emerging – A Reader 2nd ed. Ed Barclay Barrios. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. (1-16).

Patriarchal Blessings: A lesson in how to wield 'privilege' as a weapon.

2009-05-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

In another blog of mine, in which I talked about the six realms within the Mormon Heaven, I wrote about how the Mormons (and other fundamentalist religions) use a "Reward in Heaven" as a tool in order to control the congregants. Today something happened that inspired me to write about another element of the Mormon religion that has, at its heart, the design elements for even more powerful control over faithful Mormons, and that is, the "patriarchal blessing".

I won't go into great detail about what a patriarchal blessing is, but instead I will refer to the Wikipedia link (here) if you need to read up on it before you continue in this post.

In my other blog post (link here), I wrote about how the Mormon temple ordinances are used to bestow a position of privilege. Today, Mickey and I went over to my former wife's place in Naples to take her and my daughter out for a Mother's Day brunch and wish them well on their move back to the Pacific Northwest. As part of the move, Barbara had put together two boxes of my stuff that had surfaced as she went through her storage locker in preparation for the cross-country move. Within that box was a 'favorite' picture that used to hang prominently in our living room It is a picture of the Cardston temple, where we were married "for time and all eternity" in 1981. As noted in my other blog post (linked above), this gave us enormous 'privilege', but this post is about my patriarchal blessing.

In the Mormon Church, the purple Kool-Aid is served in generous portions starting at the age of three. That class in their Sunday School (which they call the Children's Primary) begins a lifelong process that focuses on molding the children into obedient souls who will follow blindly wherever the leaders want to take them, but we all know what happens when children turn into teenagers. At that point, it requires more heavy artillery in the arsenal of weapons. That is why at about the age of fifteen, Mormon youth are expected to prepare for their Patriarchal Blessing.

In that box that I received from Barbara I found my long-forgotten Patriarchal Blessing. A quick read illustrates how effective the Mormons became with wielding the weapon of privilege. This is the opening paragraph [with my present comments in square brackets]:

"Dear Brother Lester James Leavitt, in the authority of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood I bear and in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and as an ordained stake patriarch I place my hands on the crown of your head to seal upon you a Patriarchal Blessing as the Spirit of the Lord may direct me [this is all code for saying that it is "God" speaking through the mouthpiece of His servant] that it may be a divine testimony as you journey through life that you may gain the wonderful blessings and exaltation that is marked out for you."

To help you out with the full impact here, that paragraph promised "wonderful blessings and exaltation", and those blessings were essentially already mine by virtue of the fact that I had been born into a Mormon family and was sealed at birth to my parents for time and all eternity, all because they had been married in the temple! As if that wasn't already implied over the last dozen years in Sunday School, my patriarch made a point of spelling this out in the next paragraph.

"The Lord loves you and is mindful of you. Be very humble and prayerful in all things that you may learn through you faithfulness what steps to take and you will be guided and protected as you journey through life in completing your mission that you were sent here to do. Through your faithfulness and your obedience and diligence [I had passed an interview and been found worthy of having my patriarchal blessing, which is no small feat for a 15 year old] and your obedience in the spirit world [for which my 'reward' was that I had been born into a Mormon family] you were chosen and called and foreordained to come to this earth in this the dispensation of the fullness of times to wonderful parents who love you, to be guided and directed and to be tried and tested in the things of this life and you will be tried and tested very much so. There will be many things happen in your life and many distressing things also."

Now, you might think that is a bit hokey, but having been under the influence of the purple Kool-Aid since the age of three I was totally and utterly convinced that this man was looking into a Book of Heaven and reading what had been written for me in my future, and what he had just told me was very important:
1) I had been chosen in Heaven, so I already had "privilege" before I was born. I was one of the very lucky ones that had been born into the one and only true church...and the only church with a restored priesthood that allowed mortal men called patriarchs to "read" from the Book of Heaven.
2) I was here to be "tried and tested", and the implied message here clearly was that if I did not perform well during these trials then I would "lose" my privileged position.

My patriarchal blessing goes on to bestow even more privilege on me.

"Your lineage is of the house of Joseph through his noble son, Ephraim, a very choice lineage in the sight of the Lord and with this lineage comes many responsibilities and possibilities are yours and many experiences are in store for you. The posterity of Ephraim through their faithfulness and diligence were chosen and called by the Lord to be His leaders in this the dispensation of the fullness of times and you are one of them. Always remember who you are. You are a choice spirit of our Heavenly Father and many responsibilities are on your shoulders."

Wow! I'm from a choice lineage...from the favored son of Jacob. Joseph, with his technicolor dreamcoat, was my great-great......grandfather! And just by that simple fact I was destined to be a leader of the other less fortunate souls on Earth (who were descended from those other hapless sons who sold Joseph into Egypt). How lucky could one be? But then that pesky reminder not to mess up ("Always remember who you are") because I have "many responsibilities on my shoulders." Can't I finish a single paragraph without being warned about losing my privileges? The Mormon God truly is a vengeful God, but I didn't see that back then because for as long as you remain one of the privileged you don't want to mess that up by asking the hard questions.

At this point my patriarchal blessing starts in on the "Thou shalts..." and the "Thou shalt not's..."

"You have been given the Holy Ghost. Listen to the promptings of the Holy Ghost and they will come to you stronger and more often and you will be warned and forewarned when you are in danger. Listen to these prompting and act accordingly and you will be given strength and the courage and the desire to turn away from that danger and seek company that have high ideals. Turn away from evil minded people. [At this point in my life I see how this trick works. You see, if you can't "feel" the spirit then it is immediately implied that you have made friends with the "bad" crowd. The net effect is, Mormon kids only end up with other Mormon kids for their friends.] There will be many temptations come to you. Keep the Sabbath Day holy. Attend to your duties in the Church regularly and the Lord will magnify you. Guard your virtue as you would guard your life. It is very precious to you and Lucifer and his followers will throw many stumbling blocks in your way and you will need to be on your guard at all times. Keep the Word of Wisdom strictly [which is to say, don't smoke or drink]. Do not touch the evil drugs that are on the market. They are evil and vicious and could do harm to you very quickly and would guide you and lead you away from the teachings of the gospel plan. Do not touch tobacco nor liquor of any kind nor tea or coffee. These are injurious to your body. Study about them and you will know not only from the promptings of the Holy Ghost but from study how evil they are. Listen to the promptings of the Holy Ghost at all times and you will be directed in the right direction."

At this point in my patriarchal blessing, the patriarch starts off on a list of wonderful privileges that will be mine if I stay faithful to the teachings of the Mormon Church. It is an impressive list, salted with a warning every few sentences just to remind me that these blessings are all contingent on my strict obedience to the 4,300 "commandments" of the Mormon faith.

"You will be blessed in your school work that your mind will be keen and alert and active and through your humble prayers and counselling with your mom and dad and listening to the promptings of the Holy Ghost you will know what profession to choose that you can be happy with and do the most good in and the Lord will bless you in your profession and open up your mind. Pay your tithing [a full 10% of your income] honestly and honorably and the Lord will bless you in your business affairs that you will be guided and you will be successful. Money will flow into your hands almost from the blue sky that you never thought of before and you will be guided in your business affairs to know what to do for the best. Do not hesitate. Be free in helping those that need help in every way and the Lord will magnify you.

"You will be called to many positions in the church. Honor the priesthood that you hold. Do not take it into places of ill fame of any kind that you would be ashamed to be seen and you will be blessed in your priesthood. You will receive the higher priesthood and be called to high positions in the church. You will become a teacher of the gospel plan. Your mind will be keen and alert and you will be given words of wisdom in teaching this plan to younger people and the young people will learn to love and respect you and you will love your work and you will be a model to them. They will want to be like you through your teaching. This will bring great joy to your heart to see the young people grow and have a desire to do what is right through your teachings and follow in your footsteps, tremendous responsibility on your shoulders also and you will be blessed in this work. You will be called to positions in the M.I.A. [youth program], positions of presiding in this work. You will be a great help in building up he kingdom of God here on the Earth and you will enjoy your work."

Wow! I was promised so much money that it would seem to be coming out of the blue sky! Did you read that? So the only question is, what did I do wrong that it never materialized? I'm sure that is what I was supposed to be asking myself for these past 35 years so that I would always willingly "self-correct" my course and blame myself, not God, when my promised blessings never materialized.

Or did the patriarch (speaking on behalf of the Lord) just mean that when I needed $5 to buy milk and bread I would find $5 on the sidewalk...kind of like manna from Heaven instead of cash money? That would be a serious cop-out on His part, and now I can add "deceitful" to the list of names that I now have for the vengeful Mormon God.

The next part is where the patriarch really messed up the life of a completely innocent person with his lies.

"In due time of the Lord a lovely young lady will come into your life. One who is cleanand virtuous and pure in her thoughts and actions and worthy of your lvoe and confidence. Be very humble about your love affiars. Seek help and guidance in that and you will be inspired by the Holy Ghost and know which one to choose. There may be many young ladies that will strike you as being lovely young ladies. Rememer there is only one for you and when you have made the choice then set forth ever way you can to make her happy and you will be blessed with the privilege of going to the temple to be married and sealed for time and for all eternity and the Lord will less you that your body organs will function properly and you iwll become an honored father in Israel and you will have joy and happiness and confidence and love in your home. Things that money cannot buy but you will have them through your faith and your diligence and you will be blessed with the authority to bless your children. Do not hesitate to give them blessings. You will need to be very careful. There will be a deesolating sickness that you will witness also and you will be blessed with your family, through your diligence and faithfulness and the priesthood that you hold. Use it and the Lord will bless you in that."

Okay, picture this in your mind. At the age of 11 I knew that I was different from all the other boys. Far from finding myself attracted to "many ladies", I had not even been attracted to a single girl. And what is this about the "desolating sickness?" It was on Dec 13th, 1973 that I received this patriarchal blessing, and within a few years we would hear about the "gay mans cancer". If 2+2=4, then if I was attracted to other guys, and if any sexual activity with another man would expose me to this "gay man's cancer", then my patriarch really must have read from the "Book of Heaven" because he gave me a clear path to avoid this desolating sickness. All I had to do was marry a woman and avoid men. I was later told by other "inspired" church leaders that I would eventually be blessed by the Lord and be able to fall in love with the woman I chose to marry.

It continues with more privileges that will be mine in my "old age"...if I'm faithful.

"In due time of the Lord you and your wife will be called on a mission to preach the gospel to those who are seeking the truth and you will have a wonderful time. You will be blessed and protected by the Lord as you travel either by land, by air or by water and you will be blessed in a different language that you will need to learn. You will be given the gift of tongues that you will be able to learn the language and speak it fluently and you will have great joy in this work and the Lord will magnify you in the eyes of others and there will be many people that will seek your counsel and advice in the mission field. You will be a sort of a father, and a mother to them, you and your wife, and they will look to you for guidance. Many young people will be impressed by your speaking to them and look to you as a guide and a help and you will will be magnified in their eyes and the Lord will bless you that you will be able to live up to what they expect of you and you will guide them aright and will be the means of bringing many people into the church which will be a joy and a comfort to you."

Well, isn't that special? I wish old Patriarch Archibald was still alive today so that I could send him a letter, advising him that me and my "husband" are very actively working as "missionaries" to help young people. I work for The Robert N DeBenedictis Foundation and one prime focus of the foundation is to provide direct assistance to gay and lesbian youth who find themselves alone when their Christian fundamentalist families reject them. Mickey and I will very likely be like "missionaries" when we retire with the support of this foundation, and will be very willing to serve in the role as the "parents" to these young people so that they can live fulfilling authentic lives and heal from the damages caused by their religious upbringing. I truly hope that I will "be the means of bringing many people [out] of the [Mormon] church which will be a joy and comfort to [me]."

Here comes the "happily ever after" part.

"You will be blessed with power to come forth in the morning of the first resurrection clothed with glory, immortality and eternal life and be crowned a king in our Heavenly Father's kingdom.

"These are your blessings through your faithfulness and diligence in keeping the commandments of God and I seal them upon you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. Amen."

Well, count me out. I really messed up this time. In June 2006 they tried to kick me out, but they didn't do it right so they had to admit me back into the "realm" in January 2007. By then I was a radioactive public relations nightmare waiting to happen, so they left me alone. By June 2008 I decided the time was right to resign my membership, so the Mormon Heaven will just have to get by without me.

Like the Republican Party and Arlen Specter, the Mormon Heaven will be better off without the likes of me.

"I Support Non-Prophet Organizations"

2009-05-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

The following story was very relevant in my life because I am a "Recovering Mormon" and nobody is more responsible for the mid-life grief that I suffer than the Mormon prophets.

"The Secret is Almost Out."

The volunteers in the news story were turned away from a Habitat for Humanity event because they wore T-shirts with this logo.

Imagine, turning away "humanists" from a "humanity" project. Gotta love the south!

Every time I read a story like this I'm reminded of the greeting card that features an old DC-4 airplane standing on a runway and the caption reads, "Welcome to Mississippi. Please turn your clocks back 30 years."

Seeing the GOP Platform as a "Belief System"

2009-05-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

"The sad fact is, fidelity to a Lost Cause valorizes you, it imitates honor." [end of quote]

I vote that the GOP be renamed to the PCF...the "Party of Christian Fundamentalists". The following news story by Leslie Savan illustrates how the current Republican thought process is the equivalent of having a literal belief in the fables of the Abrahamic texts, and further to that, thinking that those fables could possibly become the foundation for revisions to the American constitution.

Science can play no part in the Republican line of thinking because that would completely and utterly derail the future that they still hope for. The truth is, the party base simply cannot break from a failed belief system.

This is an excerpt from a news story by Leslie Savan, from TheNation.com (May 5th, 2009):

"The sad fact is, fidelity to a Lost Cause valorizes you, it imitates honor. So the Republican Party isn't about greed or power or any base selfishness; rather, it's about nobly committing to something larger than itself--ending abortion, spreading democracy by force, saving Terri Schiavo, or, as of late, saving the GOP itself from knowledge of itself. Never mind that none of those commitments is remotely achievable, even the last.

"For the kingdom of Lost Cause Republicans is not of this world. This world is corrupt and fallen. But there is another world where all of our desires, be they sleeping with 72 virgins or living tax-free, will be fulfilled, and heavenly justice will prevail.

"The beauty part about a Lost Cause is that you don't have to struggle to find practical political solutions--that would require compromise and make you impure. Instead, you only have to make gestures and think magically."

I encourage you to read the entire story at this link.

Sarah Palin, George W Bush, and a US Theocracy.

2009-04-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

With the recent tragic death of Natasha Richardson, my partner, Mickey, recommended we honor her by watching one of her best films: "The Handmaid's Tale". Mickey knew it would inspire a blog post, and if you are not familiar with the story line (or the Margaret Atwood novel that inspired it), I highly recommend you take the time to link to the Wikipedia post that I have placed above.

Now, about Sarah Palin and how she plays into this theme. Two nights ago she was invited to speak to a "right to life" crowd in Evansville, IN. At 2 minutes and 22 seconds into the attached "Countdown with Keith Olberman" clip the commentator references how she admitted that "for just a fleeting moment" she considered having an abortion when she found out she was going to have a Down Syndrome baby.

It is in this way that Sarah Palin illustrates how close America came to realizing the type of government that allowed the fictional "Republic of Gilead" to be formed in the movie/book, "The Handmaid's Tale".

You see, what Sarah Palin took advantage of for herself was "choice". In her own words she said, "Just for a fleeting moment, I thought, 'No one knows me here. No one would ever know'"...if she had an abortion.

With that statement, she admitted that because of the current constitution in the United States, she had actually considered taking advantage of that "freedom to choose". If she, herself, had determined that she was not a good candidate to be a mother to a Down Syndrome child, she would have been able to ask her doctor for an abortion, but this is when the hypocrisy kicks in. If she had actually been elected to the office of vice-president, she was fully prepared to enact theocratic laws like those referenced in "The Handmaid's Tale"...laws that would put any doctor into jail who would have performed that abortion for her...for any reason.

In the movie, the destruction is horrible. The US government had been overthrown and the president and congress assassinated. The country was in the middle of a horrible civil war. The short news stories that are shown as a backdrop during the movie were very prescient and it was unnerving to hear audio clips that could have been cut verbatim from the Republican play book for their 2008 election campaign.

Margaret Atwood (the Canadian author of the original book) could already see what was in store for America when she wrote her 1985 novel. The fundamentalist revolutionaries portrayed in the novel had been successful in their campaign for a civil war because they had written their own revisionist history and worked the propaganda to the point that their sheep-like Christian followers had been convinced that the nuclear, biological, and chemical pollution that had rendered 99% of women infertile was actually God's judgement on the world for allowing abortions, stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, and for tolerating homosexuality, fornication, and adultery.

Hmmmm? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah...Sunday School!

The most telling moment in the movie was not what had been achieved by having the uneducated follow their church leaders blindly into war, but what those "church men" actually did once they were in power.

They created a brothel where the "commanders" were able to engage in every forbidden act that they had denied the general population, and for which civilians were systematically put to death.

We've never seen that done before either, have we?

My Brother and the "Tinfoil-Hat-Crowd"

2009-04-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

On March 25th, 2009 my brother, Fred, showed his true colors. Since June 2008 I've known that all five of my siblings were drinking the Mormon Kool-Aid and had stopped thinking for themselves. That was when the California Prop 8 campaign put an impassable void between us, but I didn't think my brother had gone so far as to buy a de facto membership into the "Tin-Foil-Hat Club" until he posted this blog: "President Obama". Every claim that my brother makes in his post is based on hyperbole and the use of extremist rhetoric.

Before I go any further, I need to perhaps help some of you understand what the "Tin-foil-Hat Crowd" is. The Wikipedia explanation of this is perhaps the best one:

"Some people wear the hats in the belief that they act to shield the brain from such influences as electromagnetic fields, or against mind control and/or mind reading."

There were no mainstream leaders for these tin-foil-hat wing nuts until Fox News realized that their audience was shrinking and their faux-news stories were becoming irrelevant, so in recent weeks they have given mainstream publicity to the likes of Alex Jones (see news story here). Now we have a few emerging "kings" within the Fox Network who will soon be wearing "tin foil crowns". Foremost among them is Glenn Beck, who Fox News hired in January 2009 in order to pull in more viewers from the extreme right. Only time will tell if Glenn Beck (and Fox) will be found civilly liable in the shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh police officers who were shot by an avid follower who had been convinced (quite possibly by Glenn Beck's exaggerations) that there was a pending "Obama gun ban" (see news story above).

As for my brother...on April 2nd he posted another blog post (Kneel Before the King) that shows which news channel he listens to, and it similarly shows the new fashion in head gear Fred will soon be wearing, to not only keep out the sun, but also those mind-controling electromagnetic fields that seem to have 66% of the country under their spell (the most recent approval ratings for President Obama).

I guess when the Mormon Kool-Aid is already working so well it naturally extends its influence to The Glenn Beck Show. After all, Glenn Beck is a "temple-recommend-holding Mormon", so it is obviously safe to blindly follow his lead, just like most blindly follow the prophet.

Unfortunately, there are more Mormons like my brother than there are Mormons like my son, who has insight far beyond his 26 years. Unfortunately, he is being boarded by my brother Fred, so you can only imagine where he finds the fodder for his recent blog post on "The Blame Game" (see link here).

The USA and their Christian "Crusades" for the 21st Century

2009-03-04T04:07:00.000-08:00

Wayne Besen said it best. Follow this link.

Read to the end to find the "crusades" reference for the actions currently underway within many of our USA military bases.

Religious Oppression and Pornography

2009-03-04T04:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't got time to write much, but I wanted to create a permanent link to this article.

Note that Utah tops the list of on-line credit card use for purchases of pornography.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Business/story?id=6977202&page=1

The "Fatal Flaw" That First Sowed the Seed of Doubt

2008-12-31T09:25:00.000-08:00

Mickey and I saw the movie Doubt a couple of days ago. It was one of those movies that didn't resolve anything at the end of the movie, but sent you on your way with new unaswered questions.

The movie opens with a sermon about a trained mariner who was a sole survivor of a sinking ship that went down at night. He was left with a lifeboat, and a sail. He had enough food and water for 10 days. He knew from before the ship sank that he was 10 days from the closest land of any kind, so he set his course by the stars. For the next several days there was changing weather and heavy cloud cover both day and night. Imagine how difficult it would be to never change your course from the one chance that you had to determine the one and only path that would save your life!

Is there any doubt in your life? What should you do about it?

In my life I can look back and see the first hints of doubt about the veracity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it is this: If a man lives a perfectly good life, and does every kind of "good" that the Mormon doctrine teaches, but turned away the missionaries and said that he didn't need religion in order to do good, the Mormon doctrine would condemn this man because he rejected baptism. End of story! One strike and you're out! That is the doctrine, so don't try to sugarcoat it and make it more palatable. Also, don't go and put it on the shelf as a question that will be answered in the next life. If your religion teaches this doctrine, this is a valid question that needs to be answered.

Why is a "good life" not "good enough" for your God?

Please don't try to tell me that "baptism is the door" and everybody has to pass through the door. A real heaven would not have walls to hold people out, so there is no use for a door. The Soviet Union built a wall in Berlin. China built a wall. Prisons have walls. Vaults have walls. A benevolent God would have no use for a wall.

I could never understand how the Mormon God would discredit a perfectly good life that was lived in every way according to the same teachings of good social graces and humanity that the Mormon Church taught just because the man had a chance to be baptized and he refused. It made about as much sense as the Catholic baby that would burn forever in hell if it wasn't christened before it died.

For two years, as a missionary in Uruguay, my companions and I would meet wonderful and good people who didn't want to take the discussions and join the Mormon Church, but every month in zone conference it was drummed into our minds that these people would have to convert to Mormonism and be baptized before God would open the doors of the Celestial Kingdom to them.

That is what first sowed the seed of doubt in my mind...not only with regard to Mormonism, but with regard with any organized religion.

While my siblings will use the mariner allegory from the Doubt sermon to point to my departure from God as a course correction that will cost me my eternal salvation, I prefer to think of the allegory in another way.

My parents taught me to live a life of integrity, and this integrity included a propensity to do good to all humanity. Because my parents also belonged to the Mormon Church, they augmented their teaching with the tools available to them at the time to help me set the course for my life. By 1977, after growing up in Cardston, and in ultra-conservative Alberta, Canada, the course had pretty much been set for my life and I moved away from home. I never went back to Cardston, and rarely had contact with my parents because my life took me to far-away cities.

Storms came, and my lifeboat took a beating. I knew I had been knocked off course, but was I just a little off course, or was I way off course? I had no idea, and I could no longer see the stars (my parents had died). One day, the clouds thinned, and for a moment I could discern where the sun was and its direction of movement. I adjusted my course, and it saved my life.

In my case, doubt was healthy.

One should always be prepared to question authority, and never follow it blindly. Common sense dictates that a person would seek a second source when it is available, and when doubt creeps in, allow it room to see if the information now available to you...current information...is going to prove more reliable than something based on old traditions and outmoded thinking.

My parents, and the Mormon Church in the 1970's, did not have any understanding of what made a man experience attraction to other men. It just "seemed odd" to them, so they taught that it was wrong. They set their course, and Mormon tradition dictated that they never deviate from that. When the "sun became visible" and science irrefutably supported the hypothesis that a small (but consistent) percentage of men are actually born gay and cannot change this orientation, nobody in the Mormon Church (or my family) was willing to correct their course.

That is the fatal flaw of religion. The Abrahamic religions set their course, and here we are, 5,000 years later, with billions of followers who are not willing to look up in the daytime to a fully visible sky and adjust their course based on new, current, information.

With the hope of giving you a gentle nudge toward healthy doubt, I ask you again: "What kind of God is it that you (they) worship where a "good life" is never going to be "good enough" unless a person accepts some mythical ethos that there has to be a savior?"

I just don't get it. I never have. Not even on my best day as a Mormon.

Why was I 44 years old before I looked to science for an answer to my same-sex attraction questions?

2008-12-29T17:05:00.000-08:00

Celsus was a pagan writer in the 2nd century AD. His writing would have been lost forever when the Roman Empire became Christian because they set out to eradicate everything pagan and in the process destroyed all of Celsus' writing. Ironically, one of the Greek Fathers quoted and paraphrased much of Celsus' arguments as a preliminary to attacking them, thus reconstructing virtually all of his lost works.

In light of this, the following is a priceless quote:

"Christians usually flee headlong from cultured people, who are not prepared to be deceived; but they trap illiterate folk...Their injunctions are like this. 'Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us [Christians] to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone who is a child, let him come boldly [to embrace Christianity].'...Some of the [Christians] do not even want to give or receive a reason for what they believe, and use such expressions as 'Do not ask questions; just believe', and 'Thy faith will save thee.' And they say, 'The wisdom in the world is an evil, and foolishness a good thing'...But why is it bad to have been educated and to have studied the best doctrines, and both to be and to appear intelligent?...However, there are among the Christians some moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people, who readily interpret allegorically."

I guess Celsus made room for my son Peter in that last line, but the whole quote pretty much sums up the Mormon (and fundamentalist Christian) mentality to homosexuality. When I read this the first time I kept getting an image of that wild-haired woman at the McCain rally who said in her halting, fearful voice..."I don't trust Obama! He's an Arab!" How did Celsus put it? "But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated...let [her] come boldly [and join the Republican Party]."

As for medical professionals and scientists...if it wasn't for the 'purple Kool-Aid' they were given as toddlers, I just don't get how they could be Christianists and Mormons. The following is copied from the NARTH web page. NARTH is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and virtually every Mormon psychologist is trained through NARTH workshops. When the APA (American Psychological Association and/or American Psychiatric Association) came out with various statements that recommend among other things "that schools censor all ex-gay materials", NARTH issued the following statement:

"And when homosexuality is discussed [in public schools], it must not cross the line into lifestyle advocacy. Ultimately, sexual lifestyle decisions hinge on matters of deeply held values. Schools should respect the right of families to convey their own social values to their children."

Hello! Is anybody home in the head of a NARTH therapist? It isn't 1973 anymore, and homosexuality is fully understood now as a trait at birth. NARTH leaders have been trying to recussitate the "lifestyle choice" argument at every annual APA conference and want every therapist to treat homosexuality as an "addiction" or something that can be overcome by just changing your mind about who you are attracted to. Every few years, NARTH and so-called professionals from organizations like Exodus show up with revised wording for the handbooks that will reverse the 1973 ruling that homosexuality was no longer to be treated as a "mental illness".

It isn't just homosexuality that is the target of Christianists and Mormons. They would prefer that any discussion of evolution be banned, and that the only conversation about sex would be the idea that you will go to hell if you aren't married to the person with whom you are intimate.

If any of the above does not answer all your questions, just put that thought on "the shelf" and wait until you are dead, at which point your god will answer all those questions.

What Motivates a Mormon to "Do Good"?

2008-12-29T16:28:00.000-08:00

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the last of the "Five Good Emperors" of Rome, and he died precisely sixteen and half centuries before Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church. He was affectionately known as "Marcus The Wise", and he wrote of one of the inherent flaws that plague the LDS Church in modern times. He spoke of three kinds of men:

"One kind of man, when he does a good turn to someone, is forward also to set down the favour to his account. Another is not forward to do this, but still within himself he thinks as though he were a creditor and is conscious of what he has done. A third is in a sense not even conscious of what he has done, but he is like a vine which has borne grapes, and asks nothing more when once it has borne its appropriate fruit. A horse runs, a hound tracks, bees make honey, and [the third] man does good, but doesn't know that he has done it and passes on to a second act, like a vine to bear once more its grapes in due season. You ought then to be one of these who in a way are not aware of what they do."

I was raised "keeping score" for myself, and by training me to do this, the LDS Church also taught me to subconsciously "keep score" for every member of the church around me. As an Elder's Quorum President I was keenly aware of who showed up to help people move and assist others in the quorum in doing tasks that could not be done on their own. The needs of others are front and center in the Mormon Church, but so is the "score keeping".

I think at the root of this trend is the notion that Mormon have to "earn their way" into the Celestial Kingdom. Just getting into "heaven" is not enough for a true-blue Mormon (TBM) because families are only eternal if you make it to the top-third of the Celestial Kingdom, so the self-evaluation is critical. If you sin (a minus), you have to counteract that with a good deed (a plus).

Just doing good because it is a part of human nature is very rare in a Mormon congregation. The Ward PEC (priesthood executive committee) is always keeping score. I know because for fully half of my adult life I was a member of a ward or branch PEC in more than six congregations from Edmonton (AB) to Yellowknife (NT) to Greater Vancouver (BC). I know there a "good Mormons" (like my son), but they are the exception rather than the rule.

"Lester, God told you to call!"

2008-12-27T04:46:00.000-08:00

I have been inspired by two events in the last couple of days that has helped me formulate a substitute for people when they begin to doubt the existence of a supreme being.

The first comes from Pliny the Elder, a Roman writer who was also a military man. He was born during the period that Christians claim was Jesus lifetime, and died in the eruptions of Vesuvius at the age of 56. He wrote:

"For mortal to aid mortal--this is God."

By itself, this quote would not have inspired me to write about it in my blog, but coupled with a phone call last night, this was very powerful. You see, last night I called my very dear friend in Naples to wish him a Merry Christmas. His name is Harry, and quite honestly I can attribute almost everything I enjoy in my current life as a gay man to what I learned from him after he took me in during my first several months after coming out in January 2005. While on the phone with Harry, he said:

"God told you to call, Lester. I've been very lonely lately."

For four months in early 2005, Harry was the "god" that I needed. On numerous occasions since then, I have been the "god" that Harry needed.

A humanist understands this duty with every breath that he takes, and assumes that obligation with all the religious fervor than an evangelical claims for Jesus.

A humanist likewise recognizes the "godlike" attributes in others who have been placed in a position to help him at critical junctures in his life.

Early Christmas Present (Part 2)

2008-12-21T18:11:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation from the previous blog. Please read this last.

In addition to the brain virus, Dawkins talks about a related symptom which a faith-sufferer may also experience. It has to do with the "mystery", per se, being a "good thing".

In the eyes of a religious-sufferer "...it is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather we should enjoy them, even revel in their insolubility."

This is where the shelf metaphor comes in to my life...and is something that I inherently understood when I realized that I was gay and a Mormon. Can you see why? It is because in that instant I set out to solve the mystery! This is where I get to introduce the 'word-of-the-day' to some of you. Inimical means "an enemy of" of "hostile toward".

"Any impulse to solve mysteries could be seriously inimical to the spread of a mind virus."

Did you get that?

If a man can convince you to stop trying to "solve mysteries" (which is what Joseph Smith did when he sold people on The First Vision, the Book of Mormon, and polygamy, among other things), the end result is that you soon have a "gang of viruses" running rampant in the minds of every adherent to that religion.

In closing, I encourage you to go out an borrow Humanist Anthology from the library or buy a used copy from Amazon and find out what a kind place the world would be once we eradicate the "mind viruses" that Richard Dawkins talks about.

An Early Christmas Present from Mickey

2008-12-21T16:35:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to my second yoga class and it just happened to fall one day before the winter solstice...a big day for yoga people. The yoga master spoke about eliminating shadows, embracing shadows, and the significance of seeking light on the day when we experience the longest night (yin-yang theory).

So, when I came home and starting searching the Internet for information on "shadow dancing" as it relates to yoga and all that, it prompted Mickey to bring out one of my Christmas presents early: a book called "Humanist Anthology: from Confucius to Attenborough".

Of course I quickly leafed through the pages (it is chronologically listed - thereby the name), so toward the end I found my favorite humanist, Richard Dawkins. What he wrote dovetailed nicely with the blog I posted yesterday from Huff-Po (Huffington Post) on the "Ending Religious-Based Bigotry" blog (link here).

"A new study out of Yale University confirms what argumentative liberals have long-known: Offering reality-based rebuttals to conservative lies only makes conservatives cling to those lies even harder."

That was a quote from a recent news story, but now read what Margaret Knight & James Herrick deemed worthy to publish from Richard Dawkins in their "Humanist Anthology":

Viruses of the Mind
Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won't know it, and may even vigorously deny it.

Okay, I have to interrupt right now. The Mormon Church mastered the art of implanting mind viruses before the church was even formed. Wait...I'll go even further than that. The pilgrims had mastered the art of planting mind viruses by the time they started burning witches in Salem. The Mormons just captured the moment from the 1830's and between them and the other fundies they have kept the many viruses alive.

Along that vein, of all my brothers and sisters, Fara would be the only one who has stopped to ask herself if there is a chance that she might "have a virus". Anyway, back to Dawkins.

He suggests that a person look for the following tell-tale signs that might suggest that you are "infected" with a mind virus.

1) The "patient" will find himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as 'faith'. [Note that this by itself does not indicate a virus...keep reading.]
2) Patients typically make a positive virtue of [this] faith being strong and unshakable, in spite of not being based upon evidence. Indeed, they may feel that the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief.

From a scientific perspective, can you see the paradox? This is where I have to remind you about the Huff-Po article: "Offering reality-based rebuttals to conservative lies only makes conservatives cling to those lies even harder."

Let me see if I can illustrate the connection better than Dawkins did...I had to read his excerpt a couple of times to connect it, but this is how the virus infects the brain.
a) There is no evidence, but you truly believe this inner conviction that you have. Let me illustrate with something that is quintessentially "Mormon"; like Joseph Smith really was lead to a rock on the Hill Cumorah and told to dig it up and flip it over to find gold plates.
b) Now, where normal thinking would tell you to doubt something that could make you play the fool (for example, somebody hands you six numbers and tells you to buy a lottery ticket because tonight will be the night those numbers win), in the case of a mind virus the actual lack of evidence is used to elevate the quality or importance of holding fast to this inner conviction of yours.

From an evidentiary standpoint the two qualities won't hold water because b) uses a) to support itself. It is self-referencing, but because of the brain virus (just like a computer virus often uses a programming loop to infect thousands of files in a matter of seconds), this "belief" now automatically undermines opposition to itself and the infected brain starts to malfunction and normal reasoning soon fails to find any traction.

"Why do you believe in the Book of Mormon? People dug up the Hill Cumorah for decades after Joseph Smith made those claims and found nothing. Where are all the bones from that final battle? Why haven't they been found? Why is the DNA from American Indians connected to Asians, not Middle-Easterners?

There is no evidence, and in spite of the best efforts of the Mormon apologists (trust me, I've heard all the arguments), the answer is always the same..."I believe it in my heart".

Huh? In case you missed it, here is the viral loop: "I know the gospel is true because I believe it is true."

Now, in the case of something where there is no evidence to refute it, that works, but every year science makes it increasingly difficult to be religious, and what has been the consequences of these scientific advances?

We have to fight in order to have evolution taught in American schools because the Christianists want to teach that the Earth is just 7,000 years old and was once completely covered with water...including Mount Everest.

We have to fight in order to have AIDS prevention and other sex education taught in American schools because to actually tell kids to use a condom you would have to admit that some of them might actually experience sexual intimacy before they get married.

We have to fight to afford gays their right to love according to their biological composition because somebody decided in the ancient world that it was just weird that a man would lie with another man...just like it was weird to that one single race of people to mix fibers in cloth and eat shellfish.

But Dawkins didn't end there. The rest of his excerpt is in the next post and it is even more important than these points are.

A Reprise for Ted Haggard

2008-12-19T03:40:00.000-08:00

In honor of the documentary coming up for Ted Haggard (where he admits that he is a "loser" at this point in his life), and in light of the fact that he still admits that he struggles with his sexuality, I wanted to post a video "reprise" of the Roy Zimmerman sketch. Go figure...if you're born gay it seems logical that you would be "struggling your entire life" to live as anything but a gay man.

This song was first performed in April 2007. It is good political commentary wrapped up with a belly full of laughs. Remember, it was only 3 weeks in "straight school" when Ted declared himself "completely heterosexual".

Roy Zimmerman has also done a sketch on Larry Craig.

"Ted Haggard is Completely Heterosexual"

Bishop John Shelby Spong (retired) - a voice of reason

2008-12-11T22:56:00.001-08:00

Bishop John Shelby Spong is a retired Episcopalian Bishop and prolific writer. I was introduced to him by the book, "Sins of Scripture". I now subscribe to his weekly email. This came yesterday:

Jeannie from Chaska, Minnesota, writes:
How do we really know what Jesus said? They get so much wrong. Is it not a house of cards?

Dear Jeannie,
It is not easy to determine what Jesus actually said or did, but I believe it is more substantial than a house of cards. Probably the reason traditional Catholics and evangelical Protestant fundamentalists try to literalize the Bible is that they recognize how fragile their grasp on truth really is and, unable to be secure in that fragility, they make incredible claims for the literal words of scripture or for the teaching authority of the church. Literalism in any form is little more than pious hysteria.

The problems are that we have nothing in writing from the time Jesus lived. The earliest material in the New Testament would be Paul's Epistles, written 20-34 years after the crucifixion and by a man who did not know the human Jesus. Paul's conversion is dated some one to six years after the crucifixion. From Paul we learn that Jesus was crucified, that he introduced the Lord's Supper and that he was perceived as alive in some way following the crucifixion and little more.

The gospels are written between 70 years after Christ at the earliest (Mark) and 100 years at the latest (John). Yet all four gospels reveal the impact of this Jesus on a variety of people. The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar spent more than a decade going over everything that the four gospels record Jesus as ever having said. When they completed this study, they determined that no more than 16% of the sayings of Jesus are authentic to the man Jesus which, of course, means that some 84% of the sayings attributed to Jesus are not historically accurate. The Seminar did not find a single word attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (John) to be authentic. The Jesus of John's gospel speaks to the concerns of the Christian Church near the end of the first century, not the literal words of a man of history.

I think I can demonstrate that all four of the gospel writers knew they were not writing either history or biography. Each was interpreting Jesus in the context of their relationship with the Synagogue and their time in history, most especially following the Jewish-Roman War when in 70 CE the city of Jerusalem was leveled by the Roman invaders.

If we looked at the gospels as portraits of Jesus painted by the second or even third generation of Christians and not as photographs or tape recordings capturing his exact deeds and words, I think we would be closer to the truth.

I believe the gospels give us insight into the impact of a man of history and they open the doors for an exploration into the mystery and wonders of God. That is why I treasure them.
– John Shelby Spong

Good vs. Evil: Contrasting the Humanist View with the Religious View

2008-12-11T22:51:00.000-08:00

I didn't get too far in my reading this morning before my blood started to boil.

On page 134 of "The Shack", the author attempts to explain why "God" not only allows, but arranges for bad things to happen to good people. Sarayu (the Holy Ghost), is staged in a conversation with Mack (the main character) for the following dialogue:

"Let me begin by asking you a question. When something happens to you, how do you determine whether it is good or evil?"

Mack thought for a moment before answering. "I guess I would say that something is good when I like it--when it makes me feel good or gives me a sense of security. Conversely, I'd call something evil that causes me pain or costs me something I want.

"...Some things I initially thought were good turned out to be horribly destructive, and some things that I thought were evil, well, they turned out..."

He hesitated before finishing his thought, but Sarayu interrupted. "Then it is you who determines good and evil. You become the judge. And to make things more confusing, that which you determine to be good will change over time and circumstance. And then beyond that and even worse, there are billions of you each determining what is good and what is evil. So when your good and evil clashes with your neighbor's, fights and arguments ensue and even wars break out."

The author then goes into this double-speak type of logic that connects this all back to the "tree of knowledge of good and evil", and what a literal calamity it was that Eve partook of it, saying, "A problem? Indeed! The choice to eat of that tree tore the universe apart divorcing the spiritual from the physical. They [Adam and Eve] died, expelling in the breath of their choice the very breath of God. I would say that is a problem!"

This is when the author went into the most damaging logic, which is absolutely frighting to me when I realize how many people have bought into this book; hook, line and sinker. Taken from page 136:

"So there is a way to fix [mankind's insane lust for independence]?" asked Mack.

"You must give up your right to decide what is good and evil on your own terms. That is a hard pill to swallow; choosing to only live in me. To do that you must know me enough to trust me and learn to rest in my inherent goodness."

Well, since religion is primarily of interest to the uneducated, what did this paragraph just accomplish? If this is supposedly the Holy Ghost talking to Mack, and the reader has just been counselled to "only live in me" and "know me enough to trust me", then how, exactly is that accomplished?

This is how...by going to church and "learning about the Holy Ghost" through the words of a preacher...a man! You are essentially being told to follow the leaders of your church blindly, and now, worse than that, "...give up your right to decide what is good and evil on your own terms...choosing to only live in me."

I have a better idea. Rather than follow "a man" who claims to be "speaking the word of God", why don't you just trust yourself...your own inner goodness?

The following is from a new web site that people are being directed to from ads on the sides of buses in Washington DC. The website is http://www.whybelieveinagod.org/.

"Many people imagine that the only way to be good in this world is through belief in a god. But is that really necessary? Must we be bound by moral dictates set down in “sacred” texts written hundreds, if not thousands of years ago? Must we accept the authority and judgments of “spiritual” leaders and religious hierarchy? Does religious faith offer the only lens through which to judge life’s events?

The answer to these questions is no! There is another way for us to approach life. We can have ethics and values based on our built-in drives toward a moral life. And we can expand on these by adding what we have learned over time, building on tested principles while weighing consequences—all in the light of compassion and reason. Our ideals and principles can thus adapt to face the new moral dilemmas that arise in our ever-changing and increasingly complex world. Although there are few simple answers to life’s problems, we can be confident in the decisions we make—not because someone told us what is right but because we relied on our own careful reasoning and emotional reflection. We can live a life that accepts and appreciates the world as it is, and makes changes where possible, without needing to see supernatural explanations behind every event. This is a positive and uplifting approach.

Such a way of life is called humanism. Humanists use reason and the tools of science to better understand our world and the best way to live in it. Humanists understand that compassion for fellow human beings, as well as an acknowledgement of their inherent dignity and worth, must form the basis of our interactions with each other. Humanists are free of belief in any god or afterlife. We must make the best of this one life that we have.

If this is how you, also, see the world, then you are a humanist. So why not learn more about the American Humanist Association and the friendly people who are enjoying humanist activities in your area?
[end of excerpt]

My advice to you this Sunday is that you stay home from church and start living your own independent life. This web page would be a good start.

Utah Suicide Statistics - brace yourself

2008-12-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

Joe & Russ Baker-Gorringe are friends of mine from Salt Lake City. They have been on the front cover of every major paper in Utah and are pretty much the "gay celebrities" of Utah. This is an excerpt from their Christmas Newletter:

"In July, [Utah] Governor Jon M Huntsman and his wife, Mary Kaye, graciously hosted us, along with others from the gay community, in their home. In addition to having our picture taken with our governor, first lady, Mary Kaye, told us about a gay young man she knew who had walked into his first day of the 11th grade. In the hall that first morning, he heard kids say, “Oh no! The faggot is back!” The next day, they jumped him in the hall, and threw him in the lunchroom garbage can. On the third day, a group of guys grabbed him, shoved his head in an unflushed toilet. On the fourth day, a group of his peers told him not to sit with them at lunch, calling him “a Queer, faggot, freak.” On the fifth day, this same young man took his own life.

Mary Kaye’s comments tugged at our heartstrings, as we have done some outreach and fundraising for the Utah Homeless Youth Resource Center . Utah has the highest homeless youth rate in the nation. Of the thousands of possible reasons a youth could find themselves homeless, 54% of Utah ’s homeless youth say they were kicked out of their homes because they were gay. We can’t help but feel shame for the fruit of Utah ’s “family values.” On a national scale, gay youth suicides are 5 times the national average. In Utah , it is 8 times the national average.

In addition, we have seen countless people lost to self-loathing, and destructive addictive behavior, which have been fueled by the hurtful teachings heard from too many pulpits. It isn’t homosexuality that destroys families. It is ignorance, hate, and bigotry."

[end quote]

When Good Men Do Evil...and Call It Religion

2008-12-10T18:25:00.000-08:00

I'm up to page 132 in "The Shack", and now I see a pattern emerging.

No sooner had the author finished talking about the blue jay on page 97 (see my other blog for that post), than he started into the most convoluted logic imaginable that attempts to hypnotize the reader by going into a 34 page description of why God is so confusing to a mortal man. This twisted and misguided attempt to "explain away" every scripture that seems to contradict another scripture with who or what God is is breathtaking in what it expects the reader to toss aside with a simple "because I said so" on the part of the author (and by extension, the scriptures).

I kept reading, hoping that the author would wrap this up with something that tied it all together in an easy to swallow pill, but instead, I got the following dialogue by the character who portrays the Holy Ghost on page 132. She is in the garden behind the cabin with Mack.

"So, are there plants in this garden that are poisonous?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," exclaimed Sarayu [the Holy Ghost]. "They are some of my favorites. Some are even dangerous to the touch, like this one." She reached for a nearby bush and snapped off something that looked like a dead stick with only a few tiny leaves budding from the stem. She handed it to Mack, who raised both hands to avoid touching it.

"Sarayu laughed. "I am here, Mack. There are times when it is safe to touch, and times when precautions must be taken. That is the wonder and adventure of exploration, a piece of what you call science--to discern and discover what we have hidden for you to find."

"So why did you hide it?" Mack inquired.

"Why do children love to hide and seek? Ask any person who has a passion to explore and discover and create. The choice to hide so many wonders from you is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life."

"Mack gingerly reached out and took the poisonous twig. "If you had not told me this was safe to touch, would it have poisoned me?"

"Of course! But if I direct you to touch, that is different."
[end of quote]

Am I the only one who sees what the reader is being set up for here? Let me take you back a few posts to the quote by the humanist Steven Weinberg:

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

This is how a religion accomplishes their evil. This is why I use the "shelf metaphor". In organized religion, it is all about being homogeneous. If you have questions about the conflicts between life and the religion, these conflicts (or questions) are to be "put on the shelf" and God will answer them in the next life. For 34 pages the author is busy reinforcing how totally and utterly confusing the notion of "God" is when you try to come up with a cohesive image from the Bible. For 34 pages you are told to 'put that on the shelf', 'put this on the shelf', 'you will have the answer to that question after you die'. None of it makes sense, and the author knows this, which is why religions spend so much time telling you how to use this "shelf" concept.

And then they hit you with the coup de grace (literally translated, the killing blow in a mercy killing). After you have loaded up your shelf with questions that they tell you are "unimportant", they tell you to obey whoever it is that your religion looks up to as its leader...and to "obey without question", even if it doesn't make sense to do so.

Once again, the ending line from the quote above:
"Of course [it would have poisoned you], but if I direct you to touch, that is different."

What is it exactly that I was supposed to learn from my reading of "The Shack"?

I think I finally understand why so many churches are making this book available free of charge to as many members of their congregation who want to take one home and/or give a copy to their friends.

For the Mormons (the thorn in my side for 44 years), they didn't need "The Shack". Because they function as de facto cult anyway, their mind control is absolute by the time you are twelve years old and graduate from their version of a junior Sunday school (the Primary Organization).

Full-page Ad by Wayne Besen in Salt Lake Tribune

2008-12-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

Full-page ad in Salt Lake Tribune by Wayne Besen.

Self-explanatory.

"A Day Without a Gay" National Day of Protest

2008-12-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

A month ago (a few days after the Nov 15th National Day of Protest), we found out about the planned Dec 10th "Day Without a Gay". Mickey immediately booked the day off so we would be available to get involved.

After a week of waiting to see if somebody would start something, and then another week trying on my own to get something large enough for a group organized, I gave up. Mickey and I signed up (just the two of us) to work as food servers in the Broward Outreach homeless shelter here in Pompano Beach.

The turning point (when I realized that we were going to be on our own) was when Mickey picked up last Wednesday's South Florida Blade (the gay weekly newspaper) and read the following entry to me from the Datebook (community calendar) section:

"Wednesday 12.10.08

T[his will be] the first (and presumably last) "Day Without A Gay", a protest where all gay people are supposed to call in sick, to protest unfair treatment of the GLBT community. On your day off, we are supposed to volunteer for a local charitable organization. But despite the motives, is anyone going to actually do it? We at the South Florida Blade will all be here at work, as we are a gay-owned business and calling in sick would do more harm than good. And honestly, if we did call in we'd just sit at home and watch TV all day, which isn't much benefit to local charities, so...do what you wish, we make no judements either way."

Unbelievable! Don't they have an ounce of imagination? If they would have gone to the web page (http://www.daywithoutagay.org/) they would have found half a dozen alternative ideas for situations like theirs so that their gay owned business would not grind to a halt, but instead they published a high-profile statement that diminished what little effort might have been underway here by people like Mickey and I at the very bottom of the grassroots.

It is at times like this that my altruistic nature becomes tarnished and I move along the spectrum toward being a cynic like so many others before me...like the writers and editor of the South Florida Blade!

Today, in Broward County, because two gay men...a bonafide gay family...were visible outside of the gay community to a dozen other volunteers and a hundred or more homeless people, there is a broader awareness that a gay couple are indeed a family and we participate in the community as such! That is what the people in Florida needed to see more of before Amendment 2 went on the ballot, and it is the only thing that will make a difference for gay families in the future.

In spite of what our local gay paper thinks, two guys did their part today and made a difference for all gay residents in Broward County.

Another quote that captures the spirit of this blog.

2008-12-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

“Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.”

Howard Winters - a modern-day archaeologist born in 1923

This quote formed the foundation for J. Michael Wiltbank's fine-art photography exhibit that was censored by BYU (see next story in this thread).

It would seem that the Mormon Church (and BYU) is resisting any movement toward civilization because their behavior only serves to further entrench the 'us' vs. 'them' way of thinking.

BYU In Total Denial

2008-12-09T04:07:00.000-08:00

J. Michael Wiltbank, a fine-art student at BYU, wanted to highlight the division brought into families and circles of friends over the gay Mormon issue, so he put together a photography exhibition that highlighted the support that still exists in the face of the bigotry within Mormon leadership. The exhibit paired a gay BYU student with his/her major support person that makes life better for that student.

BYU allowed the exhibit to go up, but then after the artist left the hall they took down his exhibit and rearranged the show to fill in his space. The artist found out from a friend that his exhibit had been censored.

He apparently also felt threatened by expulsion because of the attention he received from his blog. He pulled down the page and on his photography web page asked for respect toward BYU because he "wants to finish his education there".

"The tyranny of religion is the ignorance it fosters."

2008-12-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

A quote from David Rosen, a columnist for Alternet.

(link to story)

"Recording" History vs. "Shaping" History - you choose.

2008-12-07T04:53:00.000-08:00

My next few posts may follow along with my reading of "The Shack" by William P. Young. There have been several little promptings lately to get me to read this novel, not the least of which is the idea that it might just restore my belief in a God. I thought I would give it a valiant last attempt, so I'm reading the book.

So far, I can't get the humanist out of my head, but I'm only on page 30.

Let me tell you how my mind is working now. On page 27 it talks about how Multnomah Falls was named.

"The tale centered on a[n Indian} princess, the only child left to her aging father. The Chief loved his daughter dearly and carefully picked out a husband for her; a young warrior chief of the Clatsop tribe, who he knew she loved. The two tribes came together to celebrate the days of the wedding feast, but before it could begin, a terrible sickness began to spread among the men, killing many.

"The elders and the chiefs met to discuss what they could do about the wasting disease that was quickly decimating their warriors. The oldest medicine man among them spoke of how his own father, when aged and near death, had foretold of a terrible sickness that would kill their men, an illness that could only be stopped if a pure and innocent daughter of a chief would willingly give up her life for her people. In order to fulfill the prophecy, she must voluntarily climb to a cliff above the Big River and from there jump to her death onto the rocks below.

"A dozen young women, all daughters of the various chiefs, were brought before the council. After considerable debate the elders decided that they could not ask for such a precious sacrifice, especially for a legend they weren't sure was true.

"But the disease continued to spread unabated among the men and eventually the young warrior chief, the husband-to-be, fell ill with the sickness. The princess who loved him knew in her heart that something had to be done, and after cooling his fever and kissing him softly on the forehead, she slipped away.

"It took her all night and the next day to reach the place spoken of in the legend, a towering cliff overlooking the Big River and the lands beyond. After praying and giving herself to the Great Spirit, she fulfilled the prophecy by jumping without hesitation to her death on the rocks below.

"Back at the villages the next morning, those who had been sick arose well and strong. There was great joy and celebration until the young warrior discovered that his beloved bride was missing. As the awareness of what had happened spread rapidly among the people, many began the journey to the place where they knew they would find her. As they silently gathered around her broken body at the base of the cliff, her grief-stricken father cried out to the Great Spirit, asking that her sacrifice would always be remembered. At that moment, water began to fall from the place where she had jumped, turning into a fine mist that fell at their feet, slowly forming a beautiful pool."

And they all lived happily ever after.

As the author writes, "It had all the elements of a true redemption story, not unlike the story of Jesus that she [the little girl in the story] knew so well. It centered on a father who loved his only child and a sacrifice foretold by a prophet. Because of love, the child willingly gave up her life to save her betrothed and their tribes from certain death."

As for me, as a humanist, I fail to see the difference between the two fables. One is from a small little-known native American tribe that relied upon verbal accounts to preserve their history, and the other from a people well-known in world history. This well-known people likewise relied upon verbal history for about 60 years before somebody wanted to organize the people (now a captured people who were ready to capitalize on their "victim status") and decided to commit a common and well-liked fable to parchment as a tool to bring the people who loved to tell that fable together into an organized religion.

Both fables were likely based on actual historical events (the wasting disease for the native Americans, and the crucifixion of a man in Jerusalem), but that is where the facts end and the sensationalizing begins.

I will never again be so blind as to not realize that the "winners" get to write history, so I now read or listen to each account of history through the prism of the author. When you read the scientific account of history that documents the New Testament time period, you can clearly understand the motives in why those scriptures were written and what those fables were intended to teach.

They were written to "shape" history, and were never intended to "record" history.

No, so far, as a humanist, I wasn't inspired to see that Christianity has any more claim to the truth than the native-American tribes of Oregon, but I am committed to continue my reading of "The Shack".

A Humanist - my new religion

2008-12-06T04:51:00.000-08:00

"With or without religion,
you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things.

But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

Steven Weinberg
quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999, US physicist (1933 - )
Humanist of the Year, 2002
American Humanist Association

http://www.americanhumanist.org/about/humanists-year.php

Funny Or Die (an all-star cast)

2008-12-04T03:10:00.001-08:00

Please watch this video.

Proposition 8: The Musical

Thank you.

A Quote from Carol Lynn Pearson

2008-12-03T18:40:00.001-08:00

From the writings of Carol Lynn Pearson, directed to those who have chosen to remain with the Mormon Church:

"I remember such great lessons in Mutual [Mormon youth group] about being very careful whom we associated with. 'Don’t expect to play in the coal bin and not come out dirty.' 'You will be judged by the company you keep.' I am so grieved to see whom my church has chosen as friends in this campaign to pass Proposition 8. We have gotten into bed with some of the most extreme of the "Religious Right," some of whom are well known as hate mongers. This was not a mutually affectionate liaison. We have been raped by organizations that hate the Mormons but love our money and our energy. We have been raped, and now are we pregnant with their fear and their hate? Much of the rhetoric we use they have put in our mouths, based more in fear than in fact. I have never before in my church observed the pain and the divisiveness and the fear that I am seeing now–fear of embracing the homosexual enemy, fear of ourselves being seen as disloyal if we don’t join in. It is very hard for me to see this happen in my church."

[emphasis added by me]

From where she finds the strength to stay in the church I have no idea. She is as altruistic in her desire to "bring change from within" as I am that every gay Mormon will see that The Emperor Has No Clothes and leave before permanent damage is incurred to their soul.

Colbert Report prior to Prop 8 vote

2008-12-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

The Colbert Report link for the Nov 3rd episode. Something of a lighter fare.

Click for link to Comedy Central video

Play the above video and learn while you laugh.

The Mormon Church and the Dehumanization of Non-Mormons

2008-12-03T03:35:00.001-08:00

It finally hit me this morning what the Mormon Church had done to me as a child, and it explains perfectly why "they" (the collective "they" of those who blindly follow the prophet) are so befuddled by the public backlash over the involvement of the Mormon leadership in "ordering" the sheep to give of their savings and every spare moment of their time to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign.

What hit me this morning is that in my back-water cesspool hometown of Cardston, Alberta, Canada (which is 96% Mormon), there was (and still is) a systemic effort (not systematic, but truly a "systemic effort") to dehumanize the "gentile world". Now, you've got to understand that only in the Mormon Church is a "Jew" considered to be a "gentile". The Mormons consider any non-Mormon to be a "non-believer", which in Biblical terms, makes them a "gentile".

Let me use a recent example that I hope will illustrate the parallels between how the Mormons conduct themselves behind the "Zion Curtain" and how other events of de-humanization in American history have similarly unfolded.

I want to start with the treatment of the poor in New Orleans. There is a deeper connection between those "poor" and the fact that they were primarily African-Americans, but for clarity I will just refer to them as the forgotten poor of New Orleans.

The various levels of government were able to ignore these people in the preparations for Hurricane Katrina because "the rest of America" had dehumanized them. There are satellite images of the entire school bus fleet from New Orleans leaving the compound and heading out empty to the much less deserving suburban areas and high ground. The city jail workers fled the prison with the "less-than-human" prisoners still locked in their cells.

So then what happened when the only option available to "the forgotten poor" was the Super Dome? Nobody organized any concerted relief effort for days. The cameras focused on the looter who was carrying the big screen TV. Why didn't the media focus on the news that made these people more human? Why didn't they broadcast the images of the first shelves to be emptied...the bottled water? Why didn't they keep repeating the image of the empty shelves where the diapers once stood?

No, America had long ago dehumanized the forgotten poor of New Orleans. In the face of warnings from the Louisiana Hurricane Center that the levees would fail, there had been no effort to upgrade the levees. While Metarie (the "safe community" where people with money all live and commute to New Orleans) was getting money to reinforce levees to protect their homes, nobody was spending any money to protect the Lower 9th Ward. No, the people who live there had long ago been dehumanized so that they were now invisible.

In the end, the media broadcast the images of the way the forgotten poor of New Orleans treated their dead. "How can anybody just walk around the dead bodies like that...pushing the dead lady in the wheelchair up against a wall and leaving her there?" Well, my answer to you is this; "How can you just push the forgotten poor into the Lower 9th Ward and leave them there?" They didn't even have a spare blanket to cover the lady with, instead simply covering her with some of her own belongings. What's your excuse for not doing anything for the forgotten poor of New Orleans? America cannot claim that we didn't have anything to give them. In our case, you (with our complicity), consciously chose NOT to give anything.

Let me tell you how a class of people can accomplish this. I learned this technique when I was a three-year-old in Cardston.

First, you elevate your own position so that you see yourself as "more deserving" than them. For me, as a three-year-old, I was taught that God had chosen Mormons as "His Elect".

John Leland touched on this in the early 1800's when he wrote;

“The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

I learned about this "tolerance" as a child...that I was expected to "tolerate" the gentile world. God had chosen me, as a Mormon boy, to be in this position of pre-eminence that John Leland talked about.

"White America" had similarly anointed itself to a position of pre-eminence with the first landing of the Mayflower. For the next three hundred years they used this position in one of the most egregious crimes against humanity. Slave owners were among the first to master the art of dehumanizing their fellow man.

Yes, if you get good enough in the dehumanization process you can actually beat a man until he is bleeding and then put salt in the open wounds so that they will scar over more quickly. After all, a slave with an open wound will not fetch a very good price at market.

Well, this is a new century, so this dehumanization process has to be more refined, but it is still there. In Iran they proactively still teach their kids in school, and it is the official government position, that the Holocaust was just a massive propaganda campaign by Jews to garner sympathy for their faith and people.

Let me get to my point. In the minds of fundamentalist Christians like the Mormons, the gay community is said to have an "agenda". This gay agenda is their way of pitting "us" against "them", and as true followers of Joseph Goebbel's (Hitler's propoganda man), they set about repeating "the big lie" so often that now many Americans truly believe that there truly is a "gay agenda" of some kind.

Since when is "equality for all" an agenda?

Last year saw a 15% increase in crimes of violence that specifically targeted the gay and transgender community. This is a direct consequence of the dehumanization process that is the real agenda of the fundamentalist Christians (including the Mormon Church). The post-Katrina images that are forever etched in your mind were similarly a consequence of the dehumanization of "the forgotten poor".

No, when the Mormon Church is actively using $20,000,000 to fund thousands of commercial airings for "The Six Lies" ad on every California TV network, then you know that they are students of Joseph Goebbel's methodology.

"The Big Lie" today that is propagated by the Mormon Church and other "Crazies for Christ" is that if we ever reach the point where there is equality for gays, there will somehow be a cosmic shift in morals and they (fundamentalist Christians) will lose their freedom to practice their beliefs that only serve to entrench bigotry into the minds of their 3-year-olds.

Would that necessarily be a bad thing if public schools actively seek to reverse wrong-headed religious dogma?

"I Heard Steve Young and His Wife Have Left The Church!"

2008-12-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

No, to my knowledge this is just a rumor, but it would be a juicy story.

But it is an actual post from a Mormon news thread, and therein lies the story. Many people in the church (including most of my siblings and nieces and nephews) were actually so caught up in this letter from the pulpit on June 29th that, in their minds, only a true apostate would ignore it. (Link back here if unfamiliar with the "Letter from the Pulpit" story.)

My son, out of love for his father, experienced a similar backlash to Steve & Barbara Young (read his blog post here).

Let me take you back to my June 25th post that opened this thread. In response to my appeal to walk out of church (figuratively...because not all of my family live in California), this is what was in my inbox from my older sister:

“…you are asking us to choose between our God (our Father in Heaven) and our brother (you). I cannot, nor will I, go against what I know to be true, which is this church, and that it is guided directly by God through the prophet. I will never go against that.”

The last sentence echoed in my mind. I had read a very similar line the night before in an email from one of my favorite nieces. After regurgitating the tired line about her love for me in spite of my sinful “lifestyle”, she finished the email with:

“...but I follow the doctrine and that includes the First Presidency and anything they sign in accordance with their callings as Prophets of God!”

Well, I guess in the minds of people like Jackie and Tina, anybody who would have "walked out of church" on June 29th might as well have just "kept on walking" and resigned their membership.

That is where the logic comes from that starts rumors that Steve and Barbara Young "have left the church".

I recommend that you link to the story and work your way through the 299 comments left after the story. Comments like these two I will copy-and-paste here:

Then he is not Mormon. Simple as that. I think he forgot an important part of his belief system is that Mormons believe the Prophet receives direct council from the Lord. Whoops! Perhaps he should read 'The Proclamation on the Family' and redo his [temple] recommend interview.

Posted By: Meetthekellys October 31 2008 at 10:16 PM

[Steve], it's funny that my children asked me a while back who was my childhood hero. I am embarrassed to say today that I even mentioned your name. Just because others have different beliefs doesn't mean you need to turn your back on your very heritage. You're an embarrassment to everything "we" hold sacred. Apparently, you are no longer a part of "we". Glad to see we can count on you when things get tough...I guess only on the football field, huh? Montana was always better. You're pathetic--why didn't you sign the check coward? [referring to a donation that Barbara Young made to the "No on 8" campaign.]
Posted By: scubachewy14 October 31 2008 at 11:08 PM

Link to the SFGate.com story and all 299 comments here.

Quote of the day.

2008-11-30T04:37:00.000-08:00

Quoting actor and writer Harvey Fierstein,

"Breaking the lock on my door doesn't make your home any more secure."

It never has and it never will.

The difference between "idiotic" and "inspired".

2008-11-28T07:18:00.000-08:00

The Mormon apostle who said the following comments lived until 1984; long enough to see himself utterly and profoundly proven wrong, yet nobody ever forced him to retract these words. At the time he uttered these words, Elder Mark E Peterson had already been an apostle for 10 years!

[beginning of excerpt]
Elder MARK E. PETERSON
Race Problems -- As They Affect The Church
Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level,
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, August 27, 1954.

"I think I have read enough to give you an idea of what the Negro is after. He is not just seeking the opportunity of sitting down in a cafe where white people eat. He isn't just trying to ride on the same streetcar or the same Pullman car with white people. It isn't that he just desires to go to the same theater as the white people. From this, and other interviews I have read, it appears that the Negro seeks absorption with the white race. He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage. That is his objective and we must face it. We must not allow our feelings to carry us away, nor must we feel so sorry for Negroes that we will open our arms and embrace them with everything we have. Remember the little statement that we used to say about sin, 'First we pity, then endure, then embrace'.... "
[end of excerpt]

History will be the judge on the role that the Prop 8 battle will play in the future dilemna of being gay and Mormon, but I hope you can see by reading the above words of an "apostle of the Lord" that the words "idiotic" and "inspired" are simply a matter of perspective when it comes to following a religion.

Why Floridians placed so much hope in California

2008-11-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have not studied history, you should still be superficially aware of the fact that it took more than ten years before the "civil rights" that were taken for granted in the rest of the states were actually enacted in fact in the south.

In spite of the fact that Fort Lauderdale has the third largest gay population in the United States, our seat of government is in what we refer to as "South Georgia". There is a saying in Florida: "The further north you go, the more "south" it gets."

While you in California already had domestic partnership benefits at a state level, and gay adoption, and perhaps had already achieved a "separate but equal" state of affairs for gay couples, we in Florida still had four laws on the books prohibiting gay marriage when they launched the Amendment 2 campaign.

While the wording of Prop 8 only wanted to protect the "word" marriage, our Amendment 2 was worded to prohibit "anything that resembles marriage". Still, the "Vote Yes on 2" campaign promised that they had no intention of trying to take away the "domestic partnership" benefits that were already in place with only a handful of "rogue" municipalities and counties.

Read the following link to understand how bald-faced this lie was. It has only been three weeks, and the "Yes on 2" campaign organizers have launched their attack to strip domestic partnership benefits in Tampa's surrounding counties.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/local/article911491.ece

What to do when "obeying the prophet" is wrong for you, and you know it.

2008-11-26T06:08:00.000-08:00

I will just quickly link to this article in my blog because it exposes without bias why people must think about what it means to "obey the Prophet" when the prophet's advice just might be wrong for you, in your particular circumstances.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ia4d7c75ed209875b1e63b36a5c025f44?pn=1

Watch for works from this author.

2008-11-26T05:38:00.000-08:00

This is an excellent (but very long) article that is very revealing about why "the desert religions" fear gay marriage. The guy being interviewed is Richard Rodriguez, who is a practicing gay Catholic. His previous three books (one a 1993 Pulitzer finalist) were groundbreaking.

This interview touches on his 4th book, which is about monotheism. It is in this book that he talks about the three "desert religions"; Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Quoting from the Salon article, "In one of his Peabody Award-winning radio commentaries for PBS's News Hour, [Rodriguez said] he has been trying to understand the strands of darkness that run through these religions."

I've cut and pasted the relevant part to me here, and the link to the full article is at the bottom.

[an excerpt]
Salon:
Speaking of hypocrisy, churches have plenty of sexual skeletons in their closet.

Rodriguez:
Right. The Mormon Church has this incredible notoriety in America for polygamy and has been persecuted because of it. The very church that became notorious because of polygamy is now insisting that marriage is one man and one woman. That is, at least, an irony of history. But as a number of Mormon women friends of mine say, the same church that espouses the centrality of family in their lives is also the church that urges them to reject their gay children.

Then there is the Roman Catholic Church, my own church, which has just come off this extraordinary season of sexual scandal and misbehavior in the rectory against children. The church is barely out of the court and it's trying to assume the role of governor of sexual behavior, having just proved to America its inability to govern its own sexual behavior.

Look at the evangelicals. In their insistence that people be born again, they know Americans are broken. In their circus-tent suburban churches, you find 10,000 people on a Sunday morning. You find people who have been divorced, people who have had drug experiences, people who have been in jail. These churches touch upon a dream that people can put our lives back together again.

Now these churches are going after homosexuals as a way of insisting on their own propriety. They are insisting that they have a role to play in the general society as moral guardians, when what we have seen in the recent past is just the opposite. I mean, it's one thing for the churches to insist on their right to define the sacrament of marriage for their own members. But it's quite another for them to insist that they have a right to define the relationships of people outside their communities. That's really what's most troubling about Proposition 8. It was a deliberate civic intrusion by the churches.
[end of excerpt]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/11/25/proposition_8_religion/

Florida Judge Declares Adoption Ban "Nonsensical"

2008-11-25T12:19:00.000-08:00

Watch the video clip and read the CBS Channel 4 News story.

If you care about children at all, grap a tissue!

http://cbs4.com/local/Florida.Gay.adoptions.2.873416.html

A reasonable Mormon legal perspective.

2008-11-25T11:51:00.000-08:00

A thread from Jerry to his friend James on the Ohana News thread:

Dear James:
It happens that the attorney who edited the key book on Gay Rights Law is a member of our stake presidency. Our stake president is also a prominent local attorney, and lead council for the University of Rochester. Sunday evening they held a Fireside on California's Proposition 8 that, I'm sure, was unlike any other discussion held in the church. Here are my abridged notes from the presentation. These are notes for which I am solely responsible in case there are any mistakes or mis-spoken points. However, my wife did review them and believes that they are accurate.

In a subsequent note, Jerry says this meeting was held in their Relief Society Room because they doubted many people would be interested in attending; however, more people showed up than there was room for, and an overflow crowd went down the hall. It was a crowded, overflow event; everyone was invited.

[quoting his notes]
Proposition 8 Fireside
Cary Jensen, Esq.
November 23, 2008
Rochester NY Stake Center – Relief Society Room

President Jensen began by stating that he was not speaking as the Stake President and that he was not representing the official view of the Church of Jesus Christ o f Latter-day Saints. He is speaking from his professional background as a lawyer.

He qualified that he is not a Constitutional lawyer, but then reviewed his academic background in Constitutional Law, which was fairly impressive anyway. He also mentioned that people on both sides of the Proposition 8 issue were probably going to learn something, but find something to upset them.

He began by stating the importance of living by the “Rule of Law.” He quoted Robert Bolt’s “A Man For All Seasons” as his introduction, reviewing the setting and situation (summary: if you eliminate laws and freedoms to fight the devil, when you have exhausted the last law, the devil will turn on you and there will be no place to run for protection.) and ending with “I’d give the devil benefit of law for safety’s sake.” As an example he used Governor Romney, who opposed Gay Marriage in Massachusetts, but after his arguments were heard and the court made its decision he actively abided by it.

The three main issues on the table for this discussion will be:

1. 14th Amendment - Equal Protection (no limiting of life, liberty or pursuit of happiness without due process.)

2. Right of Privacy – Not actually stated in the Constitution, but implied and is also protected by due process.

3. 1st Amendment - Freedom of Speech, Assembly and Association

It is a judges job to review the action of legislation. The Decision is important, but often not as important as the Method of Reasoning. (Someone asked about “activist judges” and he responded that for the most part, people are only concerned about “activism from the bench” when they disagree with the decision. He felt there are very few real examples of that and that one major reason for it is “lazy legislators” who do not do their job because of fear of not being re-elected.)

Every law discriminates against someone. Therefore there are levels of scrutiny:

1. Highest – Strict Scrutiny (requires a compelling government interest to discriminate) usually involving such issues as race, national origin and alienage.

2. Intermediate Scrutiny – requires an “important rational for discrimination” and involves such issues as gender and illegitimacy.

3. Lowest Scrutiny or Rational Basis – requires a good reason, such as keeping drunks off the road.

Gay rights issues seem to be moving up from the Intermediate level to the Highest level of scrutiny.

California, for example, used Strict Scrutiny, while interestingly, Massachusetts used Lowest level and actually rewrote their definition of marriage. Cary’s opinion is that it will be very difficult for Gay Rights Lawyers to convince the judicial system that these rights satisfy the requirements for Strict Scrutiny.

At this point he pointed out that the Proposition 8 Amendment was now going up for review by the California Supreme Court. In the past, nine voter initiative amendments have been reviewed by them and one-third (or 3 out of 9) were struck down.

He quipped, if you think there was a lot of rhetoric when they declared gay marriage to be constitutional six months ago, just wait until they strike down Amendment 8. He believes they will and he has no idea what the role of the Church will be when that happens.

BUT, he quipped, “I have word from an inside source that the Church is not likely to ever be repeating this approach in the future.”

Next he discussed the following Court Decisions:

Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) Due Process

Lawrence v. Texas (2003) over ruled Bowers v. Hardwick (Sandra Connor’s opinion being significant)

Goodrich v. Dept of Health (Mass Supreme Court) In Re Marriage (Calif Supreme Court)

Romer (Colorado: Sexual Orientation is not a right) Overturned by US Supreme Court

He concluded by stating: In many states it is still legal to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. However, in states that have equality laws you have to learn to live and be comfortable with Civil Union laws.

He also believes that Civil Unions will lead to Gay Marriage because it has already been clearly demonstrated that “separate but equal” is not viable.

At this point there were four questions of “screwballs” which Pres. Jensen did not tolerate and whom he shot down.

One on gays teaching in schools (he replied that neither damage nor danger to students has been anywhere near demonstrated and restricting gay teachers was not going to happen).

One on an organization of atheist scientists who want to destroy Christianity (he replied that we should disregard conspiracy theories and that this simply was never going to happen).

One on gays getting all kind of terrible diseases (which he discounted as fundamentalist propaganda).

And one on the Church being forced by legislators to allow gay marriages, even in the temple, or lose our legal standing as a church (which he also said was never going to happen; that churches have far greater protection than this implies).

He concluded this section by stating that we needed to keep informed and rely on reliable sources for our information.

Then he got into the fact that the Church’s rhetoric has been one stating far greater compassion, respect and acceptance of homosexuals than seems to be generally given by members. He quoted from “God Loveth His Children” and commended it to everyone stating that he have been counseled by Pres. Hinckley not to discriminate against anyone and to protect the rights of individuals regardless of who they are.

He concluded by stating:

"We don’t understand our own sexuality. We need to be careful about what we think about others.

"I am under-impressed with every argument I have heard attempting to describe any damage that same sex marriage would impose on regular marriage."
[end of quote]

San Diego billboard that went up this week.

2008-11-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

A San Diego Billboard that went up this week.
"MissionGathering Christian Church is sorry for the narrow-minded, judgemental, deceptive, manipulative actions of those who took away the rights of equality of so many in the name of God."

Thank you, and well said.

Letter to President Monson - "washing of feet"

2008-11-24T04:47:00.000-08:00

Lester's Preface:
In the Mormon doctrine, when a Melchizedek Priesthood holder "dusts off his feet" with the invocation of his priesthood power, it carries enough weight to have an entire city destroyed if the wickedness in that city merits it.

This fact alone will tell you how this doctor sees the behavior of the Mormon Church leadership since they ordered that a letter be read from the pulpit in every California Mormon chapel on June 29th, 2008.

I received this before he mailed it to Salt Lake City because he is timing it to coincide with World AIDS day.

December 1st, 2008

Thomas S. Monson
President and Prophet
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
50 E. North Temple Drive
Salt Lake City, UT 84150

Dear President Monson:

As an Elder, and a father of two young sons, the youngest of whom is currently serving his mission in Stockholm, Sweden, I am writing to call you and the church to repentance. This may come as a surprise and a shock to be called to repent.

The [Mormon] church has sinned against those who are gay, lesbian or trans-gendered for too long. This sin against your gay and lesbian children has led to the destruction of faith; the destruction of families; to countless suicides. This has led to the loss of your mission to love your neighbor as yourself.

I am sending this on World AIDS day as well. My cousin died from AIDS in 1984 in Provo, Utah. She got AIDS from a blood transfusion during the delivery of her fifth child. She was the first person to die of AIDS in Utah. And, in honor of all of those we have lost along the way and the journey her death led me to in medicine to serving those most despised among us, I send this letter on this important day.

Also, with the power of my Melchizedek Priesthood still intact at this point, I ceremoniously shake the dust off of my feet. I call upon the heavens to rain down the power of heaven to bring you and your people to their knees in sincere repentance for the pain you have caused and continue to cause against the outcast and unwanted and their families dealing with this reality.

I have read the scriptures all of my life. I love my Savior. I try every day to live His example. Not once would He have entered a political fight against an unwanted minority and ignored what was the real trouble He was called to fight: ignorance, hatred, and poverty.

The traditional family is hurting, but it is not because there happen to be lesbians and gays in the world. No, the family is hurting because of divorce, abuse, addiction, poverty, gambling, etc. These are the true enemies of the family today. Yet, you have gambled the church's growth and mission on institutionalizing discrimination against your gay and lesbian children and those like them in your community and in this world.

To sin is to deny [the] Lord. His mission was to call the world to repent. It was not to cause pain to the lowly and already hurting.

Shame on you, and shame on my people, the Mormons. And, I say this out of a complicated love that I feel for you and the church.

During my years at BYU and my medical training at the University of Utah I would count the number of unexplained deaths in the Salt Lake newspapers of young men and women who died. Weekly the numbers piled higher and higher. The suicide rates of these many youth became one of the pains of my life.

The reality of growing up gay in a faith that denies and ignores this pain has led me to the realization that my people do not love Christ, nor do they serve Him. They serve a bureaucracy and organization. [T]hey have lost the work of the Lord somewhere along the way.

I am sorry for the pain that my actions today will cause my sons and my mother, but I choose [to] love them [as I] continue to work in a world to heal pain rather than cause it.

I beg you to get on your knees and speak your forgiveness to your lesbian, gay and transgendered children and their families.

Sincerely,

Robert Killian, MD/MPH
Seattle, WA

BYU Student Attempts Suicide

2008-11-21T04:39:00.000-08:00

Late on Nov 20th, a student at BYU went to the Provo temple with a gun and held it to his chest with the intent to shoot himself. He was apparently upset over recent disciplinary action that had been taken against him by the Mormon Church. A friend was there talking to him when the police arrived, and one policeman joined the conversation. An hour later they talked the young man out of taking his life.

A year ago there was not a happy ending, and this is the column I wrote then.

The Death of a BYU Freshman
By: Lester Leavitt
September 13, 2007 – Fort Lauderdale, Fla – The newspaper story only said that he was found dead in his dorm room by a roommate, and even that story was held off for more than five days “out of respect” to the family. No other coverage was forthcoming, so I was left to the bloggersphere for the rest of the story.
One blogger finally got the ball rolling with this: “Not to give details encourages the worst speculations. This is not mean, just logical, because we are questioning, analytical beings. If it were murder the police would have an ongoing investigation and the public would need to know. If it were medical there were would be no shame, so [no] need to keep it private. If it is psychological, as everyone assumes in the absence of information, then keeping it silent only confirms it.”
It was only a few more posts before somebody with some ‘local knowledge’ came in with this volley: “I know this is a difficult time for the family, but I think people should discuss the cause of death. It is a topic that needs to be addressed...not brushed under the carpet. The night I heard the news, I sat down with my boys and had an open discussion about what happened to David. I would like to think that other people could learn from his mistake and perhaps another life could be spared.”
Soon, somebody with some spine came in with a hint of truth: “I learned of this event on Friday from an email written from his father. I too wondered why this was not at least published, details or no details, which of course always leads to speculation. To lose any life so young with such great potential is heartbreaking. And to lose one's only son is of utmost grief. But to blame David for "his mistake" is insulting to anyone who has ever suffered from any type of depression or mental illness...and as for many it is still speculation as to how this young man died. He was a great kid! Yes, we can all learn from the experiences of life, but at this time the family has asked for the sharing of how vibrant, loving, and loyal David was.”
The youngest child – 10 years behind nearest sibling...
By all accounts, a super-achiever...
Best-little-boy-in-the-world...
Every reason in the world to live...
Sudden 'unexplained' death that nobody's talking about, not the least of which was BYU, which undoubtedly used its significant influence in keeping the story hushed until the funeral...
No girlfriends signed his on-line funeral guestbook, but lots of "our son was very close to David" entries...
We will probably never know anything else about this boy. I knew someone just like him in 1978. I was that boy.
I was deep in denial as a freshman when I, like David, spent my first month far away from home and family. Nobody would have had any reason to ever suspect what I dealt with within the first 3 weeks of college. That was when I was faced with my Robert Frost moment.
"Two roads diverged in the yellow wood."
That decision, and how hard it was to make, remains vivid in my mind! Also, like David, I was living in university housing, making friends with new guys that I wanted to get to know in a different way than I had known all of those familiar kids back in high school.
When I had my Robert Frost moment back then, I opened up a part of my soul that I had never looked into before, and it scared me to death to even admit it existed. It went something like this:
I had been invited to a hot tub party by one of my floor buddies. I lived on the 7th floor of Hendey Hall at the University of Alberta (Edmonton AB Canada). It was to be a floor exchange party with 7th Kelsey (the girl’s dorms). I asked naively, "what happens at a hot tub party?" My friend answered, "With any luck, we'll all get naked!"
The only thought I remember having was "a hot tub full of naked men!". The thought that there would be girls there - naked - didn't even enter my head for a second.
The “perfect-little-Mormon-boy” inside me kicked in and whispered to me, "Lester, don't even think it. It's immoral."
The black angel on the other shoulder whispered, "But it will be sooooo fun."
The “Mormon-boy” angel then whispered, "The only reason you want to go is to see all those naked men! What are you…gay?"
"Gay?” Where did that word come from?
Me? Gay? Is that possible?
Yes, in that instant, for me, two weeks short of my 19th birthday, I saw it very clearly.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could."
That Friday night, instead of going to a hot tub party, a good-little-Mormon-boy went to the dance at the church and sat in a dark corner and watched people dance. The punch and brownies were delicious.
I heard the next morning that everybody did, indeed, get naked.
I'm not saying that a certain BYU freshman who committed suicide on September 6th, 2007 was gay, but I for one can see how within three weeks of arriving at university, far from home, he might have had to face, for the first time in his life, a part of himself that he could no longer pretend didn't exist.
Until August of 2004 I never shared with a living soul the thoughts that went through my head during that time of my life, but for the next 30 years I was busy condemning myself for even having had the thoughts at all!

******************************
The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could.
To where it bent in the undergrowth,

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost (1920)

Renowned historian Jan Shipps speaks out.

2008-11-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

This is the link to the ABC4.com news story (and video).
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20stories/story.aspx?content_id=f0c6342c-cf10-4e94-b99b-4e313c8e3599#BBECDEEMBEDEDPLAYER

Below is the text of the video:

Renowned historian speaks about LDS Church PR problems

Reported by: Chris Vanocur
Last Update: 11/18 10:55 pm
Related Video |
Salt Lake LDS temple (ABC 4 News)
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - With the passage of Proposition 8 in California - the one banning gay marriage - the LDS Church is now facing a "perfect storm" of negative publicity.

So said one of the nation's leading historians on the LDS Church.

Dr. Jan Shipps has been studying and writing about the LDS Church for decades and decades.

She was also the first non-Mormon to be elected president of the Mormon History Association.

She now suggests the Church is facing a Prop 8 backlash, one which may take years to heal.

"It’s a perfect storm. It’s a perfect PR storm"

That's how Shipps described what the LDS Church has dealt with this year.

Specifically, questions about Mitt Romney's religion, the FLDS polygamy crackdown and now Mormon backlash from Prop 8.

Shipps said, "I would wager that the LDS Church has not faced this kind of negative publicity all at once."

The 78 year old Shipps is respected and revered as a historian not just outside Utah, but in Mormon circles here as well.

She said 'surprised' is probably too mild a word to describe the LDS Church's reaction to what happened since Prop 8 passed two weeks ago.

"I think they are really astonished that there are demonstrations at temples all over the nation."

Shipps noted this wasn't simply a case of the LDS Church saying it opposes gay marriage, but it also actively encouraged members to work for Prop 8's passage.

Shipps: "By talking to the Latter-day Saints outside of California that could come back to haunt them."

Shipps, a Methodist, also seemed worried about what Prop 8 and its aftermath are doing to LDS wards.

She even used the word trauma.

"It will take many, many, many months, maybe years to get this division healed."

Dr. Shipps also noted that this perfect storm of negative publicity comes just six years after Utah’s 2002 Olympics.

This was a time, she said, when the image of Mormons around the world couldn't have been higher.

Shipps is currently working on a new book about the LDS Church and Mormonism.
Copyright 2008 High Plains Broadcasting LLC All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Dr. Ed Firmage - Emeritus Law Prof at U of U Writes

2008-11-17T06:10:00.000-08:00

The last 2-by-4 is a heart-breaker
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 11/14/2008 03:05:04 PM MST
By Ed Firmage

The Mormon Church, the Republican Party at prayer, wants to run with the fox and bay with the hounds.

The Mormon Church of the 19th century had a tradition of Christian socialism and a pioneering spirit that created much of the best that can still be seen in the Great Basin of the American West. These and many more traditions were obliterated by persecution, indeed the United States declared war on Mormon culture and the feds won.

I have benefited personally by the ministrations of church leaders, truly Christian acts that went far beyond what I had any right to expect. But long ago, Fawn Mckay Brodie, arguably the most famous Mormon historian, noted just prior to her death, that the Mormon Church would begin to draw to its banner a hugely disproportionate number of radical conservatives.

She said that even when she spoke, in the early 1980s, "birds of a feather" were indeed flocking together. Now, the story is complete. The Mormon Church is the most retrograde ecclesiastical body in the United States -- 100 years dated on civil rights for African-Americans (indeed, worldwide), staunchly opposed to First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press (see, e.g., Main Street Plaza, with all its plastic and plaster of paris). The Mormon Church led the powerful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment that would have allowed women the full civic participation they obviously deserve and opposed the ordination of women to the clergy, since obviously only men can talk to God. And now Mormons have largely led and financed a war to deny marriage between gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

For me, this is not the last straw. Indeed, it is the two-by-four. My spine, devastated by surgeries, can take no more.

You have broken my heart.

Ed Firmage is the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus, at the University of Utah College of Law.

The Movie "September Dawn" is about Control

2008-07-24T03:01:00.000-07:00

[This blog post was written as a letter to my four children to apologize to them...and warn them.]

July 24, 2008

Dear Kids:

I am asking each of you to please go see the movie 'September Dawn'. It is a fictionalized account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It has a powerful message about how the Mormon Church achieves their cult-like mind control through the temple ordinance called "Blood Atonement." I know, this is another long letter from your dad, and even if you don't really want to read this, I need to write it in order to find closure.

Now I know that P__ and F___ will likely have some opposition to the idea that I want them to go see this movie (from their TBM friends - True Blue Mormons), but I'm not asking you to go see it in the frame of reference as "Brigham Young lied!". That is what most Mormon's think the movie is about, but there is a much deeper theme of Mormonism exposed in the movie. Please read this letter carefully.

The movie is an interpretation of events, and was not made to be a Discovery Channel documentary. The guy made the movie to portray religious fanaticism as dangerous, and the fact remains, whether Brigham Young was involved or not, a culture of fanaticism did exist to the degree that local church leaders had enough power over the minds of 50-60 men (some of them very likely Leavitt's because Santa Clara is less than 20 miles away from Mountain Meadows) that they could convince them that God wanted 120 innocent men, women, and children slaughtered in cold blood. The oath of secrecy was made to this Mormon God that they worshiped, and it was strong enough that only one man came clean with a confession of those events, and it took 20 years to compile enough evidence to execute him for his role as the leader of the 'death squad'. The truth will never be known but it is likely that this man "fell on his sword" to protect Brigham Young and his stake president.

I need you to see the movie and monitor the young man named Micah, from the opening scene until the end. The local Bishop is portrayed as having two special sons, Micah and Jonathan. Micah is obedient in every way, and even though he is in his early 20's he already has at least 2 wives. Jonathan, a half-brother who is from another wife, has resisted pressure from his father to marry because he has not fallen in love yet.

Micah's obedience is blind, but Jonathan always questions 'why' before he obeys. Both boys are fiercely loyal to each other, and are good right to the core. The only difference is their level of submission to the culture of the church.

If the culture of the church had been good and healthy in every way, both boys would have lived very similar lives, but that is seldom the case. Jonathan's life had a very different outcome simply be he was willing to question authority when his heart told him that to follow in blind obedience would be unethical. I want you kids to all be Jonathan's!

I was like Micah. I followed in blind obedience to what church culture told me to do.

The scene from the movie that I want to be imprinted in your minds for the rest of your lives is the scene that has Jonathan and Micah face-to-face as the massacre comes to its conclusion.

A_____, when you assert that I could have chosen differently about 'coming out' at the age of 18 instead of 44, I want you to picture that scene, and understand the consequences to me that I would have experienced in that kind of 1850's culture that exists even to this day in tight Mormon communities like Cardston.

I did not have the courage that Jonathan had, and instead chose to be a Micah. After you see the movie (you may have to watch it twice), you will have a better understanding of the mind control, and how it is achieved.

I was programmed to think that to even have doubts about Mormonism would mean eternal condemnation - complete and absolute separation for the eternities from my brothers and sisters and parents - displeasing my God that I loved - and the breaking of covenants that I made in the temple. Most importantly, the covenants as they were at the time I made them carried the penalties of death and condemnation that are portrayed very well in the movie. P_____, the covenants that you have made in the temple are very mellow compared to the ones that I made.

What is discussed in the movie about "blood atonement" is not an exaggeration of the wording of the old covenants I made. When making the covenants in the 1970's and 1980's, in reference to the breaking of the covenants made in the temple, we were obligated to utter the words, "...rather than do so, I would suffer...my life...to be taken." Those words "...my life..." are uttered while making a slashing motion across your neck, your chest, and your belly. The oath is taken three times, for each of three covenants you make in the temple. If you look up "blood atonement" in Wikipedia you get a good idea of how weird that doctrine is.

Yes, I will say it very plainly so that P____ and F____ will make no mistake about it. Your mother and I made covenants in the temple that carried with them penalties of horrible and awful deaths if we should break them! The church has wisely chosen to change the wording of those covenants in the past 25 years.

Those are the kinds of covenants that created the environment under which the Mountain Meadows Massacre occurred and under which, in my day and age, gay Mormon boys chose to marry women (or alternatively commit suicide when they realize where their thoughts are taking them and they have made every effort to change, and failed)!

The church of my day was still governing by fear! Fear of a vengeful, punishing God. The temple covenants were first and foremost about obedience, backed up by fear, not love. P_____, this might be hard for you to take, and I know it is all about perspective for people, and everyone has their own perspective.

My perspective was from that of a gay young adult who found nothing drawing me to a woman, and everything drawing me to a man as my eternal companion. Attend the temple once in my shoes, and add in the old wording, and you will have a better idea of the world that I lived in.

But I want to affirm very strongly that this is not about me. This is about the consequences that this covenant held for your mother, and about me owning the damage that I did to her in the name of a made-up God. Just as Micah participated in the murder of 120 innocent men, women and children, I caused a great deal of harm in trying to honor my temple covenants. The emotional abuse that your mother experienced because of the blind allegiance that I gave to the church was immense.

Micah said it best (from my perspective) in the movie when he said, "Women fall in love with men, but I don't think men are expected to fall in love with their wives." It was never expected that I love your mother when I married her. I simply had a duty to marry her.

The advice that I received was similar when it was explained to everybody in my generation that "if I would just get married, then God would fix everything", but the simple truth was, I had to be married in order to fulfill the temple covenants that I had made!

For the first 10 years of our marriage I was on auto pilot - a zombie - going about life without giving anything to your mother in the way of emotional intimacy. I had shut down after the honeymoon when nothing in the way of a miracle had materialized. I kept waiting for the miracle, doing what I could, making sure that the sex was good for both of us, but a marriage is more than good sex.

Your mother tried to live a life that always seemed to be at odds with the church culture, and to this day it is obvious that Mormon women will never be her kind, but instead of allowing your mother to be the 'good person' that she is, I, along with my family, insisted that 'being good' was not 'good enough'. The only kind of 'good' that is 'good enough' in a Mormon culture has already been defined by the Relief Society, and if you don't measure up against that standard, then you've got to just 'suck it up' and do better.

And don't you ever dare to doubt the authority of the priesthood, or assert your individuality if it opposes the doctrine of the church in any way.

Because I was emotionally unavailable to your mother right from the day we were married (while we were dating, we got along famously and were the best of friends), we never really had much to build a marriage with, but we both knew what we were supposed to do, so we put on a good face and went through the motions.

When your mother first suggested that we leave the church or she would be forced to separate from me I told her that because she would not have raised you kids in the church that I would do all in my power to gain full custody of you children in the event of a divorce. At the time, your mother had been driven (by my "Micah-like" behavior) to the brink of a nervous breakdown, and it would not have been difficult to convince any judge that she was unfit as a parent. Your mother knew that I would have my family and the church community to back up my claims as witnesses in court. Your mother had no other friends outside of the church to come to her rescue. It would be her word alone against an army of opposition!

The church, and myself as a blindly obedient pawn of the church, turned your mother into a shell of a human being - her spirit broken - her will to fight for an identity of her own spent. She never knew what clothes to buy because her idea of 'style' was different from the church standards. She never knew what art to do because her idea of 'art' was different than what was displayed in the chapels and temples and homes of 'good' Latter-day Saints. She never knew how to decorate her home because her idea of a comfortable living room had a completely different feel than the homes of 'good' Latter-day Saints.

She sacrificed it all - everything - in an effort to be the person that I would fall in love with, because beneath it all, she had fallen in love with me and wanted me to love her back. This is the mother that you lived with for most of your childhood years, and the mother you remember. She is not the woman that I had made friends with before we were married.

I want you kids to know that I would give my life for you to know the woman that I knew in the winter of 1980/1981! F____, I look at you, living on your own now, carefree, happy to be alive - and I see your mother as she used to be back then.

I have never felt sick to my stomach for any reason other than for food poisoning or a virus, but I almost threw-up during the movie. When I saw the portrayal of Micah I saw myself for who I had been for the first time in my life, and I was physically ill.

When Mickey and I left the theater, I insisted on walking down the river trail because I was afraid I would be sick in the car. I held myself together until we were away from other people and then I collapsed on a bench in tears as I tried to tell Mickey through my sobs of how I had never used a gun as Micah did, but nevertheless had destroyed a life through my blind obedience to a culture that put conformity on a podium as an idol to be worshipped, regardless of the personal cost. Conformity that goes so far as demanding all adherents wear identical underwear!

Forget the fact that I was a closeted gay for over 30 years. Forget the personal cost to me of being something that I was not. I take full responsibility for putting my own life back in order, and I can live with what I lost and do my best to make-up for that in my new authentic life.

Yesterday I realized the full depth of the consequences of my behavior in your mother's life. She put her trust in me, and my behavior stole something of infinite value from her. It is a debt that I can never repay.

Like Micah in the movie, I realize now (far too late) that my behavior has done irreparable harm to another human being, and there is nothing I can do to restore to your mother what I stole from her; her dignity, her happiness, her individuality.

I love you kids more than life itself. I am so sorry that your lives have also been so adversely affected by the chain of events over which you have had no control.

Your mother and I are so glad to have you in our lives, and we will continue to live the fullness of our lives with you. I do not want any of us to look back with regret, but rather with understanding of what brought us to this point.

It is our duty now to use that understanding to build a meaningful life as authentic individuals, and to find all of those things that will create lasting happiness. That will be infinitely easier if you all stay far away from Mormonism and their damaging culture of blind obedience.

Thank you for taking the time to try and understand me and where I've come from.

I love you,

Dad