Monthly Archives: July 2010

Friendly advice to the LDS Church about homosexuality

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The LDS Church gets a lot of grief over its stance on homosexuality. The criticisms are often well-deserved, but rarely constructive.

In the wake of several gay Mormon suicides, concerned Mormons are asking what their church could do to better minister to gay members. Here are what I hope to be a few constructive suggestions:

1. Work out a consistent theology regarding sex. Let me explain. If you’re going to oppose homosexuality on the grounds that it perverts the procreative end of sex, then treat homosexuality as you would other non-procreative acts—like masturbation, heterosexual sodomy, and contraceptive use. In other words, don’t treat homosexuality as a special, excommunicable sin.

(I of course don’t think homosexuality is a sin, but I cannot realistically expect the LDS Church to share my view any time soon).

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CFI launches “Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest”

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The Center for Inquiry (of which SHAFT is an affiliate) just released a PSA to advertise their “Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest.”

CFI invites you to make a short video about the importance of free expression, upload it to YouTube, and tag it with “Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest” by September 30th, 2010. The top three winners will be announced that day and awarded a grand prize of $2,000 dollars.

Go here to learn more about the contest and how to enter.

Why Mormon services are boring

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At the invitation of friends, I’ve attended LDS Sunday services a few times this month. I grew up going to these services, so I almost expected that attending them now would be a comfortable and familiar experience. I was wrong. Not only did I look like an outsider (with my beard and blue jeans), but I was reminded that—as a liberal, bisexual atheist—I am an outsider.

I’m glad I went, though. I imagined that my visits were a kind of a sociological field study of Utah Mormon culture. But it doesn’t take a sociologist to make the following observation: Mormon services are boring.

I’ve made a similar observation before. And it’s not an observation unique to me or non-Mormons. On Monday, Mormon blogger Jana Riess asked the question, “Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?” She offered five pretty insightful reasons.

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A tragedy close to home

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Utah leads the nation in male youth suicides, and there was a tragic reminder of that fact yesterday.

On July 19th, Todd Ransom, a young gay man from Salt Lake City, committed suicide. It is unclear why exactly Todd took his life, but his friends report that he faced disapproval from his family and struggled to reconcile his sexual orientation with his Mormon upbringing.

I never knew Todd, despite sharing several mutual friends with him. But his death has greatly saddened me and countless others. There will be candle-light vigil held in memory of Todd tonight at 9:00 PM outside the state capitol building.

In response to this and other recent gay Mormon suicides, my friend Isaac shared his own personal struggle as a gay Mormon on Facebook. With his permission, I’m posting the full note here.

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On dialogue and changing minds

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From a recent Boston Globe article entitled “How facts backfire”:

[A] few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

Yikes. If facts do not disabuse people of false beliefs but instead further entrench those beliefs, how can we (SHAFT) successfully promote skepticism and scientific literacy?

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Is there a link between atheism and veganism?

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Yes, both atheists and vegans are self-righteous nuisances who tend to cause problems at family reunions. Other than that striking similarity, this question seems a strange one; after all, what could atheism and animal rights possibly have to do with one another? Veganism is very much a belief in something, while atheism is a lack of belief in something.

Despite these differences, two connections come to mind. First, the two most common defenses (though not the best) of eating meat are closely linked with a God-created universe. The first of these defenses is that nonhuman animals were put here by a God to be used by humans and that they do not have souls so it is alright to use them. The second defense claims that humans have some special characteristic, such as intelligence or language, that all other animals do not. This claim, that one species possesses some characteristic wholly absent in ALL other species flies in the face of any theory of evolution, which maintains that differences between species are quantitative, not qualitative. So if nothing else, atheists should perhaps be more receptive to arguments for veganism.

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Lake of Fire

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The abortion debate occasionally flares up at this debate (and it has recently), so I want to make a documentary recommendation. Go rent/find “Lake of Fire.” Below is the trailer:

This is arguably the definitive documentary about abortion. Its approach to the issue is sensitive and balanced. You’ll probably walk away from the movie with increased respect for the other side (though you wouldn’t guess it from the trailer). I hope you check it out, but a warning: The film is two-and-a-half hours long and very graphic.