no on 8

Twelve ballot propositions will appear on the statewide ballot in California on November 4, but as members of the LDS church, one has been particularly prominent in our minds during this election season: Proposition 8, which would "eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry."

On June 29, the First Presidency of our church announced its support for Prop 8 in a letter read over the pulpit in every Mormon congregation in California that encouraged members to "do all you can" to support the initiative. Since then, members of the church in California—including family and good friends whom we respect and love—have responded overwhelmingly by blogging, making phone calls, canvassing neighborhoods, putting up signs and bumper stickers, and donating millions of dollars in support of the Yes on 8 effort.

Needless to say, it has been very hard and pretty lonely for us to have a different perspective on this issue.

After giving it hours of thought, study, and prayer, we could probably list dozens of reasons why we are choosing to vote no on Prop 8. For one, proponents of the measure would say that its passage is necessary to protect families and children; however, as eloquently stated in these reflections on Prop 8, "Voting 'Yes on 8' will not save one failing marriage or create one more loving home for abandoned children. It only eliminates civil rights now belonging to gay and lesbian Californians. It is painful to me that we have spent an estimated $70 million dollars in this campaign—not to relieve the debtor, or feed the hungry, or house homeless families, or heal the dying, or reclaim prisoners, or show stewardship for God’s creation—but to eliminate civil rights."

For us, that is the bottom line. Some supporters of Prop 8 might say that same-sex couples have nothing to complain about since the rights they desire through marriage can be found in current state anti-discrimination laws and domestic partnership provisions. However, when the California Supreme Court affirmed same-sex marriage in In re Marriage Cases, it alluded to the "separate but equal" conditions preceding Brown v. Board of Education (1954) by pointing out how exclusive usage of the term "marriage" by opposite-sex couples can stigmatize same-sex couples: "[P]articularly in light of the historic disparagement of and discrimination against gay persons, there is a very significant risk that retaining a distinction in nomenclature with regard to this most fundamental of relationships whereby the term 'marriage' is denied only to same-sex couples inevitably will cause the new parallel institution that has been made available to those couples to be viewed as of a lesser stature than marriage and, in effect, as a mark of second-class citizenship."

Previously on this blog we've paid tribute to Mildred Loving, the plaintiff in a landmark Supreme Court case decided only 41 years ago that ended restrictions on interracial marriage in the United States. Because we are an interracial couple ourselves, we feel even more hesitant to prevent any class of individuals from making a legal commitment to love and honor each other.

Additionally, it seems that many Mormons are voting for Prop 8 out of fear that temple marriages will come under legal attack if the measure fails. A document describing "Six Consequences If Prop 8 Fails" has been widely circulated and helped stir up this fear, along with concerns that gay marriage will be taught in schools and church-run adoption agencies will be shut down if they don't place children with same-sex couples. However, these fears are based on dishonest and misleading statements which have been refuted by many legal scholars, including a graduate of BYU law school, who rightly points out that "relying on deceptive arguments is not only contrary to gospel principles, but ultimately works against the very mission of the Church."

If or when the marriage doctrines of the LDS church or any church are at risk, we will be the first to defend their right of freedom of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment. However, the marriage practices of churches are already protected by the California Constitution as well as the First Amendment, and as very clearly stated by the California Supreme Court in its In re Marriage Cases decision, "affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs."

The last thing we want to mention is that we disagree with some of the questionable tactics being practiced by the Protect Marriage coalition, the latest being sending threatening (verging-on-extortion) letters to donors to the No on 8 campaign. Additionally, it seems that Ron Prentice—the president of California Renewal, the group behind Protect Marriage that is currently prohibited from doing business in California for not paying franchise taxes—has set aside more financial contributions from the public for himself than for his nonprofit's charitable work. Pretty shady stuff.

That was a pretty long post on a pretty divisive and sensitive subject, but these are things that we've been thinking about for a long time and wanted to share. Thanks for reading.

Lavémonos los Dientes

We went to the Planned Parenthood used book sale in Santa Barbara this weekend and came home with some interesting books. One of the things I found was an old LDS hymnal in Spanish titled Himnos de Sión. As I was looking through it, I came across a song titled "Lavémonos los Dientes." Here are the lyrics in Spanish:

Los Dientes no me lavaré, Un niño exclamó
Ya me lavé, ya me peiné, con eso me bastó.
Mas en su boca se oyó un grito de placer,
Y los microbios sin temor, salieron a comer.

Dijeron, llenos de placer: Aquí hay buen hogar
Entre sus dientes sin lavar, podremos festejar.
Oyó el niño de su plan y pronto se lavó,
A los microbios él mató, ni uno escapó.

It took a little bit of searching, but I found an old post on Times and Seasons that contains the lyrics to the original English version (titled "Tooth Bugs"), which I'm posting here so all the gringos out there don't have to be stuck reading my own translation.

I do not want to clean my teeth, a little boy once cried,
I’ve washed my face and combed my hair, That's quite enough, he sighed;
Some tooth bugs hiding in his mouth, Began to dance in glee;
At last we’ve found a home,” they cried, We do not have to flee!

This boy has such a nice warm mouth, We’ll linger here all night;
His teeth are filled with bits of food, We’ll eat with all our might!
The small boy heard their shout of glee, Get out of there, he cried;
He grabbed his brush and scrubbed and scrubbed ‘Till every tooth bug died.

Two questions: how did this song ever make into the hymn book? And why did they ever take it out?

news from Bolivia

The LDS church announced recently that all North American missionaries serving in Bolivia have been transferred to Peru temporarily. This is in reaction to political unrest in Bolivia resulting in the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador (or a more leftist take on the events, click here). I found an article in Deseret News about the church's decision to pull missionaries out of Bolivia. Here's a non-random sample of comments from readers of that article.

The first comment, referring to the Bolivian government:

Pray for them, folks; they don't know any better

Yes, it would be so much easier if you just let our government make your decisions for you. A few examples to show exactly what the U.S. government can do for your Latin American country: the 1973 Chilean coup resulting in human rights violations and the Pinochet dictatorship; the 1954 Guatemalan coup organized by the CIA that led to military rule, genocide, and increased discrimination; and the Iran-contra affair, where Oliver North sold weapons to Iran and used the money to fund a bloody terrorist war to overthrow a democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Speaking of democratically elected leaders, this next comment refers to the Morales administration specifically:

It is sad to see the loss of democracy in some of these South American countries.

Apparently, these people lost democracy by electing someone in a fair election where Morales received a true majority (53.7%) of the popular vote. After Morales had been in office for a few years, the politicians opposed to him were fed up and were able to finally organize a recall referendum to kick him out, but the people of Bolivia voted against the referendum with a 67% majority. Now the prefects of the rich regions are trying again to restore "democracy" by using violence to physically remove Morales from office and continuing to oppress the poor majority.

He's trying to re-write the Bolivian constitution like Venezuela for crying out loud!

Please, no re-writing of constitutions. That should be reserved for really serious problems like gays wanting to get married.

Jesus Camp

Last night we watched Jesus Camp, a documentary about an Evangelical summer camp that teaches kids to love Jesus and hate liberals. At first glance it's easy to talk about how crazy and brainwashing the Evangelicals are. After all, the leaders screamed at the kids to feel the healing blood of Christ so their sins would be washed away, then encouraged them to yell out jibberish while in some scary emotional high, which left most kids in tears. They also taught them that evolution is not based on science, but is a belief that the liberal school system was drilling into their heads, as if every day at school they are being told that creationism is stupid.

After thinking about some of the things that I saw, I realized that many of the problems I have with Evangelicals, I also have with Mormons. I'm not sure why this crossover exists, but for some reason many Mormons and Evangelicals have the same faulty logic. One focus of the Evangelicals in the documentary is that we are at war, specifically with the Muslim religion and we have to train our kids to fight against this. I also have heard this same line of thought with Mormons, and I think it's racist and wrong to think of Muslims as our enemy. Another thing that was brought up several times was they inferred that this generation of kids is some sort of chosen generation, saved to fight evil in these last days. Mormons had been spreading similar rumors around, even attaching names of general authorities to made-up quotes, until the First Presidency came out and told people to stop doing it. This kind of goes along the same idea that we're at war--the Evangelicals seemed to relish the idea of war and loved to think of themselves as being strong enough to fight it. This kind of attitude seemed completely contradictory to any of Jesus' teachings in the Bible. The next resemblance is the attitude of Evangelicals that the way to make yourself better is to pray, read the Bible and go to church. Not to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and accept others even if they're different than you. When I was young, I knew that any question in Sunday school could be answered by saying, "Pray, read your scriptures and go to church," when none of those things actually directly help anyone. So my problem is, Christianity is raising a generation focused on doing things that aren't actually helping anyone except for, arguably, themselves. The sick aren't being healed, the homeless aren't being sheltered, the mentally ill aren't being accepted or treated, the poor working class aren't being represented. With all these major problems going on in the world and billions of people needing aid of some sort, the Evangelicals decided to focus their efforts on protesting abortion in Washington by putting red tape with the word "life" written on it over their mouths. They prayed fervently for a righteous government that would turn over turn Roe vs. Wade. They desperately want these unborn children to have a chance at a life. Once given this chance at life however, Christians seem to be the last to help those who are born into poverty or other hard circumstances. They reject a nation that supports welfare and will fight to keep these poverty stricken people from having access to any form of birth control. Big businesses that they support through their conservative votes will gladly take advantage of the poor working class, using loopholes and lobbyists to keep wages and benefits ridiculously low. But the liberals are the evil ones because they are abortion supporting murderers.

This generation of Christians seems to be more focused on putting themselves above other people because they have the truth, rather than helping anyone in any way. In my opinion, Christianity, and maybe organized religion as a whole, needs to be completely revamped or completely abandoned. I spend three hours at church every Sunday and the only people that may get helped from it are members of the Mormon church because I pay money to a fund to help members. Other than that there's not much that my time or efforts at church or church activities go to actually helping people, which is what I always thought Christianity was supposed to be about.

Baa ram ewe

Today, BYU NewsNet posted a special reader's forum because of the massive response they've gotten over the whole Cheney-speaking-at-spring-commencement brouhaha.

There are a couple of gems in particular that I'd like to point out:

I was shocked to learn so many people were upset over this visit. I was especially surprised to see two alumni and four faculty members of BYU were urging others to protest the First Presidency's invitation to Vice President Cheney. This is ridiculous. In the letter they referred to the war in Iraq and how they disagreed with it, but the First Presidency urges us to support our nation's present leaders, and I am sure our prophet knows what he is talking about. Support our Prophet.

and:

I am extremely disappointed with many members of the church who are associated with BYU and speak out against Vice President Cheney's visit knowing the First Presidency approved the invitation. I am surprised by your lack of devotion to our prophet and his counselors. In a temple recommend interview you are asked if you support the First Presidency. How can you in good conscience say yes, when you so strongly disagree with an invite they approved? By going against a decision endorsed by the First Presidency you are not only disagreeing with them but also every member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who sustain the First Presidency as prophets, seers and revelators.

Why do the words "mindless sheep" immediately come to mind?

Disagreeing with BYU does not mean lack of faith in the First Presidency, just as disagreeing with Bush administration policies does not mean lack of support for the troops.

TJ pointed out yesterday that Gordon B. Hinckley acts in several capacities: as prophet of God, as president of the Church, and as chair of the BYU Board of Trustees. Let's not confuse these roles. BYU spokeswoman Carrie Jenkins made it clear that the First Presidency's approval of Cheney's visit was an administrative decision made in their capacities as chair and vice chairs of the Board of Trustees--not as seers, prophets, and revelators.

As members of the Church and citizens of this country, we're expected to play a role as responsible citizens by becoming informed about the issues and speaking out when we disagree with the actions of our leaders. Encouraging a culture of blind obedience only undermines those duties.

Shame on you, BYU.

I felt like I had to revive this blog from the dead to comment on BYU's confirmation of Dick Cheney as the speaker at spring commencement this year.

As a graduate of BYU, I have to say that I'm extremely disturbed, ashamed, and disappointed by the adminstration's decision to invite a man whose least troublesome PR problem is that he shot someone in the face.

Supposedly, BYU is an institution that stands for honor, honesty, and integrity. All indications suggest, however, that Vice President Cheney does not represent these qualities. Instead, his record is scandal-ridden and ethically questionable, from his ties to Halliburton and role in the CIA leak controversy to his promotion of torture and use of manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

I don't have a problem with inviting a vice president to speak on campus. In fact, it'd be a breath of fresh air compared to traditional commencements that simply feel like extensions of firesides or Tuesday devotionals. But it seems wrong and unwise to welcome a vice president who is so obviously at the center of a number of major political and moral controversies. No matter what the intention behind the invite, the bottom line is that it can be interpreted as a political statement and an endorsement of a divisive, corrupt individual who has repeatedly demonstrated his abuse of power and lack of respect for human rights.

I can't get behind that, and neither should BYU.