“How can you be a Democrat?” September 1, 2008

I’m asked the question above all the time.  It’s understandable, at least a little.  I’m Mormon, after all, and there are some Mormons (more than you’d think) who believe that being Democrat and being Mormon do not mix.  According to the Washington Post, 76 percent of Mormons who voted in 2004 cast their ballots for President Bush.  It’s a heavily Republican demographic.

A lot of Republican positions on the issues line up pretty well with what Mormons are taught, too: Republicans tend to be pro-life, at least more so than the Democrats.  Mormons are specifically taught to oppose gay marriage (although church positions lean toward supporting equal rights for same-sex unions).  And… no, wait, that’s about it.

If you viewed the world through the two lenses of abortion and gay marriage, then most Mormons really should be Republican.  But if you think that there might be other important issues in the world, there might be some elephants in the room.  To wit:

The Economy.  There is no LDS position or doctrine that would automatically dictate support for Republican trickle-down economics, unless you really want to torture Book of Mormon governments to the point of screaming.  I don’t think, as an economic theory, it’s necessarily evil, but it isn’t obvious that it’s in line with LDS doctrine, either.

In fact, a Mormon might be very concerned about the current state of our economy: The Book of Mormon points over and over again to civilizations that fail at about the time a yawning gap is created between the haves and the have-nots.

When all is right with the world, we have a situation like that described in Alma chapter 1: “…they did impart of their substance, every man according to that which he had, to the poor and the needy, to the sick and the afflicted…”, and later: “they did not send away any that were naked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished, and they did not set their hearts upon riches, therefore they were liberal to all.”

A concern for the needs of the poor is fundamental to the religion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  It just is.

War.  Nothing puzzles me more than a hawkish Mormon.  Nothing.  I think I understand the experiments we’ll perform in the Large Hadron Supercollider better than I understand that.  I cannot fathom how it is that a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints can seem not only to accept war, but to actually seem to want it.

The position of the LDS church is to support governments (“we believe in being subjects to kings, rulers, magistrates…”, etc., from the LDS Articles of Faith), but it is also to promote peace.  We are fundamentally opposed to war.  We absolutely view it as a course of last resort.  It can be argued, further, that according to the Book of Mormon justifiable war is only one that defends life and liberty.  This is the doctrine.

The evidence suggests that the administration (to be fair, it seems more like Dick Cheney than it does George Bush) at least overstated its case for war with Iraq, and at most outright fabricated its rationale.  For an administration to be that cavalier — about war, is an abuse worse than the scandals of Watergate or Monica Lewinsky, and it should have decent, peace-loving Mormons feeling cheated and infuriated.

Unfortunately, John McCain seems somewhere to the right of George Bush on the subject of war (you’d think there wasn’t room there, but there is).  He was on a naval ship just days after the horror of 9/11, before the first thoughts of Iraq invasions had formed, and he was videotaped saying, “Next stop, Baghdad,” with a disturbing grin on his face.

Support for war with Afghanistan is a much more defensible position for a Mormon.  The United States was attacked, and the epicenter of our attackers’ operations was Afghanistan.  Their presence was accepted and tolerated by the then-Afghan government.  It made perfect sense to go to Afghanistan to protect our liberty and our way of life.

This is where it got slippery: the suggestion that we had every right to go to the Middle East to protect our country from future attack is both absolutely correct, and vastly too broad.  We have every right to protect ourselves.  That is the key.  While Afghanistan had (essentially) attacked us, Iraq had (to quote Thomas Jefferson) “neither picked my pocket nor broken my leg.”  We were not protecting ourselves when we entered Iraq.

Given that we’re in a war, though, one can reasonably ask: what do we do now?  While a huge percentage of LDS people believe with Republicans that we should “stay the course” and “finish the job,” this is purely a matter of policy.  It is equally valid to believe that we should pull out immediately, that we should set a timetable for measured withdrawal, or that we should stay the course.  I’m in the middle.  You can be anywhere on that continuum, and it’s okay with me.

Torture.  This is, I guess, not a strictly partisan issue.  I presume that most Republicans would join most Democrats in decrying torture in all but the most clear and present dangers, and maybe not even then.  On the other hand, it was a Republican administration, and one with the barest of mandates (if they had one at all), that sought justification to torture prisoners.  And it’s simply true that the hue and cry from the right was not as thunderous as I would have expected.

It should be patently obvious that the LDS church categorically decries torture of any kind.  I mean, sheesh: that’s just insane.

Global Warming and Ecology.  Mormons believe that God gave the earth to Man with a charge that included “take care of it.”  The earth is to be “beautifi(ed) and replenish(ed).”  We are to be stewards of it, not slaveowners.  This is inarguably LDS doctrine.

Does this mean that a Mormon cannot justifiably support drilling in ANWR?  Of course not.  But it means that he or she should be concerned with the environmental impact of such an action, both from the perspective of ANWR itself, and also from the global perspective of the impact of burning fossil fuels.  It seems self-evident that Mormons should at least give serious thought to an energy policy that moves us away from heavy dependence on oil, foreign or otherwise.

I have heard active LDS members talk as though ecological concern is soft-headed and purely liberal.  It is neither, and any member of the church who cannot put their ecological position in terms of good stewardship of the earth has some explaining to do.

Immigration.  We would do well to acknowledge that immigration is a thorny problem, with “competing goods.”  Respect for the rule of law, on the one hand, implies that we should “throw the bums out.”  But basic human kindness, not to mention principles such as forgiveness and respect for families, suggests that some softer landing might be sought.

At some level, your position on immigration may depend on your perspective as to just who these people are.  If you believe that illegal immigrants tend to be law-breaking, gang-banging hoodlums who drain our resources, you’ll lean toward a conservative view of immigration.  If you believe that they are mostly hardworking people trying to better their lives and the lives of their children, you might be a little “softer” on the topic.

I would offer only the following, in response to the “law-breaker” charge: Yes.  They’ve broken the law.  But let’s not go overboard: crossing a border without proper papers isn’t murder.  It isn’t even petty theft, frankly.  And in any case, my experience here in California is that the vast majority of these people are of the “trying to better their lives” variety.

The LDS church position straddles the fence a bit on this one: (1) We respect the rule of law, and we would expect an immigrant to this or any other country to get proper documentation to do that.  (2) We acknowledge that there are millions of immigrants in the country without documentation, and we would expect them to be treated with dignity and respect.  As a practical matter, we operate on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy within our wards and branches.  We don’t actively try to get people deported, but at the same time we don’t take any action that could be deemed as “aiding and abetting.”

Other issues, such as healthcare, Social Security, and the like, really don’t have a corresponding LDS position that could be pinpointed with any accuracy.

What I’ve tried to show here is this: that aside from the positions on abortion and gay marriage, it is perhaps more fitting for a Mormon to be Democrat than it is for them to be Republican.  (And I wonder if the same couldn’t be said for Christians generally?)

Mormons and “Fundamentalist Mormons” July 24, 2008

When Texas authorities descended on the polygamous community at Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas and seized over 400 girls from the compound, mainstream Mormons were faced with a problem that rises up once in a while: how do we respond to the inevitable media attention focused on one of the least favorite parts of our church’s history?

Aggressively, it turns out.  That, at least, was the church’s semi-official response: there were press releases, Youtube videos, you name it.  Lots and lots of people spent lots and lots of time explaining to the world that those people in Texas aren’t Mormons.

And the church has an excellent point: it has been well over a century since the church’s renunciation of polygamy as a practice, and no one in the mainstream Mormon church practices polygamy today.  To do so would risk excommunication from the church, in fact.  All of the barbs regularly directed at members of the church (“how many wives do you have?  Hahaha…”) fall a little flat.  It’s not unlike walking up to someone from Atlanta and saying, “How many slaves do you own?”  It’s just nonsensical and stupid when we are separated from the practice by multiple generations.

The LDS church has every right to express its opinion that there is no connection, too: although Southern Baptists are in the family tree of the Roman Catholic Church (as a break-off from the Anglican Church, which itself broke away from Roman Catholics), the Roman Catholic Church has every right to point out that Southern Baptists are now a very long way away in terms of doctrine and practice from the Holy See.  Failure to recognize the distinction is harmful to Roman Catholics, who could be badly misunderstood; to Southern Baptists, who would if anything be even more adamant about the differences and who long ago expressed their desire to be separate; and to the public at large, who would fail to be educated without clarity on the distinct nature of the two churches.

But those who would blur the distinction with respect to these polygamist sects have a point, too: what else do you call them, really?  If they’re not fundamentalist Mormons, what are they?  They read the Book of Mormon.  They revere the early prophets of the Mormon church.  They claim, rightly or wrongly, that they are the true branch of the LDS church.  How else are we to refer to them, then?

And, let’s not mince words: the Mormon church did practice polygamy, all those years ago.  It did.  As a formal doctrine and practice.  Though it may make current Mormons (like myself) feel all icky and uncomfortable inside to admit it, it’s true.

(To be completely fair and accurate to the church, it should be pointed out that: (a) Polygamy was never widely practiced in the church.  Conservative estimates suggest that it was limited to as little as 2 or 3 percent of the membership, and more liberal estimates peg it as high as 20 percent.  Either way, somewhere between 80 and 98 percent of Mormons did not engage in the practice.  And (b) maybe just as a point of interest, many of the unions were nonsexual.  Brigham Young famously had 56 wives, but most of them admit that the relationship was platonic.  He had 56 children by nineteen of those wives.  Not that nineteen non-platonic relationships isn’t a lot — I just think it’s interesting that many of these relationships were, one presumes, either spiritual or pragmatic in nature.)

Pointing out that these people seem creepy and odd to regular Mormons doesn’t help, either: Christian churches have to sheepishly admit some fairly creepy folks all the time.  For all of our distaste for snake-handlers and other strangeness, we sort of have to admit that, yeah, we guess they’re Christian.  We think they’re doing it all wrong, yes, but we have to confess that they’re the oddball cousin at the family picnic.

Similarly, it’s not quite fair to act like these polygamist groups are not “related” to the LDS church.  They are.  Third cousins twice removed, maybe, but related.  It’s not exactly accurate to suggest that they have nothing whatsoever to do with us, since without the Mormon church’s original stance they simply wouldn’t exist, at least not in their current configuration.

What to do, then?  As usual, probably the best place to meet is somewhere in the middle.

The media should probably change their nomenclature: “Fundamentalist Mormon” at some level implies a relatively direct connection — fundamentalist Christians are, after all, Christian and fundamentalist Catholics are, one presumes, Opus Dei or something.  Still in the church, in any case.  For accuracy:

1. These sects have no current relationship of any kind with the LDS church, whatever they may want to say about it.
2. In fact, if one of these families were to show up in an LDS congregation, they could not be baptized as members of the church unless they changed their ways.
3. Their doctrines are not simply a far cry from current church doctrine — many of them are miles from any doctrine ever formally accepted by the church.  (By “formally accepted” I mean: please let’s not have someone I don’t even know write to me about how some church leader once wrote something in a letter to their cousin, or stated thus-and-such in a talk to the Fruit Heights Ward, or whatever.  Please.  I know what my church’s doctrines are, and what they were, and I try to be fair-minded about them.  Don’t try to teach me.)

It would be more accurate to call them “breakaway Mormons” or simply to drop the Mormon designation altogether and call them a polygamist sect.  Certainly the slightest suggestion that there is some relationship between the mainstream LDS church and these sects is extremely misleading.

But the LDS church would do well, I think, to get a little less worked up when people (unintentionally, I think) mislead.  These are our weird cousins, after all, and while it’s fair to point out that we didn’t grow up together, it’s also inaccurate to suggest that we don’t share a great-grandfather.

Our unease with the relationship can have unintended consequences that don’t speak well for us, I think: it was reported that a Texas judge asked local LDS leaders for some help in monitoring FLDS prayer times. This help was apparently refused, as a local leader responded that he was “baffled” by the judge’s request.

Well.  I guess.  But still: baffled?  Why, have you got somebody better in mind?  While their doctrines and practices might very well have been as strange to us as to anyone else, it nevertheless seems likely that the most sensitive folks in Schleicher County, TX to the FLDS practices were probably attending a mainstream Mormon congregation.  The judge wasn’t being insensitive, she was being practical.  And ultimately, even if their prayers were wildly different from ours, couldn’t we have helped (so long as the FLDS were willing to accept that help)?  Wouldn’t that be, well, Christian of us?  I think so.

Like most nuanced issues, we can draw distinct lines without over-worrying ourselves when others use broad brushes.  The paint won’t stick.

Why Mitt Romney Lost June 4, 2008

Mitt Romney was, in most ways, a stunningly good candidate.  He is everything that George Bush is, and also everything that George Bush isn’t: a wildly successful former CEO.  An excellent governor.  A genuine compassionate conservative.

Look, I’m a Democrat.  But I could easily have voted for Mitt Romney.  If I didn’t see a strong Democratic candidate in Senator Obama, I could in fact vote for John McCain.  I’m not a straight-line voter, and I’m not alone in that at all, especially in this election.

But Mitt Romney made three “mistakes,” of which we’ll focus on the third:

1.  He switched positions at an inopportune time.  It is entirely possible, maybe even probable, that Governor Romney genuinely changed his mind about abortion and gay marriage.  For my own part, I offer to any candidate the opportunity to switch positions for reasons of their own.  I do it all the time, and it would be hypocritical of me to insist that candidates cannot do the same.

The issue is this: it looked unbelievably convenient, in terms of timing.  It appeared that he was a man who would do whatever it took to win a nomination.  His opponents beat that drum to death, making him look untethered from genuine conviction, and it worked.

2.  Mitt Romney entered the race as a compassionate conservative, and then quickly dropped the compassionate part of that.  I was personally shocked by this, and disappointed.  Anyone who knows anything at all about Mormon church leadership (in which Gov. Romney has served) knows that this has to be… has to be… a very nice man.

But he came across as the most strident, most virulent, most antagonistic, of all of the Republican candidates.  I wanted him to be kind but firm, warm but dangerous to his enemies.  I wanted a compassionate conservative.  I wanted what Pres. Bush claimed to be, but was not.  What I got instead was a pit bull, and it was disappointing.

3. He’s a Mormon.  I think that Mormons want to believe that we have moved somewhere near the mainstream, but we have not.  Mormons in this country are still hugely misunderstood, and there is still a tremendous bigotry against us.  Period.

Obviously, I don’t think being Mormon is a mistake.  But politically, it’s suicide.

Esquire Magazine reported a poll in which adult Americans were asked: If your son or daughter started dating someone from a religious group different from your own, which would cause you the most concern?  Predictably, 42% said Muslims.  17% said they’d be most concerned by an atheist.  Running a close third?  Mormons, at 14%.  That 14% is seven times the number who said they’d be concerned by a Catholic (remember when being Catholic was a big deal?), and fourteen times the number who said they’d be concerned by a practicing Jew.  No other religious group registers so much as a blip.

In terms of political support: A poll by the Pew Research Center asked if the respondent would be less likely to support a candidate if they knew he/she was Mormon.  25% said, “Yes.”  This is twice the amount of bigotry (there’s no other way to put it) shown against women or Jews, and four times the amount of political bigotry shown against blacks.  In political terms, being Mormon is a vastly bigger hurdle to clear than being a woman or being black.  Mormons are on the low rung of America’s ladder.

This should not have been even slightly surprising.  Some of it, to be fair, is pure public relations: Lots and lots of Americans just have this vague feeling that Mormons are sort of weird.  I am, for many people I know, the only Mormon they’ve ever met (which might explain that “weird” feeling).

But some of it is much, much deeper than that.  Many people in the evangelical base — a bloc that now makes up almost 30 percent of the Republican base and holds particular sway in critical states like Virginia and South Carolina — have spent time in Sunday School viewing films or listening to sermonizing that calls Mormons a cult, right alongside Satanism, Wiccans and Jim Jones’ People’s Temple.

A digression: The whole “cult” thing is kind of interesting to me: the probable definition under which Mormons are supposed to fall would be “a religion or sect that is generally considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under an extremist leader.”  Let’s examine: (1) “False” is purely subjective with respect to religion.  (2) “Unorthodox” and “extremist” are two peas in a pod, both suggesting that we’re talking about edge cases (since nothing that is commonplace is also unorthodox or extreme).  An individual may personally consider Mormons to be an edge case, but in aggregate it’s hard to argue that America’s 4th-largest denomination is extreme.  Unless you’re prepared to call Lutherans and Presbyterians and the like extreme, this charge is untenable.  (3) We’re living in society.

I don’t know — I just have a hard time justifying this “charge.”

The result of those and other similar teachings?  In 2004 Mormons were specifically excluded from the National Day of Prayer by Shirley Dobson, because their teachings were found to be incompatible with Christian beliefs.  When the Southern Baptist Convention held their annual meeting in Salt Lake City recently, one of their keynote speakers referred to Utah as “a stronghold of Satan.”  When Richard Mouw of the Fuller Theological Seminary later tried to mend fences by apologizing, he was excoriated by many of his brethren.  In an open letter to him, they told him he had no right to speak for them or apologize for their denunciation of Mormons.

Most remarkable of all is the fact that millions of Americans can, with a straight face, (a) say that they would be concerned about their son or daughter dating a Mormon, (b) indicate that they would not vote for a Mormon, and (c) call Mormons a cult and speak in the meanest possible way about their religious beliefs; and yet (d) all of this does not strike them as bigoted.

Write this down: we are still very, very far away from a Mormon president.