Idaho Senator Frederick Dubois sought to limit Mormon influence by taking on the easy target of plural marriage: “[We] were not nearly so much opposed to polygamy as we were to the political domination of the Church… We made use of polygamy.”

Once again, Mormons are demonstrating that they can exercise formidable political power, and once again, mainstream America is not too thrilled about this group’s community organizing activities.  Once again, mainstream America is targeting Mormons’ beliefs about marriage to disenfranchise them politically.  Time Magazine recently published an article called, “The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?”  Although the title of the article seems to suggest that Mormons are misunderstood, and the author of the article will help you understand them better, the tone and structure of the article mostly contribute to an increase in misunderstanding.  Where it would be easy to read this as yet another indictment of multiculturalism, (what does “understanding” another culture really mean anyway?) the point of this article seems to be to stereotype Mormons as homophobic automatons that do whatever the prophet tells them to do.  I will agree that the article is rhetorically subtle in how it makes this point.  After all, the author does paint with the sympathetic brush at times.

Nevertheless, due to editorial constraints, personal bias, editorial bias, dishonesty, or just the daunting impossibility of the task of “cultural understanding,” I would have to argue that this article falls short of it’s proposed intent, and so yes, David Van Biema, thanks to you, Mormons are misunderstood.  The cultural logic that informs this article, also informs this online hate brochure, that basically suggests that Mormon viewpoints should not be tolerated, and that through hatemongering and intimidation it might be possible to prevent Mormons from exercising their political will in the future.  Of course, this is a perfect example of the liberal, multicultural idea of tolerance: Tolerance is great as long as that which is to be tolerated is something you already agree with.

I am sure that most Americans agree that it is a good thing for young teenagers (from 12 years up) to attend a homosexual prom in Boston, where the chaperones were gay men handing out business cards to come to their kinky kamp summer camp and bondage and sado-masochist classes.  Most Mormons would probably agree with one of their leaders, Neal A. Maxwell, who said that Heavenly Father takes our agency more seriously than we do and would therefore agree that it is perfectly fine for young teenagers to explore various forms of sexual perversion, drug-use, and statutory gay rape.  When you stand for things that are so agreeable, it is hard to understand why simple-minded, provincial Mormons can’t be more tolerant.

For instance, Vogel’s title, and therefore you could argue the central argument of the article, is based on the erroneous belief in the idea that history is a linear, positivist project.  Of course, movements that obsessively focus on civil rights and social justice need the idea of a linear historical narrative.  When your ideas and beliefs are based on a linear historical narrative where society is continuously learning from past experience, then your understanding of history becomes teleological.  A teleological historical narrative is essential for a movement such as the gay rights movement, because it gives them an overarching purpose to be working towards.  This understanding of history also enables you to negatively label those who stand in the way of your teleological destiny as historically ignorant.  It therefore isn’t surprising that of all the articles that I have read about the gay rights protests that have followed the passage of Proposition 8 have emphasized the belief of the gay rights movement that the LDS church is on the “wrong side of history.”

The problem with these ignorant statements from the gay rights community is that there is no empirical evidence that history is exclusively linear, and therefore to say you are on the right side of history and another group is not is a statement that doesn’t mean anything.  History is a messy thing.  There seems to be just as much evidence that history is cyclical as there is evidence that it is linear.  History is also dynamic.  In other words, history is a construct or invention of those who create it, and history changes as new groups reinvent their own historical narratives.  Ultimately this all raises the question, “if the LDS Church is on the wrong side of history with Proposition 8, who is to say that the gay rights movement is on the right side of history?’

Where religious traditionalists used the socially enlightened means of a democratic vote to advance their ideas, the gay rights movement is joining the historical ranks of some of the world’s worst social movements.  Therefore, they are demonstrating that history will indeed repeat itself in its true cyclical fashion.   If history proves anything it is that your whole idea of history can be wrong.  Having a flawed understanding of history is a lot more dangerous than being on any arbitrarial side of history.

Mathematical Proof that Homosexuality is Genetically Determined

Before the stock market developed a severe case of Baracktile Dysfunction, I was starting to invest in a company called Illumina.  Even though the stock for this company has crashed pretty hard, I still believe that the long term potential for this company is pretty good.  Their mission is to revolutionize the healthcare industry by providing personal medicine solutions tailored to your DNA.  In other words, it is likely that in the not too distant future when you are born they will take a blood sample and map your DNA right after they record your fingerprints.  They will then use this DNA sample to determine which chronic diseases your are susceptible to.  They will also develop medical treatments based specifically on your DNA.  I imagine that within the next 20 years we will look back at our current healthcare system the same way that we look back on the intinerant quacks of the 19th century.  We will joke about how we used to go to a doctor, recount our symptoms, and the doctor would prescribe us medicine after some educated guesswork.  I believe that Illumina, if it fulfills its mission, will be a giant like Merck or Pfizer.

However, this post isn’t to encourage you to go buy Illumina stock (even though it is a relative bargain).  This post is intended to be a response to the comment that Wallace left on my post, “Homosexuality is Demographically Doomed.”  In the comment he said that homosexuality isn’t going away, and he linked to an article called “Sexually Antagonistic Selection in Human Male Homosexuality.”  The article makes a compelling argument to demonstrate that homosexuality is genetically determined.  The writers of the article admit that the stable permanence of homosexuality in all human populations presents a puzzling Darwinian Paradox.  Where the article itself was quite fascinating, the following passage was the most interesting to me and probably reflects the main point the Wallace was trying to get across:

Sexually antagonistic selection is at present recognized as a powerful mechanism through which genetic variation of fitness is maintained despite sexual selection in biological populations, in insects, birds, and mammals, leading to population divergence and possibly speciation. Our findings firmly establish, with a particularly relevant example, the occurrence of sexually antagonistic characters in humans. This point of view may help shift the focus away from male homosexuality per se: rather than concentrating on the sole aspect of the reduced male fecundity that it entails, we can place it within the more general framework of a genetic trait with gender-specific benefit, which may have evolved by increasing the fecundity of females. A consequence of this is that the entire population exhibits a high fecundity variation, and, as we show, the trait can neither disappear nor completely invade the gene pool. Indeed, the GFMH may belong to a possibly wide, but at present still poorly understood, class of sexually antagonistic characters that contribute to the maintenance of the observed genetic variation in human populations. As such characters are mostly expected to have a sex-linked component, the present treatment of the GMFH should provide basic understanding also of the dynamics of any such general sexual antagonistic traits.

To unpack the latent ideas in this quote might take several posts, or you can just watch the third installment of the X-Men trilogy.  However, in response to Wallace, I agree that homosexuality isn’t going away, but I also agree with the article that homosexuality will not completely invade the gene pool.

The point of my post was to point out that the demographic foundation upon which the current gay rights movement stands is tenuous.  Many of the social groups who are most hostile to homosexuality have the highest birthrates in the world.  While it is true that America in 2008 is relatively tolerant of homosexuality in a historical sense, I don’t think tolerance is the end result of some linear form of progress.  It is probably more likely that tolerance is a cyclical phenomenon.

If it is true that homosexuality is a genetically determined, then in the brave new world being engineered by a company such as Illumina, homosexuality will be able to be treated as a genetic medical condition.  If this is the case, then the Darwinian paradox of humans evolving to the point where they can determine evolution with technology might trump the Darwinian paradox inherent in the idea of sexually antagonistic selection.  In other words, the studies that are being conducted to determine that homosexuality is a biological condition rather than a choice might be the same studies that lay the groundwork for some sinister future generation to be given the choice to eradicate homosexuality from the gene pool.

Whether homosexuality is biologically determined or not will become less important than the question, “Will homosexuality choose to not offend its host society (fully empowered with tools of genetic engineering) to the point of annihiliation?”

-Dan Savage

From my previous post, Wrong Side of History part 3, I mentioned Dan Savage’s appearance on the Colbert Report. Dan Savage said that homosexuals are going to outlive the bigots. I would love to see the demographic research from which this claim is based. I did some research of my own and found this website: Sampling of Latter-day Saint/Utah Demographics and Social Statistics from National Sources

Here are some highlights, but you might want to read the whole article:

• Utah was ranked as the #1 best state in which to raise children in the 1996 rankings by the Children’s Right’s Council.
• The latest federal health figures (1997) rank Utah as having the fewest births to unwed mothers.
• Utah women again labored to the highest birthrate — by far — among the states in 1999.
• Utah women also delivered the lowest percentage of babies out of wedlock.
• Utah’s “fertility rate” — the number of live births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 — was 93.1. (one of the highest in the nation and the world).
• Utah “spends a larger percentage of state dollars on education” than any other state.
• Nationally, the suicide rate among 20- to 34-year old males was 2.5 to 3 times higher than among active LDS church members of the same age.
• National demographic studies indicate that couples in which both partners are Latter-day Saints (and who marry in a Latter-day Saint temple) have the lowest divorce rate among all U.S. social and religious groups studied.
• Due in part to their emphasis on missionary work and education, combined with higher than average Internet use, the Latter-day Saint population in general exhibits higher than average awareness of geography, languages, and religious/cultural diversity.
• As Latter-day Saints become more educated, they are more likely to be active Church participants, a trend opposite what is found in most denominations.

I am only including about 10% of the facts included in this website. The facts I didn’t include reiterate a few trends. Utahns/Mormons are reproducing prolifically. Utahns/Mormons are among the healthiest constituencies in the country, and therefore have a high life-expectancy rate. Utahns/Mormons are well-educated and open to cultural diversity. Finally, the studies demonstrate the validity of the LDS sponsored belief that the foundation of a healthy society is to encourage monogamous, mutual heterosexual unions. The LDS Church didn’t encourage voters to support Proposition 8, because they hate homosexuals. Church members encouraged the passage of Proposition 8 because the LDS Church members know that the Church’s teachings work, and this claim can be backed up with scientific statistical evidence all day long.  These statistics become even more relevant when you compare them to a similar study on the homosexual community: ‘Gay marriage’ and homosexuality: Some medical comments

• A study of homosexual men shows that more than 75% of homosexual men admitted to having sex with more than 100 different males in their lifetime: approximately 15% claimed to have had 100-249 sex partners, 17% claimed 250-499, 15% claimed 500-999 and 28% claimed more than 1,000 lifetime sexual partners.
• Far higher rates of promiscuity are observed even within ‘committed’ gay relationships than in heterosexual marriage: In Holland, male homosexual relationships last, on average, 1.5 years, and gay men have an average of eight partners a year outside of their supposedly “committed” relationships.
• The high rates of promiscuity are not surprising: Gay authors admit that ‘gay liberation was founded … on a sexual brotherhood of promiscuity.’
• a large number of diseases are associated with anal intercourse, many of which are rare or even unknown in the heterosexual population such as: anal cancer, Chlamydia trachomatis, Cryptosporidium, Giardia lamblia, Herpes simplex virus, HIV, Human papilloma virus, Isospora belli, Microsporidia, Gonorrhoea, Syphilis, Hepatitis B and C and others.
  
• While ‘always’ condom use reduces the risk of contracting HIV by about 85%, Condoms, even when used 100% of the time, fail to give adequate levels of protection against many non-HIV STDs such as Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Herpes, Genital Warts and others. The only safe sex is, apart from abstinence, mutual monogamy with an uninfected partner.
• There are increased rates of mental ill health among the homosexual population compared to the general population. Many studies show much higher rates of psychiatric illness, such as depression, suicide attempts and drug abuse among homosexuals then among the general population. The homosexual lifestyle is associated with a shortened life expectancy of up to 20 years. (my emphasis).
• life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, it is estimated that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday.
• There is an overlap between the ‘gay movement’ and the movement to make pedophilia acceptable through organisations such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), as admitted by David Thorstad, Co-founder of NAMBLA writing in the Journal of Homosexuality.
• the average length of a ‘committed’ homosexual relationship was only 1.5 years. In the mentioned survey of nearly 8,000 gays, 71% of relationships did not last 8 years. Furthermore, violence among homosexual partnerships is two to three times as common as in heterosexual relationships. Such an environment does not provide the stability required for raising children. Former homosexual Stephen Bennett who is married to his wife and has two children states: ‘Granting homosexuals the right to marry or adopt children is deliberately creating dysfunctional families.’

On Tuesday November 11 Dan Savage was on the Colbert Report to defend the gay rights movement‘s protests of Proposition 8. I don’t think this interview was great PR for the gay rights movement. I was surprised that Dan Savage made so many references to his desire to perform sexually perverted acts on boys and young men, and that he also said that gays were going to outlive and outsmart the bigots in the same breath.  So apparently you are now a bigot if you want to prevent someone like Dan from getting married or adopting young children.  It is disturbing that Dan doesn’t realize that the casualness with which Dan discusses sexually assaulting “boys” is what is motivating religious traditionalists to vote to “take away his rights.”

There is talk that the gay rights movement wants to destroy the brand of Utah and the brand of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but there is no talk about how the homosexual brand is inherently self-destructive. The gay rights movement has done a good job of constructing the moral paradigm from which the current backlash against the passage of Proposition 8 is being portrayed in the media. The paradigm that they are operating from paints the desire for the right of homosexual marriage as the innocent, logical fulfillment of two people falling in love. Ultimately, in the quest for “equal rights” the gay rights movement is saying that their experience is “equal” or similar to the experience of heterosexuals. No one is challenging this paradigm, because if you do you are labeled an intolerant, hateful bigot.

As successful as the gay rights movement has been in distancing itself from the moral and sexual perversion that is the foundation, the buttresses, and the keystone of the gay rights edifice, religious christians and traditionalists are at least seeing through the facade.

I went to Florida a few years ago because I was invited to present a paper at the ALA Symposium of Jewish American Literature and the Holocaust (sorry godlesslibhomo who commented on my blog, I actually have strong connections to people in the Jewish-American community who understand the holocaust in far more profound ways than you ever will.  They don’t think I am anti-semitic). During some of our free time we decided to go to Key West to tour the home of Ernest Hemingway. We had no idea that it was the annual Key West Fantasy Fest. Entirely by accident, I and a group of fellow BYU students stumbled into a sado-masochist pride parade. You can call me an intolerant, hateful bigot, but the activities that I witnessed at this event didn’t reflect a moral paradigm from within which two people innocently fall in love and want to get married and spend the rest of their lives together and raise children. I can’t remember anyone that I encountered at the Key West Fantasy Fest who didn’t seem to be deeply troubled on a psychological level. I have never looked into so many hopeless, empty eyes. I guess I just don’t see how granting rights of same-sex marriage is going to help a guy who deals with his personal insecurities by dressing up in a Santa suit, strapping on a 2 foot long dildo and walking around in public. I also don’t see why people are so upset that I don’t want guys like this and Dan Savage raising children.

I did some research in google scholar to see what kind of academic social studies I could find that investigate the influence of homosexual parenting on children. Not suprisingly, I found a bunch of articles published in The Journal of Homosexuality saying that homosexual parenting is fine.  (Translation for those who aren’t familiar with academia: a bunch of advocates for homosexual rights started a journal to publish biased information in an “academic journal” to give their beliefs academic credibility. You can pretty much start an academic journal about anything. 90% of academic journals are filled with crap published by graduate students and associate professors who are trying to advance their academic careers – not trying to produce legitimate knowledge using verifiable methods of scientific research).  Even though I found a bunch of articles with favorable views of homosexual parenting, I also found No Basis: What the Studies Don’t Tell Us about Same-Sex Parenting. This book length study provides a substantial review of all the major studies on homosexual parenting and the following was found:

It is routinely asserted in courts, journals and the media that it makes ‘no difference’ whether a child has a mother and a father, two fathers, or two mothers. Reference is often made to social-scientific studies that are claimed to have ‘demonstrated’ this. 

An objective analysis, however, demonstrates that there is no basis for this assertion. The studies on which such claims are based are all gravely deficient.

I also found the following gem: Homosexual parents: a comparative forensic study of character and harms to children.  The author of this article compares the cases from custody court battles involving homosexual and heterosexual parents.  The Following passage is taken from the abstract with my emphasis added:

Each case involving homosexual vs heterosexual claimants was examined for recorded information about (1) the character of the homosexual parent, the associates of the homosexual parent, the heterosexual parent, and the associates of the heterosexual parent, (2) the effects, particularly harms, upon the child(ren), and (3) psychiatric opinion. 82% of the homosexual vs 18% of the heterosexual parents and 54% of the homosexual’s associates vs 19% of the heterosexuals’ associates were recorded as having poor character in cases involving a homosexual claimant. Of the 66 recorded harms, e.g., molestation, physical abuse, to the 73 children, homosexual persons accounted for 64 (97%).

Now I know that advocates from the gay rights movement will claim that I am being unfair by using a few pieces of evidence of negative behavior within the gay community as a justification for denying the whole group the right to marry.  To which I reply that sexual perversion is part of the gay brand.  If anyone who is sympathetic to the gay movement disagrees with me, then they should seriously rethink the passive acceptance of Dan Savage as a national spokesperson.  If gay rights activists want religious traditionalists to take their desire to get married more seriously, then they shouldn’t let perverts like Dan Savage joke around about sexually assaulting young men and boys on national television.  Just as Scott Eckern was forced to resign from his post of Sacramento Theater Director for supporting Propostion 8, Dan Savage should also lose his job at The Stranger, where he is an advice columnist, for tarnishing the homosexual brand by suggesting that homosexuals enjoy sexually assaulting boys.  In a country where religious traditionalists still have a large enough majority to win ballot initiatives, the gay rights movement would do better to try and convince religious christians and traditionalists that the homosexual lifestyle isn’t grounded in sexual perversion and moral deviance.  If this is the case, Dan Savage is a bigger enemy to gay rights than Scott Eckern.

John R. Pottengar, “Mormonism and the American Industrial State,” International Journal of Economics, (Feb. 1987), 26-27.

Terminator Governor #1

Terminator Governor #2

When I was going to college at BYU, I used to go hiking at night in Rock Canyon.  To get to Rock Canyon you have to pass by the Provo temple.  On just about any given night you will see several cars parked along the street outside the temple with heterosexual BYU students inside contemplating their eventual marriage for eternity.

When I was in Washington D.C. I remember walking across the lawn in front of the Capitol Building after visiting the American History Museum.  Right as you walk into the American History Museum they have one of the original sunstones from the burned remnants of the Nauvoo temple.  Where most cultural attractions in D.C. tend to be monumental apologies to any group who has ever been historically maligned, the plaque under the sunstone was a brief understatement to what that stone symbolizes to Mormons who know their history (and all Mormons know their history).  Anyway as I crossed the lawn I saw two gay men sitting on the lawn gazing at the Capitol Building just as all the young BYU students park and gaze at the temple.  “Someday that building will make our greatest dreams possible,” both groups probably think.  Where the pastoral images of two gay men sitting on the grass of the National Mall and Mormon couples gazing at the temple are full of paradox and rhyme, these images contain within them some of the darker aspects of democracy.  One image represents a group that legitimately suffered to earn their rights, and the other image represents those who would demand their rights as an entitled brat.

Rather than protest at the gates of Mormon temples, advocates of the gay rights movement could better spend their time by contemplating the presence of the artifact Sunstone in the Smithsonian’s American History Musuem.  This artifact symbolizes what can happen to a minority social movement that offends its host society to the point of annihilation.

Sunstone from Nauvoo Temple

The gay rights community has been quick to judge the Mormon church as being on the wrong side of history.  Yet, the Mormon church doesn’t need any lectures from any group on legislation targeted at a certain social group with discriminatory intent.  

Rather than protest the Mormon church, gay rights groups could learn a lot from studying the Edmunds-Tucker Act and the forced assimilation endured by the Mormon Church after the act was passed.  Compared to the Edmunds Tucker Act, Proposition 8 is a relatively benign piece of legislation.  At least Proposition 8 didn’t authorize the state to seize the assets of gay couples and turn them over to public education funds, force public officials to make an anti-homosexual oath before they took office, take away voting rights for gays, and fine gay couples for homosexual behavior.

The Mormon Church had to learn from being a consistent target of legislative terrorism that constitutional protections of rights are historically arbitrary.  Constitutional rights only count if the majority of the people whom that constitution represents believe in them.  Unfortunately for gays, the majority of Americans don’t think they should be getting married.  If gays aren’t willing to suffer, die, or relocate as a group outside the territorial boundaries of the United States to preserve their lifestyle then they need to shut up and go home and quit with the childish protests.  Gays say Mormons are on the wrong side of history, just because gays timed their movement for social justice at a time when social justice can supposedly be won by marching down the street with a sign and a flag.  Sorry, gay rights movement, but historically social justice has usually been the result of deep and profound suffering – not a weekend pride parade.  This disregard for legitimate and profound suffering as the currency which buys social justice, probably explains why 70% of African American voters voted for Proposition 8.  Yet, you don’t see gay rights activists hanging black people in effigy or demanding that the NAACP lose their tax exempt status as a non-profit organization.

It is unfortunate that gays are reacting to Proposition 8 through massive protests against the Mormon Church.  The Mormon Church’s history of being the target of violent legislative terrorism and the subsequent intense persecution places the Mormon Church on a moral high ground that is only afforded to those who endure great sacrifice in defense of their beliefs.  For the gay rights movement to criticize the Mormon Church for taking a stand for its beliefs demonstrates that the gay rights movement is motivated by a childish, selfish ignorance of history.  Gays would do better to learn from the Mormons rather than protest against them.