News

Deseret News: A Book of Mormon Musical Convert

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2013-05-07 Book of Mormon Musical

Deseret News has an interesting article about Liza Morong’s journey from watching the Book of Mormon musical to becoming a Mormon. It’s an intrinsically interesting story, but also has lots of unexpected insights into the Mormon missionary experience. Did you know that some missionaries serve online? I did not. What does a Mormon missionary with muscular dystrophy do when asked to baptize someone? This article explains. And it’s also a glimpse into the world of a convert:

“My mom will sometimes say, ‘I can’t believe I brought you to that show. None of this would have happened.’ I tell her that it still would have, just in a different way,” Morong said. And while she is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when she returns home to Maine where she grew up, she attends church with her mom as well as her LDS congregation. “I am a member of Christ’s true church, but the church I grew up in is still part of me,” she said.

Definitely worth a read.

Forget Gun Stats: Yahoo! is Running Blaze Articles!?

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I’ve seen the usual comments surrounding this article about gun stats out of Utah, but what shocked me wasn’t the article (and it definitely wasn’t the comments), it was the fact that Yahoo! News republished an article from Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.

2013-05-07 Blaze on Yahoo!

I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s definitely a thing. Glenn Beck’s homebrew hybrid of Drudge and CurrentTV must be pulling some real numbers to get pulled in by Yahoo! like this. (Here’s the site, if you’re curious.)

Elizabeth Smart, Chastity, Politics, and the Value of Human Life

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2013-05-06 Elizabeth Smart

In the short few minutes it took me to re-find the original Christian Science Monitor piece on Elizabeth Smart’s comments at a Johns Hopkins University forum on human trafficking, my take on the article shifted dramatically.

The first few references I saw were all from fellow Mormons on Facebook who were highlighting and agreeing with Smart’s message which is, to put it simply, that a lot of the conventional ways of teaching young people and especially  young girls about chastity are irredeemably terrible. From the CSM:

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

So originally I intended to just link to that piece and basically say that I thought it was great that such a strong and compelling spokesperson was drawing attention to this issue. I have tremendous respect for Smart and the way that she has risen above her ordeal and refused to be a victim. Her criticism is absolutely right, and religious people (including Smart’s fellow Mormons) need to learn to separate the ideal of chastity (which ought to apply to both genders equally) from out-dated, sexist cultural notions that mix chastity with the horrific notion that women and girls are products or goods that have most value when in “like-new” condition. It’s a simple but vital distinction: chastity ought to be about the choices that women and men  make, not something that applies only to women and includes events that happen with or without their consent.

But while I was hunting around for that article, I was surprised and disappointed to see headlines like these in secondary coverage:

Elizabeth Smart: Abstinence-only education can make rape survivors feel ‘dirty,’ ‘filthy’ (MSNBC)

Traditional Mormon Sexual Purity Lesson Contributed to Captivity, Elizabeth Smart Tells University Audience (Joanna Brooks)

Smart’s comments are being exploited for political gain, and that is neither respectful to Smart nor illuminating for the discussion. An open-ended discussion of the real issues without political prejudice might, for example, talk about the connection between American consumerism and sexual exploitation. The fetish of unwrapping expensive technological gadgets has twisted and eerie parallels with the way women’s bodies are treated as products to be consumed. I believe the problem is deep and pervasive, but MSNBC and ThinkProgress see just left vs. right. The entire discussion, and not just Smart’s views, are being shortchanged.

It’s particularly frustrating because a short perusal of Smart’s Wikipedia page indicates that she continues to thrive within her faith community as an observant Mormon, including serving a mission and marrying the traditional Mormon temple ceremony. Both of these facts indicate–in the absence of any statement from Smart to the contrary–that she remains dedicated to traditional conceptions of virtue. This is why her criticism of Mormonism is so important and insightful (and why I was excited by them in the first place): it genuinely comes from within.

I also think it’s important to realize that Smart seems to have found not only problems, but also solutions within her faith. A traditional Mormon children’s song is titled simply “I am a Child of God“, and Mormons heavily emphasize our divine heritage as children of heavenly parents. As Smart concluded (citing the CSM article again), children need to be taught that “you will always have value and nothing can change that.”

And that, too, is a part of Smart’s Mormon upbringing.

Al-Qaeda battles for control of chemical weapons plant

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2013-04-29 Chemical Weapons Plant

From the Telegraph:

Set amid the rolling plains outside Aleppo, the town of al-Safira looks just like another vicious battleground in Syria’s civil war. On one side are lightly-armed rebels, on the other are government troops, and in between is a hotly-contested no-man’s land of bombed-out homes and burned-out military vehicles.

The fight for al-Safira is no ordinary turf war, however, and the prize can be found behind the perimeter walls of the heavily-guarded military base on the edge of town. Inside what looks like a drab industrial estate is one of Syria’s main facilities for producing chemical weapons – and among its products is sarin, the lethal nerve gas that the regime is now feared to be deploying in its bid to cling to power.

That would be ominous enough, but then there’s this:

Among the rebel lines in al-Safira flutters the black flag of the al-Nusra Brigade, the jihadist group that recently declared its allegiance to al-Qaeda. Known for their fighting prowess honed in Iraq, they are now taking the lead in nearly every frontline in the Syrian war, and earlier this month, pushed to within just over a mile of al-Safira, only to for the Syrian troops to regain the ground last week.

Yeah, this can’t end well.

Samurai Sword-wielding Mormon Bishop Chases Off Mugger

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Kent Hendrix

So, a guy who had been stalking a woman hides outside her house and attacks her at 7am as she leaves for work in a quiet neighborhood in Salt Lake City. The result? The entire neighborhood apparently comes pouring out of their homes like a baseball team clearing the dugout to protect one of their own. The Mormon bishop with a 4th degree black belt in Kishindo and a sword is getting most of the headlines, but if you watch the video from Fox News, it sounds like the stalker/mugger was well down the flight branch of the fight-or-flight response before the bishop even got on the scene. One witness said an elderly woman with a baseball bat got there first, jumping on the attacker and hitting him while the sword-toting bishop ran to join in.

Which is part of what makes this story so awesome: in other parts of the country you might read about neighbors pretending they can’t see an attack happening, but in this part of Salt Lake City everyone apparently comes running out of their homes with baseball bats and swords if they hear someone in trouble.

The mugger got away from the impromptu posse, but not before the sword-wielding bishop managed to grab some his chapstick (?) and memorize his license plate. He shouted at the attacker has he drove away: “I’ve got your DNA and I’ve got your license plate: You are so done!”

The mugger/stalker turned himself in an hour later.

The New New Atheists

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Atheist advertising campaign launched

It might be a bit premature to declare victory, but this piece from The Spectator on the New New Athiests (or Newer Atheists) is still exciting. In it, Theo Hobson first provides a succinct and compelling explanation for the rise of the New Atheist after 9/11 and then sketches out their demise. In a nutshell: the New Atheism was a silly attempt to pretend that religions is neither compelling nor complex, and the moment is over because most people now realize that was a bit silly all long.

I expect it will take time (months, years) for this awareness to trickle down to the level of my Facebook experience, but I’m looking forward to not having to deal with immature arguments about how religion is the root of all evil and fundamentally irrational. Some diehards will never give up, of course, but I’ll be quite happy if it becomes not longer a legitimate topic of discussion, as it never should have been.

Internet Commenters and the “Nasty Effect”

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2013 03 22 Comments Bad For You

Slashdot summarizes a depressing bit of research:

Researchers worked with a science writer to construct a balanced news story on the pros and cons of nanotechnology, a topic chosen so that readers would have to make sense of a complicated issue with low familiarity. They then asked 1,183 subjects to review the blog post from a Canadian newspaper that discussed the water contamination risks of nanosilver particles and the antibacterial benefits. Half saw the story with polite comments, and the other half saw rude comments, like: ‘If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you’re an idiot.’ People that were exposed to the polite comments didn’t change their views really about the issue covering the story, while the people that did see the rude comments became polarized — they became more against the technology that was covered in the story.

Glad that none of my commenters here are like that, but it’s still disconcerting to thing that the ignorati of the world might actually be having a real impact. (Pic is from Salon, which also covered the story.)

Reminder: Human Beings Are Not Commodities

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Earlier this month, the New York City Health Resource Administration unveiled a series of posters designed to combat teen pregnancy. The posters have drawn widespread criticism, including drawing fire from both sides of the abortion debate. The primary complaint is that they stigmatize pregnant mothers, and that’s valid. There’s an even more sinister message, however, but it’s not drawing as much attention because it’s much more subtle.

2013 03 15 I'm Less Likely To Graduate

Think about the logic of that statement: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because ou had me as a teen.” The unstated question is: As opposed to what? By waiting, could you have had this child at a later stage in your life, a stage when this child–this particular curly-haired kid–would have had a better shot at life? No. You couldn’t have had this child at any other time. You would have had a different child.

What the poster is implying is that human beings are interchangeable. If you get pregnant at 17 your kid is more likely to have a bad life. If you get pregnant at 27 they have a better chance. But it’s not the same child. Conception is the moment when a new organism is created. Unless you save that particular sperm and that particular egg for 10 years, we’re not talking about improving the life of a specific child. We’re talking about two entirely distinct children.

Does that matter? Yeah, I think it does. I think it does because Madonna going around and adopting children like they were Pokemon (“Gotta catch ’em all!”), parents in India and China sex-selecting their chidlren by killing off the girls, the fact that 95% of babies with Down syndrome get aborted, the entire industry of IVF that tends to treat children as an upgraded model of those purse-dwelling toy dogs, and the looming biothethical quandary of designer children all contribute to the commodification of human beings.  Implicit in all of this is the idea that–as long as you terminate the pregnancy before birth–you can have a do-over. As though a human being were like a laptop or a car or a cup of coffee: a purchase you can postpone by returning the merchandise or a transaction you can unravel if the situation changes.

Yes, I’m pro-life, but you don’t have to be pro-life to be troubled by this trend. Even those who think abortion should be legal can recognize that a living human organism has some moral value, and that we ought to treat them as something qualitatively distinct from products. I’m not saying that these posters are creating that perception, but they sure are disturbing reflections of it.

Emma Watson Is Really Not Doing 50 Shades (No, Really)

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2013 03 19 Emma WatsonShe denied the rumors as far back as August saying: “I haven’t read the book, I haven’t a read a script, nothing.” Apparently that was not clear enough for some folks, so yesterday she tweeted:

Who here actually thinks I would do 50 Shades of Grey as a movie? Like really. For real. In real life.

Emma rocks. (Vulture)

NPR: What Do Changes to Mormon Scriptures Mean?

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2013 03 18 Terryl GivensIf you haven’t heard, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons) released an update to their scriptures. The vast majority of the changes were typographical, but there were some changes that might point at much more significant developments. NPR decided to ask an expert about this, and so they called Terryl Givens. (That’s my dad, and yeah, I’m proud.)

Here’s the interview.

Also, my dad says that the last quote in the article doesn’t reflect what he was trying to say. Here’s the quote, as he stated it in the interview:

In many ways, what we’re seeing with these changes is the privileging of history over theology in some ways,” he says. “It’s a kind of acknowledgement that the Mormon Church is rooted in a past that is replete with historical claims. And it’s a magnificent thing for a church to allow professional historians to have a lead role in the way that scripture is presented and its story is told.

Here’s what he would have liked to have said:

In many ways, what we’re seeing with these changes is the privileging of history over folklore in some ways,” he says. “It’s a kind of acknowledgement that the Mormon Church is rooted in a past that is replete with historical claims. And it’s a magnificent thing for a church to allow professional historians to have a lead role in the way that scripture is presented and its story is told.

In short: the historical ban that prevented black Mormons from receiving the priesthood never had a solid theological foundation to begin with. It arose from racist attitudes that were prevalent throughout the nation at that time (mid-1800s). It’s tragic that it took so long to repudiate, and it never reflected Mormon theology.