Mormons

3 Thinks to worry about
Scary think #1:
On April 3, 2008, the Texas authorities used a military level of force to raid a compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; they searched everyone’s houses and they took everyone’s kids.
On April 18 the judge ruled that all 416 children seized would be kept in protective custody...for what has turned out to be an indeterminate time.
The phone call that initiated the raid seems to have been a hoax.
A May 22 ruling by an appeals court ruled that there was no evidence of the children being in immediate danger, and therefore no justification for seizing them or keeping them in state custody.
As far as I am aware only two people have been charged with any crime, and one of those charges related to impeding a police investigation.
Despite the ruling of the appeals court, only a handful of children have been returned to their mothers, and the state seems to have no intention of returning the remainder of the children until forced to do so.
What does this amount to?
On the basis of questionable evidence, that state took 416 children from their families: not from a cult, not from a compound, they took individual children from individual families. In many cases they did so even when the individual family was not practicing polygamy or under-age marriage. The raids and searches produced virtually nothing which could be pursued as a crime. The case has proven to be flawed, and was pursued under the thinnest of legal veneers, but even after the ruling of the appeals court the state seems to pursuing it’s own agenda rather than the ruling of the judiciary.
This is government out of control and a grave insult to civil rights. In most cases this would be recognized as an illegal and inhumane action, but the majority of Americans have supported this seizure of children on the basis that the FLDS are pedophiles and polygamists. This leads us to the next point.
Scary think #2
The American public receives it’s information from the media. The media has given overwhelming support to this seizure of children and has fostered in the American public the impression that the FLDS is nothing but pedophiles and polygamists. The reporting has been skewed and has given the public a false impression of the illegality of FLDS actions.
1)It is my understanding that polygamy is only illegal if a person obtains through fraud more than one legal license of marriage. Being married to more than one person is legal as long as the marriages are based only upon religious ceremony and not more than one state marriage license has been issued. Therefore, polygamy as it has been reported is not automatically illegal, and reports of polygamy are immaterial to indicating illegal actions.
2)It is my understanding that in Texas a 17 year old can consent to sex with an adult. Therefore, reports of pregnant 17 year olds are completely immaterial.
3)It is my understanding that in Texas a 16 year old can marry with parental consent. Therefore, reports of pregnant 16 years olds have to be qualified. If there is a legitimate state marriage license it is not illegal for a 16 year old to be married and pregnant.
The conclusion is that the media will report any issue in any way that they want to and we will believe them. We were shocked when we heard of all these teenage girls pregnant in polygamous marriages, but it was not explained by the mass media that under Texas law the vast majority of these marriages and pregnancies seem to be legal. This was an action that effectively increased the power of Child Protective Services, a type of social service, one of the many arms of the government which believes that it should have more power over our lives and the lives of our children than we do, and one of the organisms through which liberals exercise social power by establishing an entrenched buerocracy. What we have seen in Texas is a victory for expansion of government in the name of a liberal organization and a liberal World-view, and we accepted this because we were misled by the media.
Scary Think #3

May 22, 2008, the House Judiciary Committee grilled some oil executives to find out why gas costs so much. I find this to be absurd because it is an example of government approaching an economic issue in the manner of a criminal proceeding.
One of the executives from Exxon laid the blame for these high prices at the foot of the Congress, claiming that excessive government regulation has kept the oil industry drilling and building refineries domestically. (This is probably true, but the oil companies are making record profits and in the present time probably have no interest in domestic expansion)
Predictably, the New York Times article of these proceedings did not mention any culpability regarding the Congress or environmental regulation. It did however, mention a statement by Rep. Waters of California, which suggested that the government should nationalize the oil industry if prices rose high enough.
I find this statement extremely disturbing, and I find the way it was reported by the Times ot be extremely disturbing.
I have heard the audio recording of these statements. Simply, the Exxon executive blamed the Congress for over-regulation, and stated that in the future $5 a gallon might be considered a cheap price for gas. The response of the Congresswoman was simply that if this happened she would be in favor of the government taking over the oil industry.
The way that it was reported was that nationalizing might be necessary if "outsize profits and exorbitant gasoline prices continued." No mention of government culpability, just the impressing that the oil companies are criminally liable for overcharging.
I despise slanted reporting, but I despise even more the sentiments of Rep. Waters and the mentality behind them. America is not supposed to be in the business of seizing control of private industry. We are a capitalist nation and abuses are supposed to be regulated; we are not a communist nation in which all capital industries are to be held by the government in the name of the people. Yet, here we have an elected official stating that it would be in the public interest for the government to nationalize an industry when the right conditions are met.
You know what this reminds me of? The concept of the "reign of terror." This is a classic concept of totalitarian governments and states that when the state of society reaches a high enough level of desperation that the people will willingly give up their freedoms for safety and order. Classically, the "reign of terror" has referred to a period of anarchy or a communist scare, but this is 21^st century America: our "reign of terror" can very well be taking place right now, at the gas pump, and if the price goes high enough I believe the American people will concede to anything to make it come back down. The concepts of free market and personal property mean less and less as the price of gas goes higher and higher.
Even more troubling, what if the Exxon executive was telling the truth? What if the high price of gasoline is largely the fault of our government? Does this mean that at some level, by some parties, there has been a plan to intentionally drive up the price of gasoline? This is a definite yes in some cases: green-minded people must find the current situation ideal, because the higher the price of gas the less of it is used, and the more likely it is that we will devote effort to gasoline alternatives.
Could there be others who were willing for gas to become increasingly expensive because it would eventually allow them to take over oil companies? To believe so would seem the height of paranoia, but how else do you explain what has happened? After the energy crisis of the seventies you would have expected America to develop a coherent energy policy, and that today we would have abundant domestic oil production and abundant alternative energy sources. This has not been the case and by degrees we have arrived at a situation where the price of oil is at record highs and can be expected to go higher. The government response has been to blame the oil companies, and to threaten to nationalize the industry.
Conclusion: In the month of May we have seen an illegal seizure of 416 children, a threat by a Congresswoman to nationalize the oil industry, and in both cases the media is the propaganda tool to sell the public on diminishing their rights and increasing the power of government.
I hope June is better.

Above is a copy of my post from Townhall, conspicary.com. Let us be totally clear that the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints is completely separate from the Mormon LDS Church, and that indeed, LDS excommunicates polygamists. I do not mention this incident as a call for religious liberty because no one is allowed to violate the law even in the name of religious liberty. Neither do I mention this incident as a call for religious tolerance, even though I believe a certain amount of tolerance is warranted; I believe that the powers that be in Texas simply dislike the FLDS, and because they were unable to find legitimate charges with which to charge them went after them under the pretense of saving the children. I would not be surprised if Texas law enforcement knew that the call was a hoax, and neither would I be surprised if the district judge knew there was insufficient evidence for the raid. It was just harrasment; in the real world if such a call was received and taken seriously they would come in with a few cops and social workers, found the specific girl in question, and would have left everyone else alone.
The reason I choose to highlight this issue is to show what can happen when the government chooses to manipulate the law and the media manipulates public opinion. Even after all that has happened, even after the raid was judged unwarranted by both the appeals court and the Texas Supreme Court, there has been no public outcry, and there never will be.
Let's look a little more closely at the media's role in this issue.
On the day after the Texas Supreme Court's ruling CNN was running a call-in show in which the moderator, who normally is supposed to be neutral, was expressing outrage and trying to stir up anger in the callers. He kept reffering to the picture of Warren Jeffs kissing that girl and asking people "didn't that make you angry/"
There is a lot wrong with this. First, no one seems to know how old that girl is. Second, it is very tenuous that the picture has anything to do with this case in question. Third, a moderator is not supposed to act like this. Fourth, the media has completely steered away from all issues of legality and has focused on the axiom that FLDS are just child molesters. As one caller put it, "if it saved one child from being raped, it was all worth it."
"If it saved one child from being raped, it was all worth it." This is a very hard statement to argue against, but shouldn't one argue against it? The argument of "child rape" is being shown to be nothing but a straw-man and an exception to the rule; I do not support rampant exercise of unwarranted law-enforcement action based only on rumors and crank phone calls. Neither do I believe that anything is warranted if it will save "one child." If we are to be a lawful nation the law must be equal for everyone , due process cannot be set aside every time there is a cause. More than anything else I am not prepared to give carte blanch to any government agency to do whatever they wish to American citizens.
From another media outlet, The ABA Journal did a April 21st piece on Judge Barbara Walther. Not only was this the Judge who originally issued the unwarranted authorization for the raid, she judged the child custody cases before the Texas Supreme Court told her she was full of crap. Anyway, the ABA piece describes her as lightening the mood in the courtroom with her good humor and jokes.
You have got to be kidding me.
Picture a courtroom in which there are dozens, if not hundreds of parents who are trying to get their children back from the state, and that somone seeing this is able to believe that the Judge is "lightening the mood" with a couple of jokes.
It's sick.

Welcome to the first posting of christsells blog, a commentary site dedicated to the odd, inane, and inauthentic in the World of religion. Let’s start with THE MORMONS.

It is February of 2007 and already the news is all about who is going to be the next president. On the Democratic side of politics is appears to be a toss-up between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton to win the primary. Everyone is acting like this is a normal, natural choice between the two most obvious candidates, but it is actually quite extraordinary. No woman has ever won the Democratic primary, and neither has any African-American, but despite this history no one has pointed out the oddity that a woman and an African-American are the two early front-runners in the Democratic race.

One thing that you can be sure of is that the race and gender of these respective candidates is going to play a role. Issues aside, there are some people who are going to vote for Clinton just because she is a woman, and there are some people who will not vote for her because she is a woman. The same rule applies to Obama, some people will vote for him for no other reason than that he is Black, and some people will not vote for him just because he is Black. The respectable commentators and political analysts don’t talk about these things very prominently because to do so is to sound racist and sexist. Yet, everyone knows that despite any political issues, Clinton will pull in more of the female vote than she would have if she were a man, and Obama will pull in more of the Black vote than he would have if he were white. That is the way that life works, everyone likes to see one of their own get ahead.

Race and gender place a role, but you can be certain, absolutely certain that no one is going to suggest that Clinton can’t win because she a woman. You can be just as certain that no one is going to suggest that Obama can’t win because he is Black. Such statements would be considered incredibly prejudicial, and the person who said such things would be reviled.

If it is impossible to suggest that Obama can’t win for being Black, or that Clinton can’t win for being female, why do we hear that Republican Mitt Romney can’t win for being a Mormon?

It’s been a while since American society considered religious denomination to be a disqualifying factor for the presidency. Certainly, we have had only one Catholic President, Kennedy, and when he was running there were concerns that Kennedy would have divided loyalties, but that was a long time ago. Senator John Kerry is Catholic, but when he was running for president his faith was never held against him as a disqualifying factor. Senator Joseph Lieberman is Jewish, but when he was running for Vice-President no one stood up and said that his faith disqualified him. So how can it be said that Romney cannot win because he is a Mormon, and why has no one objected to these statements as sentiments of religious prejudice?

Before discussing these points let us examine some background information on Romney. The guy’s entire life is a success story in which I see nothing except for pluses. He was a very accomplished student, he spent some time as a Mormon missionary in France, he was a very successful businessman, he organized the Olympic games, and while governor of Massachusetts he turned the state deficit into a surplus. It must also be considered that as the Republican governor of Massachusetts he was a conservative who able to gain the top executive seat in one of the most liberal states in America. Romney is a native of Michigan, another liberal state, and has maintained ties to his home state.

For negatives, there has been some talk that Romney is more liberal than most Republicans, but the same could be said of other presidential hopefuls in the Republican party. It has also been said that Romney has no foreign policy experience, but neither is that uncommon because most of our presidents have gone into office with little or no experience in foreign diplomacy.

When you add it all up you see a politician who stands at about the same level as all the other Republican hopefuls, but who has the added bonus that he could possibly gain the electoral votes of Massachusetts and Michigan in a presidential election. Taking either of these states away from the Democrats could very easily make the difference in 2008.

So what’s the problem with Romney? It’s that he is a Mormon. At least that is what I keep hearing.

The Mormon thing is said to be a two part problem. The first part of it is that Romney won’t be able to win the Republican nomination because the evangelicals will oppose him on the grounds that he is a Mormon. The second part of the problem is that even if Romney does win the primary he will lose in the national elections because Americans are not ready for a Mormon president.

I think that both of these theories are ridiculous.

Let’s take a look at the idea that the evangelicals won’t vote for a Mormon: I don’t buy it. Granted, evangelicals do make up a large portion of the Republican party and they probably would prefer one of their own over a Mormon candidate, but there is more to the matter than a campaign from the pulpit. Evangelicals are not mindless robots; that is the stereotype that the left has built of them and this stereotype should not become a fixture within the Republican Party. Yes, I would imagine that they would prefer one of their own to be the Republican candidate for president, but there is more to an election than just where a man goes to church. There are Romneys political views to consider, how he will run his campaign, and ultimately the party must consider that at the end they want a candidate who will win the presidency. With all due respect, after eight years of President Bush America might not want to elect another evangelical.

I don’t buy the idea that Romney can’t win the evangelicals to his side. Yes, there are some stark doctrinal differences between evangelicals and Mormons but I can’t believe that this would make any difference to most people. For myself, I don’t care what a person does in church, I care about what they do outside of church, and Mormon morality upholds the same values that are found in any other Christian denomination, and these values stand in perfect harmony with conservative thinking. I’m not saying that Romney is going to win the Republican primary, but I am saying that he has as good a chance of winning as anyone else.

What about the idea that Romney will be unable to win on the national level? On the one hand I do believe that most Americans do see the Mormons as being "a little bit different," but they do not have any deep negative feelings against them. Consider the religious stereotypes: the evangelicals have been painted by the left as right-wing theocrats, so if the Republicans run an evangelical we will the same theocracy conspiracy theories that were all the rage in 2004. If they run a southern Baptist all we’ll hear about is racism and backward religious views. The Mormon church tends to stay out of politics so they have been off the radar, and the liberals would have hard time portraying the Mormons as threatening. Romney could even do the same thing that Sen Lieberman did by presenting his religious views in the form of a human-interest story. Not everyone voted for Big Joe, but everyone learned a little bit about him during the campaign and the way that he was able to live up the demands of both his faith and his office.

Romney could very well win it all; time will tell. It’s pretty obvious that the Mormon thing is not really a negative, so why does anyone claim that Romney can’t win? It is because they are just slinging mud. They can’t find anything else to say against him based on his record so they are playing the religious card to try and knock him out of the race early. It’s actually a pretty stupid tactic, a fishing expedition, and the reason that "a Mormon can’t win" is only being heard in the background is because no one wants to be linked with this remark later on when the race gets tight.

We are still left with the question of why no one has objected to this veiled Mormon bashing. I think that it’s because we have not been socially trained to consider mild comments against Mormons as prejudice. Make a comment that disparages Jews, or Catholics, or Christians in general and there will be a response, and from this we have learned that such comments are unacceptable. The same applies in regards to race and gender. The fact that we have not yet recognized the inappropriateness of remarks against Mormons shows that Mormons are off of most Americans radar. While we do not yet know that this is wrong, we have enough natural prejudice to be acceptingor mild comments against the "oddball" Mormons. I am going to be very interested in watching how this issue shakes out as the primaries proceed.

Poll on Prejudice

This might go a little far a-field from matters of religion, but it does involve popular bias, so here goes.

On February 27, 2007, the Washington Post released the results of a pre-election poll, a very strange pre-election poll. What made this survey so odd? Usually, polls are designed to see who the people will vote for; this particular poll was designed to see who the people would not vote for.

What made this poll even weirder was that it focused upon prejudices. To be more exact:

The poll asked voting preferences about women, African Americans, the elderly, Mormons, smokers, and people who had been twice-divorced...

Hold up, are we talking about presidential candidates or are these people trying to find a mate? SWF searching for soulmate, must be below 72, no Mormons or smokers need respond.

Lets look at some of the poll results.

60% of Americans less likely to vote for candidate over age 72.

30% less likely to vote for a Mormon.

25% less likely to vote for someone with two divorces.

21% less likely to vote for a smoker.

13% less likely to vote for a woman.

6% less likely to vote for an African-American.

How were these questions chosen? They correspond to the candidates.

John McCain-old

Mitt Romney-Mormon

Rudy Giuliani-double exe’s

Barak Obama-smoker

Hillary Clinton-chick

Barak Obama-African-American

You can see from these results that Barak Obama is the only candidate who falls into two negative categories: he is Black and he is a smoker. 21% of Americans won’t vote for a smoker, 6% wont vote; and them together and you get 27%, and that is much more than the 13% who will not vote for a woman. So that way the race will run is that Hillary will beat out Obama in the Democratic primaries, and then she will defeat the Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani.

But wait, there’s more!

Barak is quieting smoking. This will eliminate the 21% who will not vote for a smoker and will put Barak on top. Either way, the stats say that the next president will be a Democrat. The only way that a Republican can win is if Hillary starts smoking, Barak keeps smoking, and neither Giuliani nor Romney start smoking.

I guess the presidency has come down to cigarettes.

I hope you can taste the sarcasm. This survey is crap, but it is crap which can be used to illustrate a point.

In order to accept the results of this survey as accurate you must believe that racism is less of a problem than gender discrimination. You must believe gender discrimination and racism combined are less of a problem than discrimination against Mormons. You also must believe that 21% of Americans base their vote on whether or not the candidate smokes.

These results do not reflect reality, they just show the answers that people gave when asked.

Since these answers don’t reflect reality, it means that many of those surveyed told lies. Why did they lie?

They lied because even in a phone survey they were embarrassed to give answers which would be considered socially incorrect. We all have our prejudices but we have been taught by the state morality police how we will express our prejudices.

John McCain did terribly in the poll. Part o the reasons is that there are legitimate health concerns about a president in his 70's. However, there is more to the matter than legitimate concerns; we as a society have not been taught that statements about the elderly are verboten. If there was a retaliation for every statement made against the old then this 60% poll number would be much lower.

Mitt Romney did pretty badly. It seems odd that being a Mormon is consider to be worse than either smoking or being divorced twice. Ironic, since Romney does not smoke and has never been divorced. Most people don’t spend much time thinking about the Mormons, and the Mormons haven’t been a problem, so we have not yet learned that it is politically incorrect to dislike someone for being a Mormon.

I am surprised that the numbers against smoking are not higher because we have been taught that smoking is evil. I am also surprised that so many people would hold it against a man to be divorced twice. Liberals rail against the far-rights manipulation of "family values," but when it’s all over 25% over voters say they don’t like a man who is on his third marriage. We don’t know what we want.

13% are less likely to vote for a woman; I feel that number about right assuming that none of the women surveyed are unlikely to vote for a woman. Women make up about half of the population so the 13% left over represents about 1 out of 3 men saying that they are less likely to vote for a woman.

The 6% who are less likely to vote for an African-American? If this number is true then it means that there is virtually no racism in America. If this number is false then it means that people just gave the right answer because it is the ultimate taboo to speak disparagingly of any minority.

This little survey has not shown us what the voters really think. It just shows that we say that we attach great importance to things which are trifling, and claim that matters which really are divisive are not. It also gives us a taste of what election 2008 will be. Instead of focusing on positives the survey focused on perceived negatives, not upon what people like but instead upon what they dislike.

A survey is meant to representative of the whole population, and if so this survey shows us what we as a nation have become. We are dishonest, but more than this we have no values. When people are without values they focus upon what they dislike in people; hence every election we are drowned in negative advertising. It was for this reason that in 2004 "Hate Bush" was a far stronger rallying cry than "support Kerry." People without values cannot be moved by the qualifications or character of a candidate, and are only aroused when angered.

More Mormons, More Programmed Prejudice

It just doesn’t go away: people are stupid on an individual level, they are stupid in groups, they are stupid on the level of institutions, and they reject the understanding of their stupidity when evidence of it is right before their eyes.

AP story from Feb 28, 2007. It seems that a high-school girl in Santa Rosa California was being taunted by her classmates for being a Mormon. Some asked the girl, "Do you have ten moms?" and to this the girl replied, "that’s so gay."

Do you have a clear picture of the situation? A girl is being teased about her family’s religion, and she responds with what is probably a crude remark. Tit-for-tat, fair is fair, they were messing with her so she responded. What do you suppose happened?

The girl got sent to the principles office, and they put a notation in her permanent record because used the word "gay" in a negative context.

The parents are suing the school for infringing upon their daughters right to free speech, but that isn’t the story. The story is that gays are such a protected group that even an unintentional insult against them is considered as hate speech that must be punished by administrative action. In contrast, deliberate harassing remarks about Mormons don’t even make a blip on the radar. What makes the situation really messed up is that the fiasco was created by institutional rules. Common sense will tell you that the school should have punished the people who were harassing the Mormon girl and that the "gay" remark should have received a verbal warning at most. That’s not the way it happened because harassment is only considered harmful if it is aimed at a group that the institution considers worthy of protection. Fair needs to be fair all across the board but remarks about religious preference are just as malevolent as remarks concerning sexual preference.

What’s up with all this Mormon bashing? All of a sudden the Mormons are the whipping boy for the rest of the WASPs. Well at least they are drawing some of the heat from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Catholics and the Evangelicals and the Jews.