Monthly Archives: September 2010

How to beat your wife

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Further evidence that extremism is a problem in the Muslim world.

I doubt the views expressed in the video are a perfect reflection of Islamic law, but there are several verses in both the Qur’an and the hadiths that seem to condone wife beating. Here is one such verse:

Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme. (Qur’an 4:34)

The appropriate translation of the above verse, however, is hotly contested. I side with those who think Islamic writings at least justify light beatings for recalcitrant women. But by no means did Islam introduce patriarchal and misogynistic attitudes to the Middle East. At worst, it merely codified them.

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Two case studies in sexual repression

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On Saturday, Evergreen International held its annual conference at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City. Evergreen is a non-profit organization that ‘helps’ LGBT Mormon youth “diminish same-sex attractions and overcome homosexual behavior.” Each year, a general authority of the LDS Church gives the keynote address at the conference.

Elder Bruce C. Hafen spoke at Evergreen last year. His address was widely regarded as a step backward for the LDS Church on homosexuality. You can read his address here. This year, Bishop Keith B. McMullin delivered the keynote address. Details from The Salt Lake Tribune:

An LDS general authority on Saturday comforted Mormons who are attracted to people of the same sex but want to live by the church’s chastity rules, which bar sexual acts outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

“Each of us has problems,” said Bishop Keith B. McMullin, second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Together, we shall overcome them.”

…

On Saturday, McMullin said people with same-sex attraction should not call themselves “gay” or “lesbian.” He offered advice to LDS ecclesiastical leaders in the audience of about 200 people.

“If someone seeking your help says to you, ‘I am a homosexual,’ or, ‘I am lesbian,’ or, ‘I am gay,’ correct this miscasting,” McMullin said. “Heavenly Father does not speak of his children this way and neither should we. It is simply not true. To speak this way seeds a doubt and deceit about who we really are.”

He said every individual is a “son or daughter” of God. Jesus Christ, McMullin said, has the power to lift the “burden” of every “man and woman, boy and girl.”

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Is President Obama a subliminal Satanist?

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Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Not convinced? You of course shouldn’t be. But unfortunately, millions of people buy this nonsense. A poll conducted earlier this year found that 24% of Republicans believe that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”

For the record, Obama is hardly the first president to be accused of Satanism by Christian conspiracy theorists. Back in 2004, at a John Kerry meet-up in Salt Lake City, I remember an old man trying to convince me that George W. Bush was the Antichrist. So both parties have their fair share of crazies at the extremes.

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Something for the ladies: advancing the role of women in Mormonism

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I have come to realize just how male-centric this blog is. Women are often most victimized by religion, and yet I very rarely write about women’s issues here. Even the name of the site and the group—SHAFT—is evidence of male bias! (Yes, the phallic innuendo was intentional; men cannot pass up the opportunity to make a penis joke.) It isn’t surprising, then, that only 21% of our readership is female*.

So I figure I ought to do a little something for the ladies in this post.

Molly Muses recently offered a list of small changes the LDS Church could make to advance the role of women in Mormonism. Below are her suggestions:

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Glenn Beck, the LDS Church, and the League of Nations

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Readers will know that among my intellectual interests are politics and Mormon history. I especially love when these two subjects intersect, as they do with the League of Nations.

You’re probably asking how the long-since defunct League of Nations, the forerunner to the United Nations, is relevant in 2010. The answer: Glenn Beck.

In the past year, Beck and his disciples in the Tea Party movement have ratcheted up the rhetoric against America’s most progressive president. And they’re not talking about Barack Obama, but—oddly enough—Woodrow Wilson.

Here’s what Beck said about President Wilson back in February: “I hate that S.O.B.! He was an evil, evil dude.” Why such invective? Beck’s litany of complaints against Wilson include, among other things: the federal income tax, the re-segregation of government offices, the imprisonment of anti-war dissidents during WWI, and the League of Nations.

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Link bomb #6

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My post about The Daily Universe‘s censorship of a letter to the editor critical of Prop 8 garnered quite the audience. PZ Myers, The Salt Lake Tribune, and The Huffington Post picked up the story, along with several prominent Mormon and LGBT blogs. Cary Crall, the BYU student who wrote the letter, will be interviewed live by Mormon Stories’ John Dehlin on Tuesday at 8 PM (MST). Call in with questions.

In related news, Chuck Cooper, the lead defense attorney for Prop 8, spoke to BYU law students on Thursday about the threat of gay marriage. Cooper’s disappointing performance prompted one attendee to ask: “If Chuck Cooper can’t defend Prop 8 in front of a group of BYU students, then how is he going to defend it in front of the Supreme Court?”

Patheos has a series of thoughtful articles on the future of secular humanism. We have reason to be optimistic.

In their magazine Awake!, Jehovah’s Witnesses critique the ‘new atheism,’ ironically complaining that atheists are “not content to keep their views to themselves.”

Despite undergoing chemotherapy for esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens marshaled enough strength to debate David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, last week. By all accounts, Hitchens was at the top of his game.

Our friend Craig, over at his blog, credits Mormonism for his atheism. I can relate, as I’m sure many of you can too. A disproportionate number of nonbelievers come out of institutional and legalistic religions like Mormonism and Catholicism.

A new study finds that atheist/agnostic doctors are twice as likely than their religious peers to hasten the death of terminally-ill patients.

The president of the Montana Tea Party was forced to resign after joking about hanging homosexuals.

An atheist and computer science student at Purdue has been blogging his way through the entire Bible, providing chapter summaries and critical commentary.

CTR rings are a thing of the past. Introducing CTR brass knuckles…

Atheist philosopher Keith Parsons says goodbye to the philosophy of religion. “I just cannot take [theistic] arguments seriously any more,” he writes, “and if you cannot take something seriously, you should not try to devote serious academic attention to it.”

Utah artist Jon McNaughton, who drew national attention for this painting, has produced yet another controversial piece—this one depicting President Obama standing on the Constitution while previous presidents look on in astonishment and disgust.

A professor at a Catholic college in India had his hand chopped off by the Islamic Popular Front of India for allegedly preparing a paper with derogatory references to Muhammad. Adding insult to injury (literally!), the college fired him for offending “religious sensibilities.”

The Liberal Agnostic Who Could updates the 13 Articles of Faith.

Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosopher’s Magazine, argues that science hasn’t killed god, only rendered him unrecognizable. The universe of Hawking and other scientists leaves no room for what Baggini calls “the activist god of the Bible.”

One of the members of our sister group SHIFT recently created the website LDS Origins, a resource for early Mormon history. Also at the site is the transcript of a conversation this SHIFT member had with an unnamed LDS apostle.

Robert Fisk of The Independent documents the growing problem of so-called honor killings, which claim the lives of at least 20,000 women a year.

Remembering September 11, 1857

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Today, people somberly remember the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But September 11th also marks the anniversary of another, less well-known tragedy born of religious fanaticism—the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

From Wikipedia:

The was Mountain Meadows Massacre a mass slaughter of the Fancher-Baker emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, by a local Mormon militia and members of the Paiute Indian tribe on September 11, 1857. The incident began as an attack, quickly turned into a siege, and eventually culminated in the murder of the unarmed emigrants after their surrender. All of the party except for seventeen children under eight years old were killed—about 120 men, women, and children were killed, but precise numbers have been debated.

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