Suboptimist
I’m not quite a pessimist. I’m more of a suboptimist.

A couple things on my mind today. Has anybody (in Utah) heard the referendum 1 (school vouchers) ads on the radio? I find them really irritating. It makes me wonder if there are options aside from “Yes” and “No” on the ballot. The logic the ads are employing is pretty ridiculous. For example, from the “Yes” side: “More money for public schools.” How? Seriously, how? Giving money that could be used for public schooling to people to use in private schooling equals more money for public schools?

From the “No” side: “…Teachers at private schools don’t need a teaching certificate or even a college degree.” How is that even relevant to the discussion? It’s not, it’s just a swipe against private schools and a misconception of what a teaching certificate is, a credential required only for teaching in government schools in Utah. The college degree thing is trumped up. Most private school teachers have degrees. The ones that don’t probably won’t be found teaching math, science, or English either.

The other thing is Julie Beck’s LDS General Conference talk. I know, I’m late to the game here, but I don’t pay attention to General Conference, so I have to catch all of the uproar second hand. I recall some complaints over at FMH about it. As I read it, yeah, I found a few examples of what I would consider an antiquated attitude of what women should do, like:

Mothers who know are nurturers. This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness.5 To nurture means to cultivate, care for, and make grow. Therefore, mothers who know create a climate for spiritual and temporal growth in their homes. Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. Working beside children in homemaking tasks creates opportunities to teach and model qualities children should emulate. Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a “house of order,” and women should pattern their homes after the Lord’s house (see D&C 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women.

Really though, aside from this and the children thing she said, it wasn’t that inflammatory of a talk. Kind of I’m tired of talking now. I think I need to go to class anyway. Why couldn’t Helen Keller drive? Sorry, sorry, I had to say that.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am bringing back a feature that has long been sitting dormant in the vast expanse of the Internets: the Friday Fatwa. I don’t know if I can say how long it’s going to be back, but it should show its ugly face every now and again. Where to start…

First, there was recently a bear attack in Utah county in which a young boy died. The local news and opinion pages since then (Monday or Tuesday I think) has been saturated with the story and commentary about the incident. It’s really starting to grind on my nerves. Here are a few letters to the editors I found particularly annoying:

[From the Deseret News]

I know that all of our hearts go out to the family of the young boy who was recently killed by a bear in American Fork Canyon. It was a tragedy. However, I don’t understand why warnings were not posted when a bear sighting took place earlier that day.

If you were at a beach and there had been shark sightings, a warning sign would have been put up. Surely there could have been some way to alert campers

Kim Grant
Kaysville

What kind of sign is necessary? You’re in the bloody wild. Of course there are going to be bears. Welcome to Utah.

[From the Trib]

I read, with sadness, the article about Samuel Ives being killed by a bear. I am sure that everyone has condolences for the family.

However, the fault does not lie solely with the bear. The family was camped two miles above the campground, some distance away from the developed areas. The Forest Service cannot possibly follow everyone who goes into the mountains to see where they are camping and what they are doing. If people choose to reject safe camping procedures by staying in undeveloped camping areas, they also must accept any consequences.

Luke Osborn, the bear hunter, yelled, “Yahoo,” when he killed the bear. There is no reason for joy in that. A bad decision cost two lives. This was not the bear’s fault, not the Forest Service’s fault and not young Samuel’s. If people would learn to follow safe practices and respect the natural wildlife in the mountains, these unfortunate events would not happen.

Janice Klein
Park City

Frankly, I agree with him, but his letter elicited this response from TribTalk user ‘Brigham Nephi Taft Benson’:

God gave humans dominion over animals. That means we can do whatever we want to them. Animals have feelings? That’s a good one. Only a tree hugging hippie would think that, not a manly man like myself. Killing animals is fun! I love watching their soul leave their body and knowing that I was the one who caused that. Gives me quite a rush, kinda like you hippies get when you smoke your doobies or whatever you call them.

Sweet Jesus…that’s all I can say.

What I am waiting to see now is a letter similar to the kinds of letters the ill-informed listeners to conservative talk shows send in when talking about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Allow me to simulate a possible entry:

We, the American people, need to stop protecting bears. Good, honest, American people don’t go into bear caves and slaughter bear cubs, but the bears rip through tents and take innocent American children. We need to stop supporting the terrorist bears.

Alma Benson Young
American Fork

In other news, I frequent a gym that includes a large family pool full of children. Why is it that these kids can’t be bothered to towel off before they go into the locker room or the bathroom stalls, leaving the floor covered in a large pool of water? What’s worse is that the management has removed some of the floor mats, leaving dirty pools of water where I stand to change.

There is also a local Mexican restaurant I am fond of that serves its food cafeteria style. When I went there last night, the woman in front of me had a conversation with one of the line workers that went something like this:

Woman: What is the thing in the bowls I keep seeing? It looks like a taco salad.

Worker: It’s a salad.

Woman: Okay, I think I want that. What do I get in it? I want meat. What kind of meat do I get on it? Do I get cheese on it?

Read the bloody menu before you order.

I finally got to watch the Frontline documentary The Mormons (I was too busy to watch it when it first aired two weeks ago). I was reasonably impressed with it. It seemed to attempt a fair portrayal, covering the history and culture and interviewing the rank and file and the dissidents. My one complaint was that it didn’t cover early Mormonism’s connections to Freemasonry. Surely that would have been relevant, either in the section on Joseph Smith, Mormon beginnings, or the temple ceremonies. Perhaps it would have taken too much time.

I discussed the documentary with a friend of mine. He asked how I felt about Mormonism, having been raised a Latter-day Saint, growing up in the culture, and being inactive (a term frequently applied to those who do not attend LDS meetings). What can be said is that I have had little exposure to Mormonism as it exists outside of Utah, the sole exceptions being visits to family in Seattle and Minneapolis and the summer I spent with a small group of Jordanian Mormons. Thus, what I can say about my feelings toward LDS culture is limited. I believe the culture is different here since Mormons comprise the majority religious group. This is probably the reason many Utahans identify themselves as being either Mormon or non-Mormon, an aspect of Utah may lead to my ultimate demise. Concerning Utah Mormon culture specifically, it’s can be a little irritating at times, but it’s not as bad as people think. It would be the same with any religious majority (even a non-religious majority).

As per Mormon doctrine and history, it’s a mixed bag for me. Do I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet? No, at least not in the commonly understood meaning of the term. Do I believe Joseph Smith was a fraud? Again, no. I think he was a sincere religious founder. Charlatan? All religious founders (including businessmen, scholars, anyone who has to use persuasions regularly) has to have a little bit of that in him, but I don’t believe Smith was trying to mislead people. Do I believe the Book of Mormon documents the pre-Columbian Americas? No, in fact Joseph Smith listed himself as the ‘Author and Proprietor’ of the first edition. Do I like some of the things Smith did? Yes. I’ll leave it at that.

Do I like Brigham Young? Not particularly. I think he was a dictator, a racist, and a philanderer. While Joseph Smith appointed a black man, Elijah Abel, to hold the priesthood office of Seventy, Young insisted that black men could not hold the priesthood, saying the only reason the ‘Negro race’ survived the flood was so Satan could maintain his presence on earth. He also called slavery a divine institution. I do, however, like the fact that he basically told American to f*** itself when he moved the early Saints west. That is certainly admirable.

Do I believe the Church is the only way to God? No. Do I believe it is one of many ways to God? Yes, the same way I believe Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. are ways to God or whatever supreme entity is there. I believe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a positive influence in the lives of millions of its members. That is something I will never deny. For me, however, it isn’t what it claims to be. I have to take a different path. So the final question is whether I consider myself ‘Mormon.’ The answer is yes, the same way a Jew can be a Jew while practicing Buddhism. I was raised Mormon, I come from pioneer stock on my mother’s side, my family is Mormon, and it will always be part of me and something I will never deny. Am I a Latter-day Saint? No, at least I can’t call myself one.

In other news, to break the awkward silence that may be permeating the area around your computer right now, I am sick of how the people leading us in this war the US is engaged in can’t pronounce the name of the country we are occupying. It isn’t iRaq, it’s Iraq. Get it right, n00bs. I heard an NPR interview the other day with a guy talking about how difficult it is to find insurgents from helicopters, because iRaq is nothing but palm trees, palm tree farms and sand. Jeez, people. Get with it.

Nation Sickened By Sight Of Happy Young Couple

WASHINGTON, DC—Three states have already passed “Get A Room” ordinances to combat the Oak Park, IL couple’s playful nudging and incessant hand-holding.

GRRR.

“The cacophony of groans, boos and applause echoing inside the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall was as divided as the men and their politics reverberating on stage,” read the opening line of the Salt Lake Tribune’s article covering the recent debate between Sean Hannity and Salt Lake mayor Rocky “America’s mayor” Anderson. Now, I use the word “debate” loosely, since this was a debate in the same way professional wrestling is a sport, in that it wasn’t a debate at all, really. After all, the Trib sent its theater critic to cover the event. A friend of mine (who shouldn’t have attended to debate in the first place) told me she never felt so embarrassed to be from Salt Lake City, and how she assumed everybody there had been raised in a barn. I don’t know if it was really that bad, I don’t really think the debate was as good for the public discourse as some made it out to be. If you attended the event, you were not helping anything, but you were aiding and abetting a fight.

On wholly unrelated note, this has been bothering me for some time: graffiti on bathroom walls, pee on the seats, and purposeful clogging of public toilets. I see this a lot in the restrooms at the University of Utah. This amazes me. Did high-school freshman start attending the university? I would assume that we had outgrown the stage in our lives when we found stuffing a toilet with the fecal mass of five human bowel movements and an entire roll of toilet paper humorous, an act many of us probably never found amusing in the first place. Let’s restore civility to the campus. While we’re at it, let’s bring back tweed, hats, canes, umbrellas, and smoking pipes. That’s my ideal campus.

If moral relativists have anything going for them, it is that morals considered good to one social group contradict with those good morals of others. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I don’t consider myself a moral relativist, but I do think that other than a few things, absolute morals are generally rather elusive. Anyway, enough about me, let’s go over a couple of interesting contradictions.

In our Western Judeo-Christian tradition, the act of Islamic terrorism is vehemently condemned for the killing of innocent men, women, and children. However, when we go to Sunday school, we read about the Holy Wars of the Old Testament. Example:

When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance do not leave alive anything that breathes.

Deuteronomy 20: 14-16

Here, our sacred text lauds a genocidal slaughter, conceivably commanded by God. We may answer, “Well, God did command the Israelites to do that.” Maybe so, but consider for a moment that perhaps we are wrong and they are right. Is God commanding them to murder? Interesting, but more interesting would be the responses to the question when I go to Sunday school.

Here is another one: shortly after the 1972 Munich Massacre and shortly before the beginning of Operation Wrath of God, then prime minister of Israel Golda Meir stated, “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.” Given the sometimes dark history of the establishment of the State of Israel, like Deir Yassin etc, it strikes me as odd that this was said. Is it inconceivable that mothers of Palestinian schoolboys killed, either intentionally or accidentally, by Jewish settlers thought the same thing? Who, then, is in the right?

One last one, and this one is more recent: in the storm of controversy regarding Jeff Nielsen of BYU’s de facto dismissal following his Tribune piece, I have noticed that an overwhelming majority of those defending BYU’s actions on the basis of it being a private university owned by the LDS Church are the same who criticize Yale — another private university — for stifling conservative speech. Interesting, indeed.

I would be willing to wager that most of you are aware that many young LDS men leave home for two years to perform missionary service. I did not go, nor am I planning on doing so in the near future. Nevertheless, a solid forty percent of my stress can likely be traced to mission-related irritants. Part of the reason I dislike attending church services is the constant barrage of questions I face, such as, “When are you putting your papers in?” Or, “So, are you still considering a mission?” Or, “What are your plans after the school year?” And of course, “Why aren’t you on a mission, Rob?”

When I engage in social activities with fellow Mormons, I can’t escape the topic. Even within my family everything is related to whether or not I will serve a mission. For example, until recently all discussions concerning my Crohn’s disease went something like this: “Rob, there is a great doctor who does a lot of work with missionaries with Crohn’s.” It’s infuriating.

I am often told that I would be a great missionary, which surprises me since I don’t think I would make a great anything, much less a missionary. I am theologically ‘liberal,’ an anti-traditionalist, and an individualist. I would probably chase people away rather than draw them in.

My situation becomes all the more frustrating with regards to dating. Most the girls I am interested in dating fall into one of two categories: Muslim or Mormon. There would be obvious conflicts with the former I need not discuss. Mormon girls my age, on the other hand, can be divided into a handful of other categories: those waiting for missionary boyfriends, those harvested by returned missionaries, and those who simply wouldn’t date a guy who hasn’t served a mission. So, here’s to ‘guy friends’ and ‘hanging out.’

Non-Mormons in Utah often say they feel like a candidate for conversion rather than a human being. I am beginning to empathize with that sentiment. I feel like a project sometimes, rather than a person. I feel as if the goals of those around me aren’t to get to know me as a person, but to reform me and put a nametag on my shirt.

There, I said it. And no, this doesn’t refer to anybody in particular.