Category Archive

You might recall the blog I did a million years ago about the cat who made a calendar of young, attractive Mormon males, all returned missionaries for the church–only sans their white shirts, ties and black name tags, if you catch my drift, wink wink, nudge nudge.  Okay, I just grossed myself out.  So this dude, Chad Hardy (such a Mormon name), was excommunicated yesterday after a disciplinary meeting with his local church leaders.  I thought you would want to know.  Okay, I thought you would probably not care, but I needed something to blog about, and this story seemed to have potential.  Also, I’m too lazy to look up more relevant current events.

Some people–a lot of people, actually–probably think this punishment was a little bit of overkill.  I mean, it’s not like it was a naked calendar, just a shirtless one.  Also, they included pictures of the young men in their missionary attire, along with their personal testimonies of the Gospel.  It was, like, an alternative missionary effort, if you will.  Plus, part of the proceeds went to charity.  So what’s the big deal?

I don’t know what the big deal is.  I’d bet dollars to doughnuts, though, that it was more than just the calendar.  According to media accounts, some of the 12 calendar models were also called in for disciplinary meetings, but none was punished.  Prior to his church court, Hardy said, “You see more in a JCPenney catalog.  I just feel like my right to free speech is being violated.”

I always find it odd when Mormons get upset with the Church interfering with their right to free speech.  Not that I think people should just sit there and like it when the Church disciplines them for something as innocuous as a pretty boy calendar, but I just think it’s a strange way to characterize what is happening to them.  They can’t just say, “The church is way too uptight about x, and they shouldn’t be punishing me for this.”  No, it has to be something glamorous and earth-shattering, like their free speech is being violated–despite the fact that this isn’t a breach of the first amendment unless you’re just really confused about what the first amendment means.

I also notice that people will get all huffy about their rights being violated, but will say very little regarding their feelings about being formally separated from the body of Christ.  One would think that relevant, if they were upset about the possibility of excommunication.  But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, after his church court, Hardy didn’t seem real torn up about the results.

“I have no ill feelings toward any of those people,” Hardy said of the church council. “They did what they believed was right and I really do feel it was the best decision for both of us.”

Which is convenient, since he doesn’t have a choice.  Just kidding.  I believe that Hardy is just fine with the decision, as he hasn’t been active in the church for several years, and hence he isn’t missing out on much by being excommunicated.  (Not in this life, anyway.)

I have about a dozen cynical takes on this, but none of them is very funny.  I was hoping for some funny to come out of this.

The 2009 calendar has sold about 10,000 copies.  On a totally unrelated note, does anyone happen to know how many gay men live in the Rocky Mountain region?  Just curious.

(And no, I’m not poaching TheTheologiansCafe’s blog.  #1, it’s impossible to poach Dan’s blog.  #2, Mormons have the inalienable right to blog about Mormon-related stories before all other bloggers, even Theologians.)

(#2 “And no”–I don’t think Chad Hardy is really going to hell.  I don’t know where he’s going.  I don’t even know where I’m going.)

I have not been motivated to do much of anything lately, not even blog. My medication is in limbo, and the Reese’s peanut butter cups are not performing their usual magic, so maybe I am just in a bad mood, but it’s a woman’s prerogative to get annoyed for no good reason, at least once a month during her era of fertility, so if you’re not in the mood for petty carping, look elsewhere. You know, that sentence makes me sound much angrier than I probably am. I must have a lot of suppressed rage or something. Well, let’s do this thing.

This is not a Mormon blog. It’s a blog written by a Mormon lady who occasionally goes all Mormony on you. I enjoy mocking my own culture sometimes–not to be all subversive and in your face, but because that’s just how I roll. I mock because I love. I love being a Mormon, and I love Mormondom in general. That doesn’t mean I’m blind to the church’s flaws and weaknesses, in its leadership and/or its membership. Some people wonder why, considering all my doubts and alleged square-peggishness, a sarcastic suckhead like me sticks with an institution that is  designed for cookie-cutter sheep-type people with great teeth and awesome hair. Well, the fact is I am not that special, I don’t like my boat rocked, and my teeth and hair are pretty great, if not outstanding. But it comes down to this: the church is my home. Mormons are my family. We’ve got our skeletons and our crazy Aunt Myrtles. I can take good-natured jokes about this stuff because I’m willing to own the kooks and the skeletons. And in turn I can joke about it because I have such deep affection for the community–an affection I think is obvious to anyone who reads me without prejudice.

It is not obvious to a certain subset of Mormons, people who think being Mormon means never having to be ironic. I’m sorry that you people are irony-deficient. I wish there were a supplement you could take, because then you wouldn’t leave random comments on my site telling me that I’m bigoted and have no manners. This happens from time to time, and I usually shrug it off because, whatever, they don’t know me and they don’t care, why waste the emotion. When somebody leaves a comment like, “Your a little retard, Mormons are great,” I don’t even feel compelled to correct their spelling, or to point out that “retard” is not a euphemism that charming people use. I definitely don’t see the point in explaining that I myself think that Mormons are great, because if they didn’t want to understand the first time, they’re usually not motivated to get it the second time either.

So sometime last year I wrote a verbose review of a Mormon movie called Church Ball–which is an awful movie, largely because it is supposed to be a wacky comedy but it is not a bit funny, but also because it tries too hard not to be Mormon–and recently I got this comment on that post:

I must say, I have seen some of the Halestorm movies for the first time recently and has really enjoyed it. So did quite a few of my friends and family. Personaly I did not like “Sons of Provo”. I did not see “Church Ball” and would like to recomend the few that I found to be quite hillarious. So it could just be a matter of taste. I should also just remind you that if you only find movies funny if it contans an age restriction, profanity, swearing, nudity, adultery, etc. you cannot expect good clean family fun to entertain you and should thus not try and review it. The movies me and my family found to be quite entertaining are the following: “Baptists at our barbeque”, “The R.M.”, “Take a chance”. Hope you find that a little more to your taste. There are also other “mormon” movies, not by Halestorm that are really good. As far as your blog goes, I find it a little tasteless as anyone would find any blog trying to demean an institution because of personal issues.

First of all, where to begin. I’m assuming that if you enjoy Halestorm movies, you must be Mormon. I’m not going to assume that you’re a bad person, but I do figure that we won’t be running into each other at the cinema anytime soon. If you enjoy Halestorm movies, along with your family, who I’m sure are all lovely people, then bully for you. I enjoy a good rerun of What’s Happenin’, and I hope people don’t judge me too harshly for that. I liked Sons of Provo, you did not. That’s fine. Unlike my husband and ten-year-old, I don’t think everyone has to like what I like. Sons of Provo doesn’t fry your burger, and that’s good enough for me. Live and be well. You have not offended me.

What does trip my where-do-you-get-off wire is this implication that my failure to be entertained by Halestorm must be a function of my obvious jadedness. Maybe I “only find movies funny if it contans an age restriction, profanity, swearing, nudity, adultery, etc.” and thus have no business trying to review wholesome entertainment for decent folk.

I’ll have you know, missy–or mister, whichever–that I don’t think profanity and nudity make a movie funny, and I haven’t seen a movie with an “R” rating in more than twelve years. But unlike some people, I don’t think a movie’s good just because it has no swearing in it, and I’m not so desperate to be entertained that I’ll just laugh randomly and hope that a joke shows up to meet me halfway. When you’re recommending a movie to me, I want to know why it’s good, not that it’s inoffensive. Technically, I suppose Church Ball is inoffensive, unless you think it’s sinful to be boring.

That was my problem with Church Ball: it was boring. You’ve never seen it; you’re lucky. I have seen it, and that makes me the expert. It was not funny. It would not have been funnier if they’d said the F-word a lot. It would not have been funnier if they’d used the word “ass” instead of “butt.” It would not have been funnier if any of them had been naked. It would not have been funnier if the entire cast had been naked. It would not have been funnier if there had been more sinning. What would have made it funnier was if there had been authentic characters and a coherent storyline. Perhaps with your limited cinematic experience, you believe that authentic characters and coherent storylines can only be achieved through obscenity. That has not been my observation.

As to the movies you recommended, I haven’t seen any of them but The R.M. I didn’t find The R.M. a very good movie, but it was funnier than Church Ball, by at least a hundred points. Its quality was uneven, but it did have an authentic main character and a semi-coherent storyline. It would have been even funnier if it had been less lame, but swearing probably wouldn’t have helped a bit.

Also, I have seen other non-Halestorm Mormon movies, and some of them are very good. They are not Oscar caliber, but Mormon cinema is in its infancy, and I judge low-budget films by a slightly different standard. Maybe that’s the soft bigotry of lower expectations, but it’s not the kind of bigotry you’re talking about.

Which brings me to your last sentence: “As far as your blog goes, I find it a little tasteless as anyone would find any blog trying to demean an institution because of personal issues.”

I confess I do not know what to do with this. Which institution am I demeaning? If I say that Halestorm tends to make low-quality movies (which it does) and that Mormon filmmakers have yet to produce a Citizen Kane (or whatever), I am not demeaning Mormon filmmaking in general. Actually, I’m doing it a favor by letting it know how it can improve, and I think I do it in a way that’s considerably nicer than Simon Cowell’s constructive criticism.  I am certainly not demeaning the Church or its people.  The Church and its people deserve better than Church Ball.  And The R.M., no offense to it or the lovely people who find it hilarious.  The only “personal issues” I have are with people who think it’s “tasteless” not to embrace mediocrity in the name of good, clean fun.

You know what I think is tasteless?  Chalking up your disagreements with someone to a personal grudge or a psychological problem because you are overly sensitive about your religion and your taste in movies.  Thank you for putting me in my place.  Now you can go get a life.

We went to church with my sister on Sunday.  Princess Zurg went to Primary (children’s Sunday School) with her cousins.  Princess Zurg has a love-hate relationship with Primary.  On the one hand, she finds it a lot less dull than the sacrament service.  On the other hand, it is still a little too “churchy” for her tastes.  She likes the classroom portion, when they discuss the application of religious principles to real-life situations.  She doesn’t enjoy when they read from the scriptures because there aren’t enough girls in them.  (She has particular disdain for the Book of Mormon, which is heavy on war stories and mentions only three women by name, one of whom is a harlot of no consequence.  That really galls her.)  She likes the singing…sometimes, when they’re not singing “annoying” or “childish” songs.  In other words, it’s really more of a tolerate-hate relationship.

I feel her pain.  I wasn’t too fond of Primary at her age, either.  I wasn’t too fond of church, period, and the feeling didn’t become warmer or fuzzier when the teen years hit.  I found the church youth programs alternately dull and condescending.  Or perhaps both simultaneously.  I was probably around thirteen when I decided I just wasn’t going to go to church anymore, because what were my parents going to do, make me?  Well, actually, it turned out they could.  I think so, anyway.  It was a long time ago, and I remember them putting up with my crap for about three weeks, and then the jig was up.  I don’t remember exactly what “changed my mind.”  I suppose I was just a people pleaser at heart.  Anyway, that’s another story.  My point is that I sympathize with PZ’s frustration, but at the same time, she’s only ten and not a very responsible ten, and I’m not going to let her just stay home by herself.  I don’t think she even wants to stay home by herself.  I think she wants us to change religions.  That’s not apt to happen.  And like I said, we need to take her with us, if only to keep her off the streets.

Historically, PZ has acted out in very loud, very public ways during various portions of the worship service, starting when she was about, oh, two?  Two-and-a-half?  We were walking into the chapel one day when she suddenly threw herself down on the floor and started screaming, “No!  No church!  NO JESUS CHRIST!”  The incident was all the more remarkable because PZ at that age was more or less non-verbal much of the time.  It would take more motivation than I currently have to provide you a laundry list of PZ’s childhood impieties; suffice it to say that the above anecdote is representative of the rest of the iceberg.

We don’t “allow” PZ to disturb other people’s worship–not any more than her school teachers “allow” her to disturb other students’ learning experiences–and in the last couple of years, she’s made great strides in the Appropriate Church Behavior department.   In the last several weeks, though, she’s been particularly vocal with her complaints.  This Sunday was no exception.  Girlfriend was not hip to strange church nurseries, so I was walking the halls with her and happened to pass by the Primary room, where the kids were learning a new song called “Home Is Where the Heart Is.”  (Technically, it’s not “new,” but this generation of kids did not know it.)  The second verse goes like this:

Out in the hall, I did my mental Marge Simpson grumble–”Hrmmmm”–and hoped that I had just misheard the lyrics.  They didn’t actually set up Father as Mr. Strength and Wisdom whilst lumping Mother in with the rest of the household members who needed his righteous dominion, did they?  Well, probably they did, but I was reserving judgment for the time being.  Right about then, my sister (who happens to be the Primary president in her ward) came out to the hall and told me that PZ had been quite disturbed that Father got strength and wisdom, while Mother just got stuck with the kids.  Yes, we chuckled over it, but I also said, “Good for her.”  At least that’s what I was thinking.  Inside the Primary room, they were still practicing the song and the music director was telling the kids, “This time, sing it like you mean it.”  PZ burst out, “But I don’t mean it!”  And at this moment, as much as I wanted her to suck it up and not make a scene or embarrass her cousins, I also couldn’t help but think, “That’s my girl!”

For those of you not up to speed on your Mormon Minutiae, the LDS church has a fully correlated curriculum–it’s a by-product of the David O. McKay era as documented in David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (fascinating read, I assure you)–which means that Primaries all over the world teach their kids the same lessons and the same songs.  This “Home Is Where the Heart Is” song is, unfortunately, part of the 2008 Primary program set to take place in October, in every Primary on the face of the earth, including ours.  So this was not the last time PZ will have to be affronted by this song, as well she knows.  She’s written (and mailed) a letter to the General Primary Board, hoping that the lyrics to this song will be changed by prophetic mandate before the October program.  No, we have not yet begun to see the end of PZ angst over this topic.  And I have to tell you, this time I’m grateful for my daughter’s utter inability to let stuff go.  It may be sad and wrong, but part of me is actually looking forward to her complaining every week about this song.  I hope she complains good and loud.  It’s nothing new–folks in our Primary are used to PZ’s feminist rants–but it has the potential for something big.  Like what?  I don’t know.  It’s just so rare that I can support my daughter’s righteous anger, and I’d like to relish it, if you don’t mind.

I realize how silly this must sound, making such a big deal out of a little song–really, only a little part of a little song–as though I didn’t belong to a patriarchal church with a treasure trove of gender disparities that are hard to reconcile with my basic sense of justice, not to mention logic.  You’re probably wondering, all things considered, if Madhousewife doesn’t have bigger theological fish to fry.  Well, yes, ordinarily I do.  But this is not a theological fish fry.  It is a cultural fish fry.  Where the fish are sometimes coated in theological batter.  I’m going to abandon this metaphor before it destroys me.  Next paragraph, please.

I know I belong to a patriarchal religion.  I’ve come to terms with that, in a way.  I had to find a way to live with it, so I did.  Find a way, I mean.  And the fact is, most Mormon women don’t feel oppressed by the church’s patriarchal structure.  I don’t feel oppressed by it.  It is more an intellectual annoyance than anything–because, in fact, there is much in the religion that is empowering to women.  Some Mormon women don’t even find it difficult to reconcile those aspects with the patriarchal ones.  I am not one of those women, but that is neither here nor there.  The church continues to evolve on gender issues.  Some things really have changed; others really haven’t.  But the fact remains:  back when this “Home” song was written, it was not controversial to assert that men had authority over their wives and children, but these days no one would get up in church and say that without ducking.  Today there is an increased emphasis on wives and husbands being equal partners, even while the church refuses to repudiate the patriarchal order.

This is frustrating for most Mormon feminists, who would rather deal with open sexism than this political correctness, but I’ve chosen to take the church at its word.  We believe in both patriarchy and equality–fine.  It may not make sense, but neither does a lot of other stuff; it’s religion, not rocket science.  I can dig that.  What I can’t dig–won’t dig–is the notion that this doctrinal paradox mustn’t produce cognitive dissonance.  Some folks don’t have the cognitive dissonance; I appreciate that.  But they need to understand that their lack of cognitive dissonance is attributable to faith, not reason.  Not that reason doesn’t inform faith; it does.  But religious mysteries cannot be “solved” by reason alone.  That is why they are mysteries.  I don’t want to remake church doctrine to suit my personal sensibilities, but I insist on acknowledging the mysteries, so I insist on acknowledging the cognitive dissonance.

This is why I’m happy to have my daughter publicly object to this silly Primary song–not because I think it’s a hill worth dying on, but because I know it’s not a hill the church is willing to die on either.  It’s just a tiny thing that niggles at me, and so I niggle back.  It’s easy to say, “Well, it’s just a song, and there’s a rhyme scheme and a rhythm to maintain, and it doesn’t mean that Mother doesn’t have ’strength and wisdom true,’ just like Father, but there just wasn’t enough room to say it that way, and for the love of Mike, it’s just a song, what do you want, Madhousewife/Princess Zurg?”  But it’s also just as easy to point out this:  A hundred little things add up.  My daughter hears this song and thinks it diminishes women.  I think it infantilizes them.  It’s not devastating; it’s not abusive; it’s just annoying–nothing more than annoying, in and of itself.  But if the church wants its patriarchy-equality paradox, maybe it should stop teaching my children songs that undermine its professed value of male-female equality.  It’s a little thing, precisely.  That’s why it’s not too much to ask.

Make no mistake–I labor under no illusion that the church is going to change this song or have it removed from the children’s songbook, nor will I be embittered because of that.  I just want other people to think about it, about its implications.  Something they won’t be able to help doing when my daughter runs out of the room screaming every time they sing it.

I haven’t had a shower since Tuesday.  And now the painters are here to finish up my bathroom, and Thursday’s not looking good for a shower either. 

Good thing my social life is already non-existent.

Speaking of non-existent, I’ve decided that Mitt Romney does have a Mormon problem.  It’s just not the Mormon problem he thinks he has.  Yeah, there are people out there who wouldn’t vote for a Mormon if he were Barack Obama himself, but I still think those numbers are exaggerated.  No, Mitt Romney’s Mormon problem is about him.  People make fun of his hair and say he looks like a used-car salesman, which is funny because, as someone on one of the Mormon blogs said recently, he really looks just like most of the stake presidents* I’ve had over the years (though handsomer than the average).  As far as I know, LDS stake presidents are not disproportionately used-car salesmen.  They do tend to share a couple common denominators, though, which are pertinent to the discussion because Mitt Romney was a stake president himself for nine years.  (*A stake president in the LDS church is roughly equivalent to a Catholic bishop, as I understand it.) 

I was not surprised to learn that Mitt Romney was a stake president.  As I said, he looks like a stake president.  And he’s the type of man who gets asked to be a stake president, i.e. he’s competent and business-like and looks most comfortable in a suit and tie.  Now, I’m not saying that all stake presidents are the same.  I’m saying they all look the same.  Mitt Romney was also a bishop (roughly equivalent to a parish priest), for two or three years, and that impressed me somewhat more.  Bishops work very closely with the members of their ward (parish) on a daily basis, spending upwards of thirty hours a week (on top of their day job) ministering to the flock, if you’ll pardon the pastoral metaphor.  Stake presidents, on the other hand, are executives.  They’re big-picture guys.  They’re the dudes at HQ who give the orders.  Theirs is an important job, but it’s far more remote from the people they serve. 

Stake president is a job that seems well-suited to Mitt Romney’s particular talents.  I have difficulty picturing him as a bishop (though stake presidents are often former bishops, just not always).  Which doesn’t mean I think he would have made a lousy bishop, just that it’s easier for me to see him in a remote leadership role, not down in the trenches with the rest of us.  I’m not trying to paint stake presidents as detached, because they’re certainly emotionally invested in their jobs.  But it’s like this:  I’ve always been very fond of all my bishops.  I often have trouble remembering who my stake president is.  (Although it’s easy to remember who my current stake president is, as he’s a prominent OB/GYN in Portland, and I think he’s delivered half the Mormon babies on the west side.  Not mine, of course.  Ew.) 

Which brings me back to Mitt Romney.  It’s really hard for me to tell who Mitt Romney is.  Not because he changes his positions on certain things.  That actually doesn’t bother me.  I care what people do now and what they plan to do in the future, more than I care about what they did x number of years ago.  No, it’s hard to tell who Mitt Romney is because he seems always to be wearing his “church face.”  It’s a common mindset among Mormons that one is always being scrutinized, and that one’s actions inevitably reflect on the church itself.  That is a suffocating responsibility.  The natural response is to hide.  Is Mitt Romney hiding something?  I think he is–though it’s hard to say whether I suspect he’s hiding or I just hope he’s hiding.  Because if he isn’t holding back, if this is all there really is–I don’t know.  I just don’t know.

I think that’s why I’ve been so put off, watching him go negative in the campaign, because he’s such a bland personality otherwise.  John McCain is a mean SOB, and everyone knows he’s a mean SOB, but he’s a compelling candidate (not the “best” candidate, not the one I’m supporting) because he just puts it all out there.  He’s obviously passionate and sincerely determined about certain things.  He’ll follow Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell.”  I mean, golly, that is disconcerting, but you know he means it.  I say if you’re going to be an SOB, be an SOB.  You know what I’m saying?  Let your freak flag fly.

On the other hand, a few right-wing Romney-loving pundits, noting that the other Republican candidates seem to genuinely dislike Romney, have speculated that those other guys are just jealous.  I mean, let’s face it:  the dude’s a millionaire; he has a wonderful family; he’s been wildly successful in his life; I think he made People magazine’s list of most beautiful people in 2002; he’s got a kid named “Tagg”–what’s not to hate? 

Am I jealous of Mitt Romney?  I confess I tend to gravitate toward people who are deeply flawed.  People like Rudy Giuliani, they have that rock star quality that I find so irresistible.  Mitt Romney is a star of a different genre.  He reminds me of those guys in the romantic comedies–the good-looking, successful guys who expect to get the girl, but the girl ends up going for the lovable loser instead, because they have such good chemistry.  It’s interesting that I would be that girl, because I’m not usually that romantic.  I’m frequently yelling at the screen, “What are you doing?  That guy doesn’t have a job!  He can’t even bother to shave, for Pete’s sake!”  But here I am, faced with the obvious choice of the competent and upstanding Mitt Romney, and who am I going for?  The cross-dressing adulterer?  Are you yelling at the screen yet?

I can bring this post full-circle by quoting Mike Huckabee’s recent exchange with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, which wins an award for creepiest joke by a politician this year:

Leno: So you were going to do an ad.

Huckabee: Right. So we put together an ad and taped the tape, got it all ready. We were going to release it at a press conference, and Monday I just didn’t feel right. We had gotten where we are by being positive and talking about what this country needs to be rather than what’s wrong with the other guys, and I just said –

Leno: As you were making it did you feel like –

Huckabee: I needed to go take a shower or something like that or give Romney a shower maybe. I don’t know.

On the one hand, ew.  On the other, I’m jealous.

And now it’s time to clutter up the blog with a YouTube video:

I used to think that the reason people couldn’t have constructive disagreements was that they talked past each other.  You know, not addressing each other’s concerns, not using the same “language,” misunderstandings, blah blah.  This morning I was visiting one of the big Mormon blogs and read a comment that I disagreed with, and I was going to respond to it, but then the only words I could come up with were, “How do you not see what a sanctimonious p**** you are?”  And I don’t even use the word “p****,” which made it all the more disconcerting. 

Take-home message:  the reason people don’t have constructive disagreements is that so few of them think like me.  Is this the end of the innocence?

I feel obligated to comment on Mitt Romney’s Big Speech that took place yesterday.  I wouldn’t, except that so many other people have commented, and so many of those comments have been dumb.  Maybe I don’t want to comment on the speech itself but only some of the comments.  Actually, I don’t have much to say about the speech, except that it was definitely the most compelling thing I’ve ever heard come out of Mitt Romney’s mouth.  Well, technically I didn’t hear it come out of his mouth.  I only read the transcript.  And having heard a lot of Mormons speak in my day, I felt as though I could recreate the delivery pretty accurately in my mind (accounting for the fact that Mitt Romney speaks twice as fast as the average Mormon–must be an east-of-the-Rockies thing). 

Anyway, generally I liked it.  Granted, my expectations were low, because frankly I didn’t see how such a speech could do anyone any good, least of all Mitt Romney, whom I don’t support as a candidate (yet), but as a fellow human being, I had my concerns.  (Okay, as a fellow Republican I had concerns.  I really don’t worry too much about Ted Kennedy screwing up a speech and destroying his career.  That’s probably because Ted Kennedy’s career was born covered in a thick layer of asbestos.  I seem to be picking on Ted Kennedy a lot lately.  That’s probably because I’m hoping that if I stop mentioning John Edwards, he will eventually go away.  So far it isn’t working.  But I’m a patient woman.)

Originally I was in that camp that said the speech was pointless because if he was trying to appease people who had misgivings about his religion, he was fighting a losing battle.  It’s possible to overcome one’s misgivings about a religion–happens more often than you’d think, actually–but such developments usually require divine intervention, or a psychotic break with reality, depending on your point of view.  Anyway, a speech doesn’t usually do the trick, no matter how nice it is.  It’s far more realistic to dispel people’s misgivings about individuals, including individuals who happen to be Mormons, but I thought that Mitt had had plenty of time to dispel people’s misgivings about him personally, and if he hadn’t dispelled mine yet, the likelihood that he would dispel those of people who were hung up on his religion was vanishingly small. 

While the speech wasn’t perfect, I was still impressed.  I could nitpick if I were so inclined, but I confess that I’m moved to view the weaker passages charitably.  (As a fellow Republican and all.  I was going to say fellow Mormon–I’m not above a little denominational cronyism–but then I realized I don’t really care if Harry Reid screws up a speech either.)  Also, I’m a sucker for that God Bless America stuff.  For the first time during Romney’s long campaign I felt a scintilla of enthusiasm for the man.  (If you’ll excuse me getting caught up in the moment there–we Mormons are emotional types.)  

So there you have it.  It doesn’t bother me that other people didn’t like the speech as much as I did, or that they’re less inclined to view the weaker passages charitably–especially if those people aren’t religious people because, really, there was not much there for Americans who are confirmed secularists, and there were a couple lines that I would not expect to sit well with non-believers (unless they were possessed of a superhuman maturity or, possibly, apathy).  “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom” is one such line.  That was clumsily written, possibly ill-considered, but on the scale of offensiveness, it probably ranks higher than it ought to.  (I respect your right to respectfully disagree.) 

And I concede that as long as he was praising other faiths, it would have been nice to throw a bone to some eastern religions–but only if he’d been Mike Huckabee.  When it comes to religions with polytheistic pantheons, a Mormon politician really can’t afford to go there.  (You probably have to be a Christian to understand why.  But if you’re a Christian, you’re probably not lamenting how often Buddhism gets overlooked, either.)  Also, it’s very possible Mitt doesn’t know the first thing about eastern religions, which should be forgivable, as a large percentage of Westerners don’t know the first thing about western religions, and certainly not about Mormonism.

And here’s where the dumb criticisms come in.  One particular quibble was that Romney was supposed to be addressing the issue of his own faith, but he only mentioned the word “Mormon” once.  (Contrast this with JFK’s famous speech, wherein he used the word “Catholic” twenty times.)  My reaction?  Um…whatev.  Yeah, not even worth a whole “whatever.”  And I never shorten “whatever,” so you know I really mean it.  I think lots of people may have been expecting Romney to talk more about Mormonism per se, but those people were expecting a speech that Romney was wise not to give.  Also, here’s a little secret:  as a general rule, Mormons don’t say the word “Mormon” nearly as much as Not-Mormons do.  I say the word “Mormon” a lot, but I say it with self-conscious irony, usually when I’m making fun of us.  (Yes, I know, I’m a subtle one.  We all are, but that’s another secret I won’t explicate at this time.)  Walk into one of our church meetings, where we–hold onto your hats–talk about our religion a lot, and we still don’t use the word “Mormon” all that much. 

Maybe this is a product of twentieth-century assimilation, but I actually think it’s because our religion isn’t actually Mormon-centric.  Yes, Mormon is the name of a person–or alleged person, if you prefer, and he compiled a group of holy writings that eventually became the book that bears his name.  But we never intended to name the religion after him, mainly because we’ve always labored under the delusion that we worship God.  As I’ve written here before, Mormons have an uneasy history with their third-party-imposed moniker and what with people getting all huffy about us calling ourselves “Christians,” frankly we’re not sure what we should call ourselves, even among ourselves.  Hence the relative infrequency of “Mormon” in our speech.  Not that we’re hung up on it.  We’re far too busy with the whole food-storage thing.  (Or in my case, the lack of food-storage thing.)  That’s why this criticism is so curious.  It would never occur to me to expect Mitt Romney to say the word “Mormon” a lot in a speech given to anyone, let alone an audience of diverse religious preference, and I’d be astonished to learn that Mitt’s underuse of the word was pre-meditated.  (And I believe very little of what Mitt Romney does is not pre-meditated–surely a strength in his professional career, but perhaps not in his political one.)

Another criticism is that he didn’t talk about specific Mormon beliefs.  As though that would be reassuring for anyone.  Yes, that’s a recipe for unifying a party:  focus on our differences.  Oh, wait, that’s a different recipe.  I forget what for…doesn’t matter.  Bill Bennett said it was a fine speech, but that it could have been given by any one of the candidates.  True enough, but as several others have pointed out, Romney was the only candidate who had to give such a speech.  (Arguably, Rudy Giuliani might have had to give a similar speech at some point, but probably not, as JFK did the heavy lifting on the Catholic front, and Bill Clinton did the heavy lifting on the “that’s between us and our God” front.  No, I’m not fishing for Lewinsky jokes here.  Save them.)  And if the purpose was to allay people’s fears of creeping Mormonism, getting into Mormon theology–which is complex and not altogether settled–would have been counterproductive.  Because who really cares about Mormon theology, other than Mormons?  No one.  Sure, others might be curious, but you don’t elect a President who can satisfy your curiosity; you elect one who can lead.  And people who waste time explaining the inexplicable to people who don’t care make very poor leaders.  In my opinion.  Take that for what it’s worth. 

And now the final criticism, that Mitt Romney’s given in and made his religion an issue and now has no right to expect the media (and voters) to leave it alone:  I can only say, for God’s sake, give it a rest, people.  (That is a politesse spin on “Why are you such a sanctimonious p****?”)

I didn’t even address the myriad of MoCriticisms of the speech, but in other Mormon news: 

In an interview Tuesday Harry Reid declined to give Brother Romney any advice on his Mormon speech, but that doesn’t mean he himself was speechless:

“Well,” Mr. Reid said, “I believe Mitt Romney, who’s a man I’ve never met — don’t particularly want to — a man I’ve never met, that I would hope that his running for president would be determined on his politics and not his religion.” (emphasis added)

You know, Mitt Romney may be a lot of things, a Mormon and a flipping phony among them–but at least he’s not small.  I’ll give him that.

So last Friday’s Featured Question on the Xanga was “Should religion be taught in public schools?”–which is an interesting question, because if I read it one way, my answer is “Of course not,” but if I read it another way, my answer is “Good heavens, no!” but for entirely different reasons. 

In my opinion, it’s clearly unconstitutional to “teach religion in public school” in the sense of indoctrinating students with religious doctrines.  As in, Teacher stands up in class and informs students that Jesus died for their sins and they have to accept him as their personal savior in order to avoid eternal damnation.*  (Or, alternatively, Teacher gets up and informs students that, I dunno, if they do bad stuff they’ll get bad karma and be reincarnated with a crappy life.  My Hinduism is, um, sketchy.  My apologies.)  Unconstitutional, inappropriate and rather a waste of time on top of that.  Whether particular expressions of a religious nature, e.g. student-led prayer, extra-curricular Bible clubs, etc., are unconstitutional is not something I wish to explore here (because I’m on a schedule, okay?). 

*When I was in the sixth grade, a substitute teacher performed an impromptu passion play during a language arts lesson.  Everyone was really uncomfortable.  Which, if I recall correctly, was the gist of his message:  Crucifixion ≠ Comfortable.

On the other hand, it’s not unconstitutional to teach about  religion in public school, and Stephen Prothero of Boston University thinks our society would be better off if our citizens were more religiously literate.  He says that it would improve public discourse.  He wrote a book about all this.  (You can take his religious literacy quiz, if this blog starts to bore you and you need something else to do.)  His is a compelling argument.  I can tell you that I thought many times, whilst in college, that various works of literature and many historical events-slash-trends were easier to understand in light of the religious cultural context.  (At this time I also went to church with a woman who taught English in the public schools, and she said she found it very difficult to teach Paradise Lost without bringing up religion.  And I thought, “You people teach Paradise Lost in high school?”  Aside from Shakespeare and Beowulf, my high school teachers didn’t show us anything that was written in English prior to the The Scarlet Letter.  But that may have been a California thing.) 

However, as noble and constitutional as Professor Prothero’s (try saying that three times fast–on second thought, try saying it once, at all) proposed religious literacy curriculum is, when I think of how such classes would “work” in real life, with real public school teachers and real public school students, I can only say, “Good luck with that.” 

Number one:  There’s no unringing that no-religion-in-public-school bell that was sounded back in the twentieth century.  My generation, at least, has been successfully trained to faint at the mere mention of God in a non-private setting.  Even persons of faith have been known to squirm at the sight of the Ten Commandments on display, just out there for anyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, to see.  (Shocking!)*  It would probably take neurosurgery to cure us of this response.

(*Note:  Not that I contend that posting the Ten Commandments is a politically neutral issue, but I do think people tend to get hysterical when protesting such displays.  Seriously, is this what most offends you about your environment?  If so, you’re either extremely lucky or extremely unobservant.  I wish I had such indignation to spare.)

Number two:  Can you imagine trying to teach a course in the Bible to teenagers, who think they know everything?  Everyone, regardless of his or her religious upbringing or background, will have a chip on his or her shoulder.  And if you’re unlucky enough to have both evangelical Christian and Mormon students in your class, just run for the flipping hills.  That is not a dynamic you want to engage.  I haven’t even gotten to the part where every kid feels persecuted and put-upon, and their parents threaten to sue you in case you haven’t already rotted in hell.  Seriously, just hand them a bunch of sticks and let them start beating each other.  It would be just as educational.

I’m in kind of a cynical mood today.  Maybe not the best time to ask me about religion in public life.  Hm.

As long as I’m on the subject, though, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has said that Mormonism is the “fourth Abrahamic religion,” the first three being Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  This strikes some as being less offensive than the usual characterization of Mormonism as a dangerous cult, but it tends to rub Mormons the wrong way because we just can’t seem to let go of this idea that everyone should accept us as “real” Christians.  I used to feel that way.  It’s a recipe for perpetual disappointment.  My husband gave up calling himself a Christian years ago.  These days I’m mostly agnostic on the subject, but I’m not sure I prefer the dignity of “fourth Abrahamic religion” to the kitschy flash of “cult.”  Actually, I like to think of Mormonism as the “bastard child of Christianity,” but I don’t think that one’s going to catch on, with Mormons, Baptists or the press. 

This reminds me of when I was growing up in the church and use of the word “Mormon” (to describe ourselves) was somewhat discouraged.  Someone got the idea that if we never referred to ourselves as Mormons but always said that we belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, people might start to believe that we were Christians.  Which was nothing more than wishful thinking, but that’s beside the point.  I’ve never liked using the church’s official name, mostly because it’s way too long.  Seriously, maybe they had time to carry around that cumbersome moniker in the nineteenth century, but no one has time to listen to a name like that anymore, let alone speak it.  If someone asks you what religion you are and you respond with “I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the reaction you’re most likely to get is either, “Mormons, eh?” or alternatively, “Huh-wha?”–in which case you’ll eventually end up telling them you’re Mormon anyway, because that religion people have heard of. 

And I’ve never thought that “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” sounded any less culty than “Mormon.”  Actually, it sounds more culty, because if you need that many words to describe your organization, it’s got to mean that you’re hiding something.  Maybe that’s why self-referring as “Mormon” came back into vogue in the church a few years ago.* 

*COJCOLDS President Gordon B. Hinckley said that “Mormon” should mean “more good.” I say “Mormon” should mean “Mo Betta,” but again, no one’s asking me to write the AP Stylebook.

As long as I’m being totally random, I read a news article the other day about the use of tribal names for sports teams.  Dennis Prager was discussing this once on his radio show, and a caller who found the practice offensive asked Dennis how he would feel if a team wanted to call itself the Fighting Jews.  I think Dennis’s reply was something like, after the last 3,000 years he’d be overjoyed to learn that the Jews had fans.  Which is funny, ha ha, but it got me to thinking, what if there were a team called the Mormons?  (No qualifier necessary, as the mere specter of those clean-cut boys in white shirts and ties is enough to strike fear in the heart of any opponent, except maybe those Fighting Amish.)  I’ve never understood why BYU’s team was called the “Cougars.”  What is that, a “mountain” thing, I guess?  Seems kind of lame to me.  

Which reminds me:

Go Ducks!

Mormonews

BYU NEWSNET–”12 Former LDS Missionaries Posing for Controversial Calendar” *

A calendar of former LDS missionaries caused controversy among LDS and non-LDS people. Mormons Exposed, a Las Vegas-based company, launched a controversial calendar showing pictures of 12 bare-chested former LDS missionaries. Chad Hardy, co-founder of Mormons Exposed and a former BYU student, said he came up with this idea because he was tired of the stereotypes that people out of the church have about the LDS people.

You mean that stereotype that we’re all FREAKS?  Yeah, I’m so glad that myth is finally being dispelled.

(*Hat tip:  Mormon Mommy Wars.  In other words, I do NOT regularly read BYU Newsnet.)

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Sugar Daddy’s Pillow Talk:  Is God a math geek?

Sugar Daddy:  If I were God, could I make people with twelve fingers and still be creating them in my own image?

Madhousewife:  What…?

SD:  It would just be a lot more convenient.

Mad:  How so?

SD:  Because then you’d have your number system as base twelve instead of base ten.  A lot more convenient.

Mad:  I don’t understand.

SD:  Because twelve can be halved, thirded, and quartered, without using decimals.  A lot more convenient.

Mad:  Okay.

SD: (Falls asleep counting sheep in base 12)

Mad:  (Up all night)*

*Dramatic license:  Actually, it was my Restless Leg Syndrome that kept me up all night.  But it’s funnier to think that I was up all night contemplating my husband’s madness.

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Mister Bubby:  “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit”

So we had our Primary Program at church yesterday.  For you NoMos, this is the annual event where all the kids aged three to twelve run the chapel service.  Okay, so they have direction from some grown-ups, but they are the “performers.”  (I guess we’re not supposed to call it “performing” in church, but I don’t know the religious word for “get up and sing songs and say the lines you’ve rehearsed.”)  Anyway, it is not uncommon for parents to get a little teary-eyed whilst watching their sweet children sing praises unto the Most High (not universal, but not uncommon–we Mormons are an emotional bunch).  I myself was moved to tears yesterday when Mister Bubby, singing a rousing chorus of “I will go, I will do/The things the Lord commands!”, started bringing on the funk with some improvised dance moves.  I might not have cried had I not been working so hard to stifle my laughter.*  I suppose I shouldn’t encourage him.  Except that I think I want to.

*This was even funnier than the year five-year-old Princess Zurg ran down the aisles screaming, “I have to leave this place!”  Primary Program = Good Times.

The husband and I do not get out to the cinema much.  The last movie we saw in an actual theatre was a charity screening of Serenity, benefiting Equality Now, back in June.  Before that, I don’t know…I think it was X-Men.  Just kidding.  Golly, I honestly don’t remember.  Point being, we see most of our movies on DVD, but lately–what with The Simpsons being on DVD and all–we haven’t even been renting any movies lately.  But Friday night we felt like watching a movie, so Sugar Daddy went to the Blockbuster and came home with two rentals.  You will never guess which two.  No, don’t even bother because it is impossible that either of these titles would ever cross your mind in a million years.  Are you ready?  Battlestar Gallactica and Church Ball.

For the blissfully ignorant, Church Ball is one of many films produced by Halestorm Entertainment, the premier B-movie studio of Mormon cinema.  Technically, all Mormon cinema is B-movies, so Halestorm is really the premier C- or D-movie studio of Mormon cinema, but I digress.  Halestorm specializes in self-consciously Mormon comedies of low budget and marginal quality.  Some of these films have flashes of brilliance, or at least really funny parts, but most of them are just unadulterated crap.  Like you look at the box and think, “There is no way this could possibly not suck.”  And none of their films could possibly appeal to anyone outside the Mormon community.  They are designed to make money off of those Mormons with disposable income who will laugh at anything.   Halestorm’s best contribution to the genre thusfar is Sons of Provo, a mockumentary about an aspiring Mormon boy band called Everclean.  It’s no Some Like It Hot, but it is consistently entertaining.  If you like that sort of thing.  We got enough laughs out of the trailer to gamble that it would be worth a look-see, and ’twas. 

Anyway, perhaps it was the success of Sons of Provo which led us to have elevated expectations for Church Ball.  That and the fact that Gary Coleman has a supporting role.  Yes, Gary Coleman and Fred Willard.  How could it not be at least a little bit good?  Oh, come on!  Somehow, though, Halestorm managed to screw it up.  As SD said, it was like they had a brainstorming session about what would make a funny movie and then filmed the brainstorming session.  Only it was one of those brainstorming sessions where you realize afterwards that the ideas only sounded good because you were drunk at the time.  Except that the Halestorm guys are Mormons and thus probably were not drunk, but maybe goofed-up on Mountain Dew.  Who knows?

It started promisingly enough, what with an elderly sister being escorted past the church gymnasium and getting beaned in the head with a stray basketball, but it was all downhill from there. 

Here’s the story.  Once upon a time the Church embraced basketball as a fun and wholesome way to build community and promote fellowship (as opposed to the usual, unwholesome fellowship people had been subjected to in the past).  As a side note, this is actually how my uncle–my mother’s brother–was introduced to the LDS church, through a church ball league.  Unable to play basketball for his school team, he accepted a Mormon friend’s invitation to play for his church team, the only catch being that he had to go to church with him (at least as long as the basketball season was going on).  My uncle really did want to play basketball that much, and eventually decided he wanted to be a Mormon, too, so he got baptized, and shortly thereafter so did my grandparents and my mother.  So in short, if it hadn’t been for church basketball, my mother would never have become a Mormon and thus probably wouldn’t have married my Mormon dad, and I would never have been born.  So if you enjoy reading this blog, thank a Mormon basketball player.  Or something.

Anyway, the joke is that basketball is the official church sport and that the men take it way too seriously and are so competitive and crazy when it comes to actual games that all Christian sensibilities and decorum fall by the wayside–a situation fraught with opportunity for humor, both wholesome and otherwise.  (Actually, when some Mormon friends of our heard there was going to be a movie about church basketball, they asked, “How are they going to keep it PG?”)  So we have our hero of Church Ball, a guy named Dennis, who plays for the Mud Flats team, a ragtag bunch of lovable losers who love the game but can’t play it worth a darn and whose uniforms don’t match.  The Mud Flats team is in a deep-seated rivalry with the Crystal Springs (I think–Crystal Something) team, who are their polar opposite:  they have awesome uniforms, play like professionals and in short are “winners”–not the good kind of winners, though, but the kind of winners that are jerks and need to be taken down a peg or two.  Crystal Springs has been the church league champion for like, twenty years, and they are just soooo freaking obnoxious about it.  Why are these two teams rivals when there’s no real competition between them?  Well, Virginia, it seems that it’s personal.  The two brothers who dominate the Crystal Springs team, Brad and Brent–or Buck and Bradley, I don’t remember–have been bullying Dennis ever since they were all kids, and that really irritates him.  But what can he do?

So the Mud Flats bishop (Fred Willard) is a former church ball player who also nurses an unhealthy obsession with the sport.  You can tell he is something of a “character,” because he insults the referees from the sidelines and works on a playbook that he hides behind his scriptures during church meetings.  Also, he wears an eyepatch.  This is possibly the funniest thing about the movie.  But I digress.  The bishop tells Dennis that the Higher-Ups have decided that the church won’t sponsor the basketball league anymore and that this is their last chance to win that championship trophy and he wants Dennis to lead Mud Flats to victory, once and for all.  Dennis protests that he’s no coach and besides, their team is terrible, so how could they ever win?  The bishop appeals to his sense of religious duty, so Dennis accepts the challenge.  Then he breaks his tailbone in the first game and has to scramble to find a replacement so they won’t have to forfeit the rest of the season.  The rest of the movie is a journey toward self-awareness and redemption, wherein Dennis and his teammates fellowship a disaffected (but athletic) church member, recruit Gary Coleman (it’s a long story), eat fewer doughnuts, and meet a Magical Black Man, whose sole purpose is to teach the clueless white guys that everyone is a winner, you just have to look inside for their special talent. 

This would all be well and good if it worked, but it doesn’t, for the following reasons (in no particular order):

1.  The actor who plays Dennis is miscast, at best.  He is what you would call “low-key.”  He conveys absolutely no energy or enthusiasm or emotion of any kind that would indicate that he is invested in the outcome of this story.  In any given scene, games included, he looks like he would actually rather be taking a nap.  I wished he would take a nap, too, and maybe he would wake up and be interesting, but that never happened.

2.  The film is narrated by Dennis’s wife, a peripheral character who has nothing to do with ninety percent of what transpires onscreen.  So why is she narrating the story?  So she can tell us that Dennis loves basketball.  Because we would never know if it was up to Dennis to show us how much he cares about basketball.  The film relies a lot on Dennis’s wife to tell us how Dennis feels about what is going on around him.  And also to point out how silly all of this male posturing is.  My goodness, boys, it’s just a game.  Why don’t you get that???

3.  Like most Halestorm pictures, the editing is slightly off.  Key characters are introduced far too late.  Everyone’s timing is half a beat too slow.  You know where all of this is going and you don’t understand why they don’t just get there already.  What’s taking so long?  Mormon Standard Time?

4.  The film relies on stereotypes but they’re really poorly-drawn stereotypes.  Most of what we know about them is what Dennis’s wife tells us. 

5.  Like 99% of Halestorm pictures, the tone is uneven.  It can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be.  The good thing is that there’s no distracting conversion/coming-to-Jesus subplot, but there are all these other distracting subplots that I think are supposed to be funny and/or heartwarming (like the Mud Flats janitor with the bad heart who’s in love with the overweight church organist), but are actually just mildly irritating.

6.  Fred Willard is utterly wasted.  And I don’t mean that he appears to have been stoned during filming.  That would have resulted in a more entertaining movie.  No, he is far too restrained here.  Fellows, you don’t hire Fred Willard so you can rein him in.  He needs to be let loose and free to say whatever insane thing comes to his brain.  His character habitually makes fleeting references to wild times in his past–like the time he almost lost his spleen–but keeps cutting himself off with, “But that’s a story I’ll save for another time,” and you just want to scream, “No, Fred!  Don’t save the story for another time!  Tell the story now!  Any story would be better than the one we’re watching!”  Don’t put Fred Willard in a corner, people.  That’s all I gotta say.

And lastly, but definitely not leastly,

7.  Mormonism has been neutered out of the picture.  There are no explicit references to anything specifically Mormon, no one ever says the word “Mormon,” and this may very well have been a self-preservation strategy, because if I were the Church and somebody made this crap movie about me, I would have to excommunicate some people.  Just kidding!  But seriously, in a misguided attempt to give the story a more generic framework–and theoretically have a wider appeal, as unlikely as that seems?–they lost the opportunity to make a story about something real.  These folks are all certainly Mormon (except for Gary Coleman–it’s a long story), but it’s a secret–shh.  The result is that it feels phony–neither hot nor cold and therefore to be spewn out of the mouth, if you will.  Mormon stories don’t have to be a niche market, if you invest them with some authenticity.  People enjoy well-told stories about real people and situations; they don’t want to have to fill in the blanks themselves–that’s the storyteller’s job.  You need to let your freak flag fly, Halestorm.  That’s my advice.

I’d promise you a review of Battlestar Gallactica and an essay on the Mormon obsession with it, but I’m afraid I’d have no intention of keeping that promise.  Happy Monday to all!

I used to toy with the idea of having a separate blog wherein to pontificate on all matter Mormon–since the vast majority of my subscribers are not Mormon and likely uninterested in most of my religious angst and philosophizin’ (which is significant, I’m afraid)–but I eventually concluded that it felt unnatural to write in a venue devoted excluively to faith issues, without the context my mundane and profane existence provides.  I must blog with integrity, or not at all!  Which is why, when religion is at the forefront of my mind, I tend not to blog at all.  It’s the same with politics, incidentally.  But sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Whilst conducting some internet research for an undisclosed side project of mine, I came across the following article on about.com:

Q. “The Salt Lake Tribune has carried several articles recently about “LDS women” who seem to believe that women are an oppressed majority within the Church. Other than the 2 dozen who signed the letter, do LDS women really feel this commonly? If so, why?”

A. There will always be a conflict for Latter-day Saint women who seek after the honors of the world. Living the gospel requires us to leave those honors behind and focus on the things of eternity. While our efforts in the home may go unheralded by the world, they are of the greatest worth and value in this life and in the life to come.

Those women who lose their focus and seek after wordly honor will inevitably find dissatisfaction. The Church oftentimes becomes an easy target for their frustrations. Be assured that these women are not the majority.

The average Latter-day Saint woman is at home nurturing her children. She’s teaching them to read, to serve, to do good in the world. She’s helping her neighbor or planting a garden. She’s developing a new talent or comforting a loved one. She’s reading a book, she’s coaching her child’s team, she’s serving in the local PTO or writing to her local congressman. She’s rocking a baby, she’s praying, she’s sharing the best of herself with those who matter most. Though she may experience sorrow from time to time she is generally happy and at peace with herself.

In the immortal words of Dorothy Parker, “And then Tantle Weader fwowed up.”

Let’s start with the insinuation that LDS women dissatisfied with the patriarchal structure of the church must be “seeking the honors of the world,” i.e. they’re dissatisfied with their God-given role of homemaker and require a professional career to validate their worth.  This assumes that

a) women who are satisfied with their homemaking careers could not possibly be dissatisfied with their patriarchal institutions;

b) the desire to do meaningful work outside the domestic realm necessarily stems from a thirst for worldly honors rather than the irritating compulsion to live as a multi-faceted human; and

c) struggling intellectually, psychologically or emotionally with certain aspects of your faith tradition and/or community constitutes “losing your focus.”

Really, is there no more charitable way to view Mormon women who consider themselves “an oppressed majority” in the Church?  Maybe some of them are ill-focused whiners seeking the praise and honor of the world–I mean, aren’t there some of those in every crowd?–but to dismiss women who question the fairness of the patriarchal order as having lost their perspective on what’s important in life?  You’re not making a very good case for LDS women being unoppressed.  I know that if I were to wonder aloud why the Church doesn’t ordain women, only to have someone respond with “What’s wrong with you?” or “Don’t you like your kids anymore?” I would find that somewhat oppressive. 

The issue isn’t really whether women should work outside the home or not.  Women who aren’t mothers are still women.  Women who aren’t married are still women.  To make this about women not wanting to be homemakers is an ad hominem argument and dodges the question.  The question is whether LDS women “commonly” feel “oppressed,” and if so, why?  One could also ask, if not, why not?

I admit that I have not done any scientific studies on the subject, but apparently the author of this about.com article has not either, so I’m at least as qualified as she is to answer the question of whether LDS women feel “oppressed.”  I think some LDS women feel oppressed.  I think a lot of LDS women who feel oppressed would not publicly admit as much.  I reckon they probably are a minority, but I could hardly say with certainty that they are a “tiny” minority. 

However, the vast majority of LDS women I know (and have known) would say the idea that we are oppressed is for to LAUGH.  To be sure, there are pressures on LDS women to act in certain ways and to make certain choices.  That’s sort of what society does to people.  But the same culture that exerts these pressures–to get married, to have kids, to stay home with your kids (at least while they’re young), to always wear your Church Face–also produces an inordinate number of smart, dynamic, independent women who speak their minds, take care of business and generally kick a**.  And I’m not talking about baking some killer quiche or playing a mean pipe organ or changing a legion of dirty diapers.  The stereotypical Mormon woman who is constantly deferring to men and having more babies than she can possibly handle does not jibe with my observation of Mormon women.  I’ve met hundreds over my short lifetime thusfar, and every last one of them is different from the other.

Who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history”?  Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Harvard professor and Mormon woman.  It’s not a coincidence.  A Mormon woman’s scriptural role model is as likely to be Eve, infamous eater of the forbidden fruit, as it is Mary, celebrated handmaiden of the Lord.  (I suspect most Mormon women don’t even think of the nameless Proverbs 31 gal because she’s a little too perfect.)  Mormonism is, I think, unique in its characterization of the Fall and particularly Eve’s role in it.  In our tradition the Fall was part of God’s plan from the beginning because God always intended for us to have the ability to choose between good and evil and to learn through our own experience.  Without delving too deeply into LDS theology (does any of us really want that?), suffice it to say that to varying degrees, most Mormons think Mother Eve rocks.  This would include every stripe of Mormon, from the feminist to the killer-quiche-maker to the Stodgy Old White Men who run the joint. 

Understand that my point is not to argue theology–this view may well indeed make us phony Christians, and if that’s your opinion, you can save it because I’ve already been there, done that and bought the T-shirt.  My point is that with as much religious baggage as Mormon women carry, we certainly are not burdened with any notion that woman is responsible for bringing evil into the world, or alternatively, that woman is too weak and dim to realize that eating fruit = bad.  So right there we have an advantage.

No, we are more burdened with the multiple examples of Mormon pioneer women crossing the plains and taming the wild desert, raising forty-two children alone whilst their husbands served eight-year missions overseas–not to mention all the canning of fruit that must have gone on during this period.  If Mormon women are oppressed, it is not by men but by our heritage of female heroism.  We are much more oppressed by the expectations we place on ourselves than we are by whatever sexism lingers in our institution. 

LDS women are a diverse lot–sort of like women in general.  Are we more likely than other women to be full-time homemakers?  Perhaps.  I haven’t seen the numbers.  But full-time homemakers are a diverse lot also.  To say that the average LDS woman is “at home nurturing her children” is only telling part of the story.  The average LDS woman does many things, usually at all once. 

I’m not sure what exactly it is about that last paragraph I quoted that rubs me wrong, whether it’s the suggestion that feminists are women who are not happy and not at peace with themselves, or the implication that the “average” LDS woman is too busy performing acceptable feminine tasks (like planting a garden and serving in the PTO) to be dissatisfied or sad about anything.  Perhaps what irks me is that it’s a phony answer to a phony question.  Does anyone really wonder if LDS women “commonly” feel oppressed?  Obviously they don’t, or 1) LDS women feeling that way wouldn’t be newsworthy, and 2) the Church would have changed more by now.  I’m not defending or maligning the Church’s patriarchal hierarchy as it now stands.  I’m only trying to characterize the experience of myself and the Mormon women I’ve known.  Of course there are sexist, domineering men and timid, submissive women who wouldn’t know their own worth if they tripped over it, but you don’t need religion to facilitate that sort of dysfunction.  It’s just that when religion is used to justify unfairness and mistreatment, it’s especially egregious and infuriating.  Especially to religious people.

I’m not sure why the author feels compelled to tie things up with a neat little bow, this Pollyanna-ish description of Mormon women that doesn’t account for the wide range of women among us who proudly proclaim themselves unoppressed–the single, the married, the divorced, the widowed, the employed, the housewifely, the emotional, the analytical, the scrapbookers, the NASCAR fans, the cheerful, the cranky, the peaceful, the frustrated, the organized, the confused–they’re all here, and the common denominator is that they find more meaning within the Church than they do without it.  And something that gives your life meaning is a great source of personal empowerment.  Even Mormon feminists–the ones who characterize us as an ”oppressed majority”–continue to stay in the church specifically because of the doctrinal and historical aspects of our faith that they find particularly empowering to women (and incompatible with the status quo). 

As for the rest of us, to chalk up our lack of discontent to the fact that we’re happy serving in our own little sphere is a truly inadequate response.  Every Mormon woman I know thinks of herself as a person, not a gender role. 

And now I’ve pretty much run out of things to say, if indeed I was ever saying anything.

I recently participated in a discussion on Feminist Mormon Housewives about Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney and the bias each of them has to overcome because of people’s preconceived notions blah blah, and I realized that we must all be eager for a new administration because it is way, way too early to be having these conversations.  Maybe we’d just rather be thinking about anything but the war. 

I remembered that one of my two friends I willingly discuss politics with was in town last month and I completely forgot to ask her who she liked in the Democratic primary.  (She’s a Democrat.  Not only is she a Democrat, but she’s a Democrat who remembers when I was a Democrat.  My other political-discussion friend is a Republican, but a Republican who also remembers when I was a Democrat.  I wonder if that has anything to do with my relative comfort in discussing uncomfortable issues with them.)  We must have been too busy talking about stuff that matters.  But I’m still curious, especially since she is probably more enthusiastic about this primary race than primary races of yore.  She used to live in Oregon, too, and always ended any discussion of who she liked in the primary with “But it doesn’t matter, because Oregon is a politically insignificant state, so who cares?”  But she has since moved to a state with a February primary, so she actually gets to choose among multiple candidates.  I can’t imagine how exciting that must be.

Unlike every other state in the Union, Oregon has decided not to move its primary to February 5.  And good for us.  Moving your primary up just to get attention is really so sad and pathetic.  And it’s not like anyone cares about Oregon anyway.  We’ve got, like, seven whole electoral votes.  Which I guess is nothing to be ashamed of, except when you’re standing next to states with twelve, fifteen, twenty-four, or thirty-three electoral votes.  Then you resemble the flat-chested Spring Break reveler flashing the “Girls Gone Wild” camera crew only to end up on the cutting-room floor.  Why did you even bother signing that waiver?  You weren’t even that drunk.  Where is your dignity?  Anyway, I’m not really sure when Oregon’s presidential primary is, but I do know it’s long after everyone else has been there, done that and started their Christmas shopping.  By the time the 2008 campaign train rolls into town on its creaky wheels, there will only be one candidate aboard, and hopefully he doesn’t ask me to sign any waivers.

In lieu of talking to my Democrat friend about the Democratic primary, I have to make do with speculating about who my 1992 self would vote for.  It would either be Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.  I’m sure I would be torn.  I would console myself by saying that it doesn’t matter since my 1992 self lives in California and California holds its primary in the late spring also, but then someone would have to remind me that this is 2008, hello, and California now has a February 5 primary, so I need to make up my mind already.  My 1992 self can’t handle the pressure.  She defers to my 1996 self, who initially favors Chris Dodd but ultimately sides with Hillary, only to regret it a year and a half later.  Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

What did any of that mean?  I don’t know.

I had a dream the other night that I was holding a fundraising party for Rudy Giuliani.  People kept saying, “I can’t believe you’re not supporting Mitt Romney,” and I kept saying, “I like Rudy.”  During my waking hours I am not currently for any particular candidate, though my subconscious obviously leans toward Rudy.  I do like Rudy.  I’m a sucker for that rock-star quality, you know.  I’m not particularly against any candidate either (in the Republican primary, at least), though I am not as enthusiastic about Romney.  The conversation on FMH reminded me that I do harbor a bias against Mormon men, whom I tend to think of as old-fashioned, patronizing and chauvanistic.  It’s really not a fair assumption.  For every patronizing and chauvanistic Mormon man I’ve met, I know ten who are not that way.  (If only I could have married one of those.  Just kidding!) 

Still, the stereotype persists, even in my extraordinarily fair-minded psyche.  Also, there’s the fact that the beautiful Mitt Romney and his beautiful wife and beautiful family come across as Sickeningly Perfect Mormon types.  If people voted for W because they thought he seemed like a nice guy to have a beer with, I don’t think Romney stands much of a chance of connecting with the Common Man.  Not just because he doesn’t drink beer, but because he seems so well-scrubbed and polished that he must be Not One Of Us.  I have to keep reminding myself of the many cookie-cutter Mormons I’ve known who turned out, in fact, to be Real People–individuals with their own thoughts and opinions and struggles.  (They just have better dental plans.)  As my husband has said of many a Perfect Mormon Family, “They’re not as innocent as they look.”  And he means it in a good way. 

I don’t have any sort of opinion on Fred Thompson, as I can’t even tell whether the cat is running or not.  Put on an apron, Fred, or step away from the grill.  Speaking of which, I need to decide what we’re eating for dinner.  My 1992 self doesn’t eat meat.  My 1996 self says she ate chicken the other day and it made her sick.  My 2007 dream self throws parties for presidential candidates and has them catered.  None of this is helping.  Have I mentioned that it’s 100 degrees outside?  If I served popsicles for supper, would that make me a bad person?

THIS JUST IN:  Springfield, Vermont has been named The Simpsons’ official hometown for The Simpsons Movie premiere (”hometown premiere,” that is).  Once again, Oregon has been dissed!  And Matt Groening is from Oregon.  Where’s the love? 

Oh, well, I’m planning to boycott the Simpsons movie anyway because I do not wish to see Bart’s full monty.  Really, who are these people drawing for?  So I’m not bitter or anything.

But still…Vermont?  Vermont?  Psh.

Yesterday I was working in the church library when the Primary (children’s Sunday School) president came in and asked for a picture of Jesus walking on the water.  I went to our handy index file o’ pictures and looked for such a picture, but alas, ’twas not to be found.  Not indexed, anyway. 

“That’s strange,” the Primary president said.  “I know I’ve seen that picture here.”

The head librarian also looked over the list of indexed Jesus pictures and said, “If it’s not in here, we don’t have it.”

“But we must have it,” the Primary president said.  “It’s got to be here somewhere.  It’s a very famous story from the New Testament!”

The head librarian pulled the big church distribution catalog and opened it to the visual media section.  “Look in here,” she said.  “If you can find the number, we can locate it.”

So the Primary president and the head librarian searched the distribution catalog, looking for the picture of Jesus walking on the water.  I stood around doing nothing because it was a slow morning.

“We need to order that picture,” the Primary president said.

“Well, we can’t if it’s not in here,” the head librarian said.

“It’s just weird that it isn’t in there.  It’s a very famous picture!”

“Yeah, it is weird,” the head librarian said. 

“You know,” I said conspiratorially, “it’s almost as if they’re trying to erase any trace of evidence that Jesus ever walked on the water.”

The head librarian chuckled and the Primary president decided to make do with a less-than-ideal Jesus picture.  After she left, the head librarian finished looking at every listed picture in the distribution catalog and said, “Nope.  Not here.”  She turned to me and deadpanned, “You’re right.  It never happened.”

Sometimes I wonder why they called me to work in the library in the first place.  I’m the second assistant librarian, and honestly, the place is not big (or busy) enough for the three of us.  Sometimes I feel like I’m just standing around doing nothing because…well, that’s the best description of what I’m doing.  I suspect that the real reason they wanted a third librarian was so they’d have another person to put into the Wednesday evening shift rotation.  Unfortunately, my tap class meets on Wednesday evening during library hours, so I can only take Wednesday evening library duty when my class is on hiatus (which it currently is, but my handsome husband is out of town this week and I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I’m going to hire a sitter so I can sit around the library doing nothing on a Wednesday evening). 

So.  One might very well wonder what sort of godly Christian service Madhousewife can perform in the library.  (Aside from the obvious fact that I’ve got that sexy librarian vibe going on.)  Well, brothers and sisters, the Lord does move in a mysterious way.  A couple weeks ago the head librarian decided it was time to clean out the closet.  We had VHS tapes of church conferences dating back to the ’80s, homemade Primary visual aids on butcher paper dating back to goodness-knows-when, and Improvement Era and Relief Society magazines from the ’50s and ’60s. 

The head librarian, being the steadfast pillar of efficiency that she is, was going to throw every last scrap of this of this obsolete media away.  Now, I couldn’t care less about VHS tapes of church conferences.  All this stuff is archived online and on DVD these days, so big deal.  Ditto for deteriorating butcher paper with stuff glued to it that is probably not even acid-free, for crying out loud.  (What are people thinking?)  But church magazines that are nearly a half-century old?  Have you no sense of history, woman?

Yes, I realize we’re only talking about the ’50s, not exactly the Dark Ages or whatever, but hey–if it happened before I was born, it counts as antiquity.

The old Improvement Era is not like the magazines the Church produces today.  For one thing, the print was smaller.  Also, they had all kinds of features–not just church news and gospel messages, but scholarly articles on theological subjects, global politics, historical whatnots, recipes, humor, short fiction and poetry.  The best part, though, is that they had advertising.

Advertisements for what?

Well, for Postum, of course.

And auto insurance…

and MRE’s.

 (Well, now she has everything!)

Also ads for folding chairs, pipe organs, Safeway, and farm equipment.  (And yeast.  Oh, the ads for yeast–too many to count.  Well, it costs money to put out a magazine, you know.)

And I’m sorry, but how can you resist these pictures of wholesome Mormon youngsters from the past?  

Okay, maybe you can, but I can’t.  That is to say, I couldn’t.  So I told the head librarian that I would personally assume stewardship over these fine publications of yesteryear.  Hauling the heavy box out to my car, I felt not unlike Dolly Madison fleeing the burning White House with the Declaration of Independence in her arms.  And that’s when I realized why God wanted me in the library:  it was my calling to save the Improvement Era from the ashbin of history. 

That, or it is somehow my divinely-appointed destiny to end up as one of those crazy people whose houses are overrun by back issues of National Geographic and Reader’s Digest in their old age.  Whichever.  The point is, I am now the proud owner of genuine artifacts from a bygone era when Mormonism and Mormon culture was still largely an American, Rocky Mountain phenomenon, though it was starting a period of rapid growth.  Long after the deaths of its most colorful leaders but before its full-scale modern makeover, the Mormon community on exhibit here is half-refined and half-peculiar.  Maybe I’m half-peculiar, but I love thumbing through these old magazines, and not just because I like the smell of musty paper.  Original sources are so hard to come by anymore.  Even if everything in these pages is relatively trivial, it gives me a poignant sense of connection to my forebears in faith.  Personally, I’ve always been less intrigued by Joseph Smith or Brigham Young than by the ordinary, nameless folks who followed them.  A prophet or megalomaniac I can understand.  It’s the one who believes without seeing who engages my imagination. 

So a couple of Sundays ago a good sister was speaking in church about gratitude.  She told about a bunch of things she was grateful for, including her husband and kids, blah blah blah, and then she told a story about the time she went to Moscow with her dance troupe.  I forget what venue they were at.  Probably if I googled “famous buildings in Moscow,” something would trip my memory, but I’m too lazy for that.  Some Big Important Place in Moscow.  Boris Yeltsin had spoken there earlier in the day.  Anyway, she said it was nice, but the bathrooms were horrible because they didn’t have flush toilets.  She went into the bathroom to use her toilet, which was just a commode atop a very deep hole, and apparently there was some solid waste in the bowl, which she had to shove down the hole with a brush-stick-thingy.  ::Shudder::  Well, at least they had brush-stick-thingies, but never mind.  Her point was that she was grateful for flushing toilets, something that many people in developed countries take for granted.

Myself, I am grateful to go to church where ladies make specific references to fecal matter over the pulpit.  No shrinking violets we.

Monday was our Family Night, and Princess Zurg was in charge of our activity, so she had us all color turkeys and put stuff we were grateful for on each of the turkey’s feathers.  And yes, I did write “Indoor Plumbing” on my turkey.  And PZ said, “Why not say ‘flushing toilets’?”  My daughter believes in plain speaking.  That’s what church has taught her.

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I am not doing any serious writing these days, but I am taking unusual enjoyment in my magnetic poetry kit.  Actually, I have two magnetic Shakespearean kits, one for insults and one for love poetry.  Together they are a formidable literary force.  They are superior to ordinary magnetic poetry kits because in addition to words like passion and embrace and beauteous, they have also have words like whoreson and milksop and scurvy.  Not to mention the always-useful strumpet.A sampling from our refrigerator:

BEHOLD AN IRKSOME INFANT INSATIATE AND MAD!
HEREAFTER THE PUNY LUNATIC WILL SMITE YE WITH PEEVISH CHEEK  ~Madhousewife

IF EXCESS DELIGHT AFFLICT THEE COME WOO A RUMP-FACED HAG
SUCH AN OFFENDING WRETCH SHALT RUIN THEE  ~Sugar Daddy

Culture is alive and well in these parts.

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Mister Bubby, No One’s FoolMister Bubby:  Mom!  Quick, hide!

Giraffemom:  I am hiding.

MB:  No, you’re not.

GM:  I’m invisible.

MB:  No, you’re not.  I can see you.

GM:  You must have special powers.

MB:  I don’t.  You’re just pretending.

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Sugar Daddy Returns Home at 9 p.m., Greets His Family WarmlySugar Daddy:  The downstairs smells like feet.

Madhousewife:  Well, that was dinner, hon.

Bet he’s glad he’s cooking the turkey this year.

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Happy Thanksgiving, kids!

Here is more of Mister Bubby’s artwork.  He has been drawing a lot of Star Wars-themed pictures lately.  For example, here is an Imperial starship and an X-wing fighter:

And this is Obi-Wan fighting General Grievous:

Now, you might think this is Han Solo, but that’s where you’d be wrong.

This is Joseph Smith getting killed.  On the right is the gun (looks like a musket) that shot him.  To the left is the window he fell out of.  Below that is a gaping mouth with teeth, symbolizing the jeering mob.  Below that is a telescope.  (Shrug.)  I don’t know if I’m raising a religious fanatic or just a sick puppy.  (Eh, you take a five-year-old to Carthage Jail on his summer vacation, and this is what you get.)

What do you think, fellow Mo’s?  Friend material, or nay?

So the LDS church is a lay church, which means that any of us could be called upon at any time to serve in some capacity.  Usually little consideration is given to what your actual gifts may be, which explains my four-month stint teaching a class of thirteen-year-old girls, one of whom I very nearly socked one Sunday.  But that’s an unpleasant memory that has nothing to do with today’s blog.  Anyway, the one exception to this With-God-All-Things-Are-Possible rule is if you have a musical skill of some kind, you will very nearly always serve in some musical capacity.  If the congregation in question has a very low population of musically skilled persons, you may end up serving in every musical capacity. 

I’ve spent about fifteen years of my adult life playing piano in the children’s Sunday School.  Let me tell you, that is a sweet gig.  Mostly because it gets you out of all those boring adult classes.  But I digress.  For the last couple years I’ve been playing piano for the women’s class, which is another sweet gig–less sweet than playing for the kiddos because you only spend about ten minutes playing piano and the rest of the time you have to listen to ladies drone on about faith and charity and blah blah blah–but still, very sweet from the Minimal Effort Required perspective.  I would have been content to stay there the rest of my natural life.  Heck, I’d be willing to do it in the afterlife, too, but I think in the afterlife there will be more demand for harp players.  Do all harp players automatically go to heaven?  I don’t know.  They didn’t cover that in Sunday School.

So where was I?  Oh, yes–there I was, content, playing the piano and being bored, and then they decided to give me a different job.  They asked me to be an assistant librarian.  I know.  Who realized church librarians needed assistants?  Or, should I say minions?  I’m glad they didn’t call me to be the real librarian because I think the power would have gone straight to my head.  You know that expression “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”?  That’s the church librarian, dude.  Forget what you’ve heard about our rigid subordination of the female.  The church librarian is almost always a woman, and she holds the keys to the kingdom–if you subscribe to the principle that the kingdom is made of blackboards and audio-visual equipment, which, thirty seconds before Sunday School starts, everyone does. 

Before I got married I attended a ward for young single adults (under 30), and I held a moderately responsible leadership position–actually, I held several positions, since we were perpetually understaffed–but I was never ward librarian because the young single adults were not allowed to have a librarian.  For some reason, unmarried Mormons of a particular age were not to be trusted with unlimited access to church materials.  I’m not sure what they thought we would do–hold some kind of weird after-hours chalk orgy, make photocopies of our butts–I dunno.  But when we needed something in the library, we had to get the bishop to unlock the door for us.  This was annoying for everyone, as you can imagine.  Once the bishop let me borrow the library key, and my fellow/sister single adults all bowed and genuflected before me.  I was highly favored in those days.  Plus, the bishop was just tired of running down to the library every time someone wanted a stapler.  Unfortunately, I had to give the key right back, so the power trip was short lived, but I still remember the rush.

This morning my friend asked me how I felt about my change in responsibilities.  I said I didn’t know because I wasn’t sure what an assistant librarian was supposed to do besides dispense spare Bibles and in general act territorial.  She said they probably decided to make me a librarian because I don’t talk much and I majored in English, but she thought it was a waste of my “genius.”

“Well,” I said, “unfortunately, they don’t have a Ward Wisecracker.”

“It would be great if they did,” she said.  “You could have the Ward Greeter on one side of the chapel, and on the other side you could have the Ward Wisecracker.  I’d come every week.”

“Yeah, so would I.”

Unfortunately, if they ever created that position, I think my husband would get the job before I would.  Mormons are notorious for not thinking outside the box.

So my father called me at 7:30 a.m. to tell me that he was flying in for a visit.  Having my father visit me is less stressful than having my step-mother visit me, but I’m not sure my father ever knows what to do with me.  Maybe he’ll help SD build or dig something.  That’s how he shows his love.  (My father, not SD.  SD shows his love by cleaning up dinner and wiping down the counters.  Thanks, honey.)  I just hope it doesn’t put a crimp in our Veronica Mars plans.  Dad’s more of a Judging Amy guy.  I consider that my step-mother’s fault, though.  Maybe while he’s here we can convert him to the Dark Side.

My husband feels that I owe the world an explanation of the true Mormon doctrine regarding Hell.  For the record, that South Park clip was a joke.  I don’t even watch South Park because 1) I don’t have cable, and 2) I’m kind of a prude.  I still think the clip is funny because a) it’s so not what Mormons actually believe about Hell, and b) we Mormons are such attention whores that we get positively giddy at any mention of us in the media, no matter how rude, immature or inaccurate it may be.  We spend so much time saying LOOK AT US!  LOOK AT US!  LOOK AT US! that when the otherwise uninterested world pulls our name out of the Religions To Poke Fun At hat, we feel like we’ve won the lottery.  In our book, any publicity is good publicity because it’s an opportunity to talk about ourselves, now that you’ve brought it up and all.  This is one of the many ways in which we differ from, say, Seventh Day Adventists (with whom, incidentally, we have absolutely nothing in common with).  Did I mention that Mormons and SDA’s are nothing alike?  Because they’re totally nothing alike.

I think most contemporary Mormons can laugh at themselves.  Many of us can even laugh at other people laughing at us.  This is probably because a) we can’t drink alcohol, so we have to get our kicks somewhere, and b) compared to having our homes burned, our families murdered, our women raped, and our children dying of exposure on the long trek west to Utah, being the butt of some crude jokes is as close as you can get to a walk in the park without actually leaving your home.

To be sure, though, there are some of us with less-evolved senses of humor, sensitive types who will sniff that they are misunderstood and you have no right to judge what you don’t understand–but I think Jesus put it best when he said, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”  (It’s in the Gospels, look it up.)

There is, of course, the inescapable fact that Mormons are weird.  Sugar Daddy’s best friend is a Christian–you know, a real one–and I think his assessment of Mormons is fairly spot on:  “They’re wonderful people, but they have a really messed-up religion.”  Not only is bona fide, thoroughly documented, standard Mormon doctrine messed up, but add to that the personal opinions of people who are attracted to messed-up religions, and you’re going to have way too many shards of theological craziness to sweep up in a dustbin.  Generally speaking, I am done and done with trying to convince people that I don’t believe what they say I believe.  If someone says to me, “Isn’t it true that Mormons believe Jesus is an alien and Joseph Smith injected a sleeping nun with cocaine to bring forth the Kingdom of God on earth?” I am inclined to say, “Sure, Mormons believe that.  Mormons will believe any whacked thing, isn’t it obvious?”  Because man, I just do not have time for this stuff.

Technically, Mormons, like other people, can believe whatever they like, even if it’s wrong.  They’re just not allowed to get up and preach it in the middle of Sacrament Meeting or Sunday School like it’s, you know, not wrong.  BYU professors of religion, on the other hand, can pull whatever wigged-out doctrine out of their rear ends and still keep their jobs because…well, that’s what Stephen Robinson does and no one’s fired him yet.  (And they say the Cougs have no academic freedom–psh.  That only applies to, like, science and junk.*)

* For the irony deficient, this is also what’s known as a joke.  BYU has terrible science programs, but it’s mostly because smart science students don’t want to go to BYU and they definitely don’t want to teach there, and not because of the Man.

So I don’t often try to state definitively what Mormons do and don’t believe because sure as the sun rises, somebody’s going to pull out some obscure text from the King Follet Discourses or some verse Brigham Young sang in the shower and prove me wrong.  But to paraphrase e. e. cummings, there is some bleep we will not eat, hence my following definitive statements per my own religion that I was raised in and have been practicing more years than any sane person would tolerate:

1)  People don’t go to hell for being the “wrong religion.”  No, not even the Moonies.  Satanists, maybe, but theoretically they don’t mind, do they?

2)  A faithful LDS woman is not rewarded for her diligence and long-suffering on earth by being forced to spend eternity a) in a marital relationship that is odious to her, or b) in a perpetual state of pregnancy, complete with nausea, water retention, varicose veins, sciatica, stress incontinence, uterine contractions, and the ever-popular Ring of Fire.  Remember the part where Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”?  That’s in our Bible, too.  Really, sisters.  There is so much actual Mormon doctrine that makes no sense.  Must we additionally make up stuff that makes no sense?  Are there Mormon women who sincerely believe that they are destined to spend eternity birthing babies?  Probably.  But they’re hysterical.  Maybe if you slapped them, they’d snap out of it.

*Sigh.*  Sermon’s over.  The Diaper Chronicles return tomorrow.

The following is dedicated to Scott, King of the Epic Blog Entries

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Sugar Daddy said I would probably provide a travelogue of our vacation, which is interesting because I hate doing travelogues.  I actually dislike being on the receiving end of a travelogue, which is why I don’t like doing travelogues.  I bore myself, and I sense that I am boring others.  Who wants to see a slide-show of my vacation?  No one.  (Good thing, too, because we took hardly any pictures.  So many kids, not enough duct tape.) 

Yet I feel obligated to give my report.  Get it down for posterity.  Sigh.  So bear with me.

The trip started inauspiciously when we flew into St. Louis to discover that the airline had checked our bags to Chicago.  It wasn’t the fault of the woman who checked our bags.  She thought we were Mark Williams.  He was going to Chicago.  Wh