Deep and Ponderous Thoughts

She was very sorrowful: for she was very rich.

2012-01-27T19:33:00.000-08:00

This is too poignant not to write about it. You'll think I made it up.

I like mass transit; have for awhile. Denver traffic is more stop than go, and I'd rather spend it reading or working than staring at taillights and sighing at NPR. My office is in an industrial area on the other side of the tracks, as it were—literally, actually—and the most convenient bus route winds through streets of crumbly houses built in the 30's, unkempt small yards, 90's-model cars parked on the street, truant punks smoking on the corner, and epithets yelled in not-English. It's kind of quaint, especially if you like antique houses, and I've never felt unsafe, but I've never lived in such a neighborhood, and chances are great that I never shall.

I had my laptop open, typing away on an address that I've been assigned to give in my congregation on Sunday. I clicked to the desktop to open another program when a loud voice in the seat behind me burst: “Whoa, could I have a copy of that?”

I turned around, saw a lady—I think—bundled in a coat and hat, friendly smile, no hint of care or fashion to her appearance, and smiled back. I was confused, thinking she'd been reading over my shoulder and meant a copy of the document I was writing.

“I want a copy of that picture! Think you could print it off for me—that's a really nice picture.”

Ah, I understood. My desktop background is full-screen “Christ and the Rich Young Ruler” by Hofmann.

“Isn't it wonderful? It's my favorite. I could tell you how to find it online if you want.”

“Could you print it off for me?”

“I—I'm sorry, I don't have a printer with me.” (Why didn't I offer to mail one to her? Didn't think.)

“Is that Jesus and Mary too?”

“It's Jesus and...remember in your bible, it says a rich young man came to see Jesus, and asked Him how to get to heaven? Jesus told him to sell all his things, give the money to the poor, and follow Him. He didn't do it. He didn't want to give away all his stuff. So there's Jesus, and that's the rich young man, and there are the poor people that Jesus wants him to help.”

“That's sure a nice picture. Say, isn't that a great picture?” She hollered at the girl across the aisle from me, who seemed much more Siddhartha than Sunday School, if you know what I mean. I turned the screen toward her with an apologetic smile. She glanced without interest and turned back to the window. My new friend was not daunted.

“I wish I could hang it up in my house, it would keep all the evil spirits away. No evil spirits get in my house with that there.”

Out of some instinct to tone down her theology a bit, I corrected, “It would definitely help you remember to be kind like Jesus, and that would keep the evil out of you.” She might have nodded for half a beat, but was far more interested in talking than listening—

“I always keep a dream catcher up on the wall, that keeps the evil spirits away, they can't get through it, and I always wear my cross...”

I kept eye contact, smiled, and nodded as she talked for several moments, mostly over my attempts to ask her her name, or where she went to church, or anything else. Abruptly she stopped, and after a few repetitions at my request I realized she had asked me for two dollars.

“I live up in Montbello. I gotta have two dollars to get home. The bus to get home, I think it's two dollars, I don't know, that should do it.”

Of course I gave it to her. Of course. I'd just told the story of the rich young ruler. Of course. What else could I possibly have done?

Only two dollars? I suddenly felt conscious of the computer on my lap and the diamonds on my finger.

It did occur to me to give more. I'm not one to carry useful denominations of cash, though, and aside from the one dollar bill and another dollar scraped together in change, the next bill up was a twenty.

What if she'd asked for twenty? Because she lived farther than Montbello, and needed it to get home?

Or fifty, for crucial medicine?

Or a place to stay for the night?

I finally bought new jeans when the old ones were worn through in immodest places—but I have plenty of clothes. My house is furnished largely from the Goodwill Spring Collection and Garage Sale Chic—but it's a large and lovely house. My Protege's transmission occasionally refuses to accelerate above 20, and my husband spent hours this week tinkering with our '95 Cavalier to avoid a large bill—but we have two cars.

And why the skinflintiness? Because I may go without groceries otherwise?

No chance.

Because I may move a sub-optimum amount to my savings account for the month?

Bingo.

I'm prudent with my finances and working toward important goals. I cut every corner I can to meet them. Pay off student loans, provide for children, save for retirement, live on one income when children are young, all the responsible et ceteras. All of these are in obedience to sound, scripture-based counsel. I don't feel bad about it.

But do I give enough in charity? Would Christ tell me to give more to the poor? Would He point out that my financial security stems largely from my favorable circumstances, and though my paystub says I earn every dime, I can never truly say this was obtained by my strength alone?

There's no pat answer, of course, and certainly not one that I can post on a blog. Here I've gone and cheapened my two dollars to be seen of men.

Bottom line: when life lines up a circumstance like my bus handout today, I'd better do some beady-eyed examination of my motives and plans in life.

What a blatant reminder. I smiled all the way home.

Candidate Selection

2012-01-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

In case you live under a rock, in a barrel of jello, with cotton stuffed in your ears, on the dark side of the moon, I'll tell you--the campaign season is upon us. I have no idea who I'll vote for. No one seems to have much to say on the single most pressing issue facing our great nation: the propriety of the Tebow. Or the second most pressing: the fact that the net present value of Social Security and Medicare's unfunded liability is $33.8 trillion. Yup, with a t. Total value of every company currently traded on the US stock exchange? $13.1 trillion. Total value of the equity in American homes? $6.2 trillion. Total haul were we to confiscate all income from all earners above $250,000 for a year? $1.4 trillion.

In other words, there's not enough money in the country to meet those promises. We and our kids are basically indentured to an outdated and irrational system.

For awhile, I was willing to grant that despite his occasional lunacies, M. Paul is a force for good in the race because he won't let everyone ignore the hard truths.

Ah, whoops: he's just as big a squish as the rest of them. Cranky noble consistent libertarian FAIL.

So really, there's no one I can enthusiastically support. Yet I'd feel bad not voting in the primaries, so what to do? How to choose? Well, a website ad today gave me an idea. It was a fundraising pitch for Rick Santorum, the first time I'd seen his official campaign logo. Its complete awfulness turned my head, and also inspired me: the candidate with the best logo! That's how I'll decide! With the campaign devolving into ridiculous whining about Romney's various acts of capitalism (the only thing I really like about the guy) and other superficialities, what better way to decide?!

Since Santorum gave me the idea, we'll start off with him. Oh, and you know one important reason why Santorum can't win? Because consulting google to snag a picture of his logo also brings up copious amounts of hard-core gay porn. Thanks, debased internet culture!

As I said: awful. The font: decent. The eagle: ridiculous. Spindly. Soaring eagles are tricky. Better to have them perched sternly, with talons gripping something. The dotted circle looks weak. Color: is it just a fluke that this looks pink? Nope. Several websites, including M. Santorum's own, display that hue. Blech. Grade: C-.

Okay, Romney:

That's an R, right? Hard to tell. Sure, it's supposed to be a waving flag, or people united, or whatever--a see-what-you-want-to-see logo really isn't the vibe Mr. Flippity-floppity needed to go for. The Last-name-in-stately-serif accompanied by tagline-in-modern-non-serif format is popular this year (see Perry below) but I'm not a fan. Lacks cohesiveness. Also, the name "Romney" looks squished--they need to spread it out a bit. Substance. Grade: C+.

So, Perry?

Meh. Don't like either font. Or the too-cute alliteration (Paul deftly avoided it, as you'll see below.) Too dense, and as our company's marketing consultant tells me every five minutes, if you don't have sufficient white space, you might as well fill your shoes with cement and jump in the lake (I paraphrase). And really, why include the word "president" at all? If people don't know what you're running for, you've got problems ain't no logo gonna fix. (Given M. Perry's debate performances, maybe a focus group did in fact request clarification as to his intentions.) Grade: D+.

M. Crankypants, I mean, Paul:

At last, consistency! Is it the libertarian thing? He used two serif fonts! Win! No too-cute "Paul for President" here, although let's face it, that's probably just because "Ron Paul" is, in Ron Paul's (fans') mind(s), a force, an entity, an ideal, a concept so transcendentally redemptively awe-inspiring that limiting it to a specific campaign is pointless. The "2012" is an observation, not a commitment. Anyway. Not loving the Miss America sash on the A. Shooting star, whatever it is. If you make a wish, will the Blue Fairy come abolish the Fed? But overall, it does look grown-up and is communicative without being cutesy. Grade: A-.

Oh, Newt:

Who dares to use the first name only? Newt, that's who. One of these things is not like the other--Newt's the only candidate without an "R" or "P" initial--the rest of them all mush together if you think about it for very long. RonPerryRickRomneyPaul. But Newt stands alone. Soars, rather--I'm sure the schwoopy thingy is designed to evoke pilots' nametags, or stars racing across the sky, or strong gales wafting us inexorably onward to the fabulousness of Newt's brilliance--wait, could the guy get airborne? Just sayin'. Meh. Grade: B.

Dang it. Daaaaaaaang it. I guess I just committed myself to voting for Paul. Maybe I'll sit out the primary after all.

However! There's a logo not yet on this list, one so vapid, so pointless, so obviously designed to evoke the most ignoble aspects of our wasted national character that it might as well be on a Pepsi can--wait, wasn't it? And any of the above are preferable to it, by a long shot:

I have no hope that anyone elected in November will fix things. Fingers crossed he'll somewhat maybe sort of keep them from getting worse. Here's hoping, anyway.

Missionary Moment

2011-04-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday. Lunchtime. Walking out of a Wal-Mart, pushing my cart, about halfway down the parking lot toward my car. (Not necessarily relevant, but: this was the Wal-Mart at Hampden and Yosemite in Denver, so definitely not your bland suburban middle-class Wal-Mart. Much more fun.)

A young man across the parking lot lane gets my attention with a moderate holler, and I was surprised to see not an acquaintance, but a preppily-dressed young asian man. He was already closing in to my position, and I'd already paused, and before I could brush off and continue to my car he asked: "Do you go to church?"

He seemed a nice chap, and my Mormon instincts to share the good news kicked in full throttle. "Why yes!"

"Do you have a Bible study?" Note: he had a very thick accent.

"Yes, I do!" I figured I could send him to Institute.

"Do you want to come to a Bible study? It is very good." Drat. Here I'd gone from proselytizer to proselytizee. But of course I'm always game for information and possible field trips.

"Where is it?" He told me an address that I didn't fully understand--the accent was a problem.

I was starting to get uncomfortable, because another young man had entered the scene. He was not asian. He was twice my size. Between the two guys, my cart, and the car behind me, I was feeling pretty hemmed in.

But this was just getting interesting--after saying the address the asian guy had continued into a description of the church and its studies, and I couldn't understand much of what he was saying, but I very clearly heard the words "Heavenly Mother." Huhwhat? Never heard that one before from a Bible-study type.

I doubt there was any danger, but because I did feel uncomfortable, and because I couldn't get much out of what the asian guy was saying, and because Hulk hadn't spoken and I didn't necessarily want him to, and because I figured I could learn more from the googles anyway, and because my Dryer's coconut fruit bars were melting, I made a lame excuse and scooted away.

So, the googles: it took some searching and guessing, but I'm pretty sure I ran into a couple of adherents of the World Mission Society Church of God. Not only do they believe in Heavenly Mother, they believe she's alive right now, her name is 장길자, she lives in Korea, and currently leads the church, ever since the death of her husband 안상홍, who was also Christ. They have a church in Northglenn, and yes, I'm interested in going.

Cutest feature? Their associated International We Love You Foundation.

Other Korean Christians think they're a cult, and though goodness knows I don't think much of creedal pronouncements of cult status, I'll go with it this time--it's just pretty awesome to be able to say I was the subject of attempted recruitment by cultists at Wal-Mart.

Felicity

2011-02-13T07:18:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning, when you don't have church until 1:00, means a pleasant stupor for a few hours, at least if you're a morning person. My husband is not, so I know full well that the alternative option is several extra hours' sleep. It won't be so for much longer--I plan to revive my old nerd group for the limited purpose of churchy field trips on Sunday mornings, so set your alarm!

O tempore, o blog--where to start? Every utter particle of life seems so different from when I last wrote (a shameful near-year ago). The wedding in July was splendid (except for my hair. Blech. Do NOT just blindly choose a Utah hair stylist). Many family and friends made it, and I'm so very glad we chose the Jordan River temple in which to wed. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and a little breezy, the building was exquisite inside and out, it held sentimental meaning for both of us, our sealer (a total stranger) was incredibly kind and insightful and spoke to us at length before the ceremony, the ceremony was simple and profound and heart-stopping to realize what was happening, the reception was, well, I won't say a ton of fun, given that it's a reception and therefore inherently boring, but at least Justin stole Troy's crutches and there was tasty food and high spirits all around, and the decoration job on our getaway car was not nearly as bad as I know my brothers could have pulled off. My threats to park in a distant lot and have Stephanie shuttle us over paid off--no oreos! Not even saran wrap, though interested parties should know that that's a less than zero guarantee that I'll omit it from their own future receptions.

The honeymoon was fantastic! We went to Moab and spent several days hiking around Canyonlands, Arches, and Dead Horse Point, plus a rafting trip and a hummer tour of the slick rock, then motored around southern Utah with stops at the Monticello temple, Natural Bridges National Monument, and Monument Valley, then an afternoon at Mesa Verde, then a gorgeous drive home. I started to appreciate, and have increased ever since, the joy and privilege and fun of being able to intertwine every mundane detail of life with another beloved person's. Getting to know my husband's quirks and jokes and mannerisms is sometimes daunting (we often express how much we wish we could just plug into each others' brains) but also so fun. And finding common ground on which to dwell is enormously satisfying. And seeing his smile when he does something for me that he knows I'll love, like the procurement of "Hello, Dolly!" for my viewing enjoyment, does indeed melt me into a puddle of goo. There are constant surprises in getting to know him, and they're nearly all very good.

Oh, the Colorado reception--loved seeing everyone who came, and again, apologies for the inherent boringness of receptions. My hair looked way better (Crystal gets a GOLD STAR!) and any night wherein Mom makes frog-eye salad and I get to take home leftovers is a good night in my book. Best moment: Brett and his fake mustache. Special props: Rhisa, Raelene, Jules, Leslie, Jared, Katie, and the immediate fam, for staying all night to clean up. By "all night," I mean "past eleven," as unlike my husband I am not a night person. Major, sky-high, everlivin' props to Mom for pulling it all together and making the place look amazing. Seriously.

Then back to life. I like our new ward. I miss all my friends in Crowfoot. Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln do I miss teaching Sunday School. Work went way downhill, in that I've never felt so unhappy, simultaneously inadequate and overqualified, and stressed in all my life, or ground my teeth so consistently and hard, and so Big Changes are coming. Kirk is going back to school this fall, and I couldn't be more excited for him. He's so brilliant and will do such great things. We're waiting to hear back on admissions decisions from schools, and the possibilities range from staying here, to Salt Lake, to Austin. I know--you can tell it's love when a true and faithful Sooner is willing to go to Austin. I expect many opportunities for gloating during football season (hear me, Stoops! Hear my plea!)

Anyway, the possibility that we'll be leaving Colorado this fall presented a conundrum--I'm only licensed to practice law in CO, and don't really want to take another bar exam, plus they're expensive. Plus I can't stand my job in the meantime. My brilliant husband found the answer! Primer: passage of the normal bar exam lets you do almost all lawyery stuff, save one: patent law. In order to take the patent bar, you have to separately apply and meet special requirements, but then if you pass the test, it's a federal credential so you can practice in any state you want. Bingo! Little-known fact about me: I was an aerospace engineering major for two years in college. The patent bar normally requires you to have a B.S. in something sciency (not even a math degree counts), but you can also qualify through a backdoor route if you have enough sciency credits even though you didn't get the degree. I qualify! The hope is that patent law will be a much more flexible and satisfying career--litigation requires long hours and near-zero flexibility, as well as meager pay for those who haven't built a practice from the ground up, and sometimes even then. But patent law means much better hours, possibly even working from home, intellectual challenge with every new patent, and--please please please--better pay. Suffice to say I'm excited to give this a shot.

I'm leaving my firm at the end of February, and then will take a month or so to study for the patent bar full-time (the passage rate is only around 50%, so I'm taking it seriously). Then the hope is to get some firm to hire me as a low-cost brand-new patent monkey for the summer, so's I can learn the ropes, then get a more permanent job wherever we move (if we move). Please pray for me, or at least keep your fingers crossed--a lot is riding on my ability to pass this test and find a job.

I love my life. There are a lot of fascinating opportunities ahead--patent law, children, finishing my book and hopefully publication, and I'm going to start being a volunteer contributor to FAIR, a Mormon apologetics group. I've got a lot more in me, and I'm going to charge after it. Starting--now!

...and then everything changed

2010-03-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

This is me, hiking with my soon-to-be Eternal Hiking Buddy. His name is Kirk Robert Hedelius, he has light brown hair and golden brown eyes, is the most kind and humble and righteous and compassionate person I've ever met, is wicked smart, laughs at my jokes (seriously, for real), has appallingly good taste in women, even better taste in diamonds, makes every morning wistful because I won't see him until evening, makes every afternoon impatient because I'll see him so soon, and makes every evening exciting and warm and comfortable and fascinating and so happy.

I feel the need for a quick biographical interlude (or perhaps I'm just gushing): Kirk grew up in Utah. We actually both lived in Riverton, overlapping for a couple years, as kids, but never knew each other. His family then moved to Manti where he spent most of his childhood and adolescence. His folks both work at Snow College. He has three brothers and two sisters (so both our families have four boys, two girls: weird). He served a mission in New York City. He loves to hike, camp, rock climb, be outside for other reasons, read books about Important Smart Stuff, learn and improve himself, and spend time with me.

Last Thursday evening we flew in to Salt Lake for my grandmother's funeral the next day. We had dinner here:

Then we went out to Temple Square and moseyed on over to here:

Then he quite sensibly asked whether, since we're madly in love and spend every spare moment together anyway, we should just get married for eternity. Except he asked it all mushily and romantically, and I'm sparing you by paraphrasing : )

I said yes.

Wait, hang on, what I said was more like "YESYESHECKYESTIMESTWELVEMILLIONANDFORTYTHREEYESANDBYTHEWAYDIDIMENTIONYESYESYESYESYES!!"

Then I hollered at some random passers-by that we had just gotten engaged. They were thrilled.

Therefore, on July 10, 2010, at 11:00 a.m., this is where Kirk and I will be:

We will then live happily ever after. Forever.

And what a relief to not have to always explain how to pronounce "Showell" anymore. Good thing I'm marrying into a simple, universally recognized name! Oh. Wait...

: )

Freedom and Slavery

2009-11-27T20:45:00.000-08:00

Fascinating article, nein? Which is to say, none of the rest of what I write here will make sense unless you read that first. If indeed I have anything to add worth adding.

I'm an independent sort of girl, and the concept of freedom is very appealing to me. Sometimes this has negative manifestations, such as my stubborn insistence on keeping my problems to myself and not confiding in people, or my stubborn contrariness that predisposes me to dislike stuff that's popular, just to be aloof. I don't trust the taste of the crowds, and I don't expect people to want to know or care about my issues, whatever they are.

But stubbornness can be positive, too. I'm comfortable doing my thing no matter what people think. I can stick to habits that are downright bizarre when compared to the majority of my peers, judging the benefit worth the standing out. I can be fairly rigorous in disciplining myself and denying myself.

But Elder Oaks got me thinking. The idea of being enslaved offends and appalls me, and yet I'm fallible and mortal, so no doubt I am in some respects not as free as I ideally could be. For example?

Debt. Oh, it's "good" debt, prophet-sanctioned debt for educational purposes only, well worth the J.D. it purchased me, and I can feel proud of having no consumer debt whatsoever (more of that self-discipline, yay), but debt is still debt, and it's still slavery. It still limits my options and constrains my sense of my possibilities.

Passions. Well, somewhat. I think that the popular perception of me is that I'm not emotional, except for a general cheerfulness. And, well, they're right. I do hit my rough patches, but keep a pretty tight leash on whatever woe I'm feeling even then, and get my equilibrium back quickly. This emotional discipline does stem partly from a stubborn prideful dislike of others' knowing my problems, but more from a hard-won companionship with the Holy Ghost and mature(-ish) realization that my capacity to handle stuff is pretty large. Having just come through a patch of distress, I'm appreciating this facet of my nature much more now.

Sin. This blog is not a confessional, but even if it was, it'd be pretty thin gruel. I was kind of born a goody two-shoes and didn't ever divert too much from that; not that goodness from sheer habit and naivete as to my alternatives bespeaks any large merit on my part. I suppose my weakest point on this front is a mental pattern of cynicism that crops out in my thoughts about certain people-types and situations. I've made some pretty good progress in getting over it, but have more work to do. I don't want to get to the other side with any lingering tendency to think badly of people.

Addiction. Freer than most, but therefore awake to just how enslaved I was and how enslaved I still am. Well, that's exaggerating. I wasn't even in the same order of magnitude as anything that Elder Oaks described, and neither are, I hope, most people. But still. I'm no neurologist, but what I do understand is that associating excitement or pleasure or arousal with violence or emotional abuse or illicit behavior causes those associations to be hard-wired into one's brain such that the association is preserved, and strengthened with repeated exposure, and used to process and respond to other experiences. I used to think that watching people be intimate on screen didn't matter in the slightest, because I considered the behavior to be wrong. Now I think that watching such things was making it harder for me to process excitement and interpersonal emotional dynamics without reference to what I had seen. No bueno. People think, and I thought at the time, that giving up almost all movies and tv was was more symbolic than substantial, a way to be more intangibly "churchy" and therefore a bit more disengaged from the world's mores. It was that, but I didn't foresee at the time that my brain would be actually re-wired as it was deprived of reinforcements for old pathways and exposed instead to better associations. And now I can think much more clearly about the ideas I used to not even realize I was buying into and analyze their implications.

In other words, I believe that I've gained a dimension of freedom that most others lack. And it's worth it.

From a religious perspective: the greatest compliment I've ever received was from my Stake President, during my interview for my temple recommend to be endowed. He's known me well since I was ten years old, and told me that I'm just as pure now as I was as a ten-year-old child. I'm not bragging, because I don't think that that's actually true, but it's nice to know that I'm on the right track. Moreover, I know for absolute certainty that it was not true 6 or 8 years ago. I surrendered some of that to the world and let it clutter my thought processes with false ideas. But my decision to sharply regulate what I absorb into my brain has brought me back more nearly to the innocence I had as a child.

Isn't that real freedom? To be guileless and pure like a child, but wise and experienced as an adult? (I occasionally get accused of being naive and sheltered from the seamy side of life, which I find hilarious--spend five minutes in my job. Seriously.) To be free from modes of thinking that we didn't precisely choose for ourselves, but let the world wire into us, without our fully realizing it? To spend our time in active pursuits of knowledge or service or strength according to our interests and needs and opportunities, instead of wasting it on whatever's on cable? (Yes, I'm feeling guilty for having spent Thanksgiving watching movies with my sister. Once a year is all : ) ).

I'm just thankful to have the convictions and traits that I do. I'm flawed in a million places, but hopefully free of most forces that would be dragging me down into more and deeper flaws. I'm free to do better.

The Love of Many Shall Wax Cold

2009-08-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

Just a little work-related venting. I'm glad I have this job. I enjoy this job. I occasionally suffer profound weirding-out as a result of the interactions I have in the course of this job.

How malleable is the human personality? Not infinitely, I suppose, but I'm concluding it has a much wider range than I'd have guessed a few years ago. Meaning, someone who now seems perfectly normally kind, thoughtful, and other-oriented can, over the course of time, become capable of exquisitely casual cruelty and total emotional indifference to certain others. The main certain other being the spouse.

Or am I just wanting to give too much credit? When a client tells me that s/he (to be honest, in these cases it's usually she) thought the spouse to be a really swell person back when they decided to wed, and that the cruelty cropped out later, I believe her, having no grounds to know otherwise. Were the germs of eventual depravity present way back when, but hidden and undeveloped? Or do some women marry despite noticing signs that Prince Charming could actually be an extremely unpleasant fellow?

Do we each have the capability to develop that cruelty?

Guess I should specify what cruelty I mean. Not even outright domestic violence, though that comes along with it often enough, but just a dark gnawing delight in putting down and undermining the happiness and contentment of the person who is supposed to be the other half of your soul. Childish, and terrifying--always walking ten paces ahead of the spouse in public, putting her down in front of friends, pulling through the drive-through and pointedly ordering food for everyone except the spouse, overwhelming and constant manipulation and guilt-tripping, silent treatment for days or weeks, followed by blame for being so sub-par as to have forced the cruel treatment because there was no other way to get your attention and help you overcome your defects. Alternated with manipulative periods of kindness and generosity, so that the cruel spouse can use it as a cudgel ("after how good I was to you yesterday, today you go back to being rotten and forcing me to treat you badly again") and more fully convince him/herself that s/he really is in the right.

Run-of-the-mill emotional abuse, basically. This is the life some of my clients have led.

Pornography is a pretty constant commality among these cases. It doesn't turn all its addicts into monsters (although the neuroscience is indisputable that it rewires and warps you) but it does often enough. It gradually erodes your ability to be a normally other-oriented human being.

But that point can be broken down still further, as well. Lots of the spouses I've been told about are quite charming, and even sincere, in their care for and appreciation of other people. Or at least they're really good at faking it. Emotional abusers become adept at putting on a nice act for outsiders, and saving the cruelty for the family or the spouse alone.

I have, or rather have had, some such tendencies. Childhood sibling cruelty is not too far off in essentials, though much different in degree. I think something of the same intent is present in both, though--getting a kick out of the ability to manipulate and bring down another person.

Ugh, I'm getting so jaded. I know that not that many people in general are awful, but in divorces, often one person is. In my experience, anyway.

So, development: how does a grown adult, who probably realizes to some degree that it is both inherently wrong and socially disapproved to be a jerk to one's spouse, get to the point where emotional abuse is a deeply ingrained habit?

Good question.

Unseemly Gloating

2009-07-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

Ah, Saturday. Watching an old musical and cramming my brain full of ideas. Simultaneously. And deciding where to go to church tomorrow—in addition to my own, of course. But I've decided to revive my old habit of popping in at various churches for the fun and interest of it. I want to go to a Greek Orthodox service, but am putting it off for another week so a friend can come along. So tomorrow morning I'll pop into a local service—either Free Evangelical or Lutheran. And looking forward to it.

So much so that I did a little pre-research, visiting the website of Heritage Christian Church. Good to know how contemporary the service, how new-fangled the music, how long the sermon, etc. Good website, and I found all this, and wasn't trawling for much else, but did notice the link for Apologetics, and the subcategory of Cults, and the document “Four Questions for Your Mormon Friends.” (The link is to a page from whence you may download the document). I discovered the delightful bonus that there are in fact five questions, and if I may be forgiven an unfounded assumption which helps my witty dismissal of the whole thing, the fifth question is a very slapdash affair. Added hastily after the document was already named, and neglected to be re-named? To be fair, the original questions one through four also lack a certain logical rigor, but hey, in the realm of theology, that's hardly unusual.

But that question five: it leaps forth from the bounds of theology, which can be respectably defended by mere assertion, and sidles into the realm of history, which leaves it open to being chewed to shreds by a little basic research. Here I go. I quote:

“The 'Book of Abraham' is part of the larger The Pearl of Great Price. It is said to have been translated by Joseph Smith from papyrii he purchased in about 1835. On November 27, 1967 the long-presumed lost collection of papyrus manuscripts was presented to the Church. The discovery of the manuscripts allowed Joseph Smith’s ability as a ‘translator’ to be tested (the ‘Rosetta Stone’, containing Greek, demotic and hieroglyphic writing had been discovered in 1799; it was largely unknown at the time of Smith’s ‘translation’).”

Sentence one is true, though, y'know, obvious, at least to a Mormon, which indicates to me that these questions are aimed more at inoculation of Christians than persuasion of Mormons. But ah well—it's true, so hurrah! so far, so good. The second sentence is likewise true. The third sentence is trickier. “The long-presumed lost collection of papyrus manuscripts?” No, rather, a collection. The evidence I've studied through seems pretty clear that the found papyrii were once part of those in Joseph Smith's possession. What has never been established, and in fact has been pretty fairly disproven (so much as history from 160 years back lets us prove or disprove anything) is that the collection presented to the church could possibly, even conceivably, be the entirety of the papyrii that Joseph Smith had. And from the contemporary accounts it's easy to learn that Joseph nor anyone working with him ever said that every single scrap of papyrus he acquired was important or sacred or part of the copy of Abraham's writings.

Also not mentioned is that those supposedly perfidious papyrii, which supposedly disprove the status of Joseph Smith as a prophet and the status of the Book of Abraham as sacred revelation from God, were, upon receipt by the church, immediately made available to all and sundry who wished to see and study them, and even reproduced in the Ensign, the church's official magazine. Lousy hoax-mongerers we.

This makes sentence four really problematic. If you can't establish that the recovered papyrii were in fact the source of the translation, then you ain't proved nothing. Question five certainly does not so establish, and therefore its convenient conclusion is rubbish.

But it actually gets better! (Sorry, by "better," I mean "more sadly inept"). Question five goes on, after setting forth that it was the 1967 discovery that "allowed Joseph Smith's ability as a 'translator' to be tested," and purports to show that a scholarly community united to do just that. Four scholars! All so scholarly--Oxford, Chicago, Chicago, and Brown to their credit! And "they say" the papyrus (now in the singular--mere carelessness? Earlier, it was acknowledged that there were multiple fragments of papyrii) is in fact from the Egyptian Book of Breathings, from the Book of the Dead, "a work largely about magical charms." That's a slight on Egyptian theology, methinks, but ah well. The really fun part is that they name the scholars. And that my humdinger Wikipedia skills were easily called into service in researching said scholars. And lemme just tell you how ridiculously scholarly two of these scholars are. They did their devastating tests of Joseph Smith's translating ability posthumously.

Oh yes. Presumably the Evangelicals are mercifully willing to overlook the Ouija board use necessary to get A.H. Sayce and James H. Breasted's opinions on Joseph Smith, though they seem rather less merciful toward any trumped up nonsense they can use against Mormons. You see, the learned Mr. Sayce shuffled off the mortal coil in 1933, and the eminent Mr. Breasted joined the bleedin' choir invisible in 1935. Now the math may be a bit hard to follow here, particularly for amateur Mormon-bashers, but I do think a good case can be made that 1933 and 1935 both come before 1967.

So there you have it. Joseph Smith couldn't possibly have been an inspired translator, because some papyrii that he didn't use for his translation don't say what his translation said, and this obvious truth has been endorsed by two dead men. (Let us not forget that "all Egyptologists have the same view," according to our Evangelical friends. That's pretty convincing, though I wonder how many of them were alive when they reached said views.)

All right, all right. I should turn down the snark. I make no claim that any amount of woeful Google improficiency or not bothering to do any basic fact-checking before making attacks on others' sincere beliefs establishes the truth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So why go though all this?

Well, it was fun.

Second, I just wish I could snap just a teensy bit of greater goodwill into my religious cousins. You think we're wrong. You think we're in eternal jeopardy. That's fine, and thank you for caring. But the plan for the lifelong faith of an intelligent person to be swept away by four ("five, sir!") five poorly-sourced and logically torqued questions is frankly a bit insulting. And it's my fault for going looking sometimes, but the tendency on comment threads and message boards and whatnot for Christians to jump immediately to the worst assumptions about Mormons--they lie, they misrepresent, they dissemble, and oh yeah, you can't trust 'em--really weirds me out.

So, touche. I enjoyed my little bout of tit for tat, and will hang with the Evangelicals tomorrow morning with a right good will. Lovely people, no matter what they're willing to believe about Mormons.

UPDATE: I shouldn't blog so late at night. Though I tend to be funnier. As Steph pointed out, I didn't back things up as I should have, so I've now gone back and added links galore. Which example the Heritage folks ought to emulate : )

Ooh, there I go being snarky again, and upon reflection this morning I decided I feel bad about it. Catching such a hilarious error was irresistable for me, but I do realize that Heritage and their ilk are good folk just trying to the best they can and no doubt copying and pasting from somewhere else they thought they could trust. They're victims more than perpetrators, and though I wish earnest Evangelical types would do their homework before telling me that my beloved prophet was a charlatan, the ethos they're immersed in probably means that it doesn't much occur to them, just as many things don't occur to me.

But currently, it occurs to me that I should be working. Laterz.

Sui generis

2009-06-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

So, today housed a twice-a-year-or-so event: a luncheon for all the Mormon lawyers in Denver. They don't all show up, of course, but about thirty did. I entered late, because I'd been to the venue before and figured I could find it again but of course could not find it again (thanks for the address, ChaCha!)

So, I'm the last one into a room which is already completely full, of lunching lawyers. And all of them had one striking thing in common: they were all men. I was the sole female at the event.

Awkward.

Not exactly unexpected, but this is the first time I've been completely femme sole. One or two others, in the past.

Oh, and I can say with decent confidence, given my deeply-ingrained and only barely-conscious habit of left-hand-checking: it would be an insufficient blow to my sense of self to be merely the only female, no, I had to be the only single, as well.

I don't have a category.

I don't necessarily care what people think, but I am aware of the probability: "Heh, looks like someone chose career over family!" I can just hear it whirring through their heads.

Anyway, the lunch was tasty, and the speech was enlightening. A marvelous experience, to be sure.

And yet...sigh.

High time for a vacation

2009-06-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

No joke. I haven't taken a day off since New Years. That includes MLK day and Memorial Day. A lot of that's my own dang fault for not organizing my time better, but ah well, 'tis what 'tis. So here it is, June, and I'm starting with the crazy-making. Not that I don't have a lovely office, but I reeeeeally want to not see it. For several days. Consecutively. Hence: vaycay!!

Restrictions:

1) I am, if not quite broke, not exactly loaded. Wiltshire and Scotland and Bulgaria and all the other lovely places I dream of seeing will have to wait a few more years.

2) I'm not a very good travelling companion, given my inordinate enthusiasm for museums, cemeteries, random old buildings, and other nerdy pursuits, and rather prefer doing things alone, so this is going to be a solo affair. Plus #4 below is going to make me even more boring than usual.

3) I intend to fully observe the Sabbath, even while on vacation.

4) Just because I'm on vacation doesn't mean I stop being a nerd. I aim to use a substantial chunk of my time reading/listening to smartstuffs, as well as working on my book. I'll just be doing so in much more beautiful and interesting locations.

5) It's not that I mind flying, but I really really like taking the scenic route.

Bearing all that in mind, I've come up with two options.

Itinerary # 1, OR, Recouping Some of My Tax Dollars Wasted on Amtrak Subsidies

Leave Friday morning from Union Station in Denver aboard the California Zephyr, Amtrak's westward cross-country line. Sit in a train from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Saturday, which is assuming that it's on time, which I hear it is very often not. Basic fare isn't too pricey, only about $300 round trip to San Fancisco. However, spending the night in the equivalent of an airline chair doesn't appeal, so I'd seriously consider springing for a private "roomette" which will up the total to more like $800. The idea of taking the train appeals to me--I could spend basically four complete days just reading/writing, of course simultaneously keeping an eye on the breathtaking scenery. Once in San Fran, I'd rent a car and spend Sunday at church and bumming around the city and then Monday to Thursday bumming around the larger area--drive along the coast, hit the redwood forest and Yosemite, take pix to arrange into a hilarious photo essay of whatever they're currently protesting at Berkeley, etc. Then train home.

Pros: the scenery would be just amazing, especially if I hold off until September or October. Lots of time to write while riding. Spend time by the ocean, which I've only seen a handful of times in my life. Yosemite is also a long-time dream.

Cons: First, single woman alone in a big city. I'm not too squeamish, but I know I'd be taking my chances on that one. I'm also not overly street-smart : ) Second, and it's a doozy, is that Amtrak is a crapshoot. I've seen epinions that it's lovely and fun, and epinions that it's chronically smelly, dirty, and late. Oh, and the staff is surly. Oh, and the food is awful. What do I expect, when it's run by the gummint? So...dunno. It would be perfect if only I could count on a decent standard of train niceness. I'm not even all that fussy, but some of the horror stories really make it sound like hell on wheels.

Itinerary #2, OR, for a native Utahn, I never did get out much

Rent a car. Leave Friday morning. Drive I-70 through the mountains of Colorado, into Utah, then head up Hwy 89 to Manti. Spend Saturday at the Manti temple, which is of interest to me because of sundry ancestors' helping to build it. Might also try to squeeze in a horseback ride in Manti Canyon. Sunday, go to church, then bum around Fairview (whoa, two of my ancestors are referenced in that article!! Jehu Cox and James N. Jones), which is interesting to me because a few branches of my family lived there back in the day; I think I'm probably related to half the occupants of the Fairview Cemetary. I don't know what all relics(houses, even identifiable addresses) of my relatives might remain, but would like to find out. Monday morning drive back south to Canyonlands National Park, rent a cabin, and spend Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday alternately writing and enjoying the park. Wednesday night drive to Arches National Park and repeat. Alternatively, stay somewhere in Moab and just alternate between the parks as the spirit moves me. Drive home Saturday afternoon.

Pros: The family history angle is way appealing to me. More so than most, I think--I've always felt a very visceral connection to anything having to do with people whose DNA I share, and so finally getting so see Fairview and the Manti temple would be amazing. I've also long wanted to see those parks. Plenty of time to write in beautiful places. Less travel time.

Cons: less travel time, and what time there is I'll have to spend driving instead of writing. I'd have to procure something like-a thees to spend my driving time on. No ocean, or at least not according to the map I have. Less exotic cred than California. Frustrating inability to anything truly cool in the parks, given that I'll be a lone female.

On the whole, I'd have to say I'm leaning toward the second option, just because I'm so worried that Amtrak will be so awful and because I'll be so miffed if it is. But if anyone has experience and opinions either way, I'd love to hear them.

The Abundant Life

2009-05-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

What an odd life I lead. Several Saturdays ago I was very thoroughly snowed in, and so, instead of going in to the office as had been my plan (I know I'm pathetic. Don't worry) I instead curled up with a blanket in my armchair and spent 12 straight hours reading--wait for it--online archives of The New Criterion. (No, wait, interspersed with a couple of Narnia volumes--I love those more and more the older I get! But mostly TNC.) That's not normal, right? To be able to stay so maniacally focused on philosophy, legal theory, and art and literary criticism for such a long time? Especially when I feel like I'm developing some sort of situational ADD in other aspects of my life--work is way harder to stay on track.

So odd, first, because so many of my dear friends from college would read the above and their heads immediately explode from uncomprehending longing. "Twelve hours? Reading? By herself?? I haven't had five consecutive minutes to myself since Junior was born in 2007!" One reason that I love facebook is it gives me the opportunity to observe at least the superficial details of the lives of friends I am not otherwise in close contact with, and a couple months ago it hit me--I think we're past the point where it would be accurate to say that we're still on the same track, just at different points upon it. Instead, we've branched off onto different, and daily diverging, tracks. Among my most meaningful experiences in college were service in three presidencies, and from the collective nine of us, I'm the only one still single. (Kendall, Mindy Jo, Abigail, Jamie, Kaytryn, Amanda, Calista, Joellen: love y'all! Congrats!) And now, e-monitoring their lives is, for me, like looking into a strange and foreign realm. I have zero claims upon my free time; they have zero free time. I am extremely particular about doing things my way in my precious personal living space; they've arranged their entire lives and routines around a spouse and, now for most, child[ren]. I can easily go several days without doing a single darn thing nice for someone else; they probably can't make it more than a few seconds without having the chance to give of themselves for spouse or child. If I feel like dropping fifty bucks on a new dress for law prom, I have only my bank statement to answer to; if they were even to have the need for a fancy getup (probably unlikely that they often would) they'd have a tight family budget and spouse and kid who has outgrown its shoes to answer to.

In other words, there are an awful lot of perks to being single. Ought my matrimonially-blessed friends to envy me? Heck yes! Do I envy them? Yesssssssss...

Wait, don't stop reading. This isn't going to turn into a whine about how I'm still single (though it is necessary to understand that, for Mormons, the theological, cultural, and philosophical importance of marriage and family simply cannot be overstated). I'm just being thoughtful. No doubt every young mother ever would disagree with me, but from where I sit it seems an easy thing to see the point in a daily life full of feedings, stories, naptimes, mac'n'cheese, Sesame Street and such. I mean, you've been given the minute and constant responsibility for the upright development of a human soul! Every moment could be a ridiculously important one. And meanwhile, you're giving of yourself with a thoroughness and incessance that cannot be paralleled.

In other words, family life and especially motherhood seem to me the most direct route to the Abundant Life, meaning the life most in line with the Savior's commands to lose your life, do good, and sacrifice all for higher and fuller purposes. Fatherhood, too--every moment grinding along at work is dedicated wholly to the family depending on you.

My situation is a tougher nut to crack. I work for myself (and for my student loans), I live for myself: it's all me, at least in default mode. I can find higher purposes for doing stuff, but I have to go out and find it--it's not built into the structure of my life. If I buy a new bookshelf or bedspread for my home my conscience twinges. Couldn't I find a worthier cause for my money? Creating a lovely home for myself alone doesn't have the same easy justification as if it were for my family. If I spend an evening reading Goethe my conscience twinges again: isn't there much I could be doing to improve the world around me? If I had a family the twinges would be less--I wouldn't have free time for Goethe to start with, and if I managed to schedule in service to others beside my family that would be more in the "extraordinary" category than the "well, of course, it's not like you've done anything else for humanity lately" one.

Basically, how do I live the Abundant Life (not sure why I keep capitalizing that) when all of the inertia in my life is dragging me toward selfishness, isolation, and frivolity? (The sense in which twelve hours reading The New Criterion constitutes frivolity would take a whole 'nother navelgazing blog post to spell out). How do I not feel a wee bit guilty for enjoying myself so much, or more than a wee bit frustrated with working so hard with nothing particularly extraordinary to show for it?

No easy answer, natch. I'm sure when I'm ninety or in the hereafter I'll be able to look back and see that there really was a point to this portion of my life. Especially given that being a with-it and outgoing Mormon means that you can never retreat into total selfishness (home/visiting teaching, service projects, interaction in general with fellow ward members who have complicated lives and need a listening ear). But on a day-to-day basis, it's fairly easy to feel like the inertia is holding me back more than my efforts are propelling me forward.

Which actually is one of the reasons I spend so much free time on my nerdy pursuits. Impossible to feel like everything important is passing me by when I've just devoured Wordsworth. And there's comfort in the thought that the very fact that I'm aware of my situation and trying, however ineptly, to rise above it shows that I'm doing something right. Right? Right.

And even though there are lots of people who could take care of my clients, someone's got to, so it might as well be me, and I do it well. Wish me luck in my hearing tomorrow! Good luck = we don't really have much of a hearing, because the other party agrees to my brilliantly negotiated stipulation. Fingers crossed.

Life and Sunday School

2009-05-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

Yeah, no, seriously, I'm not going to write about politics. Until tomorrow.

Most friends' blogs that I read are full of pictures of babies and vacations (in that order). I can offer no such enticements. Nor can I offer much of exciting singleness, concerts and Nuggets games and such. Doesn't sound like I have any fun, does it? Wrong! Good heavens, I've spent a collective total of five waking minutes at my apartment over the past two weeks. In fact, here's a peek at my planner:

Sunday: breakfast with the fam, then call from my mish brother Troy, then Parker ward, then Crowfoot ward, then dinner with the fam to celebrate Mom's day/my b-day
Monday: work, then FHE broom hockey, which was AWESOME
Tuesday: my birthday, which meant work and then dinner with Barbie and driveway vandalism with sidewalk chalk (consult my facebook page for hilarious pix)
Wednesday: work, then institute, then sort of teaching Justy a piano lesson but more talking to friends and making new friends and *cough* flirting
Thursday: Work, then meeting #2 of the Secret Society of Brilliant, Witty, and Consequential people, which was poorly but richly attended and at which we engagingly discussed the Lectures on Faith.
Friday: Work, then waiting tables at Mormon Prom, which was really quite fun, and making several new friends
Saturday: Hiking Eldorado Canyon state park with several friends, and dinner with a few afterwards
Sunday: Prepare Sunday School lesson, go to church and give Sunday School lesson, go to Bishop's house for May birthdays dinner
Monday: work, then help a friend clean and organize her house
Tuesday: work, then help said friend clean and organize more of her house (I smelled like ammonia for awhile : )
Wednesday: work, then a lot of fun keeping company with a young gentleman
Thursday: work, then a lot of fun keeping company with a young gentleman
Friday: work, then Fiddlers' Green for my youngest bro's high school graduation, then his party
Saturday: My regular shift at the temple, then put in an appearance at the Institute BBQ, then hang w/ the fam and grandparents
Sunday: Sleep in, for sanity's sake!

In other words, I love my life. I need to balance it a bit more, but the last two weeks were not typical (especially in terms of the frequency with which I kept company with young gentlemen--it's always feast or famine on that front). Thursday night I did have a precious half hour at home, which I spent reading "The Weight of Glory" by C.S.Lewis. Enjoyed it thoroughly, and made me realize that I've been missing out on soul-feeding time. I love people and being with them, even when the activity is silly and the conversation is trivial, but I also want to educate myself. So my schedule needs to be tweaked, but it's pretty darn enjoyable as is.

Or, I suppose, my schedule is never entirely trivial, because I've got two built-in recurring importances: working at the temple and teaching Sunday School. Both are the highlights of my life. This is the first time I've had a teaching calling at church, and I didn't expect to enjoy it so much! I really shouldn't be allowed to have this much fun. For as much as I love blending into the background, when the occasion comes to play the crowd, I rise to it.

Lest my sillinesses should be forgotten, I want to record some of my parables. I love using parables in my lessons, especially slightly (okay, incredibly) odd ones, because I think the lessons have a better chance of getting caught between the ears that way. Can't much verify it, but oh well, at the very least, I remember the lessons.

The parable of the houseplant: It struck me last summer/fall that my houseplant, which I had so enjoyed watching flower while I was home all day studying for the bar, had stopped flowering. Alas! thought I, it must be sick! Then, on a Sunday morning at home, I noticed that it most certainly was flowering. Over a few more days I figured out the deal: it only flowers between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Which is completely inconvenient, considering I'm generally at work or otherwise not home during that time. What a perverse little plant! thought I. What's the use of a plant that only blooms while no one's watching?!

Oh! said my conscience. You mean just like how you're all churchy and religious when you're around other Mormons, but not otherwise? You mean just like how you'll only talk about faith and prayer in religious settings? You mean just like how when someone says "how was your weekend?" you respond "oh, fine" instead of "holy cow incredible! I worked in God's temple, performing ordinances that establish covenants that bring people closer to Christ and His love, and attended church where I learned and discussed amazing eternal principles and renewed my own covenants with Christ!"?

Bloom when people are watching.

The parable of the Grenade Launcher: So, you're an army general. You have to decide how to dole out the armaments to your army, which consists of both the front-line troops as well as the support staff-types like the telegraph operator and the mess hall mopper. Your weaponry consists of grenade launchers and sling shots. To whom do you give the grenade launchers, and to whom do you give the sling shots? Obviously, the front line troops get the wicked awesome weaponry.

So are you living life on the front line, or are you mopping up the mess hall? How do you approach your calling, or home or visiting teaching? Do you pray for help? And understanding? Work hard at it? Study and ponder? Make it an important priority in your life? Or do you show up and give it a half-hearted go? Say hi in the hallway and count that as a visit? Do you talk to people that you meet about the gospel? Or keep to yourself?

Because one attitude puts you on the front line, and the other keeps you in the mess hall. And God gives gifts to His children according to how enthusiastically and effectively they intend to use them. Want revelation? Want discernment? Want more companionship from the Spirit? Then get out there on the front line.

Some of the rest aren't so much full-fledged parables as fun comparisons. Such as the Dark Forest and Non-Existent Floodlights, the Alternate Ending to the Story of The Rich Young Ruler, and My Problematic Friend Andrew. Maybe I'll just start blogging each of my lessons.

Anyway, life is good and so are you. A bientot!

Iowa, Vermont, &c.

2009-04-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't the time this week to really break down the heinousness of the Iowa same-sex marriage decision, so I'll defer to Professor Matthew Franck. Read it thrice, have a good long think, then read it once more. We all need to grasp the underlying currents of thought involved in this debate. Iowa is in a way worse than California and Connecticut, because it didn't use the state's allowance of same-sex civil unions as a springboard to same-sex marriage. Iowa just made the whole leap all at once. Again, read Franck for why this is a whole heapin' helpin' of legal insanity.

Here, then, is the new Vermont law which was passed, vetoed, and then the veto overridden on Tuesday. Huzzah, I say, because this is the first and only time so far that same sex marriage has been enacted via anything even remotely approaching the will of the people. And if the people want to go to heck in a handbasket, that's not my problem. I'd much rather the electorate be responsible for its moral condition than that judges beat them into submission with a legal two by four.

Quick thought, though--how long before somebody challenges the can't-marry-a-sibling-or-other-relative provision? As I've explained before, if you accept the philosophical premise at the heart of the pro-same-sex marriage position, that sexuality is at the center of identity and its expression at the core of liberty, then you have no business prohibiting any relationships. And I understand that some immigrant communities have cultural/religious affinities for uncle-niece marriages. We'll see...

Further huzzah: Vermont has my everlasting gratitude for including the protection that no clergy can be made the target of a civil action for refusing to solemnize a same-sex marriage. The way legal thought, or lack of it, rather, is going, the provision might not hold up long, but I am ridiculously glad to know that it's there.

UPDATE: Well and gloomily put.

Cold comfort

2009-04-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

Circa 1990-2003, when debates about what to do with gays and their place in society were getting seriously underway, those who advocated civil unions and "hate crimes" protections on behalf of gays were oh so good at scoffing conservative opposition. Conservatives pointed out that such measures were surely only the nose under the tent, paving the way for full-out gay marriage. "Nonsense!" scoffed the gay activists. "We're just talking about basic, reasonable, common-sense measures that you uptight squares are only opposing because you're nasty bigots! Stop making a boogedy man out of gay marriage when that's not even on the radar screen!"

Did the scoffing disguise laughter at the time? I mean, did the scoffers do so deceptively, full well knowing that once those initial measures were in place, the step to gay marriage would be that much shorter? Dunno. In some cases, probably yes. In any case, having achieved the "reasonable" and "basic" rights of civil unions and thought crime, oh sorry, hate crime protections, it is now all the easier for lawyers to argue that same sex marriage is the new "basic, reasonable" position. The California and Connecticut decisions made such use of civil unions, and now Iowa has done the same with hate crime protections.

Told ya so.

Quick, what does Grey's Anatomy have to do with gay marriage?

2009-04-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

You may well have been wondering. Er, not. Whatever. : ) Anyway, it hit me today as I was thinking about Iowa (boo, hiss) and what all I've been writing lately about law and culture. And in my missives I keep missing the crucial point. So here goes.

We (our collective culture, hopefully not you personally) have chomped down on, hook line and sinker, the devil's most useful lie: that sexuality is the core of your identity, your purposefulness, your contentment in life. From what I know about Freud, his observations pushed this trend forward. Everyone who found it useful and hip to rail against Puritan and Victorian repressiveness pushed it forward. The sexual revolution, the pill, Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Lawrence v. Texas: everything in law and popular culture and widespread understanding and philosophy has been moving in a single direction since the early 20th century (let's not quibble about dates; give or take several decades, m'kay?). The single direction of sex = paramount, religion/morals/norms/conventions = secondary at best, repressive at worst.

Which brings us to our current status wherein mass entertainment, sludge like Grey's and Desperate Housewives, is the full flower of the mindset wherein sexual satisfaction is the holy grail of the life well-lived.

Hardly even a step, more like a shuffled inch, from there to the morally certain pronouncement that no one has any business telling anyone else what format one's sexual satisfaction ought to conform to, or denying anyone else full freedom to pursue sexual satisfaction in any desired format. After all, if sexuality is the center of one's identity, how on earth can you dare to make any judgments about how the center of one's identity is to be set up? How can you possibly have greater authority than the person himself analyzing his own being?

So instead of character, choices, consequences, and striving for ideals remaining at the center of identity, we've convinced ourselves that the aspect of personhood most easily given over to autopilot and passion and unreflective desire is our true core. We simultaneously stopped believing that we are divine reflections of a divine Father, and instead decided that we're animals, somewhat intelligently and hopefully pragmatically deciding how best to order society to keep from killing each other, but otherwise ought to be able to take pleasure however it can be obtained.

When we stopped believing that sex is sacred, all hell broke loose. I'm not being figurative.

What planet am I on?

2009-03-26T20:43:00.000-07:00

I knew I was out of touch, but had no idea just how much. My investigation into Grey's Anatomy and Twilight got me curious as to just what else everyone my age is into. Results:

Quotes from "The Office." Wow. And I thought Grey's Anatomy didn't take sex seriously.

Clips from "The Office." Thoughtful people enjoy seeing a guy put his finger through his pants? This was source material for a spoof at a church activity?

Quotes from "Scrubs." I also found a video clip of enthusiastic crotch-grabbing, which I won't bother posting.

Quotes from "Arrested Development." Prison rape. Way funny.

Annnnnd with that, I'm giving up this line of research, FOREVER. I need to go dump my brain in a vat of acid in hopes of cleaning it out from all this.

Seriously? Is this for real? I'd always figured such shows were just not my cup of tea, maybe a tad more raunchy than I care to see/hear/remember, but whoa--seriously? Please tell me those quotes and clips were fake, and that it's not really this bad.

Am I missing something? Is there some overwhelming and profound artistic and moral and spiritual enlightenment to these shows that balances out the crudity here? Is there a good argument that they really do fit in the "virtuous, lovely, good report and praiseworthy" category, or at least the "not actively injurious to one's moral consciousness" category?

I just don't get it. I don't particularly like being isolated and unusual in so many ways among my peers, but if finding all of this normal and acceptable is what fitting in means, then weird is what I'm pleased to be.

I don't expect anyone to think the way I do. But I don't understand you.

The Case Against Romance

2009-03-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

I've always been something of a starry-eyed outsider from the prevailing popular culture. I've never seen a single episode of Friends, and, I kid you not, I never saw Titanic. My parents had a no-R movie policy which I adhered to, and I remember the summer after high school graduation my mom warning me against going to see “America's Sweethearts” with friends: PG-13 romantic comedies are inevitably lewd, quoth Mom. She was right; I was very uncomfortable and regretted having seen it afterward.

But I buried my discomfort for the first couple years of college. When I was hanging out with a group of friends and someone put in “The New Guy” or “Zoolander” or “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” I didn't protest. But neither did I really get the premises of the movies the way everyone else evidently did. I remember watching “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” and thinking that it was simply nonsensical, nay, stupid, apart from being raunchy, to nickname a guy's privates.

Then, in the summer between my junior and senior years of college, I finally heeded the counsel of my long-suffering Bishop and his wife to give up PG-13 movies. That brought such stellar dividends in my clarity of thought and spiritual development that a year and a half later I also gave up PG movies. I haven't seen a not-G movie since January of 2006.

The reason all this matters is because when I go into social critic/armchair anthropologist mode, I do so as someone capable of turning an outsider's beady eye on the attitudes, mores, and trends that I have not myself accepted as normal. In writing this I'm hoping to stir up thought in others regarding how honestly weird it is that so many of us accept so much of our popular culture.

When Twilight showed up in my consciousness, I was at first just puzzled. Why was this unexceptional-sounding book so thoroughly, universally, and maniacally adored? How did I so completely miss it? (The means of my becoming aware of Twilight was a group setting wherein 95% of the 40 or so girls in the room expressed an enthusiastic opinion as to its resolution. So I'm 95% behind a mass trend. Some social observer I am.) And of what else was I utterly unaware which was, despite my oblivion, relentlessly shaping the thought processes of those I love and spend time with?

Well, there's a tricky row to hoe. How do I learn more about culture without actually, y'know, watching/reading it? I also had some dim awareness of some pan-single female phenomenon known as “Grey's Anatomy,” and figured grasping the gist of it would give me a good lead into what them kids are thinking nowadays, so I settled for Youtube-ing a few clips and browsing through the fan application on a friend's facebook page.

As you might expect, I didn't like the cut of its jib. The youtube clip was a season overview, I take it, set to some soulful-type song. Elements: one woman with cute bangs has the obviously tormented hots for two men, one of whom she lays next to in bed after, well, you know, and another of whom she gazes at longingly from the dance floor before she storms out, he runs after her, they find a room, and they commence make-outing rather, ahem, vigorously. Another woman commences make-outing only slightly less vigorously with a shirtless man. A woman becomes very distraught, despite her ball gown, when she sees a man that she previously smooched has died. Smoldering glances exchanged all around. Alrighty then. Categories: infidelity, fornication, sex as recreation. Lovely.

The facebook application had a random quote generator, which generated quotes I reasonably assume to be fairly representative of the show overall. To paraphrase: woman is in love with man and only later learns that he is married. Having sex with a certain woman is like pornography, because she tries too hard. One woman proclaims herself to be so so so so so gay. Two women regularly parade in front of a man while in their sexy underwear, and he seems flustered what to make of it. Alrighty. Categories: adultery, sex as recreation, immodesty, pornography, homosexuality, sex as the main focus of social life.

If you're blistering with rage because I'm so coolly dissecting your favoritest awesomest show, I am sorry, but try for a moment to see things from the perspective of one who's been living under a cultural rock for several years: the degree to which the above plot synopsis totally weirds me out simply cannot be overblown. Because, to me, it seems that finding entertainment in the above is incompatible with the moral/religious/philosophical/empirical/ideological/what-have-you stance that sex should be taken seriously.

It's no new insight to say that we live in a flippant society and that previously rock-solid norms have crumbled like a danish pastry. But I'm going to spell it out, my way, anyway. For the past many decades the cultural poohbahs have made a concerted effort to disconnect sex from the religious and cultural strictures which had tightly shackled it to family, child-rearing, and a sacramental understanding of divinely-sanctioned marriage. Now there are only a few highly religious outliers for whom a marriage license is an utterly life-changing document.

And I work with people who reap the whirlwind of this development every day. Last week I had a hearing and a mediation session in two different cases, both of which involved two parents struggling to work out what to do with the results of a one-night stand. Another hearing today involved two parents who have since broken up but at the time were dating, doing lots of drugs, and weren't careful. I could care less as to the merits of arguments about contraception and sex-ed; so many of the cases I work on involve full adults who knew all about the birds and the bees, but weren't thinking things through, and faced no disincentives whatsoever to stop them from acting on their passions. And it's a really special personal hell to have to co-parent a child with someone else you don't really know and definitely no longer like.

But what does any of this have to do with Grey's Anatomy? (Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, One Tree Hill, etc?) Good question, and certainly a debatable one. I can think of reasons for categorizing the shows/movies more as symptom than disease, but they are also harmful in their own right, in that they bulwark and advance the cultural flippancy about sex. Even though these soap operas feed in part off the trauma and drama of relationships gone awry, it still isn't serious—sex is still just a pursuit for young and beautiful people to chase as a means of fulfilling the shallow purposes of pleasure, being “true” to themselves, and arranging social networks. Sexual relationships are established based on the flimsiest of acquaintances. Even when marriage is involved (I understand the “Sex and the City” movie focused on one character's wedding, which fact has implications all its own), it's of the prenup, this-is-just-another-step-in-my-personal-fulfillment variety, not the formation of a family, fraught with societal and spiritual capital and expectations.

From the religious angle, this is irreverent. Marriage is ordained of God, therefore sacred, and sex belongs only within that covenant. To isolate it from its proper setting and then to subject it to ceaseless analysis and discussion and mockery and comedy (having sex with Izzie is like...) is, quite, seriously, irreverence. For people who take seriously the companionship of God and His Spirit, that's a problem. Specifically, a blockade.

From the societal angle, this is suicidal. The Beautiful People onscreen can afford child support and nannies and therapy to deal with the practical and emotional complications of their behavior; the girl watching at home and wanting to act out her own McDreamy longings most often can't. Then she ends up in my office. She learned, tragically too late, that putting herself in a position to enjoy a life-long and other-oriented, though by Hollywood standards “boring,” relationship would have made her much happier and more fulfilled. She often can and does make up for it afterwards, just as some of my clients have seen the light and are consummately admirable women, wives, and mothers now, but there's still a little kid who has to be shuttled off to dad's every other weekend and deal with the roiling emotions and strained relationship between the two people who, ideally, should be united in loving him most.

A flimsy case, you say? Grey's Anatomy isn't responsible for the world's woes of out-of-wedlock births. No, not entirely, of course, but that's not the point I'm making. Society's rejection of any and all reasons for taking sex seriously has many causes and many manifestations, but this is most certainly one. And more particularly, it's one that has made the most serious inroads, in my observation, into the lives and thought processes of people who otherwise do take sex seriously. Almost to a woman, the members of my Christian women's group watch, regularly and proudly and delightedly, such shows and movies.

And of course I can't generalize about what effects that probably has. Most of them are doubtless smart enough to recognize that there's a difference between reel life and real life, and that a little harmless escapism into the sophisticated world of prime time soaps needn't affect one's values or behavior. Probably. But I wonder a bit. They all seem so enthused. This isn't just a minor hobby that inhabits a miniscule portion of their consciousness, like my extremely sporadic attempts at studying Swedish. These are shows they make a point of seeing, no matter what, aided by DVR if necessary, and identify themselves as fans and partisans. Cue the one million and twelfth warning about desensitization: there is no critical detachment here. There is willing cooperation with the shows' intended goals of emotional manipulation and mental re-wiring.

Moreover, even if one is totally personally immune from the likely harmful effects of watching this stuff, does it really speak well of one to recommend it to others? You might have developed an immunity to iocane powder; it doesn't speak well of you if you stand by and watch others take a swig. And if Christian women aren't going to stand up and speak in favor of restoring the serious and sacred view of sex, who in the sam heck will? That's right—just about nobody.

One more point. So far as I can determine from my arms' length analysis, my guess is that these shows don't really do much for women in terms of emotional satisfaction. They play on one's vanity, one's desire to be in the know and sophisticated and coolly cynical about the battle of the sexes in today's dating world. They might feint toward romance, but never totally embrace, despite platitudes about wholeheartedly believing in love, or shall I say “love,” and suchlike. The happily ever afters are never free from nagging fears about infidelity and trust and the likelihood of falling out of love as soon as circumstances change. (Go ahead and tell me I haven't pegged it exactly; I'll eat my shoe.) But there's something in the female psyche that longs for a real happy ending, for real, epic, lifelong love.

So. Along came Twilight.

I heard of it, I researched it, I mocked it, I read it, I loathed it, mostly for being so parasitically good at playing my girly emotions like a fiddle just as it's designed to do, I brilliantly spoofed it in a mockumentary, and I stewed for weeks over how to fit it into my observations about life and society. My initial decision to write it off as an only slightly less-steamy bodice ripper just like any Harlequin off the grocery store shelf was, I admit, fairly wrong. It's both better and worse than that. Let us count the ways.

In a sense, Twilight is the anti-flippancy. On certain levels, it takes sex not only seriously, but deeply, deathly seriously. It's obvious to any thinking consumer of literature that vampire stories in general are thinly-veiled metaphors for Puritan fears that men will sexually despoil tender young ladies. Twilight keeps this schema perfectly intact, and conflates it with the more conventional, and realistic, fear that an actual man will actually sexually despoil a tender young lady. Or Bella, in this case (whose first person internal narrative was one of the most unappealing characterizations I've come across in awhile).

That's why some reviews I've seen praising Twilight for promoting abstinence are so so way wrong. The characters do in fact abstain, until, I understand, book four (I only read Twilight and Midnight Sun, and skimmed synopses of the others), but Twilight is about sex. Like whoa. If you ever had any doubt that abstinence could be erotic, Twilight proves you completely wrong. I don't just mean Bella's inane babbling about Edward's perfect glorious godlike unbelievably hot hott hottness. I mean Meyer's genre-blending device of dialing up the usual mishandled but still semi-normal teenage infatuation by placing desire on a pedestal of utter irresistibility. About twenty minutes into their first deep conversation Bella is “totally, irrevocably” in “love” with Edward, and later ruminates on never having had a choice because overwhelming perfection and otherness. He has the power to transform her away from her problems and foibles and keep them together forever—how could any mere mortal be expected to keep herself from brutally desiring him? Meanwhile, Edward's irresistible desire stems from a brutally physical attraction to her blood or scent or whatever, as well as a gnawing desire to know what she's thinking. (That the thirst issue is being played for romance really ought to creep more people out).

In a nutshell, he desires to ravage her but won't because of the profound consequences to them both, but especially to her. She desires to be ravaged but recognizes that it will involve profound loss to herself. If you can't see the parallel there to the currently out-of-fashion notions about women and virginity, you need to read more closely. The recognition of the consequences and the holding off on both sex and vampire transformation are why I say that on some level, Twilight takes sex seriously.

It's also why I say that Twilight is lighting up female neurons in ways that other clever-clever forms of entertainment involving sex aren't and never will. Twilight exploited a gap in American female interaction with culture that nobody had realized was there. It's romantic, in an unreflective and unrefined sort of way. No prenups here, only her desiring him so badly that she's willing to give up anything, and him desiring her so badly that he's unwilling to make her give it up.

I'm not going to take up much space to go into why this is profoundly unhealthy and a worrisome cultural phenomenon if even one pre-teen currently sporting a “Team Edward” t-shirt uses in any degree as a roadmap for future relationships. In short: complete imbalance of talent and competence between her and him; her willingness to give up her very humanity in order to be with him (might work out well with a vampire, but a much less healthy attitude to apply to whatever schmoe two lockers down is currently catching a girl's fancy); incredible self-centeredness despite to pretension to “love” which is really masquerading desire; offhanded dismissal of ordinary boys whom Meyer causes to all be conveniently distasteful, because love is better if it's, y'know, spectacular; creepily controlling behavior; the female bearing responsibility for regulating the male's wildly fluctuating moods; etc.

All that aside (and that's a lot to gloss over), my big point for tonight is that on another level, Twilight is guilty of the same flippancy as the rest of the tv and movies currently in vogue among the girly types. It puts sexual desire at the forefront of everything, and adopts the imperative that to resist is absolutely impossible (Alice even saw it in the future!) Twilight shows slightly more class than the Grey's type shows that can't conceive of any reason for making relationship decisions beyond pleasure or being “authentic” and “true to yourself,” but that's not saying much. Whether you go with Twilight's mystical fate or Grey's sly unseriousness, you're still abdicating responsibility for your relationship choices.

I obviously give this more thought than most, given that I'm a divorce lawyer, but it's honestly worrying the heck out of me that my peers are gulping down these solid, insidious lies about how to arrange one's life. Twilight encourages you to mistake infatuation for real love built on friendship, and to disdain normal, flawed, goofy humans as potential mates with whom you can build a normal, flawed, often frustrating, marginally fulfilling life. Grey's and co. encourage you to think of sex and relationships more generally as a sportscaster thinks of a basketball game, analyzed by stats and mocked for imperfection and cheered for skill and completely separated from any reverence or transcendent meaning. This is precisely backward: you need to take a long hard look at the circumstances and possibilities and compatibility and everything else about your potential spouse, being hard-headed and (dare I say?) unromantic about how likely it is to work out well. Then be clear-eyed about how to work hard to make marriage successful, but as silly and mushy-headed and infatuated as you like about your spouse. You'll have truth on your side.

Does watching and reading these things mean you're doomed to act in these unwise ways? No. Do you lose something in clarity of thought and purposefulness of action, just the same? Yes.

Just found out how much my tax return will be...

2009-02-28T23:17:00.000-08:00

...and so now I face a choice. The kindly government overlords have seen fit to return to me a whole heapin' lot of my hard-earned dollars. I responsible person, in this uncertain economy, would save it (and then keep her fingers crossed that her bank didn't fail). I, on the other hand, would blow it all in one fell swoop. Behold:

Oh baby. Perfection, manifested as a digital piano. I noodled around on one at the piano store and it blew me away how piano-like it felt and sounded. And I can hook it up to the laptop and do all sorts of fun and awesome MIDI stuff. Goodbye 64 or however many inadequate keys there are on my ancient, pathetic Casio! Goodbye tedious transposing! Goodbye ludicrous setups with keyboard awkwardly poised on chair arm so I could unnaturally twist back and forth between keys and computer! Hello amazing! I'm just a little excited.

An update after four months really ought to be more exciting than this

2009-02-28T22:16:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago a couple friends weirded the heck out of me by saying "I love your blog!" What? Somebody reads this thing? Seriously, shock. ("Cassie, why do you post stuff online if you don't think anybody will read it?" Good question : ) ) So yes, this blog that I have not updated in well nigh four months, largely because I keep starting posts and not finishing them, largely because I can't get my thoughts straight on how to analyze "Twilight," and also largely because I simply haven't the time--it's going to get good and updated now, dagnabbit!!

Let's touch on politics. Briefly. More would be depressing. Obama, that evil genius extraordinaire, has given me some small measure of satisfaction. Reagan won. In one small way, at least. What Obama is actually doing, properly labelled, is Great Society Part Deux. Tax the heck out of successful people and spend it on every lefty's dearest dreams. Seriously, all of them. What Obama is saying he is doing is very different: "stimulus." This "stimulus" is necessary in order to save the economy.

Which is stark, utter balderdash to, well, everyone. Even lefties. All know full well that this Christmas-morning-of-giddy-Democrats'-dreams package of spending initiatives has really nothing to do with the economy. "Shovel-ready" infrastructure projects? Yeah, like a whopping 4% of total spending. So why call it a stimulus when everyone knows it's everything but? Because Reagan won. Because Americans have gotten imprinted into their neurons that tax'n'spend=bad and keep-government-out-of-the-way-of-business=good. With some hiccups, obviously (see Enron). But this "stimulus" bill wouldn't have been nearly so popular if it had been properly labeled. Heck, as is it's not all that popular. I was aghast to see a couple facebook polls showing that facebook users only supported it in the mid 50s, percentage-wise.

Not that the lukewarm popular support will save any of us from being ruined by it. I'm going to start an organization called the League of Free-Born Citizens. I'll be darned (strongly tempted to use another word) if I ever turn my responsibility to provide health care for myself over to the government. Sorry folks, that's just not what the state is for. At least, not when you're a full adult and a proud citizen of a functioning republic.

Work is going well, with the caveat that "well" includes moderately frustrating, often depressing, and way time-consuming. But none of these are deal-breakers, and indeed even add to the charm of embarking on this, my professional life. I'm liking it. Looooove my co-workers, because they laugh at my jokes. I wish I could blog about my clients, just one case study after another, because then I could start to put together a coherent case for how the world oughta work as opposed to how it does. As is, no one listens to my advice because they suppose I don't know much : ) But I have to follow these silly little rules about client confidentiality, so alas. But trust me, whoever's reading--I'm constantly processing a heckuva lotta information about human nature, interpersonal relationship dynamics, legal influence on culture and society, and sociological trends. Sure hope this is leading me somewhere interesting.

And there's a can of worms--I wonder fairly often, where am I going? Why have I ended up in this hugely fascinating career niche? (Not by choice, no, I more just fell into it without knowing what I was really getting into). Why do I feel driven to think things through the way I do? And to constantly study philosophy and history and literature? What, exactly, am I going to do with it all?

No clue. Beyond weirding out my peers when I venture to pipe up with what I'm actually thinking. I guess I could blog about this. I was sworn in as an attorney in December, was euphorically happy about it for a couple days, and then went completely to pieces. We're talking torrential weeping and pacing my apartment late into the night every night for a week. Didn't think I could be so unstable, didja? I had completely failed to anticipate the magnitude of the psychological adjustment required when I ran out of milestones. I've spent my whole life up to now very driven--get through high school, get through college, get through grad school, get through the bar, and do it all faster and younger and exceedingly well. (Though I traded outward ambition for private eggheadedness starting 'round fall of 2004). Then, suddenly, holy cow, I've made it all and there's nothing left (nothing but marriage, anyway, but I'm not about to set a timeline on that one, given that I don't want to go insane).

Drove me completely batty. I pushed forward, forward, forward, and then all of a sudden arrived to realize that what was a narrow track with a cutthroat scorekeeper had suddenly broadened out to a vast plain where you have to scout out a location for, design, and then build your own milestones instead of just grabbing a leaflet as you breeze by. Does this make sense? The diplomas were already set out for the collecting before. Now there's plenty I can do with myself, but it's in bits and pieces scattered in every which direction instead of clearly along a narrow path marked "Forward." Should I work toward leadership positions in the bar? Try and get into legal scholarship? Make a name contributing to political journals? Sure, why not? Nobody cares.

I guess I'm not make a very good case for why this was so darned distressing to me. That's because I haven't gotten to the associated social aspect yet. Boils down to this: it was bad enough, from the how-others-react-to-me standpoint, when I was in law school. Now that I'm a lawyer, it's way worse. And kind friends won't shut up about it "Hey, this is Cassie, and she's a lawyer!" Grrrr, thanks so much. No one else gets pegged with their occupation before they can get a single friendly/funny/cute/welcoming word in edgewise. Too late! First impression made! No one is deliberately unkind, but some people pretty obviously shut down conversation when I try to be friendly. Sigh. I understand, I honestly do. If I was intimidated by someone I'd have a hard time with it too. And it's certainly not everyone. I'm blessed beyond belief with so many lovely, delightful friends who love me and aren't weird about my professional life, or at least not that often.

But here's where being female equals being a fool--I've actually got guilt kicking in. I feel bad for making people feel bad about whatever qualities of theirs they judge to be inferior to mine. I feel bad for that girl I sat by in Relief Society who'd already heard I was a lawyer, confirmed it from me, and then completely shut off the conversation. So obvious. I think I'm good at talking to and welcoming people, but am I doing more harm than good by being in this ward? Am I just weirding everyone out? Should I (can't believe I'm considering this) go to a family ward?

Don't think I'd have the nerve. I'd miss everyone too much. But it's been on my mind enough that I'm into study-it-out mode. Dropping in on the local family ward tomorrow morning. Just to, um...not sure what my goal is here. See what it's like? See how they react to a new, single, sister? See if my desire to explore my options and act on possible promptings can spur revelation for what the heck to do with myself?

Alors. Don't worry, I'd miss everyone too much.

My magnum opus on gay marriage

2008-11-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

I really had no idea that going back to work full-time would demolish my blogging so thoroughly. I don't feel entirely bad about it, though, as goodness knows I'm still keeping up on the events and ideas of the day; I've merely changed formats. Now I mainly post articles on my facebook page. To my surprise, my postings have attracted quite a lot of attention from sundry friends and acquaintances, some of it in the "rah for you" vein and much of it in the "you are utterly wrongheaded" mode. Always a little startling to realize just how much exposure I'm getting out on this wide interweb. I'd have thought really no one read or cared about my postings.

Anyway, in the wake of Proposition 8's passage I posted some articles about the march on the LA temple and the fairly hilarious/scarily revealing nutroots drive to strip the LDS church of its tax-exempt status. Discussions ensued, driven mostly by those feeling the need to tell me how wrongheaded I am, and yesterday a sympathetic friend asked me for an elaboration on my opposition to gay marriage. Sad to oblige--this won't change any minds, I'm sure, and may only enrage the usual suspects. But if anyone reading this could just take it as a statement of principles made in goodwill and at least attempted sympathy to the other side, I'd appreciate it.

Obligatory disclaiming of hatred

So. I'm going to make clear from the outside that individual gay people are rad, nothing personal against any sincere beliefs, obligatory disclaimer of the bigotry others are so indignantly ready to assume on my part, etc etc. Let me put it this way. I am a Mormon, and as such I hold to some really deep beliefs in some really firm truths. For instance, I believe it is an eternal truth that the only way to eternal life with God is to make and abide by certain covenants, which include complete chastity, meaning sexual activity only within heterosexual marriage, which marital arrangement is ordained by God for our happiness and progression. Kay. But how does this mean I feel toward others who think and believe very differently?

Consider: I also believe that if I were to drink coffee, it would be a fairly grave sin that would deprive me of vital spiritual privileges. Does this mean that if you sit down next to me with your morning Starbucks I will recoil in horror and condemn you as an immoral Hell-bound pagan? Let's go ahead and assign a great big NO to that one. I defintely recognize that you have a whole different cache of beliefs, life experiences, and things you've been taught than I do. You haven't made the same committments I have and I'd be a fool and a self-righteous creep to insist you keep the same standards I do. Am I willing to share with you the things I believe? You betcha (wanna come to church with me Sunday?) Do I think perhaps there's a certain somethin' in the back of your mind trying to remind you that your body is a temple and that enslaving it, be it ever so slightly, to such a substance is not the best use of your four bucks? Eh, I think maybe. But it doesn't have any practical bearing on our relationship. I just do my thing, and if you feel like noticing and asking why, I'm happy to share my beliefs with you. If you don't, cool, we'll just go on being buds.

The coffee scenario translates imperfectly but still pretty well to how I feel toward a homosexual person. Different beliefs, different premises, different history, different feelings, different challenges: I truly love people and their variety, and if someone thinks that lifestyle is where happiness lies, I'm not in much of a position to argue, though I believe that God is. I'm perfectly willing to let Him do the talking. And, for the hackneyed admission, some of the people of whom I've thought most highly throughout my adult life have been homosexual. I remember with particular fondness my boss one year as an RA in college--I don't know that I've ever run across a greater love for humanity and dedication to helping others than Derek had. He was so essentially good.

I think also of a minor player in the history of the Book of Mormon: in Ether 10:9-13 a brief description is given of Morianton, who was a great king, especially contrasted with the other assorted ne'er-do-wells chronicled in that book, and who "did justice unto the people, but not unto himself because of his many whoredoms; wherefore he was cut off from the presence of the Lord." I think his is a different case from someone like my friend because Morianton was probably taught and convinced of the importance of chastity and then went on to ignore it, but the account still showcases I think the correct attitude to have: someone who is guilty of sexual problems can still be a really good and useful person, and deserves not condemnation but compassion, because it is his own relationship with the Lord that suffers. And that is a sad thing. But if you know anything about Mormon theology you know that being cut off from the presence of the Lord means that the Lord loves you if anything even more (see Isaiah 54:7-8), and thank heaven for that. So since the Lord looks with compassion on struggling souls, I certainly don't see any reason for me to think badly instead of kindly toward homosexuals.

In other words, the religious-condemnation-of-homosexuality-is-necessarily-shackled-to-bigotry-against-and-hatred-toward-gays argument is sloppy thinking and uncharitable in turn. Perhaps in some cases that's right, but certainly not in all, and if you're really trying to persuade people to join you instead of feeling self-righteous by comparison then you'll avoid making sweeping judgments about peoples' motives.

Premises, definitions, history—oh my!

But none of this is the real meat of the argument, now, is it? Let's talk about gay marriage. How do I get from thinking my individual gay friends are swell people to opposing their right to marry as they choose? That is certainly trickier, and again, I know I'm probably not going to change anyone's mind. I just want to make a rational case so we can all understand better where everyone's coming from.

The argument in favor of gay marriage has several permutations (I think I'm pretty up to speed on Rauch, Sullivan, and others) but can, I think, be fairly boiled down to the following: that Rosemary Clooney is the greatest thing to happen to American vocal music, ever. No wait, that wasn't it. But seriously, I could listen to her for hours.

Okay, focus, right, the pro gay marriage argument boils down to: saying that two gays cannot marry each other is denying a very fundamental and important right to someone, based on a discriminatory classification. Fair 'nuff? Good. I get the sense a lot of people consider this airtight logic, an open-and-shut case. But from where I stand, it steals several logical bases, and I warn you I'm about to go all lawyer on you as I tear holes in it. *Cracks knuckles*

First, let's talk definitions. What does "marriage" mean, anyway? This isn't often made all that clear. People talk about how "the government should play no role in marriage!" without first saying what all marriage is and what it can fairly encompass. I further think it is fair to say that gay marriage activists don't see themselves as wanting to fundamentally change marriage, just to tweak the entry requirements. For them, "marriage" means a "committed and state/religion-sanctioned relationship between two adults." Again, fair 'nuff? Kay.

On the other hand, to traditionalists, that definition of marriage is missing a real big chunk of essential meaning: for them, marriage is inherently, necessarily, essentially, by definition, a gender-specific relationship. Legislating to keep marriage male-female is like legislating to keep the sky blue. The assorted reasons for this include religious capital-T truth, observations that intact mom-dad families are better for kids and society, and the fact that every major society upon which our current civilization is based has seen fit to arrange family life this way. (More on this later.) (This point is also why it’s so dumb and offensive to analogize same-sex marriage to inter-racial marriage. Can’t you try to understand that I sincerely believe that gender is inherent and important in a way that race is not? Is that really so hard to grasp, aside from how it puts a crimp in the gay-marriage-opponents-are-simple-bigots-akin-to-racists meme?)

So who is right? Well, traditionalists have, um, tradition on their side. Activists have modern currents of social thought in favor of equality and personal liberty on their side. And to ask who is right is silly--people have the perceptions and beliefs that they have for reasons that make perfectly good sense to them, and it's no one's place to think they can get a handle on all those reasons.

So let's think back just a few years. Activists, from what I could tell, seemed more understanding of the traditionalist position. They seemed much more willing to accomodate the view that marriage is essentially gendered, and that "gay marriage" was more a demolishment and rebuilding than a mere tweaking. (Whether this understanding was sincere or a ruse is a question I'll leave alone). Therefore the consensus seemed to be emerging that marriage could have its special place, and that what gays really needed was assurance of inheritance rights, medical decision-making, and the like. The compromise: civil unions. A lot of traditionalists didn't like it, thinking that the unions would still be too close to marriage and therefore start to alter marriage's institutional character, but the public at large seemed pretty fly with the idea. Ahh, success.

Not. The traditionalists were still skittish about the arrangement and therefore started putting initiatives on the ballots of several states that enshrined the man-woman marriage definition in the state constitution, and started talking about the need for a Federal Marriage Amendment. And the traditionalists had reason to be skittish, because meanwhile the activists were getting Goodridge into Massachusetts law (saying the Mass. constitution made gay marriage a civil liberty). Goodridge accelerated the traditionalists' agenda due to fears that some court would hold that the Full Faith and Credit clause required other states to recognize Goodridge-authorized marriages. So the compromise never really was. Alas. I think it would have been the best outcome.

And clearly, the activists disagree. At least now they do. I might be wrong about this disagreement becoming more acute in very recent years, but it is my perception--many liberals who a few years back said that civil unions were sufficient are now convinced that a separate system for relationships is a hideous equal protection violation. Some Toquevellian magnification of small inequalities when most of the large ones have already been dealt with? I suspect so.

Have you ever heard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms? Amazing.

The reason why I wonder if past support of civil unions coupled with claimed respect for the traditionalist position was disingenuous is because of the way now both the California and Connecticut Supreme Courts have dealt with it. Traditionalists feel like they've been the victim of a stealthy bait-and-switch: what started out as "we don't agree but understand that you strongly feel marriage should be maintained as a separate man-woman institution, so civil unions are a good compromise" was filtered through many layers of lawyers and became fodder for "well, since society went so far as to grant gay couples the rights of civil unions, which are basically marriages in all but name, the only possible reason for not going all the way and granting them the right to marry is unconstitutional discrimination." Oh, yes...hey, wait just a minute!

Now, I know you activist types don't see this as a shady move. More of a progression down the obvious path of Truth and Light. But can you pause just a sec to see how some of the public feel a wee bit wronged? Civil unions poll very well; gay marriage not so well (obviously, considering how many states have passed constitutional amendments against it by healthy margins). Americans really are pretty tolerant of homosexuality, I think, to the point of saying sure, if you want to have a homosexual partner and some assurance of basic couple rights, that's cool. But just hold your horses a bit; marriage can't accommodate you without changing marriage more than we're comfortable with. On the other hand if you're a homosexual you probably, and understandably, feel that such "tolerance" that stops short of marriage isn't nearly tolerant enough (scare quotes yours, not mine).

So here's where we get to the meat of the issue: tolerance vs. acceptance. If I may, I present an illustrative dialogue:
The traditionalist: "Okay, you've won! You've got civil unions, thriving cultural scenes in many major cities, Will and Grace, and Clinton Kelly. You've won over mass culture, elite opinion, and academia. Rest on your laurels, already!"
The activist: "nuh-uh, we still can't get married, and a lot of religious people still think we're deviants who are going to Hell."
Traditionalist: "For Pete's sake, there’s nothing you can do about that! The people have given a resounding democratic answer to the marriage thing, let it go already! We've given you an awful lot of ground! You're never going to win everyone over!"
Activist: "The people are wrong, obviously. And we can't just let this go, when there's still so much invidious ill-will toward us throughout society!"

Which unlovely standoff brings us to now.

How activists use law, and why I’d be an idiot not to have a problem with it

I like how Chai Feldblum frames it here:

"It seemed to me the height of disingenuousness, absurdity, and indeed disrespect to tell someone it is okay to 'be' gay, but not necessarily okay to engage in gay sex. What do they think being gay means? I have the same reaction to courts and legislatures that blithely assume a religious person can easily disengage her religious belief and self-identity from her religious practice and religious behavior. What do they think being religious means?"

To Feldblum the emerging conflicts between free exercise of religion and sexual liberty are real: "When we pass a law that says you may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, we are burdening those who have an alternative moral assessment of gay men and lesbians." Most of the time, the need to protect the dignity of gay people will justify burdening religious belief, she argues. But that does not make it right to pretend these burdens do not exist in the first place, or that the religious people the law is burdening don't matter.

"You have to stop, think, and justify the burden each time," says Feldblum. She pauses. "Respect doesn't mean that the religious person should prevail in the right to discriminate--it just means demonstrating a respectful awareness of the religious position."

I have quibbles with this, obviously, given that Feldblum is an activist. I think the thought process that puts sexual identity at the center of meaning for all humanity, and religious belief as a peripheral incidental trait, is wrong. But Feldblum is one of the oh-so-few gay activists I’ve come across that acknowledge that the oppositional religious beliefs of some traditionalists are worthy of respect. She doesn’t think they ever deserve accommodation, but at least she’s willing to say that my religious beliefs are more than a unexamined bundle of unbridled hatred and closed-minded bigotry.

It's that respectful awareness that I think gets way, way lost by almost all activists. Most activists I read and correspond with are so caught up in the travails of the gay community that they unreflectively brush off the religious position as neanderthalian bigotry that ought not to be given the time of day. (I think it's suggestive that the infamous thug missionaries commercial aired only on MSNBC and Comedy Central, both of which audiences tend thoroughly sympathetic with gay marriage already. Was the commercial meant to gain support, or just to heighten condemnation of religious opposition?) Indeed, not only should the religious position not be heard or considered in this mindset, but, because full societal acceptance of homosexuality is the goal, it should be actively eradicated.

Eradicated how? Through non-discrimination legislation saying a photographer can’t refuse to photograph a gay commitment ceremony. Through Canadian human rights tribunals issuing lifetime bans on preaching for ministers who had said homosexuality is immoral. By arguing that churches who dare to take a stand on moral issues important to them should lose their tax-exempt status. By jailing ministers who quote the Bible’s pronouncements on homosexuality.

By going after kids and schools.

Remember the bait-and-switch I talked about earlier? Here’s where it gets pushed a step further. The progression:
1) It’s unfair to shut committed gay couples out of probate/medical/etc benefits. We need civil unions!
2) Now that everyone has decided that justice requires civil unions, only illegal discrimination would make them stay in a separate system instead of letting them actually marry!
3) Because gays have the right to marry, and schools teach about sexuality and families, it would be unjust to have any curriculum that doesn’t teach that homosexual marriages are morally on par with heterosexual ones!
This progression, especially step 3, varies from state to state, because laws differ on how schools handle family issues. For instance, I know the Yes on 8 campaign's claims that legalized gay marriage would expose every child to "King and King" caused considerable consternation among the No crowd, but I haven't seen a very cogent refutation of it. The No on 8's counterargument that California law makes sacrosanct the right of parents to opt their children out of any such is not comforting to me. It's really hard to tell how new bombshells like the CA Supreme Court's decision will eventually play out with existing law, and just as good a case can be made that teachers are required to teach and students to learn about gay marriage as a moral equal with traditional marriage. (See CA Education Code § 51890). Legal activism is the art of the persuasively possible, and given the CA Supreme Court's past willingness to declare that accommodation is required in order to make gays more accepted, I don't think it would be too big of a leap to get to "students need to be educated about how gays are morally equivalent.”

Leaving aside the specific case of California, traditionalists have every reason in the world to worry that their kids will be exposed to teaching that contradicts their parents’ beliefs. First of all, school curricula are the logical step for activists to take given the premise that full societal acceptance of homosexuality is a necessary goal. Second of all, it, um, happens. All the time. It’s what y’all do, and you’re not exactly shy about it, yet the No on 8 crowd disingenuously tried to soothe parents with talk of how no way would children be thusly exposed. Third, the insouciant argument that if you don't like what is taught in school you can just deprogram your kid at home is lame and would never be countenanced were the shoe on the other foot. Just try to be imaginative for a sec: your kid's school is teaching your kid that the values you are trying to instill in him are wrong, that you are immoral for holding them, and that a lifestyle you believe your child's eternal wellbeing hinges on avoiding is perfectly laudable. You would take that lying down? Yeah, thought not.

Moreover, we've got persuasive authority from the First Circuit that the following statement from a school administrator violates no basic parental right: "[The district will] not provide parental notification for 'discussions, activities, or materials that simply reference same-gender parents or that otherwise recognize the existence of differences in sexual orientation.'" (This case deserves and will probably get its own blog post in the near future.)

Activist: "Calm down! They don't need to inform you every little time a teacher plans on merely bringing up the existence of gay families. Sheesh."
Traditionalist: "Lookit, you're taking it upon yourself to shape the perceptions of a five-year-old on an issue that is of great religious importance to us. The 'mere' mention is in fact important; I as a parent need the chance to make it clear that such families should be respected and treated kindly but that our faith has a very different and very important standard. Given the curricular materials I’ve seen promulgated, I don’t trust you to take that tack, nor should I have to rely on such trust."
Activist: "Our right to societal acceptance trumps your right to religious consideration."

I just spent three years in law school studying how legal logic evolves from case to case, bit by bit, until you get from a case invalidating laws setting bakery hours to Roe v. Wade. Sound like an utter non sequitur? That's because you're not a lawyer. Everyone now saying that fears of schools usurping parents are overblown will, in a few years, be saying that of course court X had to hold that parents can't yank their kids out of school curricula teaching acceptance of gays, because gays have the right to couples benefits and therefore the right to full marriage and therefore the right to full equality and therefore the right to not be discriminated against in any way and therefore the right to squelch wrong thinking out of the children of bigoted yokels. That's not even nearly as much of a leap as bakery hours to abortion.

Insert the horrified anecdote: but some 5-year-old repeated something nasty about gays that he obviously learned at home! Schools need to correct this sort of wrong thinking! Please. I don't think anyone would object to a teacher sternly saying "we don't talk that way about anyone" to a kid spouting off. The only necessary value transmission is niceness and respect, not affirmative acceptance of familial and sexual arrangements.

The hate crimes angle

I know how I would respond to that were I an activist: “You just don’t understand/care that gays are attacked/beaten/murdered, and that rewiring kids and society so that they don’t think homosexuality is wrong is simple self-defense.” Kay. I do understand. I do care. I had a longish exchange about this with a lesbian friend-of-a-friend who was herself attacked. Yet I disagree. Don’t let your head explode with indignation; I’ll explain.

First, let me give the Hard-Headed Realist’s answer: you. cannot. perfect. the. world. Can’t be done. Wherever there is a grouping of humans into a society, it will have its share of psychos.

And do I think anything should be done about it? Certainly. Gay groups have mounted very effective public service-type campaigns saying, in effect, “be nice.” I think it is fair to say that mainstream culture is uniformly harshly condemning of violence against gays. And this is all to the good.

Activist: “but it isn’t enough! Gays are still being attacked! We’ve got to DO something!”

Well, let’s look at the problem. The data isn’t very recent, don’t know why, but civilrights.org reports that in 1999 28 murders were probably anti-gay motivated. 28 way too many, obviously. Ah, here’s more recent: the FBI logged 1,265 crimes motivated by sexuality for 2007. 5 murders and 242 aggravated assaults. Absolutely terrible. But the hard-headed question you can’t just gloss over is, will gay marriage make this go away? Will gay marriage coupled with the accelerated legality of pro-gay school indoctrination and church censorship make this go away?

I think the reason is no. Feel free to disagree. But hear where I’m coming from. We live in what is in some ways a pretty sick society. Untrammeled access to depictions of sex, violence, sexual violence, and all sorts of malevolence in general. It has twisted a lot of minds. Observing it all, I have a real hard time believing that Christianity is the main culprit in anti-gay violence. I doubt that the video game/porn/movie/cable genie can be put back in the bottle (Rousseau observed that censorship is useless for restoring morality. One of the few things he got right) but we can at least more openly acknowledge the real problem and thereby perhaps cabin its effects.

In short, Matthew Shepard’s murderers weren’t earnest Christians just out from Sunday School. They were malevolent, plotting thugs. I’ve done a quick but I think fair survey of the major terrible relevant hate crimes and though no doubt there’s an exception it seems to me this rotten class of attackers are all basically unhinged.

Can you see why decent folks are more than a little insulted by being lumped in with that kind of scum? Why we’re not amenable to the notion that our children have to be indoctrinated by those who know better than us, lest they turn out to be raving homicidal monsters? Why we’re not about to agree that our sincere belief in a revealed moral law must be shunned, put down, and shut out from polite society because it contributes to such atrocities?

Even if you don’t agree, can you understand?

Once you’re reduced to the argument that any expressed opposition to homosexuality on moral/religious grounds, be it ever so mild and couched in terms of respect and rejection of violence, equals fomenting attacks on gays, you, friend, have left the mothership. Quit the reality-based community, as it were.

One more thing on this topic: can I caution activist types about their wholesale ceding of the moral high ground here? Why is it bad and pernicious for me to teach in Sunday School that homosexuality is not okay for people who have made the covenants we have, but it’s totally kosher for mobs to harass temple-goers, vandalize church property, thuggishly shout down a little old lady, and single out Mormons for frothy denunciation?

Categories: I’ll take Sexual Proclivities for $400, Alex

Let’s leave the murky realm of anecdote and get back to cold, hard law. In 2003 the US Supreme Court handed down Lawrence v. Texas, which carried to its logical conclusion the premise of Roe and Casey. In what Scalia in dissent derided as an extension of Planned Parenthood v. Casey’s “sweet-mystery-of-life passage,” the majority held that “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.” The majority also cravenly made it clear that they were looking in the direction of declaring both a fundamental right to perform sodomy and that gays deserved protected-class status like, say, blacks. But the Lawrence decision did not actually declare either of these things.
But of course many activists think that they should, and indeed that the rightness of those two legal declarations would be unassailable. With either one of them, strict scrutiny of any legislation touching on sexual morality or gays as a class would kick in, which would mean the utter end of such legislation.

The problem with having courts decide stuff, though, is that words tend to get taken to their logical conclusions. And though I’ve asked the following questions to a lot of smart people in a lot of law school classes, I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer.

Premise: the law holds that personal liberty must encompass one’s “autonomy of self” and “freedom of certain intimate conduct” (anyone’s guess what the “certain” should or shouldn’t mean). This means, and was so applied in Lawrence, that the state has no right to legislate against someone’s sexual proclivities, because sexual expression is so so important to liberty. Kay.

Next: in the activist view, this decimates any argument that marriage should be restricted to man-woman couples, because that means the law is restricting the liberty to marry of gays as a class, just for being gay. Right?

Therefore: a person’s private conception of his own sexuality is tied to the justice or injustice of marriage laws, or, because marriage isn’t the only way in which the state touches on sexuality, any morals-based legislation that has anything to say about a person’s sexual expression.

Question: then why, as Scalia asked, should all laws against public nudity not be similarly invalidated, were they to be challenged? If I sexually express myself through public nudity, shouldn’t I receive the same legal protection as homosexuals?

Maybe you’ll allow that a public interest in sanitation or, heaven forfend, decency, might outweigh the needs of the beleaguered nudist here. Okay.

Same with pedophiles, yes? Even if pedophilia is central to one’s sexuality, there’s a countervailing protection of children interest, right?

So what of adult incest? You have no right to tell me that my personal definition of liberty can’t include sexual expression with a sibling, right? Ah, you fear my deformed offspring? Fine, how about homosexual incest? No kids possible there. To tell a man he can’t marry his brother infringes on his right to define his own meaning of life, yes?

How ‘bout groups? If my sexual identity includes a long-term relationship with four other people of whichever gender, the state has no right to say we can’t all be married as a group, nein?

In fact, once you’ve accepted the premise, there is no logical flaw in what follows, and the courts are bound to take it to the logical conclusion. I’ve seen activists deal with this issue in a couple of ways:

1) "It’s a red herring. Nobody is advocating for incest or group marriage rights."
I respond: heh, you’re not looking too hard. And again, the limits of your imagination are not the limits of human variety.

2) "So what? That’s exactly correct. A person’s sexual identity should define the liberty to which he is entitled."
I respond: fair enough. You’re at least consistent. But I cannot just sit back and watch as this out-of-control concept of anything-goes “liberty” forces the state to recognize any behavior at all, with nary a thought to the social consequences of it all.

The Libertarian run-around

Ever heard Dvorak's Romance in F Minor? Sublime. If I ever get proficient at the violin, that's first on my list to perform.

This article, by Megan McArdle, is essential reading. (UPADTE 11/27/09: Drat, she took down the link. The gist of the essay is that the argument currently in vogue, that allowing gay marriage will have no effect whatsoever on the stability and frequency of hetero marriage, is very much akin to the arguments made by reformers that allowing no-fault divorce would not increase divorce rates, or that allowing single mothers access to public housing would not increase rates of unwed motherhood. Both arguments were spectacularly wrong, because changes like that inevitably change the institution, starting with the marginal cases that reformers didn't consider in their pat rosy scenarios). That gay marriage will have no effect whatsoever on the strength of marriage as a whole is always so blithely assumed but never defended. If you've thought through the issues McArdle raises, then no matter your opinion I will consider you well-informed and your thought processes worthy of respect. If you haven't thought it through, then you have no business advocating the radical reshaping of major bulwarks of society.

Look, it’s no secret that at least some sectors of the gay community tend to openly celebrate promiscuity, sexual recklessness, and exhibitionism, which set off my ire in a way a stable, committed gay couple most certainly does not. These traits are bad for society as a whole. That’s my position. And don’t go off on my being mean/nasty for bringing it up: serious thinkers like Rauch and Sullivan have brought it up first, because they want to argue that letting gays into a stabilizing, monogamy-encouraging institution will mitigate those problems somewhat. That’s a fair argument. But I don’t buy it. I just don’t think that this kind of culture will do anything other than further degrade mainstream marriage culture.

Which brings up the argument I hate most: Britney Spears’ 55-hour marriage. How could I possibly argue that hetero marriage needs to be protected from the insidious influence of gay culture when we let Britney get married? Look, smuglings, think about what you’re really saying. First of all, no institution is perfect and works as intended all of the time, but you don’t get a gold star for pointing out the obvious. And the loud coverage of Britney’s marriage was because it was exceptional (-ly dumb, outrageous, etc): the exception proves the rule in this case.

For the past hundred years liberal reformer types have been pounding away at marriage and family. No-fault divorce. Fewer restrictions on pornography. The sexual revolution. Glorification of sexual appetite and personal desire at the expense of the other-oriented family ideal. Promotion of unwed cohabitation. Facilitation of unwed motherhood. And surprise, surprise, it worked: marriage is now a wounded, stumbling wretch. So now, at your smug invocation of an exceptionally bad case, you expect me to say “ah, you’re right! It isn’t even worth saving. Plunge in the knife!”?

Think, people.

Look, I’m a conservative. That means I’m inherently suspicious of radical changes to longstanding arrangements. We’re the bores who are always spoiling the fun by droning on about the possibility of unintended consequences. Society needs people like us. Not listening to us has produced a living hell for a lot of children and families who would have been better off in intact families instead of living with minimum-wage Mom with occasional half-hearted parenting visits from drug-addicted Dad. I’ve spent the last two years working in criminal and family law. I see the seamy side. And I have ideas about how things could be better.

So stop with the immediate assumption that gay marriage opponents are necessarily mean-spirited and bigoted. Just because you can’t think of any negative practical consequences for your ideas doesn’t mean there are none. I just gave you some. It's not an airtight case, obviously, but life rarely presents us with those. You may well disagree. But can’t we just at least try to understand one another as people of goodwill? And get your stupid signs off of my sacred temple? I get it. You’re mad that you can’t get married. You might be really, deeply hurt by it. So keep persuading. I’ve no doubt you’ll succeed eventually. You needn’t run roughshod over civility and the First Amendment in the meantime.

People who misunderstand tax law go after the Mormons

2008-11-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

Part of the boring legal argument against gay marriage has been the worry that it could lead to traditionalist churches losing their tax-exempt status. This was pooh-poohed as paranoid fantasy by those who insist that gay marriage poses no threat to religious freedom whatsoever.

Ah, the mordant irony--the Prop. 8 sore losers are now calling for the LDS church to lose its tax-exempt status. Not any of the other Yes churches, and none of the No churches. Just the Mormons.

My friend Phil had this to say in favor: "None of the "no on 8" churches funded 80% of the campaign. To be honest, this is the first I've heard of a major financial backing from a religious entity in legislature so long as I've been able to vote. While I do feel it the LDS prerogative to do so, it does seem to violate the fairly straight-forward IRS edict."

It does no such thing. Phil and others misunderstood the donations, thinking that the church as an institution had donated the nearly $18 million. Nope, and in fact the $18 million-from-Mormons figure is only a guesstimate generated by creepy online stalker types pawing through church directories to figure out which thought criminals go to which church.

The church as an institution merely said "hey, it'd be cool if y'all'd support this." No church money went to Yes on 8, only individual donations. Which, like it or not, comes nowhere even slightly near a "substantial part of its activities." The LDS church is a mega-worldwide organization with humanitarian and religious expenditures to the moon and back. Having its leaders ask small proportion of its members to support a moral/political issue is laughably insubstantial.

Let's talk tax law. As I understand it, that IRS provision is an attempt to prevent organizations from being de facto lobbyists disguised as churches. There can't necessarily be a hard fast line as to when that line is crossed, so they used the "substantial part of its activity" language. On that understanding, even if the LDS church HAD given $18 million as an instution, it still wouldn't be anywhere near a large enough chunk of change so as to turn the LDS church from a church into a lobbyist. The Mormons have got so way too much going on (buildings, humanitarian projects, the missionary program, congregation budgets, curricular materials, welfare and canning, on and on and on) to be anywhere near the "substantial" threshold just because they jumped in on one ballot measure.

Finally, isn't this outrage a little convenient? All sorts of right-wing as well as left-wing hobbyhorse ballot initiatives have been defeated by tsunamis of out-of-state money. That's just how politics works sometimes. If you don't like it, go muck around with the campaign finance laws s'more. Though I doubt many want to because it as often works to everyone's advantage.

Return to Fern Gully

2008-09-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

Posting this is mean. Really really mean. I should not take such delight in laughing until I turn inside out over these poor people. They probably need professional help. Heck, there's no "probably" about it. But wowee, I have not laughed so hard in, well, maybe ever.

Lunch break music review

2008-09-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

Wow, full-time job and blogging don't mix. What a pathetic showing for August and, so far, September. I do have free evenings, but don't generally care to spend them staring at a computer screen, after having done so all day. Except in one case. But that was a very noble cause.

So, a quick political note: is Sarah Palin a lightweight? Yup. In any normal year would I focus some energy against her and McCain? You betcha. Is this a normal year? Nowhere close. Does it creep me out that the right has celebrified Palin as much as the left has Obama? Yes, but not quite as much. At least Palin doesn't seem to think she's deity. Is watching the Obama campaign implode in slow motion a lot of fun? Giggle, snort, guffaw. Is the major media's effort to establish their preferred fact that Palin is corrupt/dishonest convincing? Good grief, in what universe? Stand Palin next to Obama and she gleams, pure as the driven snow. Does it weird me out that 90% of reasonably politically astute people that I talk to of both ideological persuasions know nada about Obama and the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act? Sigh, yes.

That is all.

Now for music! The first weekend in October is the semi-annual general conference of the LDS church, and I am, as always, terrifically excited. For the talks, yes. But for the music! The other night I received the past two conferences on CD sets (I'm not sure why I delayed obtaining them, usually I do right away)and spent the evening ripping the music tracks onto my PC and making a mix CD. Glorious! The arrangements of "Beautiful Zion, Built Above" and "Sing We Now at Parting" were especially beautiful. I also really appreciate that the Tab choir and other conference choirs are ventuing more and more into little-known hymns territory. In the course of two conferences we get "Lean on My Ample Arm," the old-school tune for "If You Could Hie to Kolob," "Know This, That Every Soul is Free," "Come, Rejoice," "An Angel From On High," "Sweet is the Peace the Gospel Brings," "Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me," "Faith of Our Fathers," and the two above mentioned. All of them truly excellent arrangements and gorgeously sung.

Of course, I'm the only one who notices. Awhile back I chose "Come Unto Him" as a hymn in Sacrament meeting, and had several people remark about "that weird hymn we sang." My reaction was of the "what the heck" variety, given that the Tab Choir has sung that song about every third conference for the past several years. Don't people listen? Moreover, don't they remember?

Clearly not, which is a shame. Some of the hymns that carry the most profound personal meaning for me I first heard in conference. For instance, "From all that Dwell Below the Skies," "Arise, O God, and Shine," "Come Unto Him," "Sing Praise to Him," "Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise," and "Oh What Songs of the Heart" were all unfamiliar to me when the choir started singing, but I scrambled for a hymnbook, followed along, and quickly realized how moving each could be.

So I love, love, love conference for the chance to hear from the prophets, but I'm nearly as excited to hear what Tab Choir director Mack Wilberg has up his sleeve. October is the loveliest month!

Brouhaha

2008-08-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

I'm suffering from ongoing flusterment due to the consequences of my lack on insight into human nature.

Weeeeeks ago I wrote about my eye-rolling re the "Twilight" book series and the mania it had stirred up in the fevered bosom of pretty much every female I know. (Exceptions: my mother, who read the first book and then stopped because it was trash, and my consummately admirable friend Jen.) My initial aversion to the books was largely snobbish--I generally avoid reading stuff that everyone is reading, just to be contrarian. My opposition grew specific as I researched and realized that vamping (heh) in seductive poses, ridiculously dysfunctional ideas about relationships, and carping dissatisfaction with the real world are part and parcel of this fun little storybook.

So how did I not see it coming that daring to criticize the darling of millions of slavering girls would land me in a heaping pile of trouble? I'm foolish, that's all. What does it say about society (and, grimace, suburban LDS female culture) that this exercise in the legitimizing of the romance novel has engendered such fierce protectiveness?

Nothing good.

Homepix for Cindy

2008-08-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

It was a good idea in any case, and now that my dearest amigo has specifically requested to see pix of my sweet new apartment, I shall certainly post them. Begin the epic struggle between Cassandra and blogger's picture-poster-tool thingy: GO!

We'll start with this ridiculous little floorplan, which was a lot of fun to draw with paint. Here's hoping my descendents find it at least a smidgen interesting one day, because otherwise I just wasted twenty minutes...no, that's not true, I was listening to a lecture while drawing. So either way, that's the birds-eye view.

Alrighty, this is the kitchen. If you can tell that there are dishes in the sink, ignore them. If you can't tell, then of course I would never leave dishes in the sink for a picture! The very idea! I'm especially proud of my refrigerator magnet collection--a year or two ago my brother gave me a sheet of sturdy plastic muppet stickers for my birthday, which I held onto because I love the muppets, but surprisingly just never found much use for. Go fig. So I got little magnet squares from Michaels and voila! refrigerator magnets that make me smile all the time!

This is the closet at the top of the stairs, just to the right of the previous pic of the kitchen, and the only reason I posted this picture is because my little sister Miky was so enchanted that the door is exactly her size. Rather too short for me, however : )

The staircase up from ground level is behind this little row of cabinets. I love them because they're perfect for food storage--which I hope to be able to afford some day soon : ) The framed picture in the middle is of the Denver Temple, my second favorite place in the world--after home.

Here's my armchair, wherein I spend an awful lot of my free time (though, in total, far less time than I'd like) reading and writing and thinking good thoughts. Behind it to the left is my stereo cubby, from where I pump up the party by cranking up the Haydn and Motab (who did you think? : ) ) and to the right are my west-facing windows. It's important that they face west, because I am then treated to views like...

...this!! Curse my inferior camera, it's just not getting across the spectacularness that I see in person.

The rocky mountains are visible in person. Cindy, you'll just have to come visit if you want to see them properly ; )

Here's the piece de resistance: my book collection is such a delight to me. I have so little time to read, which is sad, but when I do have the opportunity, what a selection!

A table and chairs shouldn't be all that exciting, but I don't let that stop me. They're so lovely and sturdy and antique and just exactly what I could have wanted for myself--for a mere $50 at a garage sale! Solid maple, fifty years old, and likely to last another hundred. The lamp, which I equally love for being so lovely, I purchased with its twin for a mere $11 at another garage sale. The picture of flowers next to the doorway is one of a set of three, $2 per at a garage sale. Lemme tell you, no human has any right to expect to be able to put together this nice of a household for so little and exclusively from garage sales (I forgot to mention--the armchair also came from the equivalent of a garage sale, for $10). Coincidence, or miracle?

And, my bedroom, or at least the interesting part thereof (not that my laundry hamper isn't fascinating, but I decided to refrain). I'll know I've really made it in life when I can afford a baby grand, but for now my stunted little keyboard is basically good enough. Next to it is my pride and joy, the organ I inherited from a kind church leader when I was fifteen. I'm pretty lousy at playing it, but now that it's been freed from the dark imprisonment of my parents' basement I'm getting better.

So, this is my little kingdom. I should note that it has unleashed my inner neat freak as never before : ) I'm so happy when I can be here, spending time in worthwhile ways, in my pleasant and orderly and refined atmosphere. Life is so good!

Desk jockey once more

2008-08-07T10:18:00.001-07:00

I'm back at work, which is nice insofar as I really enjoy my coworkers and the atmosphere in the office. On the other hand...work. Can't deny it was nice to spend a leisurely summer in my jammies training my brain for personal gain.

Anyway. My aunt, my father's youngest sister, had her sixth baby a few days ago, and I've got to give her major props on naming the new lil' sugar'n'spice: Sevia (Seh-VEE-a). It's an old Swedish family name--my great-great-grandmother, Amanda Larson, had a little sister named Sevia, who generally went by Sevie (Seh-VEE).

What's even cooler is that my father and aunt both now have six children, and both broods follow exactly the same gender pattern: boy, girl, boy, boy, boy, girl. What are the odds of that?? I actually tried to think through the math behind it, but my math chops are sadly not what they once were and probability wasn't my best at my best anyway.

Lastly, I'm delighted and gleeful that Obama's had a rotten month and voters in general are starting to peer through the aura to the shyster within. The latest gotcha: he keeps quoting this report saying that if we started drilling ANWR or offshore it wouldn't affect oil prices. Problem? The report reached that conclusion assuming current prices of $50 a barrel. Yes, about that...I have a slight hunch the calculation is rather different when the market's clocking in at $118 and $147 per. Give it up, Obama. Even many of the people still in thrall to you are more in thrall to the idea of not having to sell kidneys to drive to work. Cold, hard reality hurts.

GOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL!

2008-07-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

Finished the bar exam. Oh, how I've spent the summer longing to be able to say those words! It wasn't even as bad as I'd thought it would be--they didn't test family law or wills, my best subjects, but nor did they test secured transactions, my worst. And though the people (I charitably assume they're human) writing the multistate questions are unarguably evil, I felt flashes of insight from time to time about what must have been going through their twisted minds, often enough to, knock on wood, have passed.

But I don't find out until October. Blech. I wouldn't care except that it means I can't earn the technically-a-lawyer big bucks until then. And I can't, technically, call myself a lawyer. What am I? A near-lawyer? A law clerk? A pathetic sap who's been sucked into this whole charade and should have decided upon a more satisfying career option long ago? Okay, just kidding, it's not as bad as all that. Though I would have made a swell high school calculus teacher.

The Test was in north Denver, uncomfortably far from my dwelling, so my brother and sister-in-law kindly let me stay two nights with them. Arriving home post-test last night was really splendid. I just can't say enough about how much I love where I live. Clean, quiet, as elegant as I can manage, full of good and useful and interesting things to do, and sporting a killer Rocky Mountain view out the front window. The sunsets alone are worth the rent check. Which I need to remember to pay tomorrow.

I also just plain love Castle Rock. I've lived the plurality of my life in Parker, just to the north and east, and always thought it a pleasant place, but Castle Rock is really everything I could ask for. Gorgeous. Not just beautiful, but gorgeous. Hiking trails five minutes from home. Awesome downtown shopping district (not that I'm all that big on shopping, but I somehow like knowing it's there. I do mean to check out the indie-used-books-and-music-and-stuff emporium). I'm about six minutes from the freeway (I can't tell you how amazing that is, after living a good half hour from any on-ramp for so long) so I can be up to Denver or down to the Springs in 30 minutes flat.

I know this because I was up to Denver today, for a meeting of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society Denver chapter. JRCLS is the Mormon lawyers' group, and I think a very positive thing on the whole. This was a fairly informal get-together and lunch, specifically designed to impart advice and networking to summer clerks/interns/students/brand-newbie lawyers. Problem: I am terrible at networking. Hate it; stink at it. Oh, I can converse with strangers pleasantly enough, when there are interests in common and likely topics, but to hand out business cards or angle for useful contacts...sigh. I'm just not wired for this sort of thing. Fortunately, I already have a job so I don't really need to be wired for it. But I'll never get ahead, methinks. Chances are I don't want to.

The only downside to today was the stark contrasts that I tend to dwell too much upon and draw depressing conclusions from. Of the perhaps 20 clerk/new lawyer types, three of us were female and the rest male. Which is fine. But because I'm a single gal on the prowl, I cannot help but look at social events like this in terms of their husband-finding potential. I thought this might be a good one, but no--every single man in the room was married. Strengthening my gloomy Law of Prospects (or Lack Thereof): everyone is already married. Never fails. Of those three women, there was me, my awesome friend Liz who is married with four kids about my age and who decided it was about darn time to get her law degree, and another single gal. Strengthening my gloomy Law of Disparity: young, bright, professional Mormon men: married. Young, bright, professional Mormon women: single.

It's a bit wearing to feel like such a dang trailblazer all the time. I'm an utter anomaly in the churchy circles in which I move. There are two other girls in my ward who have or will soon have graduate degrees, but even against them I get the drift that I stand out as an overt egghead. Law school is just plain intimidating to people. Add to that my ascetic habits and views on standards...it's too much to say I'm sui generis but it feels like that sometimes. For instance, I use the term sui generis. Argh, I should probably start by moderating my vocabulary, if I want to fit in better : )

But that leads to the topic of pressure to be less than my best, and I don't want to be here all night. Life is good! Many possibilities! Must make King Soopers run!

Why can't we just depend on federalism?

2008-07-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

I heard that question a lot, from liberals and some conservatives, back when the gay marriage debate was still gathering steam (2003-ish). If some state wants to let gays marry, what's your problem? All sorts of states have laws you don't like, but you don't have to live in that state! Federalism is your friend!

It was a disingenuous line of reasoning from the start. But even if no one at that point could clairvoyantly articulate what was sure to follow, I'm not sure I'd believe that gay marriage advocates didn't have this planned out all along.

Don't know if the supreme court would ever go along. Kennedy might be feeling especially magnanimous on a given day. And a test case is sure to pop up before too long.

Tangentially, I find it adorable that Massachusetts, so cutting edge when it comes to marriage law in other ways, apparently still has fault-based divorces. They missed the wave of the future there, I think.

View of the Prude

2008-07-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago in Relief Society (church women's group) I rolled my eyes when a girl announced, seemingly off-the-cuff, that a group was going together to await the midnight release of the latest "Twilight" or whatever vampire book at a bookstore. Whatev. Haven't read the books, but had heard from a trustworthy source that they're on the steamy (granted, steamy for Mormons) side and not much worth the attention of people with better things to do.

Yesterday in Relief Society, the get-together-and-squeal-a-thon was given a more official imprimatur when in the get-to-know-you portion of the meeting everyone was told to say their name, favorite book, and whether they were on Edward or Jacob's side. My reaction: blank and clueless look. Girl next to me: haughty dismissive look. Every other girl in the room: "omigosh, I'm totally wanting it to be Edward!!" Blech, on grounds of mass hysteria alone.

But I do strive to be a fair-minded girl, so on a time-wasting break this afternoon (right now) I did a little googling. I love it when fair-minded research completely confirms my preconceptions. This is what every Mormon girl I know is salivating about? The ol' beefcake'n'trollop routine? Don't we collectively have any higher of views than this? This is what so many mommies are letting their pre-teen girls read and dream about? Good heavens.

I really don't insist that the whole world spend its time reading Goethe and Tolstoy, and I don't look down on those who prefer lighter fare. But honestly...not cool, I think. No one knows how to think through the implications of what they read/watch.

UPDATE 8/22/08: Okay, move this tripe squarely into the "are you stinking kidding me?" category. I still haven't read the books and will probably at some point take a hit for pontificating against what I haven't directly experienced, but oh well. I've seen enough; this article says it all. The article excerpts a quotation from the books that more than solidifies any case I want to make, be it on artistic, literary, moral, or sanity grounds:

"Edward . . . lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal."

Oh my goodness gracious heavens-to-betsey golly gee. Does anyone seriously read this goop without dying of laughter? Look, girls: you like this stuff. Of course you do. It's a precision-designed highly-polished shaft aimed straight at your girly hormonal hearts. But for the love of all that is still aware of the practical implications of what you feed your soul, wake up! We get on the guys' case for viewing porn, partly because it builds up monstrously unrealistic expectations for real intimacy with real humans; what the heck do you think this purple prose is doing for you, if not exactly the same thing??

I know exactly how hard it is to control one's thoughts when NOT exposed to anything like this. I shudder to think how hard y'all are making it for yourselves.

Oh terrific

2008-07-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

Just great. The feds have decided to target their bureaucratic harassment methods onto university physics and engineering departments. Because some feminists finally overcame their seemly reticence to argue that by gum, not enough women are going into the physical sciences. (I say reticence is seemly because the only women whining about such things studied gender studies and sociology themselves).

I'm one of the women who throughout high school was advanced in math and science, continued into college as an engineering major, and eventually completed a minor in mathematics because I think it's a fascinating and elegant discipline. But I didn't stick with engineering, no more than several other girls I knew, and why? I puzzled about it at the time, but a little more life experience and reading up in the behavioral sciences has made it crystal clear: women are hard-wired to like people. To want to talk to them and work with them and help them and study them and all that. Which is why I turned to political science, and which is why I've gone into family law instead of corporate law.

Can't the government just let the world go on its merry way every now and then?

Can't have too many Balkan travelogues

2008-07-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

The pictures of commie architecture are alone worth a gander. (I can't figure out how to link to the specific post so look for the post titled "An abominable blood-logged plain).

A scare, and gratitude

2008-07-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

I've never had much in the way of health crises to deal with in my life, either my own or my family's. My parents and sibs have all stayed fit as fiddles. So it was distressing Thursday to be informed that my 16-year-old little bro had had a profuse nosebleed all the preceeding afternoon and evening, which bleeding would not be stopped by any usual efforts, and that he had developed a heinous and unexplained purple-black bruise on his arm, and assorted sundries like swollen nodes and persistent headaches. When Mom called the HMO nurse hotline thingy, they gave the unwelcome advice to cart him in to a hospital immediately, which was accomplished around 3 Thursday morning. And then, the flurry of tests and carelessly tossed out theories and telephone relays amongst family members regarding those relays and worry worry worry. I think what really got me was the suggestion that they would extract bone marrow to test--shades of leukemia, etc.

No doubt I was blowing it out of proportion. Aside from the profuse bleeding, which admittedly is no small thing, Brett was fine--he even called me from the hospital and was mad when I knew where he was so he couldn't break the dramatic news to me himself. But I nonetheless feared all sorts of worst-case scenarios and cried a bit and was reminded of how much I besottedly love my little brother.

Turns out it's not so bad, really, just weird: Brett has mononucleosis. (Which isn't normally a cheerful thing, but when I got the word I turned to Stephane, our French exchange student, and said "good news! He has mono!" Then had to stop and think for a second what a weird thing that was to say.) Normally, when a body is infected with such as mono, its white blood cells attack the unfamiliar pathogens. Brett, however, being something of an overachiever, is equipped with white blood cells that went the extra mile and attacked his platelets as well. Apparently the low end of normal for platelets per whatever measure of blood is 150,000; Brett was sporting a sleek 2,000. He is also covered in red polka dots because, for reasons that escape me, being low on platelets makes one's capillaries burst.

So he still bleeds loud and long, but they sent him home to let it run its course and see if the autocannibalism will reverse itself. (Mom, explaining doctor's orders upon their arrival: "well, a head injury would be especially dangerous, so they said to bring him straight back in if he acts strange." Stephane and I look at each other. "Um, hi, this is Brett. Shouldn't you have just left him there, under that criterion?" This is a million times funnier if you know my brother.)

And I am very very so so relieved. No doubt life will throw something hard at me in this vein before too many years, but it's dodged this time. I'm going to try to not take for granted our amazingly good health.

Webless

2008-07-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

I've moved to a new apartment, and for the time being my internet access is problematic at best. Plus the studying for the bar, etc. So I guess I'm going to have to really give up on my hopes for keeping this blog going constantly. Alas; I enjoy it.

Interesting article.

News of the cosmos

2008-07-03T06:50:00.000-07:00

The original article isn't available online, alas, but I'm going to quote John Derbyshire quoting the original article from Astronomy magazine:

"Writing in the current issue of Astronomy magazine, Abraham Loeb argues that the recently-discovered fact that the cosmic expansion is accelerating means that in a hundred billion years or so, the number of galaxies visible from Earth will be … zero. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, will have merged with M31 in Andromeda (Loeb calls the merged galaxy "Milkomeda") and all other galaxies — he has actually checked — will have passed beyond (actually, sufficiently close to — it's technical) the "horizon" at which we can get no useful information from them.

'Suppose some future cataclysm destroys all scientific archives. Could future astronomers, who are able to study only Milkomeda, be able to reveal it originated from the Big Bang? No … The accelerating universe makes the study of cosmology a transient episode in our long-term scientific endeavor. We had better observe the universe in the next tens of billions of years and document our findings for the benefit of future scientists who won't be able to do so. Perhaps funding agencies should take notice and allocate funds for cosmology now. One day, such studies be [sic] impossible.'"

This is interesting for its own sake, of course, if you think stars and galaxies are cool in their own right. But think also of the implication--I observe that a lot of people put a lot of faith in science, which seems a rational thing to do given the enormous distance we've come over the last, say, century. We figure we've got the number of all sorts of phenomena, from the human genome to global warming to archeology, and skeptics are not indulged. So I find it a refreshing reminder that we don't and can't know everything through our instruments and limited reasoning--some things can be simply outside our observation, because we don't have the means to observe or because we lack the imagination to figure out what to look for. I wish the church of Science Knows Everything (populated much more by ideologues than by actual scientists, I think) would calm down and recognize its limits every now and then.

Global warming on the couch

2008-07-02T07:01:00.001-07:00

I'm so busy, moving into my sweet new apartment and, of course, studying. Not much time for politics, and in fact if I were any sort of rational person I'd cut politics out of my schedule completely, but I'm not so I don't. Here's an article on global warming that jibes with my overall observations. Funny old world...

It's all about the court

2008-06-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

I rather wish Scalia had filed a dissent in Kennedy v. Louisiana, just because his writing is always so worth reading as writing apart from its content when he's mad, but I guess there's nothing to say here that Alito didn't cover adequately or that Scalia didn't already rant about in Roper.

And Alito was absolutely brilliant on one point that I wouldn't have thought of (I'll have to check to see if it was briefed or not): the majority cites its ability to discern the country's standard of decency in reference to what punishment is appropriate according to the crime and perpetrator, but how can you tell that the majority position is an outgrowth of decency and not of other factors? It's not as though almost all states have long been restricting the death penalty to homicides in a vacuum that offered no pressure to guide such decisions. A previous court opinion, Coker v. Georgia, held that capital punishment for the rape of an adult woman violated the eighth amendment and though it did not address the issue of whether a child rapist could be sentenced to death, loose language in the opinion indicated that the court would probably put the kibosh on that too. Justice Powell did not join the majority but instead concurred separately for precisely that reason: he thought the majority's opinion was inappropriately broad and that other more heinous cases should be decided separately.

Any wonder, then, that state legislatures could read Coker as well as Justice Powell could, and didn't bother enacting death penalty for child rape laws because they had every reason to believe the court would strike any such sentence down if they did? We know that that's precisely what happened, as Alito cites three documented instances (SC, OK, and TX) and one could easily believe that other legislatures were similarly swayed though not on record. And yet here comes today's majority, blithely asserting that because such laws don't exist it must be because our societal standard of decency. Pshaw.

History is messy, part deux

2008-06-24T14:53:00.001-07:00

This article has nothing directly to do with the Book of Mormon, theories about the Book of Mormon, or Book of Mormon archeology. I'm not proposing a grand theory tying the Mayas to the Nephites. But it is very interesting for a tangential reason:

For years, really ever since the Book of Mormon was first published, people have been jumping to attack it with arguments that it's preposterous because "archeology shows X, which so contradicts the Book of Mormon narrative and details that only an utter nincompoop could think the Book of Mormon is an actual historical document." Here's an article detailing an incident in probably the 1950's where a Mormon teenager's friend gave him a list of supposed anachronisms that disprove the Book of Mormon. Fortunately the teenager had enough faith and intellectual humility to not just jettison the book, and later on in life realized that every single item on the list had been proven to be not an anachronism, but an authentic feature of ancient mesoamerican life.

Are there other items that weren't on his list? Surely. I've read through several, and some of them sound like pretty sound reasoning. But argument like that always comes down to "archeology has concluded that X, which is described in the Book of Mormon, did not exist in that time place and culture!" Which is where this article comes in. If I point out that sheafs of other supposed anachronisms have been proven accurate, they response is "but modern archeology, which is way more accurate, has given no indication whatsoever that X existed! It doesn't matter how much was right (Joseph Smith was just a really good guesser and relied on his extensive frontier anthropological library!), the Book of Mormon still fails based on these falsehoods!"

And yet, here are prominent non-LDS archeologists admitting that we pretty much still don't know beans about ancient mesoamerica. Got a huge chunk of the narrative wrong. Because they made assumptions about what was and wasn't there.

Did I mention intellectual humility? It's a trait these archeologists have, and that obsessive anti-Mormons sorely lack.

No one expects a green inquisition!

2008-06-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

Well, they should. Down with thought heretics!

History is messy

2008-06-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

I love Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism because it so thoroughly documents that everything everyone knows about history is wrong. Whenever conservatives got something wrong, it's an albatross around the neck of conservatism (e.g., opposition to the Civil Rights Act). Whenever liberals got something wrong, it's twisted into a sin perpetuated by America as a whole, which conservatives then feel compelled to defend on some grounds because they love America (e.g., the Palmer raids, which I remember being taught in high school history utterly separate from any connection to Wilson and progressivism).

Anyway, here's an excerpt from Goldberg, pointing out just what a pleasant person Margaret Sanger was. Good stuff.

Ignorance is bliss...

2008-06-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

...for Obama and those who follow him. This man can't even comment intelligently on vital issues. I'm curious what he'll do, his first day in power, when briefed by some general about the real extent and nastiness of our enemies. Keep up the facade that the world is a happy fun place with a few minor baddies the courts can easily deal with? Or turn on a dime and try for inspiring leadership in the midst of crisis, blaming Bush for having let the threat get so bad? Either way has its uses: under the first, even if we suffered another major attack none of the star-struck watchpuppy media would dare to blame even a scintilla of it on Obama. And under the second, well: liberals love crises. It gives them cover to pass new deals and great societies and such. The rest of us are sunk either way.

Got a yen for a Balkan travelogue?

2008-06-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

I delight to oblige.

Pure objectivity, ma foi!

2008-06-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

I like this. 90% of people who have any opinion on global warming get that opinion from what they see on the MSN or Yahoo homepage every morning, and yet even being constantly exposed to headlines as described in that article still won't get as all-fired worried as Gore and such beg them to. But opinion is creeping Gore-ward, alas. Largely because "news" organizations want it to.

Say it a million times a day, and it gets truer every time: climate change as a political issue is not about the environment. It's about political control.

Thoughts on tragedy

2008-06-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Who can properly study when pieces like this are available? Perspective is a good thing, as is a reminder that life is always always more complicated than one's first glib impression.

Inflation, indeed

2008-06-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

Uh...huh. Is this for real? Some need to get over their inflated sense of importance to history, nein?

In the cards

2008-06-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

In light of the California to-do, I re-read this piece from a year or two back. Curious to think through how all this is going to play out.

Update: Dale Carpenter has a different view, of course, and a reasonable one. A good reminder that a lot of my objection to all of this is attitudinal--why can't gay couples stop being so snippy if a photographer doesn't want to photograph your committment ceremony? I'm sure all sorts of evangelical types would be unwilling to photograph my Mormon wedding, but there's no way in heck I'd drag them to court over it. Still, the legal issues aren't non-existent. I need to hunt up that Becket Fund book.

Studying like a mad studying fool

2008-06-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

I am a recalcitrant blogger. I have no time for blogging because I spend all my time studying for the bar; problem is, I am a recalcitrant bar studier as well. It's darn hard to make myself sit through so many hours each day! I'm behind on the study schedule and will have to go at a punishing pace all week to catch up. I deserve it. Can't wait until summer is over...

But I did have good reasons for getting behind last week. Wednesday I was in the office, both to finish up a motion and to attend a continuing legal education lunch with a bunch of judges. It was pretty interesting--they'd have a judge or two per table and then move us from table to table in groups of about five. I learned a lot from a probate judge on how to handle a client who you come to realize might not be legally competent. Definitely good to know--one comes across crazy people in this biz.

Wednesday night I made my second foray into the symphonic world, with as much delight as the last time. I actually had an extra ticket, due to a season-ending two-for-one deal, but couldn't corral a single friend or family member into going with me and am way too much of a chicken to ask a member of the opposite sex on a date (not true generally, but way true for the symphony--the average young man would have a rotten time, and I'd be able to tell, and we'd both be miserable). So I had fun alone yet again. Opened with Bernstein, who as we all know was inherently incapable of writing anything non-delightful. The Candide overture was such fun, and reminded me of high school days playing "Glitter and Be Gay" for my opera friend for talent shows. Next, I'd never even heard of the Chichester psalms before then, but was so glad to finally hear them there. Lovely beyond expectations.

About the Corigliano piano concerto, the less said the better. Hated it. Some of that may well have been my own fault--I'm too poor to afford decent seats, and was sitting opposite the stage from the orchestra section; therefore the entire orchestra and particularly the timpani lay between me and the pianist. So I couldn't hear her much, but what I could hear didn't give me reason to believe I was missing much.

I was nervous about Kanchelli--it was a swap in the program replacing Copeland, which I would have loved, and the Amazon reviews for Kanchelli's Styx were mixed at best (though also sparse; it's a very new piece that has apparently only been performed in the US a handful of times). But I really did love it. Having heretofor been a sucker for violin solos, I now add violas to the list. And even when the music was maddening and frankly ridiculously abrupt, it was beautiful to make up for it. One part in the middle especially, evoking the final judgment and begging for forgiveness for various named people, made me physically shrink in my seat.

The next morning my sister-in-law and I spent several hours at the Denver-area LDS cannery, where the project du jour was to can many many pounds of potatoes for area food banks. Factory-process canning is pretty fun when you're only doing it for a morning at a time, and I learned that people eat canned potatoes. I'd really never heard of that.

Finally, I took a study break (I take those a lot) to look for apartments online and lo, craigslist pulled through in a big way. I found my dream apartment--not in a smelly complex with loud neighbors, in a quiet neighborhood built over a garage, new and clean, not that big, in my price range, comes with all the appliances I lack, and big windows with gorgeous views of gorgeous Castle Rock. I couldn't have imagined up a better situation. Can't wait to start life for real!

So life is good, and I haven't even read up on politics for several days. No doubt Obama is doing stuff that would creep me out, and McCain is finding new ways to infuriate--ignorance is bliss, nein? Wake me in November.

Picking on Obama, just because I can

2008-06-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

This is way classy. I know a candidate can't necessarily be held accountable for every kook supporting him, but you really should have someone policing your official site for junk like this. And not leave it up for two months after other people have noticed it. Dare I hazard the opinion that the Obama campaign, being the well-oiled modern media-savvy operation it is, did know about the post but didn't see the necessity of removing it?

Ah well, Newsweek has concluded that there is absolutely no danger of Jewish voters not wanting to support Obama. Can't decide if Newsweek is in his pocket or working against him by trying to lull him into a false sense of security.

The pernicious danger of disparagement

2008-06-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

No worries, Canada has it covered. Not only will people who say unfashionable things be dragged through years of expensive litigation (at no cost to the complainant), but Big Brother will order them not to say anything disparaging. And, and, don't worry, because even though those wily disparagers would probably get around it all by complaining about the way the legal proceedings were conducted, the tribunal thought of that already. It's okay! The disparagers have also been ordered not to disparage the complainant or any witnesses based on their involvement in the complaint. Making the world safe for intellectual wimpery.

ALSO: Even EGALE makes the obvious point that laws like this are only fun if the inquisitors are on your side.

Ezra Levant is furious.

Definitely don't like where this is going

2008-06-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

Wowwwww. Hoo boy. I like Goldberg's snide response to this creepy article: "Obama willing, my re-education facility will be somewhere in the mountains, with a nice view."

Steyn sums up the whole sorry farce

2008-06-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

I just want to be able to find this link again. It's nice to be able to laugh instead of moan when a free country decides it'd rather be an authoritarian one.

ALSO: Some blogger compiles a thorough list of everything legally wrong with the hearing.

1) there are no trial procedures as in any real court. The tribunal decides who speaks, and in which order, from day to day.

2) the complainant (in this case, Mohamed Elmasry) doesn't have to be in attendance. The hearing can go on without him. Facing your accuser? Forget it.

3) Hearsay evidence is admissible, and is still admissible even if one of the people who originally said something is in the room while you're giving the hearsay testimony.

4) Jurisdiction does not apply. In this hearing, a witness from Ontario testified that he read something in Ontario and was offended by it in Ontario...which is why he's testifying in a BC hearing room. From Coyne: "Julian Porter on his feet, objecting on territorial grounds, as Awan details how the article made him feel as he read it in downtown Toronto. Overruled."

5) Jurisdiction shopping is allowed. The complainant was not in attendance, so one of his representatives outlined how they looked at the human rights codes of various places, and made their picks. Ontario, BC, and the Federal human rights commissions. You've gotta get lucky sooner or later.

6) The original charge doesn't matter much, it's more about the alleged violation's impact on the world at large. This one is especially weird. Get this: the Steyn article in Maclean's is what the complaint is all about. Yet the witness (Khurrum Awan) went on at length about stuff he read after the Steyn article was released, and how it made him feel. The witness and his counsel are claiming that the Steyn article inspired these works. Blog posts, YouTube comments, and other internet material. This is especially creepy, because the state is being asked not to look at a specific incident, but to read the minds of anonymous nice-Canadians-turned-bigots and use it in their ruling. What does any of this have to do with Elmasry? Nothing.

7) Rules of evidence don't exist. For instance, yesterday the lead counsel for the complainant, Faisal Joseph, read from 20 Maclean's articles. Later in the day, blog post were read aloud, and comments from YouTube were referenced. How do we know who wrote this stuff? We don't. Could have been anybody. None of this stuff is vetted for veracity. Even the 20 Maclean's articles could be bogus, and the Tribunal would never know it. With no rules of evidence, do you think they investigated the articles for original accuracy before the hearing?

8) It's this next from the Tribunal that should scare you the most. Andrew Coyne: "Under Section 7.1, he continues, innocent intent is not a defence, nor is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith or responsible journalism. Or in other words, there is no defence." That's Maclean's lawyer, giving a rundown of section 7.1, the section that says you can't expose people to hatred or contempt. Look at that list and tell me if he's wrong: there is no defence. If someone's offended by what you write, no matter how true, no matter how factual, then you're done like dinner for a hate offense.

Obama the lightweight, part three million and twelve

2008-06-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

A little cheerful reading, courtesy of Sowell and Bolton.

Oh, and let us not forget he's a corrupt lightweight. Someone someday will write a book about his dealings in Chicago politics. It'll be engrossing reading.

Love One Another

2008-06-04T08:28:00.000-07:00

Appropos nothing in particular, I want to collect for my own reference and anyone else's a survey of what all the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is doing in the humanitarian field. The fact that the church does so much world-wide doesn't prove our doctrine or authority are true, of course, but I'd way rather belong to a church that serves the least of humanity's brethren than belong to one that doesn't. And the fact that we do it so remarkably and effectively is even better.

All Mormons are expected to pay tithing (of course no one makes you, but certain privileges are conditioned on faithfulness in this area), which funds go to pay for meetinghouses, temples, materials, and such. Also, one Sunday per month we skip two meals and donate the money we would have spent on food (or as much as one can spare; much more is encouraged) as an offering which is explicitly set aside to care for members in need and other community needs. If a congregation takes in more in these "fast offerings" than local needs can use, it is sent to a central church fund for distribution elsewhere.

On the same donation slip filled out for tithing and fast offerings, there is a space for "Humanitarian Aid." Sometimes we're explicitly asked to donate to this fund (a special fast post-tsunami or post-Katrina, for example) but more often it's between an individual and the Lord as to what can be donated. One can also donate directly to LDS philanthropies here.

As for what Humanitarian Aid is spent on, the list is miles long: wheelchair donations worldwide, measels vaccinations in Africa and elsewhere, cleanup after natural disasters including immediate food aid, hygiene kits, and long-term rebuilding help in places like Indonesia and China, clean-water projects in Africa and elsewhere (scroll down), training in agricultural techniques, job training/employment counseling, and on and on. Here is the comprehensive list of humanitarian projects worldwide.

One of the best things about our programs is the lack of overhead costs. There is paid staff running things in Salt Lake City and elsewhere, but their salaries don't come from humanitarian aid donations (I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure church staff is paid from investment income from church properties, not from tithing). The actual legwork is accomplished in several ways--often in partnership with other charities, such as after the tsunamis when the church provided the boxes of food and hygiene kits and Islamic Charities (can't find their webpage, but I'm pretty sure that was the specific name I saw on the plane) did the distribution. Often members are asked to donate time to help out when natural disasters have struck nearby, as in the China link above. When the 1999 tornado hit Tuttle and Moore, Oklahoma (my friend Kendall is quoted in that article), our local leaders in Colorado with approval from general leaders asked anyone who could to take time off work and drive down to Oklahoma, bringing their own tents and sleeping bags. My Dad went down with some friends and spent over a week. Most ended up clearing debris for the most part, where it was safe to do so, but because of Dad's expertise with his ham radio he was drafted as a sort of jobsite scout/coordinator. We all got a kick out of an OKC-area press account quoting a community leader as saying the two major groups involved in helping to clean up were the LDS and the Mormons. Efforts like that happen all the time--members in the south did a lot of Katrina cleanup, members and missionaries have done flood and mudslide cleanup, etc. It's nothing good neighbors and true Christians wouldn't be expected to do, but we have the benefit of swell organization under priesthood direction.

Then there are missionaries. The stereotypical missionaries, 19-22 year old single men and women, are required to do a certain amount of community service every week, and if a major need occurs in their area they leave off proselyting entirely and just help out. But not all missionaries are young, and not all are called to proselytize. Older retired couples are also strongly encouraged to serve missions, and many serve multiple missions for as long as their health holds out (my great-aunt and uncle just wrapped up their second). Whereas most young missionaries are called to proselytize, most couple missionaries are called for humanitarian or other service. It's a terrific system--since all missionaries pay their own way, the church gets free labor and no overhead in its humanitarian activities. And couples can put to use their expertise--a retired farmer might be sent to help third-world subsistence farmers improve their techniques and increase yield, a retired engineer might be sent to work on a well and water-storage system for a village, a retired nurse or doctor might be sent to help start a community health program and clinic or to train local personnel in techniques like neonatal resuscitation, a retired teacher might be sent to teach job and language skills...I really just wish the image of Mormons as insular Utah jello-eaters could be dispelled. We're the most cosmopolitan and humanitarian-minded group I know. One of my favorite speakers is Mary Ellen Edmunds, whose life-long singleness has presented her with opportunities to serve missions focused on community health (she's a nurse by profession) in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nigeria.

Finally, the Perpetual Education Fund. I remember how exciting it was when President Hinckley announced this in 2001 and asked for initial donations, which have continued and can be made on the same donation slip as tithing and other donations. It's modeled on the Perpetual Emmigration Fund, which helped thousands of converts get to Utah in the late 1800s by receiving a loan and then paying it back over time, once one was established economically, so that the fund was self-sustaining. Today's Perpetual Education Fund is the same idea--loans made to pay for tuition and supplies for education or vocational training programs, along with employment counseling (usually from service missionaries), and the loan being paid back within a reasonable length of time after the recipient has found a much better job than would have been otherwise possible. President Hinckley chronicled some success stories here. And the Fund's former director discusses its growth and success here. Here's one more recent report (scroll down).

I said that such programs and teachings and efforts and opportunities to serve don't prove the church is true, but I do think they are evidence of divinity. We're trying to follow Christ's teachings to the best extent we can. If we didn't have all this, it would be an argument against the truth of the church, so their existence is an indication in favor. There's more even than I've written here that's more difficult to document on the web: canneries, farms, storehouses, supplies, etc. And every Sunday I can decide whether to be generous or stingy and have my good choices help the whole world. What a wonderful church!

Intrigue

2008-06-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not a foreign policy expert, but I know enough to not trust Syria. Interesting developments, though--curious what behind-the-scenes leverage the Israelis are really exerting here. And just how badly Obama would mess it up by flouncing in, denouncing all past isolation as symptoms of Republican meanness and nothing more, and being too solicitous of the Assad squad.

Telling it like it is

2008-06-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

From President Eyring, a Prophet of God, in the latest Ensign:

"Korihor was arguing, as men and women have falsely argued from the beginning of time, that to take counsel from the servants of God is to surrender God-given rights of independence. But the argument is false because it misrepresents reality. When we reject the counsel that comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred. We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose."

The assumption in society is wide and deep, that those who choose to follow leaders, such as religious authorities, are blindly following for reasons of fear or incuriosity or tradition or lack of intelligence. So wrong. Brigham Young said (I paraphrase) that he sure as heck didn't want anyone following him blindly--he wanted people to ask God for themselves if what he advised was right. And anyone who thinks that the only choices in life are the unenlightened God Squad on the one hand and freethinking autonomy on the other are going to sadly find out one day that they were being led just as surely as I try to choose to be led by Prophets.

Obama in wonderland

2008-06-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

This is really just cute. Does anyone not in thrall to the Aura believe a word he says? This talk of economy-deadening policies creating millions of jobs is just a front to placate the dull yokels, right?

"Maybe if he went to Pennsylvania and met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he'd understand that we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators. That man needs us to pass an energy policy that works with automakers to raise fuel standards, and makes corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future — an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. That's the change we need."

Giggle, guffaw. Right, make them pay for their pollution! That will lower gas prices for that poor Pennsylvanian! Take away their profits! All shall be well! You can make a case for those policies, sure, but arguing that it will lower fuel prices is like saying that we will henceforth ban the sky from being blue.

And then this shot, which besides being graceless doesn't even make much sense:

"Change is realizing that meeting today's threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy — tough, direct diplomacy where the president of the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for. We must once again have the courage and conviction to lead the free world. That is the legacy of Roosevelt, and Truman, and Kennedy. That's what the American people want. That's what change is."

Um, yeah...what?? I thought the whole rap against Bush was being too darn strident with the dictators, Axis of Evil and starting wars and all that. Of Bush's failings, attitudinal reticence was not supposed to be found. And here Obama is going to march in and change everything and "let [them] know what we stand for?" Haha, yeah. Great. I'm way glad America has nominated him, for the historical value of it all, but it ought to be worrisome to thinking people that this lightweight narcissist is so close to leading the free world.

The new monkey trial

2008-06-02T12:58:00.001-07:00

I thank my lucky stars I'm not practicing law in Canada. It sounds like these people can't even think clearly. Way to besmirch the noble name of "human rights."

UPDATE: The National Post gets it.

UPDATE again: Ezra Levant is live-blogging, and it gets scarier. No, seriously, it keeps getting worse. Good night to free-thinking citizens in Canada. If someone can do a crummy lawyering job and dredge up some random blog posts from whoever showing that some people have mean thoughts, the commission can silence you.

Even when I'm bad, I'm good

2008-05-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Never fails. I came out of my election law final feeling like I'd missed at least 75% of what he'd intended me to find. I hadn't properly outlined (for various reasons that are always bound to crop up when one doesn't start outlining in, oh, February), in fact an embarassingly large portion of my outline was more or less wikipedia entries on cases added in with little alteration, and as I hit "submit" on the final I glanced at my outline and realized I'd missed a completely obvious issue.

And I ended up with an A-, my second-highest grade of the semester. From a professor whose day job is as an federal appeals court judge and who I figured would be a ridiculously hard grader. Amongst classmates including a couple of graduate degrees from Harvard and the guy who keeps coming in first in everything...I feel really proud of me : )

My highest grade? The only class for which I studied even less, which is to say, domestic violence. No outline at all, just the prior evening spent skimming everything I was supposed to have read, of which task I finished probably 65%. Straight up A!

This harks back to second semester of first year, when in torts I was so lost, uncomprehending, and congenitally incapable of finding it even the least bit interesting that I couldn't ever have told you what topic we were studying within a given week. A minus!

All in all, I think grades-wise this was my best semester of law school period. Just think! If I can do this well while spending more time reading Tolstoy than I do law, how awesome would I be if I applied myself?

It's actually pretty much a bad thing that I can skate through without having to really exert myself and study--I'm sure there's some measure of intellectual discipline that I ought to be very sad I lack. On the other hand, if I had it and had therefore spent law school studying like a mad studying fool, two undesirable consequences would have followed:
1) I would have gotten not just good but ridiculously good grades, and would have fallen onto the career track involving big-name firms and selling my soul and working 300 hours per week
2) I wouldn't have read so much or even any Tolstoy during law school, and stemming from consequence #1 would have even less time to read Tolstoy after law school. I'll have little enough time as is.

So I'm satisfied with the balance I've struck for myself: no $100,000 salary, no working Saturdays (at least, not that often). No chasing inordinate success to the detriment of mind-broadening.

Brother Barbarian

2008-05-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

The "gorillas-in-the-mist" tone of this article really werids me out. These people are homo sapiens, fellow children of God, and all these anthropologists can think to do is to "protect their habitat" and leave them alone as though they were some exotic species of tree frog. I'm sure their culture and way of life is ancient and lovely and unspoiled and all that, but suppose some of them might, given the chance, like to learn to read or become accountants or visit Paris?

Time was when civilized people were straightforward about wanting to convert the savages to a higher way of life. We've thankfully left off using such demeaning terminology, and being so dismissive about various cultural heritages, but when westerners say with a straight face that they think that such people should be left where they are because it's better for them, I don't believe it. I don't believe anyone really thinks that these people are objectively better off living in their pristine jungle villages, where their material living is meager at best and their chances of dying of malaria or dysentery before age thirty are immense and their concept of a wider world is nil. Talk of how contact with the natives in the past has gone so poorly is just moral self-congratualtion that we're way too enlightened nowadays to enforce our vulgar capitalistic ways on the noble indigenous types.

In other words, urging that they be left alone has nothing to do with them and everything to do with smug us. Isn't there any possible way to send someone in to learn their language and befriend them and communicate to them the opportunities life might hold without giving them some disease? I bet there is. And if we don't even try then we're exercising the cruel imperialist impulse over others' destinies just as surely as our benighted forefathers did. Why is it so pleasant to the modern environmentalist mind just to know that unspoiled nature merely exists, to the exclusion of all consideration of how it might be improved by spoiling it just a little? I don't understand why people get such a kick out of merely being aware that somewhere on the globe ANWR is undrilled and this tribe is uncontacted.

Doom, gloom

2008-05-30T07:51:00.001-07:00

Not for the environment, but for a free and sane society. Ration cards? Ration cards? Aren't any worthwhile people willing to notice that this is nuts?

Thought police alert

2008-05-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

Cute. The hilarious lack of self-awareness from those whom I have no doubt would label conservatives fascists as though it were unarguable is just really rich. From student leaders at York University in Toronto:

"student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it 'within a pro-choice realm,' and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance."

Thanks for that. Free to discuss, eh? As long as my discussion discusses within the overlord-approved ideological framework? Whew, for a minute there I was afraid of being repressed.

World of weirdos

2008-05-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

I don't like video games, and I look down on people who play them much at all. But this article takes a pretty even-handed view, and is certainly interesting. I had no idea of some of the issues coming into play.

The gods are implacable

2008-05-29T10:19:00.001-07:00

At least we're not throwing virgins in the volcano. Yet.

Good point, oft overlooked

2008-05-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Swedish is really weird to pronounce. The word for "seven" is spelled "sja," but pronounced something like "fru." ??? I really enjoyed my first few Rosetta Stone lessons, though. Now I just need to go back over them about a million times : )

Apparently Obama gave a commencement speech at Wesleyan (link included in the link I'm posting) that was the usualspiel about going into public service instead of the evil scary corporate world, but I like how Jim Manzi pulls it apart here.

All together now: environmentalism and "community organizing" and social entitlements and the like are luxuries that only rich societies can afford, whether for themselves or to nourish in others. Would that the left could grasp that fact. You think the oil companies making profits is an unmitigated evil? What about the teachers union pensions that only continue growing if oil stocks continue increasing in value? Anyone who thinks the economy's downswing will increase public support for liberal policies will be sorely disappointed when concern over climate change is the first thing to tank in the opinion polls. And Obama really really needs to add just a teeny bit of respect for capitalism to his worldview, given that his community organizing days are well behind him and he now makes millions. He starts to sound like he wonders if he sold out for too low a price.

Gales of change

2008-05-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

Hmm.

Polygamy news

2008-05-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

While the US remains fixated on creepy apostate Mormons in Texas, polygamy is on the march in Canada. How long before a Candaian court uses Lawrence-esque logic (bolstered with some free exercise of religion jurisprudence) to declare a right to polygamy? Dunno. I'm really rather curious to see how long the pro-redefinition-of-marriage cohort can keep insisting that the genders of participants in a marriage is completely irrelevant but that the number of participants is highly fundamental. Or that the fairly miniscule state interest in preventing deformed kids trumps one's sweet-mystery-of-life definition including incest. And, as Steyn points out, if officialdom keeps on looking the other way or making incremental bureaucratic accomodations for new marital arrangements, it's all the same in the end, though never having been put to a vote or even covered on the nightly news.

In thirty, at most fifty, years traditional marriage will be completely kaput and we'll wonder what all the fuss was about or have forgotten that there even was a fuss. Sigh. Highly curious to see what we'll look like demographically by then. Won't be pretty, incoming-tax-receipts-to-sustain-the-entitlement-state-wise.

Truman G. Madsen and logical theology

2008-05-27T00:09:00.000-07:00

I'm almost never awake this late, but I've been sick and took a three-hour nap today. Er, yesterday. Ergo, body is still tired but brain is not.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't been raised in Mormonism just so I could be more easily able to comprehend why others think it's weird--when some Christian site says in horror that we believe the fall was a good thing(!) or that Christ might have been married (!) my reaction is most likely "um...yes. And?"

Meanwhile, I think on many fronts Christians are losing the cultural and intellectual war with secularism/atheism and on the fronts on which Christians are prevailing (conservative protestant churches are doing hearteningly well attendance-wise) they won't be for much longer. A main front upon which Christians are losing, speaking as I find, is what I hear from several extremely decent and humane and concerned friends whom I respect greatly--religion just don't cover it. Modern American Christianity just isn't equipped to deal with and explain the messy messy world we find ourselves in. Why are people rotten? Or confused? Abused, neglected, persecuted, hated, etc after unpleasant etc? And Christianity has answers for it, absolutely (I think Michael Novak is particularly awesome, as is the Catholic intellectual tradition in general, and I wish I could link to his National Review article of perhaps a year ago), but they don't get through. My generation (insofar as I can credibly speak as one having her finger upon its pulse) is steeped in emotionalism simultaneously intense and shallow, and rather enjoys feeling concerned yet helpless and therefore resentful that they can't make people behave. (See Allan Bloom on rock music's "smarmy, hypocritical version of brotherly love.") Not that being concerned is bad. Quite the opposite, obviously. But concern turns into an excuse for the uber-pleasant sensation of moral superiority, which creeps up the priority list until it equals or supercedes the original charitable impulse. And against smugness the old "God wanted us to be able to learn and grow from adversity" line can't make any headway.

Because, cue the oldest dilemma on the books, if God is all-powerful, and could have created us any way He wanted to, but chose to create us wicked and miserable, how does that speak well of Him? If there's some particular advantage to this method of learning/growing for us, doesn't that detract from His power to arrange things any way at all? Here's where Truman G. comes in--I'll let him say it for me much better.

"In a discussion at a widely known theological seminary in the East, I was asked, 'What is the Mormon understanding of God?' I struggled to testify. Then three of the most learned of their teachers, not with acrimony but with candor, said: 'Let us explain why we cannot accept this. First of all, you people talk of God in terms that are human--all too human.' (That's a phrase, incidentally, from Nietzsche.) 'But the second problem is worse. You dare to say that man can become like God.' And then they held up a hand and said, 'Blasphemy.'

"Well, that hurts a little. I was led to ask two series of questions...The first was a series of questions about the nature of Christ. 'Was he a person?'
'Yes.'
'Did he live in a certain place and time?'
'Yes.'
'Was he embodied?'
'Yes.'
'Was he somewhere between five and seven feet in height?'
'Well, we hadn't thought of it, but, yes, we suppose he was.'
'Was he resurrected with his physical body?'
'He was.'
'Does he now have that body?'
'Yes.'
'Will he always?'
'Yes.'
'Is there any reason we should not adore and honor and worship him for what he has now become?'
'No,' they said, 'he is very God.'
'Yes,' I said, 'what then of the Father?'
'Oh no, oh no!' And then they issued a kind of Platonic manifesto--the statement out of the traditional creeds which are, all due honor to them, more Greek than they are Hebrew. 'No, no, the Father is "immaterial, incorporeal, beyond space, beyond time, unchanging, unembodied, etc."'

"Now, earlier they had berated me because Mormons, as you know, are credited--or blamed--for teaching, not trinitarianism, but tritheism--the idea of separate, distinct personages in the Godhead--and denying the metaphysical oneness of God. I couldn't resist at this point saying: ' Who has two Gods? You are the ones who are saying that there are two utterly unlike persons. The religious dilemma is, How can I honor the Father and seek to become like him (for even the pronoun him is not appropriate) without becoming unlike the Christ whom you say we can properly adore and worship and honor?' Well, the response at that point was that I didn't understand the Trinity. And I acknowledged that was true.

"But now the second set of questions: 'Why,' I dared to ask--and it's a question any child can ask--'did God make us at all?' There's an answer to that in the catechisms. Basically, it is that God created man for his own pleasure and by his inscrutable will. Sometimes it is suggested that he did so that he might have creatures to honor and worship him--which, if we are stark in response, is not the most unselfish motive one could conceive. Sometimes it is said that he did so for our happiness. But because of the creeds it is impossible to say that God needed to do so, for God, in their view, is beyond need. And then the bold question I put was 'You hold, don't you, that God has and had all power, all knowledge, all anticipatory wisdom, and that he knew, therefore, exactly what he was about and could have done otherwise?'

"'Yes,' they allowed, 'he could.'

"'Why, then, since God could have created co-creators, did he choose to make us creatures? Why did God choose to make us his everlasting inferiors?'

"At that point one of them said, 'God's very nature forbids that he should have peers.'

"I replied: 'That's interesting. For us, God's very nature requires that he should have peers. Which God is more worthy of our love?'" (The Highest in Us, p. 3-5). (I love that we have at least one credentialed philosopher who can communicate clearly. Madsen is always and everywhere worth listening to).

What Christianity in general sadly misses is this essential truth: if I ask you how old you are and you say something between ten and ninety, you're mostly wrong. My body is 24, but the spirit/intelligence/will/essential personhood of me and everyone else who's ever lived on earth is we know not how many million bajillion eons old. Outside of time, even. And while I've been accused by a protestant of believing that Christ was created by God as the foremost of His children (as opposed to being an uncreated member of the trinity) our scripture is quite clear that we believe exactly the opposite, that nobody, least of all Christ, is a mere creature of God: "Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be." Doctrine and Covenants 93:29. We are eternal beings who are children of God because He orgainzed our existing intelligences into spiritual personhood (no, I don't know clearly what that means; how could I? Nor am I expressing it all that well), taught us principles of growth and advancement (see Abraham 3:18-19, also Teachings of Joseph Smith: "God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with himself.."). But because we are self-existing and not just creatures that God could as easily have made angels or golden retrievers if He'd wanted, God cannot make us do anything. If there's one principle that Mormons go on about more than any other Christian group, it's agency or will.

Which has implications that are, I think, huge. I'm sure the counter-argument to all this is to say that our nature being such as Mormons teach it is to limit the power and agency of God. To which I reaspond: so? If what we teach is indeed the true situation, then I don't think the Almighty wastes much time sulking that He can't be more autocratic and controlling in the lives of His children. Moreover, the truth as taught in Mormonism does Him the courtesy of removing the stain upon His reputation that He did a lousy job creating a lousy world when He was perfectly capable of creating a nice one, and that a lot of people are mad at Him for requiring basic blind faith that He knew what He was about and it's all for the best that we should suffer so even though there were other options. In the Mormon view, there were only two options for God's handling of His spirit children: let them stay children, or let them achieve their full potential via a chance to prove themselves and their devotion to God's teachings of goodness, truth, justice, etc. Of course the second option is, though more stern because of the chance of failure, the more loving plan and the one God actually set into motion for us. The first option was presented by one of God's children, a would-be usurper, as a means of "saving" everyone and therefore (he figured) being entitled to God's glory. His motives and purported plan were all rebellious against God and that's how he fell and became the devil. ("Jesus and the devil were brothers!" they crow in horror. Well, yes. Why do you think "Lucifer" means "light-bearer?" Because he was once a child of God who rebelled and was kicked out of Heaven and denied the opportunity to progress. How is believing that he and the Savior were brothers more horrible than believing that God created him?)

So God created a world that He knew would, through the choice of Eve and Adam, fall into a mortal condition where, He knew, humans would have a chance to play out their baser urges. The fall was necessary because 1) it made procreation possible (Moses 5:11) and 2) it made real choice possible. Opposition is essential to agency; living in Heaven in the presence of God wasn't enough to really starkly force us to be committed to being what we could potentially be. It's here on earth that we have really tempting alternatives to overcome and the stark necessity of relying on God's grace and the Savior's atonement to overcome them.

This isn't to belittle the horrific suffering of 90% of the world's population ever. I'm not trying to glibly say "well, it's no big deal, it's just a test!" But I think it ads a lot more meaning to the horrors of life to know that 1) we knew what we were getting into, had a chance to say no thanks, I'm not interested, and were really excited about the chance to come and prove ourselves; and 2) God doesn't judge us all on the same scale. Unlike the Christian understanding that accepting Christ is necessary to salvation and that someone unfortunate enough to be born in Bangladesh in 2000 B.C. is just out of luck, we have the revelation that everyone who would have received the gospel if they'd heard it will have full opportunity for exaltation (Doctrine and Covenants 137:7-9). That's why the Savior's injunction that baptism is necessary to enter the kingdom of Heaven (Mark 16:16, for instance) doesn't doom 99% of humanity. That's why we spend hours hunting through microfilms and dusty books for names of people we can do proxy ordinances for.

God will judge everyone according to the desires of his/her heart, and even if life on earth was nasty, brutish and short it was a chance to choose to be nice instead of mean, honest instead of false, humble instead of prideful, chaste instead of not. We may have forgotten the details of our previous life, but have retained our traits and propensities and moral capacities. And God's perfect mind and judgment can perfectly judge what one would have done in a more ideal situation--that's why of whom much is given much is required and vice versa (Luke 12:48). A heckuva lot more is expected of me, having been taught truths ever since I was born and blessed with all needs fulfilled and historically aberrational amounts of luxury and discretionary time. Someone suffering from far worse circumstances and less knowledge might have made just as big a triumph by turning away instead of punching someone in the jaw as I would make by devoting my life to Mother Theresa-esque service. And of course the Savior's atonement can make up for any discrepancy between performance and perfection, no matter how large, so long as one is trying one's best.

I wish I had the intellect to really thoroughly dissect all this from a philosophical standpoint. And I wish more people knew what my religion is actually teaching and how it makes a lot of humanity's headaches manageable. I wish I'd gone to bed an hour ago. But I do so love to write about the most important topic ever told.

Abroad

2008-05-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

Legal scene in other countries' counterterrorism efforts: so boo to everyone who keeps bawling that the US is uniquely depraved in its treatment of terrorist suspects and deprivation of civil rights and spying on library records and whatever.

Theodore Dalrymple is amazing. Simply amazing. I wish I could write like that almost as much as I wish I could think like that. This article isn't anywhere near his most trenchant work, but it's his most recent.

Life and its direction

2008-05-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

Last night our family room window presented a spectacular show--the first thunderstorm of the season. And it was an especially good one, with incredibly rapid-fire cloud-to-cloud lightning that came more often in tangles and forks and loops than in outright bolts. Everything was lit up pink, and better yet as a cloud bank moved north a bright orange moon stepped out. It was one of those unimportant but memorable opportunities, to sit up late with two of my brothers and talk and watch the fireworks.

Now that I'm good and graduated I'm feeling much less panicky about life and where it's going. I'm basically the most fortunate girl alive, to have a good job lined up and family nearby and my whole life before me to spend on interesting and useful things. Several ideas have been germinating for awhile now as to how to spend what free time I'll have, and here's a list:

1) Form a jazz quintet
2) Learn Swedish, Latin, and Greek
3) Travel to every continent
4) Learn to play the violin well enough to perform a major concerto in public
5) Write and publish at least two books--one fiction and one non-fiction
6) Serve at least one LDS mission, at some point
7) Kayak around Maine
8) Become an expert vegetable and flower gardener
9) Become ridiculously well-read
10) Marry and have ten children
11) Be thought of by everyone I meet as an exceedingly gracious and kind person
12) Pay off my student loans

Not bad, eh? That should fill up the next seventy years pretty well. And yesterday I was handed the means to get going on one goal already! My firm threw a graduation party for me and our little file clerk, and as a graduation gift gave me a very generous gift card to Barnes and Noble. Which, if one knows me, one knows is like giving an alcoholic a distillery. There's pretty much nothing I'd rather do than trawl the isles of Barnes and Noble, buying darn well anything I please. This happy thought filled my head but then I had a newer and better idea, even--I'd better check the website to see what rarer off-the-shelves treasures could be found. And then the best of ideas ever--supposing they had Rosetta Stone-type software? They did! Swedish level one was just about the price of the gift card, and you can bet I placed my order post haste. (Impetuous, probably, but that's how I always do things. Why delay and think it over when I'm seized by enthusiasm now?) Marvels! Exultations! I'm going to learn Swedish! Certainly not to any true proficiency, I'm sure, but I just want to get some basics down and then decide how to proceed from there. I can read my great-grandmother's collection of letters from the old country! I can do Swedish geneological research over the web! I can start saving for my trip to Sweden!

How's that for a random ambition? Sweden's not exactly an a-list hot travel spot. But like it matters. I'm going to find my ancestors! I only know a few generations back on several lines.

On another goal front, I'm on the market for a violin but thoroughly stumped as to how to proceed. Amazon has junky ones for as little as $60, and not even I'm cheap enough to go that route. But what of a $200 model? $400? I can't afford very much, and don't want to anyway because this is far more Fun Hobby than Serious Endeavor, but I also don't want to buy utter rubbish in case I turn out to be halfway good. If anyone on this wide world web has knowledge of violin buying...

Levity for the lousy-feeling

2008-05-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

I'm sick, and sick of being sick, especially what with the weather so nice and my planned triumphant return to running having to be delayed. But fear not! Ogden Nash knows how I feel:

The Common Cold

Go hang yourself, you old M.D,!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
In not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

So what if it's true? Likewise, harmless?

2008-05-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

I've written before about the Mark Steyn case and section 13 of Canada's Human Rights Act. Another chap accused of violating it challenged it on the grounds that truth and fair comment are no defense to an alleged violation, as would be available in normal tort actions. The Canadian federal justice department responded thusly:

"Mr. Lemire complains that the prohibition against disseminating hatred via the Internet is not accompanied by the defences of truth and fair comment that are available to traditional news media in torts ranging from defamation to seditious libel. This argument is misleading. The defences of truth and fair comment remain available to torts such as defamation and seditious libel, regardless of the medium in which they occur. However, none of the traditional media can avail themselves of these defences in cases of alleged hate propaganda, whether the communication appears in print, on television or on a website.
"As the Federal Court has explained, defences that may be available in tort actions are not available in cases of hate propaganda because the prohibition is concerned with adverse effects, not with intent."

Got that? Who decides if what you've said is "alleged hate propaganda?" Umm, some administrative judge. And, as otherwhere documented, they tend to decide in the affirmative at a rate of oh, 100%. Whew, good thing truth and fair comment are no defense. Otherwise some 1% of those evilsayers might have gotten off! Keep in mind too that a successful complaint needn't prove harm or even actual offense.

Where's mindlessly quoted Blackstone when you need it?

Oh, here goes California

2008-05-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

I hope to get to read this whole opinion today, as it's a slow day at work. But the take-away from the first couple paragraphs is to smile sadly at memories of how many times I've heard people say that they don't favor gay marriage, but that civil unions are really just a fundamentally fair and reasonable measure. Or that civil unions are so way not a step down a path that will inexorably lead to gay marriage. Yep.

UPDATE: The majority's attempt to distinguish polygamous relationships and adult incest is so lame. I'm going to assume that because no one has yet made a persuasive rejoinder to Scalia's Lawrence v. Texas dissent that it simply can't be done.

Poor, poor bears

2008-05-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

People don't like it when I opine that much of the environmental movement is more concerned with power and control over society and the economy than with actual environmental woes; environmentalism is a means to a statist end. Well, boo hoo--I may be no clairvoyant, but even if some environmentalist motives are indeed pure concern, the movement's methods are intellectually dishonest and make use of shut-up-and-don't-ask-questions-or-we'll-label-you-a-hater propaganda techniques. Obama goes around saying that cap-and-trade will be this wonderful economic boon creating thousands of "green jobs," which is obvious twaddle to anyone capable of rigorous economic analysis. Polar bears are made a cause de celebre when their populations are perfectly stable. Next news cycle: the sky is falling. All in service of the greater good, of course.

UPDATE: Okay, I'll throw environmentalists a bone: instead of being mostly concerned with garnering power and implementing statism, they can split the majority proportion of bad motives with feeling good about proclaiming themselves righteous while hiding the actual costs of their policies. Case in point is California's illusory greenery.

UPDATE AGAIN: And oh yeah, let's not forget the profit motive.

Republican autocannibalism

2008-05-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

Dang it. Dang it, dang it, dang it, dang it. Dang it. Just when I think I'll be able to hold my nose and vote for McCain, he has to go and remind me why he's a damnable illiterate in all sorts of important areas. Economics, to start with.

Neuroscience and religion

2008-05-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

David Brooks has been reading in the neuroscience section of the library. Don't wander there much myself, though I was highly interested by Derbyshire's essay in the latest National Review. If Brooks is right, scientists are no longer monolithically rejecting the existence of a higher power because they can observe its influence and effects, and the debate from now on is going to center on whether a defensible case can be made for that higher power taking the shape of the Biblical God. Apparently scientists are likely to hotly argue not, for various scientific reasons I don't grasp.

In some ways this seems a very pleasant development, if only because it might shush at least a little bit twerps like certain classmates in First Amendment who kept asserting that allowing any religious POV into education was like allowing students to be taught that two plus two is five. Religion was untrue and they knew it because science had said so and that was that, and anyone who couldn't grasp this QED truth was only too obviously an intellectual neanderthal (the south is crawling with 'em). And don't worry, the science in which we put all our faith has progressed way far and would definitely never be used to justify horrible things like eugenics and genocide like it just might have happened to have been in the past. Religion was used to justify horrible stuff too, so there...

Needless to say, I don't find such a compelling argument. And maybe this neuroscience news won't matter to anyone else any more than it does to me. From a materialistic point of view, religion-as-inbred-evolutionary-impulse or religion-as-anti-intellectual-relic-of-primitive-superstitious-man will always make much the most sense, and in my schooling I was buried by these points nearly every day. So rational, so logical, so obvious, nein?

Problem is, I know what I know. Rather, in terms of faith, I know that I know. My worldview is mine not because some science that I don't actually understand but believe anyway because such is the intellectual fashion told me so, but because a revelatory source and influence outside myself communicated it to me. And no matter how anyone explains my experience away by reasoning it must have been a case of manufacturing feelings for myself out of powerful wishful thinking, who cares what anyone says? They haven't experienced what I have, over and over and in situations where I wasn't looking for it or wishing for it.

So did Jonah really survive three days inside a fish? Dunno. Probably. Ho hum. Even if the Bible got a thing or two wrong, my faith is secure. One of the perks of being a Mormon--I don't have to believe that the more gibberish-y passages of the Bible are inerrant and deep. Meanwhile a close study of modernly revealed scripture puts together a logical structure that is pretty darn airtight, once a few basic unproveable premises are accepted (God lives, and works through revelation today).

Shooting down helpless little clay discs

2008-05-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

Man, I've been almost internet-free for a week, and it feels good. Haven't even read National Review, and that's a big deal for me. It's a funny old world...

Last Thursday I awaited the arrival of a friend from college and his brother, who had asked to stay with my folks and I for the night as the halfway between Oklahoma and Salt Lake, where friend is moving for a new job. His brother drove his car and he drove a rental truck with his stuff, and they had no reason to think their roadtrip would be impeded on this, the second of May. They were so wrong. A late spring storm moved in and though it didn't do much down here, in the mountains it was pretty severe. They moved out Friday morning but couldn't get through because I-80 through Wyoming was closed. I-70 was open, I think, but I sure wasn't going to let some Okie drive a rental truck on those roads when snowy. So they came back, defeated, and brother had to fly back to Oklahoma to get back to work and Friend got out with the truck the next day once the snow had cleared a bit, but this left his car sitting in my driveway. So, since I'm the nicest friend ever, I finished my last final Monday afternoon and set out Tuesday morning for Salt Lake. I actually didn't mind it at all and got a lot out of it--the drive was beautiful, I like driving, and it was a chance to see relatives.

Plus I can obtain in Utah that which I can obtain in no other way: mounds and mountains and piles and piles of books! Deseret Industries is the thrift store for Mormons, fulfilling also a lot of church welfare functions but for my purposes is the place where people donate their no-longer-wanted books, where I buy them for a buck or two apiece. This trip I made a pretty good haul--my favorite find was a hymnbook in French, and I also love a book about Marjorie Hinckley (biographies in general are an all-around fave). That evening my brother and I went to visit our aunt, and I realized that she still has boxes of books cleaned out of grandpa's house after he died. I've already gotten my mitts on many of them, but didn't ask for them all for fear of being grabby. I needn't have worried, for lo these three months later none of my cousins or aunts or uncles have asked for any of the rest. All mine! Grandpa was a great collector of churchy books from long ago, so I now have several titles that I've seen quoted but never thought I'd read like Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Smith and Sjodahl, Outlines of Ecclesiastical History by B.H. Roberts, Where Is Wisdom? by Richards, and Life of Christ by Farrar, and Man: His Origin and Destiny by Joseph Fielding Smith. Treasures!

I'm under no illusions that I'll be able to read all of these books any time soon or even ever. I love the books themselves, just because they're old and rare, and I like to know that I'll always have something worthwhile to read. Moreover, if I ever have a family I want them to have good options. Meanwhile, I definitely need to invest in another shelf.

The other fun event in Utah was Grandpa's first reaction upon hearing I was coming--"let's go shooting!" Pretty much nothing he'd rather do : ) I hadn't been for awhile either, as a trip to the range gets low priority when I'm in the middle of school. I'm still lousy with any species of handgun, but got a bit better once the range officer kindly showed me how to hold a revolver properly. It's just so hard not to flinch, though. And I'm comfortable with a shotgun, but the one we shot wasn't about to hit anything even in the hands of an expert. It had belonged to my other grandpa who died, an ancient sixteen-gauge model that definitely hasn't seen any action lately. It's a break action, which is quaint to one such as I who loves my pump-action, and moreover the shell ejector didn't work. Had to pry and pop the shell out after every round. Moreover, to break the action open requires a bit of downward force on the barrel, which is usually obtained by pulling down on the stock on the underside of the barrel. The stock on this one popped off the first time my brother tried that. The other option is to push from the top of the barrel, which gets to roughly a million degrees hot after every round. Let's just say I've never had to handle a gun so gingerly, and most of the helpless little clay discs escaped unscathed.

I'll part with a political point: I know full well the gun control issue will never be compromised upon, because it's so often a matter of personal experience and worldview. For instance, I grew up around guns and was taught how to safely handle one from a very young age. They're just not a big deal to me; fun tools that you have to be really careful with but are a good time to target practice with. And let me assure you that huge part of my upbringing was the understanding that any horseplay, tomfoolery, or other improper handline of firearms would result in BIG TROUBLE.

In contrast, for a lot of my more liberal and urban acquaintances, I get the impression that guns are something sinister and scary and shady. Such people wouldn't know the first thing about handling one unless they learned it from a video game and just think they're all murders waiting to happen. Such would have been paranoid and freaked out to walk onto a gun range like the one I was at, whereas I hadn't the slightest fear for my safety because I knew I was with good people.

My dad is a major gun enthusiast, both in the hobby and the politcal sense, and one of his favorite things is to invite people shooting. So many times he's taken a person who thought guns were scary and bad and would have voted for gun control, put them behind a shotgun for a few rounds of trap, and had them admitting to a great time. People who learn how to properly handle firearms tend to accept the "guns don't kill people; people kill people" formulation, in my experience.

FWIW. Also, men who hang out at shooting ranges are the nicest and most courteous men you will meet anywhere, period.

Graduation tomorrow!

Finals break

2008-05-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

Yowza. This has been a particularly action-packed finals week. CU law finals stretch over two weeks, but mine are so front-loaded that I'll be finished by 3:00 p.m. Monday of the second week. Admin law was harder than I'd thought, which basically means I was an idiot for thinking it's be at all easy, Domestic Violence was the most broadly-written test I've ever seen (no scenarios or fact patterns, just "Topic: what are the legal issues involved?" three times), and on Election Law just as I was clicking "exit and submit" I glanced at my outline and realized on the last question I'd missed a completely obvious and key issue. Ah well. C'est la vie, and the trope at this point anyway is that no 3L cares about doing particularly well on the last set of finals--just tell me I got a passing grade and give me the dang diploma already!

Funny story: Also during finals week came the deadline for bar applications. Most people were smart enough to get them completed and submitted ahead of time. Not me. So I had to take some time out of Election Law outlining to get a couple of forms notarized before I could mail them. I went to my credit union, explained my need for a notary, and was directed to the desk of a young man whose business suit tamed down his spiked hair and general punkyness. Nothing against punks, he just struck me as a lad who would far rather be working his dream job as manager for a rock band than dealing with credit union customers. I got him started notarizing and casually mentioned in the course of explaining that all this was for my bar application. He let it pass at the time, but as we were wrapping up he was searching for pleasantries and looked a little confused and said: "so, this is so you can be a bartender?"

Meh heh heh. I'm going to have to be more judicious in how I explain to people what I'm doing with my time this summer. Wouldn't want to be misunderstood...

Reminds me of other experiences when I joltingly realized that others were completely ignorant of terms that I consider routine. There was one small flap in my college newspaper when the University implemented a no-alcohol policy in dorms and undergrad organizations, but the article noted that "professional students" could still drink at school functions and the context made clear that that meant medical and law students. At least one letter-writer was outraged: how dare the writer demean other majors and programs by calling them non-professional! They were just as professional as any law or medical students! The traditional distinction whereby medical, law, and a few other degrees are classified not as academic masters or doctorates, but as professional degrees (I know there are correlations to academic designations, but professional is a specific subset), and medical and law students therefore professional students, was completely lost on this offended letter-writer. And the opinion editor ran the letter, probably thinking he had a point...

Anyway, I should be writing my economic analysis paper. It has stopped snowing, and had darn well better be for good, especially as it was bad enough to close highways and strand my friend here an extra night. On the second of May. Springtime in the Rockies, yay.

Here's a little global warming.

Here's a little first amendment and tax policy.

Very well, I accept.

2008-04-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

Post-finals, I plan to think through the feminist issues presented here much more thoroughly.

Right now, in the thick of finals, forget it...

Collateral Damage

2008-04-26T20:31:00.001-07:00

If true, oi. Wish I knew more. But too plausible to ignore.

Democratic autocannibalism

2008-04-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Deeelightful. Just splendid. Funny old world. Here I've been worried that McCain will lose because so many Republicans hate and won't volunteer for him, but if Hillary pulls off the nomination it's a wash. Two candidates nobody likes. Vote in November '08: c'mon, there must be one you marginally prefer!

When Gabriel sounds his trump...

2008-04-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

...the final judgment can't possibly be any worse than what I'm going through now. Before they'll let you be a lawyer, you have to document every hint or whiff of wrongdoing as well as all substantive rightdoing from the age of eighteen. Who on earth remembers the address of the apartment she lived in in D.C. in the summer of 2003? Who on earth remembers the name of the company the temp agency placed her at for a week four summers ago? And how was I to know that robbery charge wouldn't be expunged from my record? (Just kidding on that last one.) All this in the middle of finals prep. Oi.

On the other hand, it's stopped snowing and it's a gorgeous day. Spring is a flighty temptress, and I always think that surely this time she's here to stay, but she's been letting winter muscle back in all over April. The road to my favorite hiking trail won't be passable until July, alas.

Speaking of hiking, as my last hurrah before my super-fun summer of bar prep and then my entry into the real world, I'm going to hike until my feet fall off. I'm thinking Canyonlands National Park, but if anyone has suggestions for more better places within reasonable driving distance of Denver I'm all ears.

Alas, poor Greenland

2008-04-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

Just to be contrarian. And because people get way too much personal satisfaction out of believing in the righteousness of fighting climate change.

The real reasons Mitt lost

2008-04-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's see if I can figure out how to embed YouTube videos. This is good stuff:

New Mexico wants you to be nice

2008-04-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

There's a lot wrong with this. It's an opinion issued by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission holding that a photographer cannot refuse to provide photography services for a same-sex commitment ceremony when she has a website, advertises to everyone, and does photography for a lot of straight weddings. I found out about this via Eugene Volokh, who does a good run-down of the legal (First Amendment) badness of it all here. A few other thoughts:

1) The NM Human Rights Commission should fire their clerk forthwith. Nowhere but in an intellectually soggy state agency could one get away with that bad of writing.

2) The complainant is sure a wee delicate bloom, to have been so "fearful" that the "opposition to same-sex [sic]" was "so blatant." C'mon. The photographer wrote a polite enough note, saying that she didn't as a rule photograph same-sex weddings. She even ended it with "have a nice day!" for crying out loud. If that's enough to make a gal fearful and thereby justify the policy of stomping all over the first amendment, then she should probably get some therapy. Or just stop reading all the liberal rags that so hysterically insist that everyone who has a moral or religious objection to same-sex marriage is on the brink of going on a machine gun rampage against every gay he or she can find.

3) Many (guess who) would find the following to be mere hair-splitting, but I think it's significant. Even if it's trivial, it should have been addressed to anticipate this objection (more intellectual sogginess): As quoted in the opinion, the New Mexico Human Rights Act prohibits "any person in any public accommodation [from making] a distinction, directly or indirectly, in offering or refusing to offer its services, facilities, accommodations, or goods to any person because of...sexual orientation..." NMSA 1978 28-1-7(F). Okay. But, Scalia-like (I'm thinking of his Lawrence dissent), I can't help noticing that the logic here doesn't completely connect. The photographer said she doesn't photograph gay committment ceremonies, not that she doesn't photograph gay people. Maybe she'd be unwilling to photograph a gay person marrying someone of the opposite gender in a traditional wedding, but nobody asked her because everyone assumed that opposition to gay marriage = opposition to gay people, and discrimination against them because they are gay. Which proposition would make a lot of people say "yes, exactly!" but it's not an airtight case.

And you may make the argument that opposition to gay committment ceremonies is a manifestation of animus against gay people, but that's psychoanalysis in a way the law does not and should not contemplate. Like it or not, it is possible to think that gay marriage or even gay committment ceremonies are a bad idea (on moral, religious, pragmatic, selfish, or other grounds) without harboring hatred or discriminatory impulses toward gay people. The statute as written doesn't allow you to blithely conflate the two without my calling you a base-stealer.

4) The opinion misstates or misunderstands almost every single case cited. NM really needs to invest in a Lexis account so its commission law clerks can shepardize a thing or two. Citing Hurley that way without further explanation would get you chewed out at any real job. Likewise, not citing Dale...

5) If New Mexico allowed gay marriage, Defendants wouldn't even be able to maybe grasp at my point three above. The extension of political authority over personal opinion would be that much more complete. First Amendment guarantees have, in this opinion, been completely subsumed by "human rights" concerns. If gay marriage were legal in NM, the plaintiff's argument would write itself: "What reason could she possibly have for not wanting to accommodate us besides illegal animus? After all, we were just getting married as approved and allowed by the state!" Which means that my opposition to gay marriage writes itself: Normalizing and state-sanctioning gay relationships will give much more leverage to laws like this which pretend to discern bad feelings and to outlaw them. And because commissioners are not telepathic, bad feelings have to be discerned on the basis of external evidence. And, mark my words, the more states legalize gay marriage, the more opposition to gay marriage or any political action tangentially gay-related will be used as evidence of illegal animus proving discrimination.

Rest in, ahem, peace

2008-04-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Wowwwwww...

The curious case of trade

2008-04-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not an economist, but this strikes me as sensible. It's worrisome how trade has become the all-purpose bogeyman for what's allegedly wrong with the country.

Facts on the ground

2008-04-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

Good piece on developments in Fallujah, from the always-awesome City Journal.

Victorian greenery

2008-04-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

I like this insight, from Yuval Levin:

"Far from viewing nature as the oppressor, this new vision sees nature as a precious, vulnerable, and almost benevolent passive environment, held in careful balance, and under siege by human action and human power. This view of nature calls for human restraint and humility—and for diminished expectations of human power and potential.

"The environmental movement is, in this sense, not a natural fit for the progressive and forward-looking mentality of the left. Indeed, in many important respects environmentalism is deeply conservative. It takes no great feat of logic to show that conservation is conservative, of course, but the conservatism of the environmental movement runs far deeper than that. The movement seeks to preserve a given balance which we did not create, are not capable of fully understanding, and should not delude ourselves into imagining we can much improve—in other words, its attitude toward nature is much like the attitude of conservatism toward society.

"Moreover, contemporary environmentalism is deeply moralistic. It speaks of duties and responsibilities, of curbing arrogance and vice. As Charles T. Rubin puts it in his insightful 1994 book The Green Crusade, 'environmentalism is the temperance movement of our time,' albeit largely devoid of the religious convictions that moved those prior progressives. Think 'addicted to oil.' It is a movement stirred by moralism to reform a prominent human excess, and driven by the hope that this reform will improve almost everything about life. As Al Gore put it before a Senate committee not long ago, 'the climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.'"

Celebrate diversity

2008-04-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last two years keeping more or less to myself, politically—I don't think any of my current crew know that I'm particularly political or which way I lean, unless they read this blog. Prior to these two years, however, I lived in a college town (Norman, OK) and held political conversations with left-leaning friends multiple times per week. For good measure, I was for several semesters a newspaper political columnist.

For some reason, in writing my last few columns I became less ideological and more armchair anthropologist. One of those columns observed that it was inane and low to use profanity in the way so many on campus did—screaming it across public areas, using it in class discussions, etc. I knew it would irritate the usual people (I got plenty of responsive email from people who disagreed with me from every column, not just this one) but thought that was that.

Then, the weekend after the column ran, I got a curious and unexpected email from the professor I was research assisting: he frequented an online discussion forum for Oklahoma Democrats, and noticed that another member had posted my column. In his words: “it's stirred up a veritable s*&#storm.” Naturally I moseyed on over, registered on the site, and dove in.

Wowee. The original poster of my column was a less-fire-breathing sort who just said he'd liked what I had to say and wished people didn't think vulgarity was a badge of honor. (I should note that he and, it seemed to me, most others were middle aged or older, non-students.) From there, someone who was a regular newspaper reader recognized my name and chided the first for posting the writings of a conservative activist. Then others started going through my archived columns and posting all sorts of my statements that they found to be reprehensible or just commenting on my thinking in general.

Which was all fair enough—had it stopped there I would have merely been glad that I'd started up a debate. (Okay, not so much a debate as a group condemnation.) But what was fascinating and provoking was how many posters (almost all of them, after a point; I really can't say why this went on so long. On a Saturday afternoon. Maybe it was raining.) took the pretty immediate leap into pronouncing conclusory inferences regarding my upbringing (cloistered and Victorian), economic status (I was obviously living off my parents' wealth), intelligence (middling), intellectual curiosity (zippo), and reading habits (only conservative stuff I agree with). The near-unanimous conclusion: here is a girl who knows nothing and is not interested in learning, but if she'd open her eyes to reality she'd understand just as we do. Specific quote: "I hope she learns to open her mind before it closes down forever."

Well, I decided, being un-humble, to set them straight. In a long long post I wish I still had a copy of, I told them that I in fact had been entirely economically independent since starting college, worked two jobs, got most of my news from neutral sources (I wish CNN weren't so tabloid-y, but there you are), and honestly tried to keep abreast of both sides' thinking in any political debate. I named the specific liberal (-ish, at least) publications I was then reading, and basically tried to make them feel ashamed of themselves for leading such cloistered lives that they could honestly believe anyone disagreeing with themselves must be stupid. The coup de grace was a challenge to all: let's compare reading lists.

Remarkable thing was, it worked. I was utterly shocked, but those who responded to my post pretty much folded like dryer sheets. One woman lamented that I was so articulate and wondered what they could do to inculcate such talent in young liberals. Others merely harrumphed that I was still conservative (=wrong) so obviously those traits don't amount to much. (They did when you considered them proof that my conservatism was generated by my inferiority!) And not a one had a comeback to my challenge. I felt smug and triumphant and had a happy evening.

It was a tiny tiny battle to win, though, and I should have recognized that there was no way to avoid losing the war. If what I say next is too harsh I can only protest that I speak as I find and my powers of observation may not be infallible: peoples of the leftist persuasion have this curious conviction that conservatives are ignorant. It isn't always or even often a function of malice, just that when they're in large groups with few conservatives present and it's simply a shared assumption and long-running joke or occasion for sorrow that progress is being denied when it needn't be. If only conservatives knew! If only we could enlighten them to the realities of the world and our obviously correct proposed solutions!

This presumption is ironclad. My postings on this blog make it nothing if not clear that I read thenation.com frequently (almost daily, in fact). I also regularly click over to prospect.org, the site for The American Prospect. I've gotten out of the habit, but used to check up on Mother Jones frequently. I also enjoy and regularly read The New Republic. If I could afford it, I'd subscribe to The Economist. Etc, you get the picture. When I was regularly writing columns, my loyal un-fan club (they weren't a club, I just always got mail from the same people) would send me links to articles explaining the liberal counterpoint with a triumphant "read this! Then you shall agree with me!" Nine times out of ten, I'd already read it. And yet remained a conservative! Go fig.

On the other hand, I have only once (darn you for ruining my tirade, Mike!) run into a liberal who regularly reads National Review or The Weekly Standard or City Journal or Policy Review or even Reason. The reason, I gather, is that conservatives are thought not to produce any writing worth reading. Who's being closed minded here? You can't even glance over the contents page of Policy Review without being impressed with the breath of interest and originality of analysis presented. You needn't agree, but could at least peruse a minute or two.

When, on my blog, I link to The Nation every week or so (yes, to point out fallacies and disagree, but at least I had to read to begin with), and then still get a visitor posting in a comment that I'm closed minded and uninterested in other peoples' problems and contrasting ideas, I get peeved. People of the world: insisting that everyone who disagrees with you is either unintelligent, morally flawed, or both may make your ego purr, but it does not in fact speak well of you. It probably means you're the one who never gets outside your echo chamber or deals with different ideas.

Effete Obama

2008-04-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

I hold out the hope that Obama will lodge his foot so securely in his mouth that even many of his supporters will realize he's a political dead-end. Awake, thou politically astute and left: things you say amongst yourselves, when congratulating yourselves for having figured out all the reasons lesser beings act as they do, are nowhere near familiar-sounding or anywhere within a million miles of obviously true to those actual lesser beings (i.e. non-urban voters).

My favorite take-away line from the 2004 election was a mock campaign slogan for John Kerry: Fear not America, for I have deigned to lead you! Applies more and more specifically to Obama as well.

P.S. I want to add this too, because it's relevant and precious:
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
--Michelle Obama

P.P.S. Vanden Heuvel piles on the condescension. Talk about your tin ear--if you can't tell why Obama's style is off-putting, then you have no business writing about politics.

P.P.P.S. Jonah Goldberg adds an excellent point: Obama seems to be saying that comparatively recent political mismanagement has wrecked the PA economy. In the past, it was a happy place where people had jobs and could afford health care. By that logic, doesn't that mean that Pennsylvanians would have been less religious and less fond of guns in that distant past? And is there anyone in this wide world who thinks that's actually true?

O, Canada!

2008-04-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

I wish this was getting more press. And it would take hours I don't currently have to explain it all in detail; if you're curious just follow more links from that one and the whole sorry affair will soon be clear to you.

Here's the gist of it: in Canada, views that are considered by the ruling ideology to be "hateful" are, instead of merely distasteful--criminal. The Canada Human Rights Commission has the power, under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, to investigate and sanction any communication (including internet) "that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination."

Let's unpack that: "likely" to "expose" anyone to "hatred" or "contempt." No one need prove that they've been actually harmed, merely "exposed"; and no one need prove that they've been actually exposed, only that some communication is "likely" to expose them. Even more creepily, it need not be one's own self that is likely to be exposed; I (were I Canadian) could file a complaint against, say, a website that disparages gay Buddhist Eskimos, and be personally awarded damages from the owners of the site. Even though I am nothing if not a straight non-Buddhist non-Eskimo.

Having thus dispensed with time-honored concepts such as standing and harm, you'd think it would be pretty darn easy to prove one's complaint. You'd be absolutely right. The conviction rate for those accused of Section 13 violation is not just "really high": we're talking corrupt Stalinist show-trials-to-dispose-of-Big-Brother's-enemies conviction rates. 100%. Every single defendant.

The conviction rate is probably also helped along by the fact that truth is no defense: "Messages that make use of allegedly true stories, news reports, pictures and references to apparently reputable sources in an attempt to lend an air of objectivity and truthfulness to the extremely negative characterization of the targeted group have been found to be likely to expose members of the targeted group to hatred and contempt." You got that? If I say something negative about a group, and back it up with facts, news reports, evidence--that's all the more proof that I'm likely exposing someone to hatred and contempt. The most prominent current Section 13 action is a complaint alleging that excerpts from Mark Steyn's book in a Canadian magazine exposed Muslims to hatred or contempt because it included the text "Muslims are breeding like mosquitoes." Wait for it: Steyn was directly quoting a European Muslim leader. No defense! How dare he report unpleasant things others have said that go against the script of our political prejudices!

It gets weirder. In the history of Section 13, about half of the cases have been brought by a single complainant: Richard Warman. Since 2002, Richard Warman has been a complainant on almost every single Section 13 case. Which rather undercuts the argument that Section 13 is a necessary recourse for the hated and suffering-from-contempt downtrodden of Canada: Warman is the only one bringing the complaints, and the only one reaping the financial reward of that miraculous 100% conviction rate.

And who is this Richard Warman, who is not himself downtrodden but loves to complain that somewhere somehow some Canadian is likely to be exposed to hatred or contempt? He's a former investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Guess you can't blame him for seizing the day when he noticed there was a lot more money to be made as a complainant than as an investigator. What's truly creepy is the plain fact that Warman is still good buddies with his former colleagues on the commission, and that when he's got a Section 13 complaint pending he's colluded with current investigators to beef up the case. By using pseudonymns to post hateful messages on accused websites. Using government computers. At least one current CHRC investigator has also used a pseudonym to post such messages.

And the other day, Warman sued several Canadian bloggers for defamation, for pointing out the above. Nice.

If you're not quite grasping how totalitarian all of this is, let's have a long talk some time. And put aside your opinion on the opinions involved: this isn't about whether it's laudable to be a jerk to people who are different. This boils down to Canada's delusional effort to make the world a perfectly nice and sunshiny place where no one even thinks anything mean, and Canada's scary choice of kangaroo courts, entrapment and evidence-planting by government investigators, and laws written to allow infinitely elastic interpretations against the ideologically disfavored. Since when did free speech cease to be a human right?

Undercover Mormon

2008-04-10T09:41:00.001-07:00

I posted recently about my confusion as to how Protestants view the role of prophets and apostles. This line of thought was sparked by Elder Holland's talk on Sunday, about the logical inconsistencies in the position that God closed the canon with the Bible. My earlier post expressed my confusion that Ephesians 2:20-21 is uniformly interpreted to mean that we don't need no prophets no more, which is of course a reasonable interpretation but by no means a necessary one, especially in light of several other factors I listed there.

Basically, I wanted to know why people think the way they do. And then on Wednesday the thought hit me--get it from the horse's mouth, of course!

I was driving home from school and had switched on the radio to KRKS. It was Gino Geraci's time slot, but a substitute was filling in--Ed Taylor. And I hope this wasn't a jerky thing to do, but I called in to the show. I didn't want to badger or debate, just to see how Ed would explain the issue. For that reason it's probably good that I called while driving instead of while sitting at a table with my Bible open. Otherwise I would have wanted to talk back and debate, which definitely would have been jerky. So I just listened.

I asked: how should Ephesians 2:20-21 be understood? Why doesn't God call prophets and apostles anymore? No doubt he's thought this through before (his church's website has an extensive apologetics section) but I was, well, unimpressed.

First, he said, that the apostles called by Jesus were the only legit for that reason, and that after Jesus was gone He couldn't call any more Apostles. (But...He wasn't living on the earth when He called the Old Testament prophets.) I interrupted to ask: what about Matthias? Well, responded Ed, that was just Peter freelancing. Matthias wasn't really an apostle called by Jesus, and since he's never mentioned in the New Testament again we know he wasn't really an apostle like the remaining eleven were.

And here's where it is definitely good I wasn't looking at a Bible as he spoke, because I would have really been a pain. What about Acts 1:15-26? Was Peter misunderstanding Psalms when he said that Judas' place should be taken? Or does that passage mean that someone takes Judas' place but doesn't get the full authority? And when the apostles prayed to know who God had chosen between Barsabas and Matthias, it sounds to me like their choice following was an inspired answer to that prayer and not Peter's unauthorized decision. It is at least a perfectly reasonable interpretation of that passage that the remaining eleven were acting in accordance with Jesus' will when they filled Judas' spot and that they intended that apostolic authority to carry on.

Then we have the matter of Paul. Ed Taylor continued in his answer, saying that some, and he seemed to conclude himself in that number, but I wasn't quite sure, but in any case he does not condemn the views of these some, believe that Paul was such an apostle called of God and not Peter. Which is a helpful thing to believe if you believe the majority of the post-gospels New Testament is God's word and not the words of some dude called by Peter but not endorsed by Jesus. Ed acknowledged the contradiction between believing that Matthias wasn't really an apostle but Paul was, and just kind of left it at that. I left it at that too, both out of my desire to not cause a scene on the guy's own show and also to get in my final question:

If the apostles weren't needed save as an initial foundation, and the church was able to carry on fine without them, why then the need for the Reformation? Ed's answer was no answer at all, just a metaphor about when you're driving to a birthday party and you take a wrong turn and don't immediately correct it, you then eventually have to make a huge mondo turn to get back on track. Oooookay. Got that. But doesn't it strike anyone that if the post-apostolic Catholic phase of Christianity was, as Protestants believe, all sorts of wrong, then that kind of argues against the Protestant belief that the church could do just fine without apostles?

I wish I could have about ten hours of a pastor's time to talk all this through. I just don't understand the thought process, and I wish I did.

Picture of the weak

2008-04-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

It's only Wednesday, but my sense of the ridiculous has been building up and is now spilling over at The Nation online's "picture of the week." You can't tell me that's not funny. I guess I should be glad the lefties are too wrapped up in their self-absorbed and silly stunts to get out there and do any actual damage.

Get involved! they chant. Make a difference! Raise consciousness! By...laying on the floor and making your bodies spell out some slogan while people who already agree with you look on approvingly! That way you won't have to miss out on your favorite show tonight, but can still feel superior and heroic.

Grace on the cheap and tacky. Love it.

Peradventure He sleepeth

2008-04-07T14:34:00.001-07:00

The first weekends of April and October are two of my favorite events of the year--Mormons everywhere tune in to their tv, internet, or meetinghouse satellite feed for General Conference, broadcast live from Salt Lake City (and translated into about a bazillion languages). The days are long past when all Mormons lived in Utah and could regularly hear from their leaders in person (I know a bit about those days from several ancestors' journals) so it's really just a treat to get to see the Prophet and the Apostles at all.

It's a little difficult for me to wrap my mind around just how weird that last sentence must sound to someone who hasn't grown up Mormon. Did a rational, intelligent, educated young woman just mention a current Prophet and Apostles without irony? It's really too bad that a few weirdo cults have driven the popular imagination of people who believe in such things. Slavering, blank-eyed peons who come with creepy background music--as opposed to normal Joes who don't believe in Prophets! I have a sneaking and unproveable suspicion that a lot of Christians who sincerely believe in ancient prophets do so in part because they're ancient. Wore robes and sandals, had long beards, spoke dead languages. Communion with the divine is palatable only if both exotic and remote. (Branch Davidian types fail the second criterion; Mormons fail both.) But clean-shaven men in suits who drive cars and went to Harvard? Please. So doesn't fit the template.

And they're not just leaders in the administrative sense--they're prophets. Seers, revelators. I believe that Christ leads His church not just in the Protestant sense of giving disparate individuals a nudge now and then, such that they go to Bible College or start a ministry or something, but that He guides His cohesive church in long-ago-prophesied directions and helps its members cope with modern and changing problems by inspiring His chosen leaders to give specific counsel. I follow them because I follow Him, and when I act in faith to obey He graciously helps me to know for myself through the Holy Spirit that the counsel is from God and not from man.

This conference was terrific. The prophet, his counselors, the Apostles, and other leaders take turns speaking for 15 or so minutes on whatever subjects they feel like. The talks generally aren't earth-shattering; Mormons are no different from the rest of humanity from needing to be reminded as much as instructed. But often they explain things in ways I wouldn't have thought of myself and that really hit home. And their knowledge of scripture--including the Bible--is formidable, and they use that knowledge to teach very effectively.

It does bother me when people figure that only the weak-minded have deep faith. I know I'm not a sheep, and I know a lot of awfully smart people who believe the gospel whole-heartedly. In fact, the closer I get to God, the more my intellect is sharpened. The Spirit enhances natural gifts, and church leaders never ask me to believe things that I know could not be true.

Moreover, I don't think a believable case could be made that the Prophet and Apostles are weak-minded, as they're obviously intelligent and articulate and not Koreshian even a little bit. And it would take a truckload of cynicism to think that they're merely power-hungry shepherds diabolically keeping the flock in darkness to serve their own sinister ends. President Monson worked in publishing. President Eyring went to Harvard and taught business at Stanford. President Uchtdorf was a higher-up at Lufthansa. President Packer has high degrees in education from secular schools. Elder Nelson was a trailblazer in modern heart surgery. Elder Oaks taught at Chicago Law and served on the Utah Supreme Court. Elder Ballard and Elder Wirthlin were successful businessmen. Elder Scott was a military nuclear engineer. Elder Hales was CEO or COO (I forget which) of big-time companies. Elder Holland has a PhD in American Studies from Yale. Elder Bednar was a university business professor. Elder Cook and Elder Christofferson were respected lawyers. (I left out Elder Perry because I can't remember what he did.) Is it surprising that the Lord would assemble a group of talent like that to administer to the needs of a fast-growing world-wide church? And is it really believable that a group of talent like that would leave their successes to live less remunerative, much more harried lives just so they could mesmerize a bunch of sheeple for a few hours twice a year? Those who try to discredit the church by slandering the character or competency of its leaders are whistling in the wind.

Also, I don't get the Protestant arguments for explaining away Ephesians 2:20-21, which teaches that the church should be built on the foundation of Apostles and Prophets. "But we are!" they say. "Those Apostles and Prophets lived back then, set up the foundation, and now we can carry on without them." Makes superficial sense, but it requires a few huge leaps in logic of the sort that when you take them, you'd better be right. But all they have is conjecture. Why, for instance, should God throughout absolutely all of history call Prophet after Prophet, and then suddenly stop a generation after Christ? Because you don't need them any more? Right, because the world is so fun and simple right now. Because you're so all-fired good and righteous enough to get along without? According to whom? The New Testament is filled with dire warnings that people will be lead astray and reject the truth and follow false teachers, not that church members will be so saintly and faithful that they will no longer require leadership. (2 Thes 2:3, 2 Tim 1:15, 2 Tim 4:2-4, 2 Pet 2:1, Acts 20:29, Matt 13:25, see also Amos 8:11). The argument that Paul was talking to those other people and not to me is a really difficult call to make objectively, nein? And besides, Protestants as a rule believe that Catholics messed things up throughout history, necessitating the Reformation, meaning that Protestants of necessity believe that post-Apostles, the church went in at least some ways astray.

In addition, why doesn't the New Testament specify that the Apostles' work was only for a short time, after which the church could soldier on alone? I think the narrative indicates the opposite: Matthias was chosen to fill in the Apostles, and the twelve ordained Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, Nicolas, etc. Agabus and others were referred to as prophets and their teachings recorded. The Apostles made effort to keep the line of authority from Christ going. That they were thwarted from doing so certainly doesn't prove that they were happy in the knowledge that the church was being left without inspired leadership.

Joseph Smith wasn't the only one claiming that the restoration of ancient church authority was necessary. There were all sorts of restorationists, most notably Roger Williams. Ralph Waldo Emerson forcefully cautioned churchmen against falling into the trap of teaching that God's works and words are done and gone.

Anyway, I'm sorry to wail on Protestants once again. I'm just curious about how thoughtful people think this through. I would think it'd be a bit nerve-wracking to believe that there can't be any more prophets or apostles, and that there can't be any more scripture, and that we should reject all claims that God is speaking and calling, based not on explicit revelation but upon inferences based on scripture, upon the meaning of which reasonable people may disagree. Yikes. Just, yikes.

Doesn't anyone ever think "ooh, another book claiming to be scripture inspired by God? How exciting! I will read the Book of Mormon forthwith to see if it is what it claims to be!" I'd be totally excited if I heard new scripture had come forth. I'm always totally excited to hear counsel from the Prophet and Apostles, whose teachings are inspired by God.

Ideology or Temperament?

2008-04-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

I've now attended the University of Colorado at Boulder for almost a full two school years. You'd think I'd be used to pervasive lefty-ism by now. Yet every now and then it still manages to stun me! Perhaps I'm dense, or have a short term memory problem.

Today in election law we were discussing not the law, but the policy behind campaign finance reform. The prof asked if such laws are necessary because people have unequal influence on governmental actors, and a normally quiet kid answered very passionately "of course they do, because if more regular (in context he meant non-wealthy) people had influence then we obviously wouldn't have policies like tax cuts for the rich!"

Whoa, Nell. Of course all but two of us nodded along. (How does it never bother them that their entire academic experience takes place in an echo chamber?) Leaving aside the merits of his premises (wrong, according to moi, obviously), the behavioral discrepancy struck me. I would never ever ever in a million bazillion years make the opposite point: "of course they do, because if political discourse wasn't driven by big-Hollywood donors to the democrats then socially and morally liberal ideas wouldn't have gained so much currency!"

And today, I wondered: why? Because I know that such a point would goad my classmates to bust out their rhetorical torches and pitchforks? (Last semester in family law, the very hedged, very limited, very stated-on-pragmatic-and-not-moral-grounds opinion expressed that legalizing gay marriage might have undesirable effects got me called akin to a racist. The professor just nodded along thoughtfully. Ouch.)

The answer is pretty much yes. I do not enjoy confrontations of that sort, and moreover I realize they're utterly futile. These people do not want to hear contrary opinions. End of story. But the real question is personal: do I fear making waves because I natively don't like confrontation? Or have my past experiences making waves made me into the sort that doesn't like confrontation? Am I accommodating because I'm nice, or because I'm cowed?

Dunno. I should go back to school, get my PhD in psychology, and study the effects of peer pressure on ideological minorities.

The smug left informs me of my moronic self-absorption

2008-04-07T09:00:00.001-07:00

The Nation today serves up a really interesting distillation of how liberals see, and misunderstand, conservative politics. Anyone who could describe Mike Huckabee as McCain's "sworn rival," more likely to attack McCain than to, you know, slavishly promote McCain's candidacy from the depths of the biggest political man-crush since ever is very clearly unqualified to accurately analyze Republican politics.

As an aside, I think The Nation and its liberal brethren are objectively snarkier, on the whole, than the conservative rags. Rob Long may take some sharp shots at liberals, but it's perfectly clear that his articles are parodies. Condescension and omniscient conservatives-in-the-mist psychoanalysis is woven throughout the serious stuff in liberal articles. On the whole. There are always exceptions, on the fringes. But would anyone disagree that The Nation/National Review constitutes the respectable middle for both sides?

Anyway, how inconvenient for Perlstein to run this on the same day his Exhibit A for the proposition that "The New York Times obviously doesn't have it out for McCain," Bill Kristol, publishes his column basically predicting that Obama will mash McCain into the carpet. (The "but beware, Obama's nancy-Harvard persona may prove his undoing!" ending is just bet-hedging.)

And when you start from the premise that Mike Reagan, Laura Ingraham, et al are morons, the conclusions you draw are going to be equally wrong. This is no stand on principle or fight for what they belive to be correct policies, Perlstein intones. What they want from McCain is kowtowing, ring-kissing, deference to their traditional GOP kingmaking role! He dug up some quote from DeLay saying that what conservites want from McCain is an attitude adjustment, not positional adjustment. Because (a) McCain is so obviously conservative (83 lifetime ACU rating) that there's no adjustment possible to make and (b) these conservative noisemakers need to preserve their illusion of being representative of the rubes (Republican voters) out in the sticks who have most ungratefully gone and voted for McCain despite the displeasure of their radio overlords.

There is a place in political analysis for ignoring substance when style is driving the story. But doing so when substance is the story does not bode well for your chances of being thought of by me as anything more than a blinkered lefty hack. Breezing by with the assertion that McCain is a substantive, if not lockstep, conservative is to completely overlook the key to the whole puzzle Perlstein claims to be solving. Is it so hard to state the obviously relevant? Here, I'll do it for you:

McCain hearts basically unbounded immigration.
McCain hearts close governmental control on what can be spent and what can be said in politics.

NOW then, we can get to the rest. Parse the political merits of both those positions as you will, there's no denying they're big and relevant issues. The first is a social engineering experiment whose current and future consequences are unallowed by political correctness to be even discussed, and the second is fraught with political control boobytraps. Strong feelings abound with respect to both. Republicans tend to be on the opposite side of both from McCain, for very good reasons that they discuss extensively among themselves, though Perlstein probably believes they back up their positions with nothing more than a mean, racist, privilege-preserving streak.

So is it any wonder that McCain has been hard to swallow? And is it any wonder that an assurance by McCain that, despite our differences, he is in the main on the side of his party and doesn't simply enjoy flouting their preferences for the sake of his own ego, would be devoutly wished by GOP leaders?

Sounds pretty logical to me. But it wouldn't allow Perlstein to be so smug and entertaining to his readers. Alas.

Green tip: how to save on air conditioning

2008-04-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

I've found a new saying for "mentioning something considered by everyone else to be vulgar and inappropriate:" mentioning Tony Rezko in a room full of Obama supporters. It was in election law, the professor asked for examples of whether political corruption was even all that big a problem any more, and I naturally thought of the Illinois "alternative" fundraiser. I well knew that utterly everyone in this famously free-thinking school is all about the Obama, but gee, isn't a knowing sidelong glance at the bad habits of authority figures still the main currency of the intelligensia? Well...no. Nope. Not. Not when it's a charming Democrat who may well be the political, nay, the moral salvation of America. As soon as I said Rezko the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. Some things just aren't done. Stop denting the aura, man!

Contrast this with the iron-clad belief of every law professor and law student everywhere ever that they are at least three orders of magnitude smarter than Scalia, who is frankly ridiculous. It's a fascinating tic with these people that they simply cannot discuss any writing by him without throwing in some comment on his intelligence/scurrilous motive/hidebound ideological prejudice.

Not that it's any less than simply human to scrutinize those we disagree with and resent criticism of those we support. I do it myself, obviously. But you can't deny it's irritating to be on the wrong side of a monolithic cultural norm that everybody loudly insists is a brave and subversive intellectual stand. Pshaw. I've got three weeks left of law school classes. If I were brave at all I'd spend them trumpeting long and loud my agreement with everything conservative, traditional, and jurisprudentially Scalia-ish.

But I'm not brave, I'm conciliatory and a lover of tranquility. Though perpetually moderately irritated by the status quo.

Cassandra infiltrates the megachurch

2008-03-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

I not infrequently get weird ideas, and get excited about them, and within a matter of days carry them out without really thinking them through. It's generally a fun way to live. And this past weekend was no exception--first the symphony on a whim, then a sudden desire to attend a megachurch!

I guess it just hit me that here at age nearly-24 I had never attended any worship save for Mormon. And since my interest in comparative theology (fancy term for getting irritated with anti-Mormons) has been growing, I could not as a fair-minded person comment on what I had never directly experienced.

So I did a quick directory search for churches in my area, looking for one that met not during my own Sabbath meetings, was big enough so that I could be anonymous and get in and out without being pestered to be saved, and had a completely different style from what I'm used to in church. Southeast Christian Church filled all criteria nicely.

I was pretty literally awed as I entered--it looks big enough from the outside, but by golly, it's big. The foyer looks like the lobby of a convention center. And has a coffee bar at the back, proudly serving Starbucks. And a small bookstore. And a welcome center for newbies. And a little seating area. And the entrances to at least two auditoriums (okay, probably solely two. I was just a little overwhelmed and imagining auditoriums sprouting up everywhere). It's nothing on the scale of the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City, but most Mormons never attend a meeting there. It's incomprehensible to think of attending church there every week.

I paced around a bit, dodging the very large crowd all greeting each other--in fact I was very favorably impressed. I'd expected that in a church that large no one would know anyone, but there was bonhomie all around.

I slid into the main auditorium only a few seconds before the sermon started (50 seconds, in fact, which I know because a countdown was projected onto the large screens on either side of the stage). The seats were tres comfy, movie theater stadium-style, and even though I was in the next-to-back row (the better to observe and be unobserved) I still had a swell view of everything.

Honestly, the Conference Center is the best comparison for the building. It's a mini-conference center, although considered on its own there's nothing mini about it. A huge difference, though, is the stage, or rather what's on it: an enormous multi-piece banner, brightly colored, showing a boy's face peeking out of the bedclothes and the scaryy-cartoon-lettered word "MONSTERS." Then, propped in front of the back row of musicians, the five foot tall monsters themselves (cardboard cutouts). Cute little guys.

If that paragraph made you wonder what the heck monsters have to do with a Christian sermon, then you know what I felt as I was handed a program with the same graphics. I thought for a moment I was accidentally headed into the kids' service, but was not. Apparently I arrived in time for the premiere of a six-week series on several sins, a.k.a. monsters. Lurking in our hearts, just like we used to think real monsters lurked under the bed! Cute. Greed, anger, gluttony, envy, lust, um...sloth? That wasn't it. And I seem to have some residue of historical awareness rattling around in my head that there were seven deadly sins, so I'll have to look up which one is no longer considered dangerous when I get interweb back. (Typing on the bus = no dumb links.)

So that was my first impression as I walked into the auditorium. Childish and cartoon-y. Good thing it got better from there. But not before it got worse. And it's churlish of me to pick a church based specifically on its degree of difference from what I'm used to and then to criticize those differences, but I can't help it--Christian rock music is abominable, and I couldn't help but be displeased to find my ears suddenly full of it. Christian rock is even worse than Mormon pop, and that's saying something. Why worse, you ask? Well, the lyrics are incorrigibly repetitive. Two-line verse, two-line chorus, repeated over and over with maybe a four-line bridge thrown in somewhere. Intensity manufactured by means of starting out with no bass, then adding bass. Voila! I know I'm being an insufferable snob.

So I'll repent, and fully admit that I was impressed with the feeling in the room. It would be easy as anything for any of the attendees to throw on a CD at home to worship, but they seemed to really get something out of being together, clapping, holding up their hands, etc. And there was a great deal of sincerity shining from several faces, perhaps more than you might see in a Mormon congregation singing "Lead, Kindly Light" for the bazillionth time. On the other hand, to see good and sincere religious people completely jettisoning their heritage of awesome Christian hymnody is just sad. I wonder how they would defend their preference for "cultural relevance" on intellectual, as opposed to pragmatic, grounds. During communion, only a keyboardist was playing, a pretty but repetitive melody that I could have written myself--major, minor, resolve with dissonance. Introspection in a can, musically speaking. The same song could be the backdrop for any quiet emotion in a movie scene, even emotions far removed from worship. It's just a little sad that people opt for the puddle when the ocean is available.

The "praise team" led several loud songs and everyone seemed obliged to stand and clap, so, feeling it was rude to abstain, I stood but could not bring myself to clap. My notions of propriety forbad, I suppose--one does not clap on the Sabbath! Besides, I was taking notes. Finally the musical punishment ended and the baptisms of two twelve-ish boys was performed. It was by immersion, by which I was impressed, and was done in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I badly wanted to ask someone who has the authority to baptize but the other back-row dwellers nearby seemed uncommunicative and didn't want to miss what was coming next.

The sermon was good, though I didn't much care for the pastor's delivery. Must be nice to be a nondenominational Christian and be able to hop around until you find a style that agrees with you; I've written about Mormons' comparative lack of cultivation of speaking talent before. But the substance of the sermon was great--don't be greedy, don't define yourself in terms of your stuff'n'things, don't be fooled into thinking more will satisfy you, don't go into consumer debt. Great stuff. What puzzled me was his use of scripture. Most of the quotations were from Ecclesiastes, using Solomon as an example of one tripped up by greed. Spanned three chapters at most. And by my count he used three different translations of the Bible! I guess if you have a range available it would be tempting to troll through them for the most quoteable verses, but three...I'd be a bit torqued if I was one of the families sitting near me with merely a NIV in hand. Besides NIV, he also used New Living Translation, and one whose full name I did not catch but was abbreviated MSG, tee hee...Ah, Wikipedia turns up an entry for a "Message Bible," so I presume that's it. I like my stolid old King James, and look rather askance at efforts to entrap something so ancient and grand (both the Bible itself and it's barely-modern English translation) in the ubiquitous Now. But I was also pleased at how much more comprehensible some of those obscure Ecclesiastes verses were when presented in modern language. I think I'll download a NIV or something for help when the KJV doesn't make much sense, but I wish it didn't need so to be. I've long felt that one of the diabolical aims of modern mis-education is to make people unable to fully appreciate scripture; giving up and going with new hip-to-the-lingo translations is not the best answer. And any new translation is pretty certain to reflect certain theological biases: any new translation of Paul will be taken with a pile of salt.

Anyway, I skipped communion (I figured the liquid was grape juice, but couldn't be positive, and though I know I'm as saved as any of them they would probably disagree) and didn't put a pink slip in the collection bag (which slips I assume are authorizations for the church to charge one's credit card for offerings, the credit card info having already been tendered. I mentioned this practice to a friend and she said she had often wished tithing could be via direct deposit. Intriguing, but it's probably better to have to go to the effort of writing out a check. And otherwise the Deacons would be out of a job). Nor did I have the guts to go to the front of the auditorium to meet a "prayer partner" as invited as the congregation was dismissed. I didn't want to lie about who I was or why I was there, and I didn't want to start a scene/debate if anyone discovered my beliefs. But I wish I'd gone to find out what exactly the prayer partners do. Otherwise, nobody talked to me, introduced themselves, or noticed me in the slightest, but I was ok with that. One must seek out one's welcome in a megachurch.

In sum, I'm really glad I went. I've been dwelling too much on Mormon-Creedal debates and getting too irritated at the disingenuousness of Creedal arguments and acquiring way too dark a view of modern Christianity in general. It did my heart good to spend an hour among people who love God and try to be good and sing about turning away from the world and don't care or talk much about Mormons. I even teared up at one point toward the end--the Praise Leader (should that be capitalized?) was vamping on the guitar and kind of bearing his testimony (in Mormon parlance) about how Christ can make us new. Amen.

and now I have reason to rejoice I'm not Mayan

2008-03-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and I'm about to give the universe incontrovertible proof that I'm the most incurable and hopeless nerd on the face of the planet ever: I spent money to go sit in an uncomfortable chair and listen to classical music for two hours alone. Yes. I did put up a Facebook plea for a concert buddy, but my only taker was someone I didn't know well that would have made for an awkward evening. None else among my friends or kin could be induced to come.

And I, impetuous in my nerd-dom, am tired of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up! If I reach for high culture I reach alone, but so be it. It was worth it. And I really shouldn't try to write like a credible music critic because I'm laughably incredible, but some general observations are screaming to be made.

I'm disappointed in Denver--Boettcher isn't all that big of a concert hall, and it was only a third full, if that. And what was full was mostly grey-headed. Sigh.

First, Haydn, "Il distratto." I wish I'd had time to read the program notes aforehand, because I kept finding the performance raucous and funny (alternating with merely breathtaking) and couldn't figure out why I was reacting like a twit. Raucous really isn't the right word; it was simply offbeat attitudinally. Marvelous. The music is grand, grand, grand, and deep enough to swim in for the full half hour or however long. I loved every note. And afterward, when I read the program notes and realized the symphony was derived from the score to a comic play ("distratto" = absent-minded professor) I was consoled to know that my reaction was what Haydn would have wanted.

Second, the poster attraction of the night: Nicola Benedetti soloing the Bruch violin concerto, which I'd never heard before. Benedetti, insofar as I'm qualified to opine, was great, though I had much lost my focus by this point in the program. Not sure why, though her manic swaying and jiving to the music might have been a big part of it. I can appreciate working up a musical passion, but whoa nellie was she pitching about; must have been some invisible musical squall. But oh well, I love violin concertos and will certainly download Bruch to listen again and hopefully grasp this time.

Third, it all went to heck. The conductor, a guest artist from Mexico, apparently specially chose this piece out of a sense of very regrettable ethnic pride. In introducing it he said that some of us would love it and some of us would hate it, and that that was just fine. Right, I thought, I will certainly endeavor to love it. I fully recognize that I'm basically ethnocentric in my musical tastes and that the further one gets from Baroque Europeans the more inclined I am to disdain one's music. So I went into the Revueltas with all the good will in the world--and came out of it with a headache.

Apparently Revueltas was something of a Mexican Prokofiev--much of his best-known music was originally film scores, and such was the case with La Noche de los Mayas. And from the first note onward, you knew it. Every blessed millisecond of that piece evoked a particularly hokey 1930's costume drama with a laughably overwrought score. You would never sit down and listen for listening's sake to the score of, say, Captain Blood, but I would sooner have done so than listen to the Mayas. It didn't help that I was sitting on a mezzanine to the side, directly over the brass. Every several moments Revueltas had the tuba just blat--I'm not being snarky, that's honestly what the horn would do. Fiesta-style music...blaaaaaaat...a little more introspective...blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat...loud, crude, ugh. Incomprehensible.

The first three movements, aside from the asinine tuba braying, were merely hokey. The fourth movement was scary beyond all reason. Ever notice how a shorthand for non-American ethnic flair is mildly unusual drums? Here we were treated to thirteen percussionists. One of them playing the conch shell. One of them playing the same two rapidly repeating chords on a dingy xylophone until I wanted to chop it to tiny bits with a hatchet. And then several other loud, large ethnic drums and shaky/scrapey things. A good ten minutes of the performance was a sixteen-hour drum solo wherein the whole row kept basic time like a high school marching band drumline and each and every percussionist had a turn letting out his inner ethnic rock star. The timpanist let loose like he was on a drum set. The worm-shaped scrapey thingy got, um, scraped in sort of unpredictable rhythms. The maracas got shook around in a manner that was not, as intended, interesting. About twenty thousand drums, it seemed to me, had solo time. The xylophonist jammed out, though too tunefully and not ethnically enough. Twenty thousand more drums...I had noticed that there were two snares, only one of whom was playing the background drumline timekeeping. Surely, thought I, they won't both solo...as the second one started my woe ranneth over. Then--the piano soloed! With the same problems as the xylophone. Then--the huge gong soloed. Yes, a gong solo. The King and I-style gong. He'd gong it, then drum on the edge, then gong halfheartedly, muffle, gong again, edge again...it was about this point I realized my fists had involuntarily clenched. I took up digging my nails into my palm instead. Then--I assure you I was both conscious, sane, and am not making this up--the conch shell soloed. I was nearing readiness to pitch myself off the mezzanine. All I could think was "make the bloody noise stop!" And if "bloody" is a bad word, I was using it in the anatomically realistic sense that my eardrums were undergoing torture of a cruel and violent kind. The non-ethnic-percussion instrumentalists were visibly bored by all this. I saw the concertmaster chatting with her seatmate. The percussion showcase finally closed and there were several more moments of pan-orchestral insanity before the torturous ordeal ended. I did not stand for the ovation.

Anyway, the consummate badness of the third selection doesn't make me regret the night as a whole. I very much enjoyed my night at the symphony, expensive pasttime though it is. But where to find some friends willing to give up the faux-individualism of music everyone else is listening to and come with me down the path genuinely less traveled...?

Busting the Radio Silence

2008-03-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

Been a few days. But since the main purpose of this blog (readership: zero) is to give me a chance to practice writing, which practice I have been obtaining by other means the past few days, I guess I needn't really care if my blog is not updated every blessed day. Not sure how I've acquired the moderate guilt complex if it isn't.

This past Sunday was Easter, which is in general a delightful holiday but a specifically stressful one for choir directors. My ward's choir is always a bundle of surprises, and it was only two weeks prior that I finally figured out how to get attendance to skyrocket--bring cheese. Yep, with cheese and crackers prior to choir I suddenly found myself with a full complement of both tenors and bases, and get this, they sounded good. The guys did, and if the girls were a little more lackluster I can't blame them because their parts were so much harder. As performance day dawned we were woefully underpracticed, due to my having discovered the Cheese Secret too late in the practice sequence than would have been ideal, but we pulled it off anyway. Sounded pretty good, and that's pretty good enough for me.

The problem was the third number, a quartet singing "That Easter Morn." We'd been practicing for weeks and I thought here would be the time to shine. I played the piano, of course, because that's what I ever and always do, and the four singers were really doing well. Then, tragedy: the morning of, the soprano reported debilitating illness. Yeah. Poor thing, but I didn't waste much compassion on her because I had to throw all attention into fixing the whole impossible situation. Problem is, though the soprano section collectively is quite satisfactory, the sopranos who have the tone and pitch quality, confidence, and chutzpah to sing a lone part in a small group number very very few. Moreover this is not the easiest melody to learn on short notice. The more I thought through my soprano options, the more I thought of each "no, she wouldn't be able to learn quickly enough to do it the way I'd like it..." and then the obvious struck that the way I'd like it is the way I'd do it. Myself.

Problem is, I'm not really a singer. I have a fine choir voice, but not a lovely solo voice. Yet the more I thought about it the more it seemed the easiest choice to make my vocal debut and find a substitute pianist (also very difficult, and Brittney could now fairly demand any sacrifice of me in return for what I put her through.) I should also mention that I'm not a soprano. A mezzo-soprano on a good day. Sunday wasn't the best of days.

Anyway, I got through it and as nobody said anything kind I must now quell the paranoid tendency to assume I must have sounded like a very distressed cow when singing. Perhaps everyone just assumes singing comes as naturally to me as pianoing, and that praise would therefore have been overkill...in any case, I think I'll end my vocal career while I'm ahead. Except when Karaoke Revolution is going.