Defeat Mormon Hate: Defeat Prop 8
I moved from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in 1993.
I was generally well-prepared for the cultural adjustment. My best friend from high school is Mormon and through her I had learned about LDS culture and its attraction for people who want a tight-knit nurturing religion. From living in in-land San Diego I knew how to get those trying to convert me to stop, quickly and definitively. And I quickly learned that, in Utah, the mountains were gloriously uncrowded on Sundays. For the most part, SLC was a gorgeous city where I could afford a house.
My biggest problem was the way Mormons treated gays.
For the year before my move, I had been the only "out" straight girl on a Bay Area woman’s rugby team. It was an instructive experience for me, having to come out as straight, having to prove to the women on my team I’d do things with them–like share a hotel bed–I would do with guy friends I trusted, having to beat down silly stereotypes they had of heteros ("oh, I didn’t think straight people had monogamous relationships!"). I was definitely an oddball on the team–for many of them, the team was their main social circle, and several of them were dating women on the team or on rival teams. I had an entirely separate social life and I spent much less time with the team than my teammates.
That spring, my Dad was dying. Rather than go to tournaments with the team on weekends, I was flying to AZ to spend time with my parents. Though I tried to make it to practice during the week to blow off steam, my mind wasn’t really with the team. Which is why it was so meaningful to me that the team made it clear to me that, even though I was gone most of the time, even though I was an oddball straight girl, I was still part of the team. I remember one morning, stopping by the apartment between the airport and work, finding a bouquet of flowers from the other backs on the team. I had a lot of other support from closer friends at the time, but that gesture meant so much to me because it reassured me that my extended community remained strong, that even a community where I was an outsider was reaching out.
When people said anti-gay things in my presence in UT, I’d explain to them how loving my rugby team was, even for me, an outsider. I don’t think I convinced them, but I think describing a community in terms of its love, its support, its generosity–all traits Mormons rightly cherish about their own community–at least meant they couldn’t respond, they just had to accept it.
Not long after I moved to UT, a woman in my department in her early 20s got divorced, a rare thing for a Mormon woman. She had learned her husband was gay when he revealed to her he had been exposed to HIV during a relationship with a man in AZ. She went twice, utterly alone, to be tested herself. When she told me about it afterward she still seemed ashamed, scared. I think I was the one person she knew who had known people living with HIV.
The worst thing, though, was that (perhaps predictably) they blamed her. It was because of her inadequacies as a woman and a wife, the former mother-in-law said, that her husband had slept with other men. And every time I saw the amazing generosity and community that Mormons are capable of (I’m thinking, in particular, of the funeral of another co-worker’s mother out by Dugway), I thought of how they had failed two of their own when they were having a crisis.
It’s through that lens that I see the fight over the right to marry in California. I always knew that Mormons had no monopoly on caring–that gay men and women are every bit as loving as the incredibly warm community of Mormons. For that reason alone, they should be able to get married. But at least in my own personal experience, my gay team mates were the ones who extended themselves to others, not the Mormons I knew. And when it counted–and when it pertained to one gay man and his unfortunate former wife–the Mormon community was even willing to fail one of its own to make their hateful stance.
The opposition to Proposition 8 in California is largely funded by Mormons, claiming that their own loving relations and their lifestyle will be threatened by other humans entering into legally sanctioned loving relations. That offends me, and reminds me of how angry I was at Mormon hate 15 years ago when I moved to UT.
Don’t let that hateful stance win now. Donate to defeat Prop 8.
Way off topic: Ivins’ personnel file has been released, but naturally his performance reviews were redacted.
http://www.fredericknewspost.c…..ryID=82026
Thanks for post EW. I sent another $100 to the No on 8 today. Crossing my fingers for Teddy and friend.
Here is another hater Rep. King of IA:Obama Will Make America A ‘Totalitarian Dictatorship’
This is wonderful.
Thank you, emptywheel
Thanks Teddy.
It’s nuts when you see otherwise wonderful, warm people being hateful people. I still don’t know if I can write about it properly.
I think you can. Nothing is more powerful than showing your readers what happened and how it made you feel.
I learned that when prejudice teaches people to shun their own, to turn them into untouchables even in moments of crisis when they are most in need of support, how could it be more transparently wrong?
The Mormon biblical version of marriage is essential to their identity, sexual discrimination and all. Their exclusive knowledge of the way, exceptionalism and cultural tunnel vision (eg, baptizing Holocaust Jews, posthumously forcing them to be Christians, in order to “save them”) seem among their defining traits. Sexual equality and equal treatment are as foreign as allowing a lone woman to have multiple husbands.
Their version of marriage represents the antithesis of a way that gives legal, public, governmental sanction to gay and lesbian marriage. A society that no longer discriminates may no longer tolerate the sexual discrimination they practice.
Their political campaign conflates allowing gay and lesbian marriage with mandating it, conflates accepting it with attacking all “marriage”. An emotionally skillful, if factually inaccurate message. In fact, I suspect Mormons are concerned with attacks on their concept of “marriage”, which seems as alien to many as female circumcision. They circumcise not intimate parts of a woman’s body, but intimate parts of her political, social and economic life.
Prop 8, I think, is essential to all neocons. It is one of this cycle’s few wedge opportunities. It tests their ability to raise funds, rally the troops, regardless of internal dissent, and sell their message, in effect, to market the value of their movement for the election cycles ahead.
One other weird aspect of moving to SLC. I moved there with a Jewish guy originally from Cleveland. Not long after, someone took a Jewish Book of Memories–a record of those who had died in the holocaust partly because they wouldn’t renounce their faith–and posthumously converted them.
Fricking nuts. You don’t do that. When whatshisname the former PR professional became Church pres, he rescinded these “conversions.” Though–as I subsequently learned from a Native American friend in grad school, they did not do the same for Hopi and Navajo similarly “converted.”
A number of Hopi kids who are now adults went to school in Utah with Mormon families. Hard to tell the over all effect of that program.
Moved to Salt Lake with a Jewish guy from Cleveland? Now that would make for a study in cross-cultural communication. In 1993, that would have been an adventure in a lot of places, like cheering for the Wolverines in Columbus or South Bend.
The posthumous conversion movement really was (is?) an abomination. The one attribute many Jews died for possessing is the last thing that movement took from them, leaving them bereft of their religion, their families, their histories even in death. A cultural and religious myopia that rivals the proverbial genetic “myopia” of the Ozarks or rural Utah.
I acknowledge that it is no longer sanctioned, but then that’s purportedly true of polygamy. But I think that myopia remains essential to their view of life and, hence, politics; hence, their global, religion-wide mandatory tithe, a “three-line whip” in parliamentary terms, to pay for the fight on Prop 8.
Yeah, and even in UT, we kept getting called by someone who said (in a smarmy vote) “hey, it’s [I don’t remember his name] Cleveland Browns Backers here.” We’d gather in the “Clubs” and drink UT beer.
But the posthumous conversion thing was bad when I learned about it (they converted Virginia Wolfe, IIRC, who would never have lasted as a Mormon in real life). And when I met my Native AMerican colleague about same, I was more incensed.
Agreed. And the Mormon underground storage facilities built to survive a nuclear holocaust will contain this final word on the very personal histories of people. Not so bad if the Mormons weren’t in the process of rewriting it. Without a similar nondenominational underground repository of family history, however, who is going to be able to counter their facts in a few centuries?
It is odd that the Nazi’s kept meticulous records, too, but mainly to identify and eliminate Jews from the community. Mormons included Jews in their records by eliminating their Jewishness. It’s the “melting pot” analogy taken to the nth degree. Perhaps the concept of a “tossed salad” hasn’t made inroads yet into Mormon society, even though the genetic diversity among Mormons is pretty wide.
Beautiful post, emptywheel. You touch on all the aspects of life: family, friends, love, loss and support.
I agree those experiences would be a good starting point for opening a discussion with people who might think they have an exclusive lock on those values.
There is an organization called jewishgen.org that is compiling and preserving Jewish genealogy and their particular focus is the Jews from Germany and the other parts of Europe that wound up under Nazi control in WWII. There is also another set of records that is being compiled at the Holocaust Museum in DC and the one in Jerusalem as well. Whatever the Mormons are doing with their genealogy records will need to be balanced against those other records. The Jews have managed to maintain their identity as a people throughout the last 4000 plus years and many such events as this. I have faith that they will not succumb to history as easily as that, thankfully.
I do think this posthumous conversion theory is horrid. But I do not think in the grander, spiritual scheme of things that the Jews have really lost anything. Surely people who died for the sake of their religious beliefs would not be stripped of that basis of their identity in the hereafter simply because some alternate theory tried to deem that possible.
I personally believe that god/goddess/universe or whatever you want to call it/him/her will enlighten the souls of all at the appropriate time that they all are worshiping the same entity – and that the different paths people take here on earth are just that – different paths to the same goal. Religions here on earth are made up by men. Men are fallible. Just because someone in the Mormon church says something does not make it so. Or the Southern Baptists. Or any religion for that matter.
I also believe that all these judgmental, hateful, bigoted, prejudiced and self-righteous people will be judged as well. Every religion in the world teaches that we are to love one another. So how does any of this hate show that the teaching is being followed?
Jus’ sayin’
If immortality is comprised of living memory, then something is irretrievably lost when churches, presidents, friends or enemies, wrongly rewrite history, whether by omission or comission, simple ignorance or cruel malice. Orwell captured it succinctly in 1984:
But do you really think that the descendants of those ‘converted’ people believe that their ancestors were actually converted or robbed of their Jewishness or Indianness by these idiots? The Mormons do NOT have the living memory – to them these people are just lists of names.
The immortality of memory is preserved by their families and friends – people who actually knew them, or are descended from them either literally or figuratively. Because Mormons are not Jews (or Native people) – they cannot understand or have any of the kinds of relationships that would be able to ‘carry’ that immortality. The survivors of the Holocaust carry the memories of those persons, whether they are related or not. The Mormon Church does not. And while the Mormon Church may be seeking to re-write history, they are not the only ones keeping it. The repository for the Jews is in Jerusalem and I believe they will control their own past and future far better than the Mormons will. And in the same way, the descendants of the Native peoples who were supposedly ‘converted’ carry the memories of their ancestors as well, not the Mormon Church. I am encouraged even about them keeping their own records because over time, Native peoples are moving more towards preservation of their own history and taking affirmative steps to do so.
In any case – I was speaking primarily in a spiritual/non-earthly type of dimension, and it seems that your references are to what happens here in the earth dimension.
Just another thought. I could set myself up as a ‘prophet’ or some type of leader and build up a little group. Then at some opportune moment I could declare that Buddha was not enlightened and he actually was a member of my little cult.
Does that then mean that all the followers of Buddhism suddenly believe what I have said? Why should they? I would be just as much an idiot as the Mormon ‘prophet’ who said they could posthumously ‘convert’ Jews. The idea is ludicrous IMHO on the face of it that you could obliterate a person’s whole identity and belief system just because I (or anyone else) say so, particularly after that person has died and cannot reject the conversion.
Remember also, it is easy to stamp out people, but stamping out ideas is a whole other ball-game.
Agreed. If I die still a Methodist, it will not matter a whit that my Mormon cousins have me baptized as one of them.
And if I’m terribly wrong and they’re terribly right, then I will still have the option of choosing the fourth level of heaven rather than one a couple of steps up (they have four levels of heaven, and no hell). That fourth level might be more fun anyway.
One thing they keep saying, in public, about the sealings etc for the dead: the dead don’t have to accept them. I keep hoping there will be a lot of surprised Mormons in the next world, surprised because they’ll be a small minority group.
One of my favorite quips on stepping back, reassessing one’s perspective on essential things comes from a sketch by Rowan Atkinson. In it, he plays the Devil’s concierge, welcoming sundry new arrivals to the Other Place.
The latest batch of entrants being unexpectedly large, he divides it into smaller groups. Bank managers over here; adulterers, line up in front of that small guillotine over there. With firmness and empathy, he reminds a sad fellow asking for the toilet that God’s instructions were that it be damnation, “without relief”. Lastly, he lines up against the wall a motley collection of surprised Christians, because, he says, “Um, you see, the Jews were right.”
A familiar, anthropomorphized God punishes His followers because they misinterpreted His message and, hence, ruined their and others’ lives. Except that Atkinson turns the tables about who got it right. Enough to make one re-ask an old question: whether an all-knowing, all-powerful, all merciful being, having created such a fallible body of followers, and having loosed them in a strange world, to find their own way back, might She not have allowed them more than one pathway?
Welcome to Hell with Rowan Atkinson
Correction: they baptize the Jews post mortem to be Mormons. This may seem like a quibble to people who are not much interested in Christianity, but Mormons are not Christians; their theology fails on a couple of very simple basics that define Christianity as Christianity, but I digress.
They do this for all of their non-Mormon family, too.
My Mormon cousins (whom I love) have had this done to my immediate family members, but that they did this to my sainted grandmother, and I do mean sainted, makes me both annoyed and amused. The audacity they must possess to believe that she needed to be improved by being converted by proxy! And I am amused when I think of her reaction to the gesture, once she discovers their effort. I can imagine her laughing.
The bit that really chafes, though, is that they did not even stand in for her, their favorite aunt, they just put her name on a list and some strangers serving as missionaries stood in for my Grandma.
Very well written.
Dugg
I have two experiences with Mormons.
1) After the wildfires last year, a woman and two young boys stopped by the house with a bucket of top notch cleaning supplies, brushes, etc. that was probably worth $100. She also left a flyer with a number to call if I needed help with clean-up, tree removal, or whatever.
2) As a young teacher, I had a Mormon father come on to me, and it shattered the respect I had for the tribe.
Do the righht thing California.
the number of ads innundating our airways courtesy the mormon money is beyond belief. whatever channel, tv or radio, they are there. constantly.
this is not a simple matter of right or wrong, but successfully countering the advertising blitz and getting out the vote.
They’re on every street corner with a stoplight too with their bright yellow Yes on 8 signs. I hold up my Obama sign, and if I’m stopped I put it up through the sunroof. Fun to watch ‘em!
Is the funding coming from the Mormon Church as an institution, organized donations from its members, or a combination of both?
The Mormon church, as an institution, and its leading members, are exceptionally well-organized, disciplined, even gifted. I assumed without inquiry that they had organized the mandatory global tithe in a formal way that complies with state and federal laws and which preserves what I assume is the church’s tax exempt status. Prop 8, for example, is a social issue, not a specific political candidate.
All three, I would imagine.
I’ve looked at the donor list, and there’s nothing under $1,000 from pro prop 8 contributors, and everything up in neat $500 increments (as though those individuals had been ordered to give certain amounts — which I’ve read is the case.)
The contributions to the No on Prop 8, on the other hand, range from $20 up, and are loosely assorted amounts, which look as though they came from the free will of individual donors..
The Tabernacle in La Jolla was open to public viewing after construction. It was incredibly beautiful inside and out, and there were plans to replace all carpeting and do other upgrades before being used as a church.
Regular folks can’t worship there, but can marry there.
I was there when it opened–I worked a couple of blocks away at IBM. Didnt’ go. It wasn’t until my aforementioned best friend explained to me, patiently, that I couldn’t go to her marriage (it was in the LA temple, I think) that I figured out I wasn’t welcome. I also missed the sinners’ tour of a temple that opened close to my workplace in UT when I was there.
Until 1978, the Mormon Church did not permit blacks to participate in temple marriages (”sealings”), nor were blacks ordained to the priesthood, which was especially significant for a religion with a lay priesthood such as Mormonism. Blacks were permitted to participate in baptism of the dead however. A sudden “revelation” to the church elders ended the restrictions against blacks, I can only hope that a similar revelation will come regarding same-sex marriage, at least with respect to the rights of others, if not their full participation in the Mormon Church.
Revelations seem to come to the Mormon hierarchy when it is politically or financially expedient. They had a ‘revelation’ regarding polygamous marriage when it became apparent that they would be excluded from the US (financial) and a ‘revelation’ regarding inclusion of blacks (political). They will only have a revelation regarding gays when and if it becomes either overwhelmingly in their best financial interest, or becomes so politically necessary. This certainly does not mean full acceptance. A black Mormon is still like a black Republican – kept around to show off like a pet or a shiny trinket. Same with their supposedly anti-polygamy stance. A ‘temple/sealed’ marriage is supposed to only be with one woman and one man. However I know Mormons who have been married multiple times (serially, not all at once) and each marriage was sealed. I was told that only the last one ’sticks’ but this person also said they would be with all their wives/husbands in heaven. And the official Mormon Church has been noticeably silent throughout the Texas/Jeffs scandal.
My girlfriend at the time got tickets and I toured it too. It really pisses me off that they’ve made this move here.
I live in CA-50, Duke’s old district, now the execrable phony-surfer carpetbagger Brian Bilbray. The Yes-on-8 signs are all over my neighborhood.
I don’t get it, but here’s my pet theory. I think Republicans are taking their anger out on gay people.
They are pissed that Bush and McCain suck so badly, they’re pissed about Obama and pissed about the Democrats basically kicking their ass nationally.
Fold in the conservative latinos and you have a close race. I think it will go down to defeat by a couple of points.
Oh, my. Good take. We’ll punish the gays to make us feel better about our losses. So if you’re in 50, you’re living in Mormon controlled country in terms of city council and (perhaps, can’t remember) mayor. Carlsbad is a stunning city, and an example of beautifully executed planning.
Unfortunately, I live in the 49th…Issa.
Ugh, Issa. What is it about San Diego County Congressionals?? Hunter is a freakin’ hack too.
I’m not in Carlsbad, I live in San Diego – Clairemont. Boats and SUV’s in the driveways of the ranch-style tract homes. I’ll never understand how a small piece of Clairemont and La Jolla made it into CA-50.
I live behind the Orange Curtain in Anaheim, but Loretta Sanchez is my Rep. I feel quite good about that.
Oh, I think you’ve nailed it. But even having read John Dean’s “Conservatives Without Conscience”, in which he explains how anything ‘unconventional’ becomes a target for authoritarians, I still don’t really get it.
I’m sick of the whole nonsense.
It’s one of the issues on which I have zero patience.
Several of my childhood friends are in long-term, same sex relationships and I’ve watched them care for one another’s aging/dying parents with grace and tenderness. The idea that anyone would insult commitment, or shared lives, just makes me nuts.
You will never ‘get it’. And there is a reason.
I read recently that someone had been doing a survey study regarding the relationship between the ’startle reflex’ and one’s political leanings. Turns out there is an almost 1:1 correlation. If you startle easily and remain fearful for more than about 5 seconds, you are about 96% likely to become a conservative/Republican. If you don’t and even when you are startled you are curious rather than afraid – you are about 97% likely to become a liberal/progressive/Democrat.
The theory behind this is that the Rep/cons have an innate desire/need/requirement for the authoritarian/strict father type of relationship with their world (includes family, religion, government) They have a hard time functioning without someone telling them every move to make and what to think and what to say.
OTOH the lib/prog/Dem group is more curious, exploratory, questioning and needs more cooperative/nurturant parent type of relationship.
If you fall into one of these groups or the other, it is almost like speaking a foreign language or being slightly different sub-species. Unfortunately, it is the same thing of trying to ‘understand’ gay vs straight. Not possible.
The difference is that the Repubs reject gay simply because they cannot understand it, and libs/Dems as well, for exactly the same reasons.
Libs/Dems are more accepting because although they cannot understand Repubs/cons, they are self-confident enough that the idea of something different/unknowable existing alongside them is not seen as a threat.
What does it mean when you start out with that startle reflex etc and then gradually lose most of it? I started out a Republican, and am still registered that way until after this election, when I’ll switch to Dem. I told someone that I wanted to vote for Obama as a Republican to sort of put an exclamation point on my vote… not that hardly anyone will know, but I will.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tended to see the world as less black and white, starting in my mid-20s. Now I’m 58.
I can see it from my place, on a good day. It reminds me of the Its a Small World castle at Disneyland. Personally.. I find it overdone. I do have Mormon friends though.. they’re all nice, incredibly industrious people, but we just need avoid talking about those topics that they regard as hot topics (gender issues being one of them on which we just have to agree to disagree).
On principle, I’m less concerned about lobbying by CA Mormons (they’re a religious group and are entitled to their views, however intolerant I personally find them). I am, however, livid about out of state intervention in the internal affairs of California… and, yes, that includes Blackwater-related money, not just the Salt Lake City donations and call centers. Ughhh!!!!! Attention foreign agitprop agents: get your dirty fingers out of my city and my state!
I’ve passed it on the freeway, it’s fairy tale pretty.
The Hate on 8? Not so pretty, but the Mormon’s don’t mind telling fairytales about it.
OT
From NTY’s Political Blog:
I just went to my voter protection training tonight. And it’s MUCH better than we had in 2004 or 2006.
I hope all goes smoothly for on Tuesday next week. My precinct is at the local school and most rez residents aren’t into voting but, who knows, this year may be dfferent.
Yeah, as much as bmaz talks about an Obama visit, I almost wonder whether a visit into the Navajo reservation might make the difference. The Lakota made him an honorary tribe member earlier this year–you’d think if he had pursued NA connections, he could get turnout.
The House District 1 race to replace Renzi should get the Navajos to the voting booths in numbers and they will go Democratic. Obama needs a Phoenix rally as that is where the votes are.
My understanding is that while Obama didn’t visit the D’neh people personally, he does have a campaign staff made up mostly of Natives who are working with them and the Hopi, as well as on most of the reservations in the country. Some of the tribal leaders were commenting on how much they appreciated the outreach to all members of the tribes instead of just trying to get the leadership to run a free groundgame for them. Obama is paying the staff and providing money for offices, phones, materials, etc. He IS pursuing turnout among the Native peoples.
Fabulous news, unexpected from Consigliere Mukasey. The “order” to investigate a matter already adjudicated by the Supreme Court was exceptionally obtuse. Perhaps someone more level-headed persuaded Mr. Mukasey, if not Mr. Bush, that Mr. Bush didn’t really mean what he said. Odd, because when it comes to partisan payback, I imagine Mr. Bush to be like Col. Jessep in A Few Good Men: when asked whether he ordered the Code Red, he finally blurted out, “You’re goddamn right I did.”
individual mormons are donating at the organized behest of the church. as to the church itself, i don’t know the particulars.
i do know that after that supremely stupid letter came to light last week targeting people who made large donations to the “no on 8″ side trying to blackmail them into donating to the other side, the church suddenly tried to lower its profile. if they pull off this election, the blowback is gonna be huge.
I have had similar contradictory experiences with the Mormon church as well. Some good friends were in a bad financial position, the church provided food and clothing, paid their utility and rent bills, and completely supported the family while the husband was looking for work. The two adults in the family did various odd jobs including working in the genealogy library as ‘payment’ back to the church.
The other, my brother and his wife converted to Mormonism. The wife had previously had an adulterous relationship with my other brother which resulted in a child. As you can imagine, our family was in an uproar about the whole thing. After a long series of ups and downs, my father passed away after a long illness. During his last days (at home) this wife and brother proceed to instigate a knock-down drag out fight at my parents’ home with the police being called, all kinds of really nasty accusations being made by them against my mother and they finally left, telling my mother they would never speak to her again until SHE apologized to them both. My father died two days later, and they have kept their word.
For an organization that is supposed to be all about families and stuff they sure aren’t. My other sis-in-law and I each went to bishops in the LDS church and asked them to intercede in this mess and counsel them so our family could be reconciled. They both promised they would. Nothing happened.
thanks for sharing this personal story. through revealing ourselves as you have exemplefied, we demonstrate how similar we really are. not unlike i heard from barack tonight. inspiring!
one theory being bandied about is the mormons are trying to buy some cred with the fundies, smoothing the way for mitt 2012.
Massachusetts, in its openness to other religious beliefs, elected Mitt Romney for governor because most people believed him when he assured the state that he would run it efficiently, honestly, wisely.
He took no salary.
That should have been the tip off that he was not interested in the job we elected him to do.
In taking no salary, he was free to ignore the Big Dig until Milena Delvalle, 38, was killed by tons of concrete falling on her from a tunnel ceiling; she was trying to get to the airport. Then, and only then, did Romney get involved. Because he had to. And what a show he put on striding into that tunnel, controlling his mock outrage. Mr. Olympics.
Benign neglect is fine when you take no salary.
He ran for President by not governing Massachusetts because we deserved his disdain.
He’d become pro-life – and Massachusetts deserved to be insulted at his every campaign stop. He’d do it politely, of course, with a condescending smile. We were beneath seriousness.
He’d become anti-gay marriage. And Massachusetts, with its embarrassing marriage thing was a zone to be cordoned of from the rest of “real America”. Mitt championed himself as valiantly warring with irrational Liberals who would seek to change American schools, textbooks and other societal institutions.
He was running for President on these three things:
his heartfelt change from his mother’s position that abortion must be legalized (an extended family member died from a botched illegal abortion, if I remember correctly) to a come to Jesus Pro-Lifer.
his Olympics-demeanor navigation through Massachusetts politics to heroically and cleverly outwit those wiley gays who were trying to overturn America’s precious societal norms.
his condescension towards Massachusetts, a state worth using to promote his savior-like run for the presidency. We were his punchline.
When Deval Patrick was to be sworn in, Romney would not be seen with him. He chose to break with Massachusetts tradition and leave office in the cover of darkness. James Boyce at Huffington wrote a post entitled Mitt Romney: Coward or Racist?
Start there:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..36941.html
and work backwards through his days in Massachusetts.
There’s so much more to say.
Spot on…. an opportunist without shame.
I was pissed cuz he spent over 200 days, I think, outside
the State….
one theory being bandied about is the mormons are trying to buy some cred with the fundies, smoothing the way for mitt 2012.
————————–
That’s a given.
Internal unity is paramount. The us vs. them mentality is very like the dime-novel version of settlers wagons encircled by Indians. The price of inclusion, the return obligation for bountiful communal support, is absolute loyalty. It’s an extreme example of superficially similar traits in other tightly knit social-cum-religious groups, like the Amish, and certain Jewish and Japanese groups. It’s a function of degree. Bountiful support is, of course, a drain on community resources, and it’s expected that it be drawn upon only in extremis. Wastrels are not long tolerated, and are soon “educated” out of that behavior.
Over a dozen years in prosecuting, in particular a stretch of 3 years, I was involved directly or closely with around sixty separate cases involving forms of incest or sexual assaults on children and young people in their own family or care.
I can’t recall the exact number of cases in which the defendant called in his case at trial or during the sentencing process at least one witness, and typically several, and almost invariably his minister, chaplin, pastor, preacher, priest or imam, as to the religious piety of the defendant, but I do have a firm memory of how many did not: two.
One was a case involving an elderly and reputably dedicated retired teacher, who it turned out was at some stage of dementia. The other involved a plea deal with such difficult facts the defending lawyer didn’t want to run the risk of upsetting the plea deal by possibly insulting the judge’s intelligence.
Of the rest, all involved but a third involved sexually repressed versions of Christianity. The other third involved members of the church they always called “Latter Days” – as in “I’m a Latter Day”.
So I figure there might be some repression involved.
I’m sick of seeing this ugliness rear its head. I’ve known several people who seemed to think that gay marriage signals The End Of Civilization As We Know It. In each case, I’ve let the connections lapse. I don’t have time to waste with that kind of stupidity.
For those of you in CA, hang in there.
Boy isn’t that the truth. Well, gay people are and have been getting married for a year or two now in different states, and for over four in all of Canada. I haven’t noticed that the institution of marriage has exploded, or ceased to exist, or become some wierd fifth dimension for straight people in the meantime. All the straight people I know are still married and they all haven’t ‘turned gay’ or anything, nor have their marriages unraveled because the two women down the block are officially hooked up.
Yeah, you’d think the Mormon Church would catch on to the fact that ‘gayness’ is not contagious. I don’t have two seconds for their obstinate stupidity. It makes me nuts.
OT, re Bush’s pardons.
EW, what do you think of this?
http://www.vloggingtheapocalyp…..WAR_CRIMES
Obama on Rachel tomorrow night. Rachel is the public face of the gay, and nobody can dispute that she’s brilliant. I’m hoping that Obama asks her to be his press secretary. Wouldn’t that be a refreshing change?
‘Gay’ is not even close to the first thing that I think about with Rachel Maddow.
Smart, witty, well-prepared, informed, curious, courteous…. many other thoughts come before I ever think about who she shares her life with.
I’d hate to see her too closely associated with any administration; I think she is hugely talented, and there’s such a need for her to take on topics without being hemmed in by any particular political party or politician. She has so much potential that I’d hate to see her become too connected to any specific ‘issue’ or politician.
I agree with you on that issue. I and all the people I know who watch her are much more interested in her ideas and her take on things then her personal life. And that is as it should be.
I also agree that I’d rather she stayed right where she is – and help the rest of us hold Obama’s feet to the fire!
Except that she’s not pretending to be anything other than what she is. Obama needs someone to speak with the press who has the ability to express his opinions in a coherent way, and to actually answer questions in an intelligent manner. Maybe she wouldn’t be willing to give up her independence (to the degree that she has it with MSNBC) for the position of press secretary, but I think she loves America enough to postpone her career for a while.
I mention teh gay only in the sense that Obama would be able to prove further diversity in his administration, certainly not because that defines Rachel in any sense.
No clue, that idea is just another on my wish list!
Yeah, it’s too bad that all the really great people I’d like to have in his inner circle are really great people doing the jobs they already have!
But whaddaya think? Rachel for press secretary, either Axelrod or Plouffe for Chief of Staff, Wes Clark for SecDef, I want Debbie Wasserman-Schulz for something but I don’t know what – I think she’d be good at about half a dozen of them…
David Iglesias for Attorney General (!)
John Edwards for HHS
Warren Buffet for Treasury
Al Gore for EPA
Dennis Kucinich for a new Department of Peace
I can dream can’t I?
Marcy had a thoughtful post on that today.
New post.
The rest of us, however, do know. You can, and have; and beautifully too.
Amen.
To all of what you wrote and Empty Wheel being able to write about it properly.
Choosing my words carefully I can reveal this: The film business develops friendships on one project and sometimes accidental soul-mates develop over years of occasional crossing of paths. The work can be intense at times and totally laid back when another department is front and center, but almost always the hours are gruelingly long.
A fellow Teamster is a friend on both accounts and a Mormon. He has relatives high in the Mormon ranking.
Though he works out of “Hollywood” he maintains his household in UT. One of his very under-age daughters was raped by a fellow Mormon neighbor.
The Mormon council or decision makers decided to eliminate legalities, handle it in tribe, and basically sweep it under the carpet. Officials including police were involved.
My friend eventually snapped, acted on his rage and went on a rampage. It was ugly, destructive. blood was spilt.
Not including the incalculable damage to fellow humans this imbalance has cost my friend a small fortune. Not in legal fees, damages or hospital, but in the inability to focus on one’s daily work at hand.
The whole episode was kept in tribe — swept under the carpet.
The pain he expressed was — and is indescribable. To both families.
Character should be the Standard of Socio-Politico Value, for Ourselves and Our Service to Others.
Sharing, Honesty, Forgiveness…Modesty, Integrity, Vision…that’s what Each of US needs to bring to the Table, in order to enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – Together – in Our America.
Bush the Torturer? – No Character.
McCain the Lobbyist Puppet? – No Character.
Palin the Power Abuser? – No Character.
There will Always be Haters at the Table.
Let’s think twice before We elevate them to Leadership again.
Stop the Hate!
Defeat Prop 8!
great story, ew; thanks.
i’ve been finding the mormon involvement in prop 8 appallingly hypocritical, based as it is on the integrity of family, when their own history has such questionable perspectives on family, perspectives they maintained until not that long ago.
all that power, so little insight.
Thanks ew.
digg
I played rugby at BYU. I loved the camaraderie of the team. I am still embarrassed that once, after practice, when we were all in the locker room — one of my team mates started taunting someone in the shower for being gay. That person was not on the team — and as far as I know, the guy was just taking a shower. But that poor guy had 50% of the team, about 15 guys verbally abuse him so bad that he ran out of the locker room crying. This guy is probably still scarred today. I know I am and I didn’t take part. I didn’t stop it either.
What does this have to do with Prop 8? I am one of two families with No on 8 signs in our yard in our neighborhood. Last week, we had dog shit wiped on my wife’s car and our doors — I think because of the sign. Someone asked to me, in all earnestness, “Aren’t you afraid some crazy person is going to through something through your plate-glass window?” We live in semi-tolerant Los Angeles. I say semi-tolerant because the gays in my neighborhood are too afraid of property damage to put signs up.
The one thing I do know, after my Mormon upbringing and studying Christianity, the Jesus of the New Testament would have been willing to wear a tee-shirt saying “We are all gay”.
Proposition 8 is part of a vibrant initiative process, albeit a misguided proposal which confuses ideologies and sets ethical systems against one another, an outcome which the nation’s constitution, and the state of CA’s, are designed to resist, though the authors have a freespeech guarantee they may exert to present their polemical views to voters. About the best repartee I would venture would be from the realm of technology. In computers there was a dawn of personal computers three decades ago, descendants of so-called minicomuters of that era; and in a notoriously Mormon part of the US an entity named Satellite Software International developed in assembly language a program which later ported to then new desktop workstations, which when in eventual retail distribution SSI called WordPerfect. WP got a lot of things right as a product, and the company was famous for brilliant helpdesk support at a time when wordprocessing still was part science and less turnkey than it is now. But to me the Mormon facet of WP was transparent, even irrelevant. It was a program that took hard work to operate but worked miracles with text, even when compared with some competitors. It was a trail blazing application and office standard for nearly ten years. I met a person who had worked in Orem for WP toward the end of the company’s independent phase; he told a tale of a common meeting at which the founders spoke of liquidating the company in a way to spread the wealth they had earned evenly among all employees. Those are features of corporate kultcha, evidently, workable in some instances, mere ephemera in other settings, as with the WP final outcome, which saw no such implementation of equal distribution of wealth. And beyond that unrealized dream lay the history of a work ethic which inspired the industry. Involuting all that back to some moral extrapolation to control domestic relationships is too unrealistic a chasm for this appreciative former WP maven to address, as is prop-8’s anachronistic but heartfelt message. CA will consign p8 to the dustbin of failed initiatives based on the strength of separation afforded by the establishment clause in the constitution. Maybe the net effect is some permutation of establishment v Establishment. Even the current Republican party remains interested in ethical constructs as recruitable into the neocon constituency Rs would like to build. To me there is something too distracted about p8 and its genesis to have relevance or plausibility, and it deserves its sure defeat. I can see p8 as unconstitutional, yet, still appreciate a solid grounding in WP, they are different worlds.
One other story. In 1976, my brother began at BYU as a freshman. One of his best friends was a gay sinner and decided he had to confess. So he went to the bishop of his university ward to unburden his soul. His bishop was actually very compassionate in listening to his story and promised to help him overcome his homosexuality. But then, he also said that since he was a dean or provost or something, he also had a professional duty to the school — and that he was going to have to report him, turn him in to the school’s feared Standard’s Office. Which he did. And the school kicked him out as an act of love. And they told his home congregation in California, who told his parents. All with love, you should be aware.
Well, my brother’s friend showed them. He committed suicide within a week.
Mormon theology, excerpted from “Mormonism for Dummies”.
Heaven is on a planet in the constellation Cancer, sector 2813. It is called the Celestial Kingdom. The name of the planet of Heaven is KOLOB. Mormon astronomers at BYU University in Utah have designated it as OJ287, which is located 3.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. KOLOB, or OJ287 throws an overwhelming beacon of light onto Earth. This is associated with the path to and from the Celestial Kingdom.
On KOLOB, the main activity is mating. This is because the spirit world of KOLOB exists to supply souls for newborn earthlings.
The exponential growth of new souls in heaven is only possible because the children of heaven do not have physical bodies. Instead, they have spirit-bodies. Just as KOLOB is surrounded by a spirit world, Mormon theologians imagine that the Earth is surrounded by a spirit world. The earth’s spirit world is the home of dead people, in limbo for now, who await transport back to KOLOB. But first, they must all be baptized.
The baptism ritual occupies much time for Mormons, because they are required to research the names of all their dead ancestors. Then they must act as proxies for the Dead Ones, as they stand in to be dunked under in the baptismal font. Without knowing their names, Mormons are powerless to baptize them. “Baptism for the Dead” has evolved into a very sophisticated form of ancestor worship, as is evidenced by the excellent genealogical libraries Mormons have built throughout the world, and especially in Salt Lake City.
When a soul is needed for a fertilized human ovum, a previously dispatched spirit from KOLOB travels to earth at speeds faster than light. Faster than light travel is easily achieved for Kolobian spirits because spirits weigh nothing. It is a stream of these supraluminal spirits from the planet KOLOB that supplies the souls of earthlings’ fertilized ova, Mormon and gentile alike. Souls arrive speedily to lend the vital force to our otherwise useless shells.
It is with special spirit, that Mormon wives, who are called “Precious Vessels”, deliver their tiny extra-terrestrial visitors. Mormon fathers are especially eager to trigger this process, beginning at KOLOB in a far away galaxy and ending at a birth canal.
Does this help to explain why the Mormon Church is so vigorously opposed to same sex marriage?
Kolob you!
A FYI for Dodger fans: Jeff Kent gave 15K to the yes on 8 side.
story
another strike against re-signing him…
Jeff Kent was the only guy on the giants more hated than Barry Bonds. Pretty much says it all.
I admit to prejudice against Mormons. Ski every year in Utah, and while they don’t populate the lodge I stay at, their control over the state is apparent in oh so many ways, few of them enlightened.
At work, there were several Mormon sales teams that worked SoCal. Real go-getters, but you wouldn’t want to have a beer with them (and they did drink alcohol). Only time I ever almost got shoved into a males client’s limosinefor you know what was at a dinner with them in LaJolla. “No” worked out just fine, but what jerks.
eCAHN, the DH went to college in Utah(mostly to get away from his famiy in Florida, but also to see mountains) and spent his entire first year fending off his roomate and everyone else trying to convert him. He tends to see them on a par with Scientologists, frankly.
Utah is a physically gorgeous state. Lots of reason to put up with the less desireable aspects of the state!
EW great moving post, thank you for sharing your experience.
what’s 8 polling? does anybody know?
2 of the 3 most recent polls, both of which have questionable methodology, have Yes on 8 ahead but within the margin of error. The third, which has a better methodology and is the third one by the same polling group, shows No on 8 ahead 52-44 but that is a decline of 6 points since their last poll.
No on 8 is warning everyone that this is going to be a close race and we need everyone to vote no. There are rallies throughout the state this weekend that anyone is welcome to participate in. For you San Diegans, there is a huge gathering expected at Qaulcomm this weekend that will devolve into a Yes on 8 rally. No on 8 will be there to counteract the virtiol.
Thanks. That’s disappointing. Going to send another round of emails out urging people to vote if they haven’t already.
btw, what’s Bilbray polling? Any chance we can dump him along with 8?
I can also tell you that alot of these out of staters are not very Christian when it comes to disagreeing with No on 8 rallyers. I have been involved in the No on 8 campaign locally since early September and cannot tell you how many times we have been flipped off, called names and told to “F@*k off”. My favorite was the man with 5 kids in the car who rolled his window down in order to shout an obsenity – nice family values.
A few questions for the Yes on 8 people if you encounter them since everything in the bible in the word of God
http://westwing.bewarne.com/second/25letter.html
DUH?? Great way to shut them up!! Those whop would try and impose THEIR religion on the rest of us should understand that we can try and impose our religion on them ya know a little tit for tat!! I find that those who would try and remake our laws to reflect what their religion says they should to be exceedingly odious and need to be told to just fuck off and take their religion back to their church and keep it there and leave the rest of us alone to believe what e want to believe! We don’t need them to be telling us anything period!!
Thanks for a great post EW. My first experience with Mormons was in married grad student housing at Stanford.
I thought I had seen the worst excesses of misogyny growing up in the rural south of the 50-60s. Not even close.
Several years later, I took my NYC raised daughter skiing in Idaho. It was creepy deja vu. Her comment was
“I feel like we’re in another country …. one inhabited by angry androids”. Didn’t think to prepare her in advance for the cultural differences. Am glad I didn’t. It was affirming to see “through her eyes”.
i just voted no on 8!
KO just did a great campaign comment on Khalidi, Ayers, McCain, Obama.
The mantra in my home while growing up was ‘Mind your own business.’ Not a lot of preaching, just that simple statement. That’s how I view this. I get the civil rights issue and know that it’s worth fighting for, but mostly when this issue comes up, my first thought isn’t that someone is undermining a gay person’s rights, rather it’s what the fuck do they care what other people are doing? What’s next? What other personal choices do they want to regulate? Just leave me the fuck alone.
If they’re going to claim that same-sex marriages damage marriage as a socal institution, and their own marriages, maybe we should ask how much damage those have taken from Britney Spears’s 48-hour marriage and from politicians like Gingrich and Giuliani.
Make them explain why adultery and divorce are good, but same-sex marriages between longtime partners are bad.
I still think that if 8 passes, it’s going to spark a massive backlash against the Mormon church. And I don’t just mean going after their tax-exempt status. I have no idea what form it will take, but I expect a lot of anger, and I suspect it will be channelled in a lot of very creative–and highly entertaining–ways.
EW this is an incredible post, telling of your experiences and with what intelligent tolerance you have led your life! I’m sis of a gay brother, who died of aids about the time you were going to Utah. This week his lifepartner will go back East to help move his new love back to CA. I would be so happy if my brotheroutlaw could marry eventually. Now I shall go root around in my drying up moneyplaces to see if there can be one more donation — hope so! Driving around on my errands today in RB area of San Diego there were so many ‘yes on 8′ posters and signs and I did not see one ‘NO on 8′. Sometimes it is hard not to harbor seething anger; I just don’t know why anyone feels like they must impose their religious ideologies on other people– it does not have anything to do with them. I just don’t understand why. now to my search! and thanks.
Btw, that Mormon best friend from high school and I went to Poway High. Not surprised there are few vocal opponents of 8, unfortunately.
remember back when they used to talk about covenant marriage? hilarious.
isn’t common law marriage an afront to tradition? why don’t we hear about the candidates’ positions on common law marriage?
oh right, i forgot. teh gehz aren’t fully human so they don’t deserve full and equal rights.
This is very late.
Mitt Romney appeared on WTKK yesterday.
His run for 2012, sponsored by Mormons with money who work coast to coast, is on:
http://wtkk.everyzing.com/view…..0&x=0
By the way, he is ever so politely working the ACORN thing.
Correction: He appeared on Wednesday, October 29th.
I think the tape may have been edited at about the 8:05 mark in the midst of a discussion about voter fraud.
In Mitt’s experience, Democrats will do anything to win.
I’d appreciate your help concerning what Romney said.