Nate in Salt Lake City

Friday music post: Rhythm of Life

2009-11-13T09:18:00.001-07:00

In case you missed the October choir show:

Big props to my property professor

2009-11-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

Way to be a good sport, Professor Fee:

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Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Nailed 'Em - Mormon Church Trespassing

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U.S. Speedskating

Apparently the BBC does not subscribe to the mercy rule

2009-11-11T09:18:00.001-07:00

You definitely need to watch this debate. The archbishop of Nigeria and an English Conservative MP debate Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry on the motion "that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world."

As a former debater, allow me to give a couple points of constructive criticism:

Don't do your topic analysis in the final speech.
Make sure you don't bring up what most would believe would be one of your weak points (see AIDS in Africa) as a plus for your side.
try and pick a debate partner whose voice does not make set people into convulsions.
At lease try to be conversant with the arguments against your side before appearing on national television and destroying whatever credibility your side has.

That is all.

How is this not front page news?

2009-11-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

So apparently, the LDS Church is lobbying for the business interests of its mission presidents. Check this out:

Several years ago, Salt Lake County was pushing a bill at the Legislature to allow its county and municipal fire departments to offer emergency ambulance service rather than having to contract with privately owned Gold Cross Ambulance . . . . However, Dan Eastman, then a state senator, told some legislative colleagues he had heard from LDS Church Apostle Russell M. Ballard, who discouraged any legislation that would hurt Gold Cross' business. The firm's owner, Gene Moffatt, was serving as an LDS mission president at the time, and Ballard felt it was unfair to go after the firm while Moffatt was away. So the watered-down bill that passed added new constraints that made it less attractive for local governments to bid against Gold Cross.

In Salt Lake County, two municipalities have done so anyway: West Valley City now operates its own ambulance service and Salt Lake City accepted the bid of Gold Cross competitor Southwest Ambulance Service. Still, Gold Cross maintains its monopoly in the rest of the county and in many locales around the state.

The subtle nihilism of horserace politics

2009-11-08T20:41:00.004-07:00

This pissed me off enough to come out of my blogging sabbatical:

The extremes of the anti-war left before Iraq were every bit as inflammatory and loopy as the Tea Partiers today. Now, they were opposing a war that turned out to be a catastrophe for all involved, while the Tea Partiers are just opposing the working poor having a chance to buy health insurance. But if Godwin's Law is the point, many (but not all) on the left currently do not have a leg to stand on.

Putting aside for the moment the accuracy of the statement, the assumption that "Godwin's Law is the point" is astounding, but unfortunately altogether too common among the Washington commentariat. Most of the punditocracy has come to view politics as some sort of a game: form is analyzed while substance is ignored. The question is never "who is right?" but always "who won?"

Viewing politics as some sort of game in which there is no good, bad, right, or wrong, only winners and losers, is nihilism, pure and simple. Equating one side's employment of ad hitlerium arguments in service of denying people health care with employing those arguments in service of avoiding a disastrous foreign policy misadventure is akin to equating killing someone in self defense and killing someone because the sun was in your eyes. Politics is more than a game. The wise use of the power and resources of the State can lead to freedom, prosperity and enlightenment. Misuse of the State can lead to tyranny and misery. Politics, in many cases, really is a matter of life and death.

Now the obvious rejoinder to my point is that the Teabaggers sincerely believe that the health care plan will lead to tyranny and misery. However, this argument is again, rooted in nihilism, albeit a form of nihilism that has found a home in the major news networks. While in a pluralistic society all points of view should be tolerated, it does not follow that all points of view should be given equal respect. The Teabaggers' arguments have no foundation in evidence or logic and are not deserving of any more than a thorough debunking. The news media's insistence on reporting the controversy rather than analyzing the facts underlying that controversy is an implicit statement that there is no truth and that all points of view are equally valid. In sum, focusing on balance and tone to the absence of facts and substance says that a person's opinion on issues of war and peace is no more consequential than whether he or she likes Pet Sounds more than Rubber Soul. I will speak against this sort of nihilism at every opportunity, and if I sound shrill while doing it, that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Behavior Modification Therapy

2009-09-22T10:13:00.000-06:00

Sure, Alli blocks the absorption of fat that you eat. But that isn't why you'll lose weight when you take it.*

*--Yes, I know I haven't explained why I haven't posted in four months. Next time, I promise. Just enjoy this for now.

Friday music post: Because

2009-05-01T09:16:00.000-06:00

Don't talk--just listen.

What I was doing instead of blogging

2009-04-28T10:42:00.006-06:00

I was redoing my office. I inherited an office with walls that looked like this:

Needless to say, this was not acceptable. So, I repainted, got new office furniture, and hung up some pictures, and here we are:

This is the view as you enter my office. I will be replacing the office chair sometime soon.

This is my grandfather's desk, which now belongs to my brother and he is graciously letting me use. A lot of the pictures are his as well.

This is the peace lily that I got from my dad's funeral last May--it's sitting on a walnut chair my brother got from Jordan High School.

You can see here what I did with that hideous wallpaper--I left the portion below the chair rail as a faux-wainscoting.

I bought this desk for $150 at a used furniture store. It matches the roll top desk perfectly and it's solid walnut. A little polishing and a glass cover and it looks great. I am changing the knobs to something a little less target-like, but the new knobs are on back order and won't be here for a week.

Finally, here is my view. It will be supplemented by a large antique framed map as soon as the map gets out of the frame shop. I will also be getting new chairs as soon as I have the money to do so.

Anyway, I just got done with this yesterday, so let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Just got this from the framing shop:

Quote for the day

2009-04-27T09:17:00.001-06:00

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

Kung-Fu Monkey

Friday music post: Agnus Dei

2009-04-24T09:56:00.000-06:00

I know it's late for Easter, but I got it up before Pentecost--what more do you want?

A distraction for your Thursday

2009-04-23T09:45:00.000-06:00

I was going to write about the torture memos, but I got sucked in playing the new Gemcraft game because I didn't want to think about it. Give it a try, but don't be surprised if you end up losing track of time.

The stupid, it burns...

2009-04-22T09:52:00.000-06:00

First tea-bagging, and now this:

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The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad

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And of course, no one is better at mocking it than Stephen Colbert. By the way, National Organization for Marriage's campaign is called . . .

Wait for it . . .

Two million for marriage, or 2M4M for short. So, so, sad . . . .

Mind the Gaps

2009-04-21T09:55:00.000-06:00

I have long argued that a belief in organic evolution was not incompatible with a belief in God or some other metaphysical belief. My support for this was Stephen Jay Gould's argument for "Non-Overlapping Magisteria:"

The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.

However, the more I have thought about the idea that science and religion are trying to answer totally different questions, the more I realize that Gould is talking about something different than what most people think of as religion. How much different would religion look if, as Gould suggests, it were limited to questions of meaning and value?

For one thing, there would be no miracles, or at least not as miracles are currently regarded. It is a tenet of most believers' faith that God answers prayers not only through inner peace and inspiration, but also through actual intervention in the physical world. If God were to intervene in that way, science would be able to detect his presence. The problem with actual, physical miracles is that they are not normative, but rather descriptive. The believer is claiming that an event was brought about by divine intervention. That is a testable claim.

The way to get around this dilemma would be to posit that God does not actually intervene in the physical world, but rather, being omniscient, had the foreknowledge to plant the seed of the miracle in the foundations of the universe. While this is a perfectly reasonable way of reformulating the idea of miracles, it calls into question the necessity of prayer. Why should the believer ask for divine favor when the die has been cast already? While one can argue that it is to show faith and penitence, that is a much different view of prayer than most adhere to.

While a totally non-descriptive religion is possible, I wonder if the idea of a God who does not perform miracles would be attractive to most believers. Cordoning off religion to the realm of ethics, rather than its former position of being priest, lawyer, scholar and king is disconcerting. Fundamentalism is attractive to many because the idea of shared authority does not provide the surety that they need in their lives. Can religion survive as one voice among many? Time will tell, I guess . . . .

An update

2009-04-20T16:42:00.003-06:00

Sometimes your body just forces you to slow down.

The last three weekends, I've been busy. Very busy. I stripped off the wallpaper in my office and painted three weekends ago. I was doing taxes two weekends ago, and this last weekend I went to St. George and sang with the choir. Since the only time I usually have to blog is on the weekends, my blog turned into a ghost town. But this morning, I woke up with a sore throat from hell. I was having difficulty swallowing, and my tongue and glands felt swollen. I went to the doctor and was (unsurprisingly, given how I felt) diagnosed with strep throat.

But, dear readers, my suffering is your gain, because being cooped up in the house for a few days will give me some time to actually do some blogging. So, this week, I will wrap up the LDS same-sex marriage series, blog about the events in Iowa and Vermont, and generally pick up my blogging life again. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to comment and send my posts to your friends. Sometimes I feel like the ghost in The Ring--I'm not looking for peace, just publicity.

So, while you're waiting for new material, why don't you take a minute and read some of my other work?

LDS Doctrine and Same-Sex Couples:part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.

The Prop 8 case: A legal analysis of Strauss v. Horton: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Same-Sex Marriage, equality and Religious Freedom: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.

Rants on Religion: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Random musings about Science, politics, grammar, and bathroom graffiti: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.

Reality is stranger than South Park

2009-04-06T09:13:00.000-06:00

Headline: An elderly man lost control of his luxury sedan Sunday afternoon in Redondo Beach, injuring more than a dozen people when he plowed into a restaurant. That sounds awfully familiar . . .

Friday music post: Sinister

2009-04-03T09:04:00.000-06:00

Posted without further comment

2009-04-01T09:28:00.000-06:00

LDS Doctrine and Same-Sex Couples, part 6: Prophetic Authority

2009-03-31T09:34:00.002-06:00

Part six of the continuing series... click for part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

The belief in modern revelation is one of the distinctive features of the Church. Members of the Church sustain the leaders of the Church as prophets, seers, and revelators and look to them to declare the word of God for our time. Doctrine and Covenants 68:4 proclaims that the words of the prophets, “when moved upon by the Holy Ghost[,] shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation.” Clearly, the current leadership of the Church has decided that homosexual activity is sinful. However, to claim that this is the end of the story would be to ignore the dynamics of revelation within the Church.

The scriptures claim that God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever . . . ,” (1 Ne. 10:18) and that he does not “vary from that which he hath said.” (Alma 7:20) However, the Church makes changes constantly, from mundane policy changes like changing the length of missions, to dramatic changes in doctrine like the manifesto banning plural marriage and the extension of the priesthood to all men regardless of race. While these changes may seem to conflict with the scriptures quoted above, it can be explained by the fact that revelation, even the revelation given to Church leaders, is limited by certain principles.

The first principle is that revelation is a human-mediated process. While the Church is led by prophets, it does not follow that all words and actions of the Church and its leaders are therefore from the Lord. It is commonly understood in the Church that the leadership of the Church receives constant revelation and guidance regarding the everyday affairs of the Church. But if we take at face value the idea that revelation guides the Church on a daily basis, it becomes easy to infer that the Church is exactly the way that God would have it be in every detail; bureaucratic inertia, political compromise, and the personal passions of individuals are assumed to have divine stamp of approval. This is not the case. Church leaders are fallible and have their own priorities and prejudices. Brigham Young said that the brethren “are all liable to err . . . and many may think that a man in my standing ought to be perfect; no such thing.”¹ While it results in an imperfect expression of his will, the Lord accepts such imperfections and shortcomings. Thus, it is possible for Church policy to be based not the unadulterated word of the Lord but rather on the understandings, prejudices, and preferences of human leaders.

Secondly, revelation must be understood as the expression of the will of a perfect God to imperfect people. The process of revelation is described in the scriptures as occurring “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little . . . .” (2 Ne. 28:30) The logic of gradualism is described in the Doctrine and Covenants: “Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth.” (D&C 50:40) Those not prepared to receive and live a higher law will not be given the law and therefore will escape the condemnation that would come with it.

Finally, revelation is a process that is, as a rule, initiated by humans. The model for receiving revelation is to search, ponder, and pray for confirmation. God will not give knowledge that a person has not asked for, and that knowledge will not be given without study on the individual’s part. The Doctrine and Covenants explains that “you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask [God] if it be right . . . .” (D&C 9:8) This requirement provides a barrier to an individual, or for that matter, the Church, receiving the will of God. If there is no concerted effort to ask and resolve a question, God will not provide an answer.

These limitations provide space for the possibility of change for the status of homosexuality in the Church. The 1978 lifting of the priesthood ban is a good example of the change of a doctrine said to be eternal. While the position of the Church in its early years seemed to be ambiguous on the question of slavery and ordination of black members to the priesthood, by the tenure of Brigham Young, the practice of denying the priesthood to blacks was established. Young spoke to the subject in 1852: “[A]ny man having one drop of the seed of [Cain] . . . in him cannot hold the priesthood and if no other [p]rophet ever spake it before I will say it now in the name of Jesus Christ I know it is true and others know it . . . .”² Young also declared miscegenation to be an offense worthy of death, declaring that “if the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.”³

Doctrinal explanations were constructed to explain President Young’s teaching. Orson Hyde and Orson Pratt, among others, proffered the hypothesis that those of African blood were less valiant in the pre-earth life, choosing to fight for neither God nor the devil in the war in heaven. Scripture was also employed to justify the doctrine. Mormons borrowed the biblical scriptures employed to justify the ownership of slaves to justify their doctrine. Restoration scripture was used to extend this doctrine as well.

The attitudes of the Church reflected the attitudes of the wider society, which viewed blacks as inferior. While there was a difference of opinion within the Church, Oliver Cowdery’s statements against abolition are illustrative of the attitude of many at the time: “Let the blacks of the south be free, and our community is overrun with paupers, and a reckless mass of human beings, uncultivated, untaught and unaccustomed to provide for themselves for the necessaries of life—endangering the chastity of every female who might by chance be found in our streets . . . .”⁴ The practices of the Church in supporting segregation, denying accommodations to blacks in Church-owned hotels, and LDS hospital’s maintenance of an all-white blood bank are further evidence of Mormons taking on the attitudes of the wider population.

Changing attitudes about race inside and outside of Mormon society, as well as the practical difficulties of maintaining the priesthood ban, led to its ultimate demise in 1978. While the Church initially resisted movement toward racial integration, legal and social developments within the United States put pressure on the Church to review its position and support black civil rights, while preserving the priesthood ban. President Hugh B. Brown called for the Church to extend at least the Aaronic Priesthood to black members in 1965, and in 1969 called for the end of the ban altogether. But this was not to be at the time, and Joseph Fielding Smith, successor to President McKay, reaffirmed the status of the ban.

Meanwhile, the civil rights movement found an effective way to put pressure on the Church: its university. BYU athletic teams were met with protests when they competed at other schools, and some schools severed ties with BYU entirely. The pressure put on the Church and its members regarding the priesthood ban resulted in what Mauss called a “siege mentality”; resulting in Utah members taking precautions against the “expected black onslaught,” an increase in racist remarks and race hostility within the Church, and the circulation of rumors of black mobs attacking cars with Utah license plates.

While this pressure was significant, it is more likely that the heartache of injustice was not nearly as influential towards the lifting of the priesthood ban as the headaches of administration it caused. The priesthood ban became a quandary for proselyting efforts in Latin America, where miscegenation had caused the intermingling of African blood throughout much of the population. Men were ordained to the priesthood, only to have their privileges “suspended” because of suspicion regarding their ancestry. By 1978, there were 41,000 saints and a temple in the works in Brazil, the most racially diverse and intermixed of the countries of Latin America. In reviewing this, Mauss asserts that “[i]t seems unbelievable that a decision would deliberately have been made to build a temple in the most racially mixed country in the continent without a concomitant realization . . . that the priesthood ban would have to be ended.”

President Spencer W. Kimball, it seems, understood very well the implications of that decision. While he had been a faithful supporter of the Church’s position on the priesthood ban as a member of the Twelve, his ascension to the presidency of the Church made him feel a “direct, personal responsibility to discover the Lord’s will” regarding blacks and the priesthood. President Kimball described the process of receiving an answer: “Day after day, and especially on Saturdays and Sundays when there were no organizations [sessions] in the temple, I went there where I could be alone . . . . I was very humble . . . . I was searching for this . . . . I wanted to be sure . . . . I had a great deal to fight . . . myself, largely, because I had grown up with this thought that Negroes should not have the priesthood and I was prepared to go all the rest of my life until my death and fight for it and defend it as it was.”⁵ Kimball encouraged the other apostles to search over the question themselves, wanting unanimous support from the brethren. Finally, the Church announced the change on September 30, 1978, where it was given to the general membership to sustain.

This episode in the Church’s history is instructive to the possibilities regarding the Church’s handling of the question of homosexuality. While Church leaders have asserted the eternal nature of commandments against homosexual conduct, those same assertions were made regarding interracial marriage and priesthood ordination by Brigham Young. While change in the Church is sometimes a slow and agonizing process, it can be done if there is a concerted effort to learn God’s will, and if the Church is ready for the change.

BRIGHAM YOUNG, 10 JOURNAL OF DISCOURSES 212 (1865).
Lester E. Bush, Jr., Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: A
Historical Overview, DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT, Spring 1973, at 25.
Id. at 26.
Id. at 15.
EDWARD L. KIMBALL, LENGTHEN YOUR STRIDE: THE PRESIDENCY OF SPENCER W. KIMBALL 217 (2005).

Pure, unadulterated awesome

2009-03-30T09:46:00.002-06:00

Especially like the choice of song:

Friday music post: Philosophy

2009-03-27T09:19:00.001-06:00

I have no idea how I've gone this long without posting this:

Eppur si muove

2009-03-26T09:35:00.000-06:00

Last week, I made reference to Big Love's portrayal of portions of the LDS temple ceremony. After talking with some readers and friends about the post, I determined that there was a larger issue that it would be productive to discuss. While members of a faith consider their rites sacred, what about people who don't share that feeling? This question is by no means unique to the Big Love controversy. Muslims were outraged at the negative portrayal of Muhammad in a Danish political cartoon. Catholics were upset over PZ Myers' threats to subject communion wafers to "heinous cracker abuse." All of these episodes involve behavior considered blasphemous by members of a religious community perpetrated by non-believers. That raises the question of what level of deference an outsider to a religion owes to the members of a religion with respect to their sacred rites.

At the outset, I want to make it clear that this is not a legal question. In the United States, people are free to blaspheme with impunity because of the First Amendment. Rather, I am asking this question as a person committed to a pluralist society. I believe in a society where people are free to believe according to the dictates of their own consciences. This ideal cannot be enforced only by law; even bigots have First Amendment rights. We have an ethical and social obligation to promote religious tolerance and pluralism by our interaction with each other. There are certain standards of respect that we have an obligation to uphold because we are decent people that are committed to a just and free society.

However, there is a countervailing proposition: we cannot allow respect for other people's beliefs to stifle honest religious discussion and debate. Religious pluralism gives people the "right to be wrong," but it does not mean that everyone must be treated as though they are right. Pluralism is not relativism. In a pluralist society, the statement, "the Eucharist is just a cracker," is not out of bounds anymore than the statement, "the Eucharist is the body of Christ." Turning a critical eye to the practices and truth claims of a religion is a vital part of the pluralist project. Pluralism exists in the zone between religious bigotry and unquestioning deference to religious dogmas.

The rule that I have come up with is good faith. Non-believers owe a duty to believers to represent the beliefs and rites of the religion accurately and honestly, without resorting to logical fallacies or equivocation, and to act without fraud or deceit. This allows observers to make up their minds for themselves about the claims of the religion. The religion is not being slandered, and the restriction does not slide into moral relativism.

Notice that I did not talk about the motive of the person portraying the religious rites. This is because it is frankly irrelevant. Before you object, ask yourself this: would Mormons have been OK with the portrayal of the temple ceremony if it was done in a widely televised documentary for educational purposes? Would Scientologists have been OK with the information presented in the South Park episode if it were presented in a less mocking way? Would Catholics be OK with scientists driving nails through the Host if they were doing it to show that contrary to legend, the Host does not bleed when pierced? Or is it the case that blasphemy is blasphemy, regardless of the motive of the blasphemer?

I'm interested to know what you think. Is there a better place to draw the line? I'd love to hear from my readers regarding this. I will say, however, in formulating your rule, you keep in mind the Flying Spaghetti Monster rule: Any rule you propose insulating Christianity or any other major religion from criticism must also apply to Pastafarians. If you can't do that, you aren't proposing a pluralist rule.

Aware of all internet traditions, vol. 2: Time Cube

2009-03-25T09:35:00.000-06:00

You haven't seen this before? Seriously? Check it out—It's not every day you get to read something written by the world's wisest human.

LDS Doctrine and Same-Sex Couples, part 5: Exploring the Possibilities

2009-03-24T09:44:00.000-06:00

The widow’s problem is just one illustration of how little the Church claims to know about the architecture of the celestial society. The incongruence of current monogamous marriage practices with the plural marriages of the 19th century, not to mention Joseph Smith’s short-lived introduction of polyandry in Nauvoo, suggest that the plan of salvation as we understand it is too vague to conclusively foreclose the accommodation of homosexuality by the Church.

In fact, there is even an argument to be made in favor of eternal same-sex couples. While the assumption is that homosexuality is a temporary condition, this seems to contradict the LDS belief that “that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there . . . ,” (D&C 130:2) and “that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.” (Alma 34:34) The doctrine of eternal intelligence posits that there is a part of each of us that has always existed, an essential personality that is co-eternal with even God. The idea that homosexuality is a temporary affliction of the body rather than a part of the essence of personality conflicts with the experience of many gays and lesbians. It also fundamentally denies part of Mormon theology—that sexual desire is not a vice, but rather an eternal part of God’s plan. LDS scholar Wayne Schow explains:

Sexuality . . . is more than just the power of procreation . . . . [O]ur sexuality is self-expressive, a dynamic assertion of personal identity; it is a “fingerprint” of personal force . . . . More than simple gratification of all of our physical senses, sexual union can unify body, mind, and spirit . . . . To ignore this aspect of sexuality is to give up a rich and integrative dimension of personal wholeness. A life without sexual realization is not a complete life, however good it otherwise may be.¹

This question ultimately cannot be resolved in this life, but if homosexuality is part of eternal personality, then speculating about the will of God for these children in the eternities would be appropriate.

The basic objection to having two men or two women as an eternal coupling was the lack of fecundity that such a coupling would imply—how would such a pairing be able to produce worlds without number? The flaw in this argument lies with its central assumption—that spirit children are created sexually. There is no reason to believe this case beyond conventional wisdom, and thinking of the implications of the argument reveals the absurdity of applying traditional notions of mortal reproduction to the production of spirits. A woman would have to be pregnant constantly in order create the spirits necessary to populate planets. The process sounds more akin to a colony of bees than an equal partnership between husband and wife. The absurdity of this position is also shown by taking it to its logical extreme, as Joseph Fielding Smith did. Based on his understanding of eternal increase, he deduced that those assigned to less than the highest degree of glory would be resurrected without genitalia.

But the argument’s assumptions can be revealed one level further—there is no reason to believe that spirit production occurs at all. While some statements by general authorities suggest this to be the case, there is support for the idea that spirits are co-eternal with God, implying that the process of becoming spirit children of our heavenly parents did not require spiritual birth but rather adoption. This could be done as easily by a same-sex pair as by an opposite-sex couple, nullifying the logic of restricting eternal marriage to opposite-sex couples. This model has powerful support with the sealing doctrine, which teaches that families are not created by blood but rather by priesthood authority. (D&C 132:7)

The sealing of same-sex couples would not be unprecedented, either. While the current conception of the sealing ordinance is limited to monogamous marriage and sealing parents to children, earlier sealings included polygamous marriages, sealing to prominent Mormon families, and friendship sealings. If the Church were to recognize same-sex orientation as a part of eternal identity rather than a temporal affliction, these earlier sealing practices would allow for the introduction of new uses of the sealing power.

Another argument that can be raised against eternal same-sex marriage is the complementary nature of man and woman. The Proclamation on the Family states that “[g]ender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” However, the document does not explain the reasoning behind this statement, and so we are left with little guidance to discover just what it is about gender that is essential (beyond the biological arguments above), and even less to say that both a man and a woman are essential for an eternal marriage. We must be careful not to extend the logic of current marriage relationships into the eternities. Marriage as we know it, and the gender roles that go along with it, has more rooting in the Industrial Revolution than in the eternities. To hold up this version of the marriage relationship as the ideal form of marriage ignores history and remakes God in our image.

In conclusion, the argument against same-sex relationships from the standpoint of the Plan of Salvation can only be valid if there is something within a temporal homosexual relationship that would block an eternal opposite-sex marriage. The only explanation for this is if there were something inherently disordered and sinful with any homosexual relationship, even a committed, legally sanctioned, faithful, and monogamous relationship. While most faiths would depend on the word of scripture or natural law to determine sinfulness, the LDS faith relies on the word of living prophets to declare the will of God to its adherents. I will deal with that argument in the next post.

Wayne Schow, Sexual Morality Revisited, DIALOGUE, Fall 2004, at 114, 121.

Total Pwnage

2009-03-23T09:38:00.000-06:00

I previously talked about Dinesh D'Souza's horrible America-hating book. I was unaware until recently that he got the drubbing he so richly deserved:

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Friday music post: William Tell Overture

2009-03-20T09:15:00.000-06:00

In honor of last week's Salt Lake Men's Choir performance: