Understanding Mormons: It's A Real Problem

Mitt Romney has been under a lot of pressure lately. Not that there's anything wrong with or even surprising about that. The lead up to the presidential debates is always intense. Candidates typically respond by delivering their vision with articulate and passionate bullshit, carefully wrapped and vacuum sealed to energize the base without alienating the center. We're used to it.

But there are other types of pressure that have popped up on the campaign trail for Romney this September. For example, there's the pressure of being born wealthy, white and male, which apparently makes politics hard. It sounds awful as a joke, and plays even worse when the makeup artist accidentally goes too dark on the foundation when you're speaking to a Hispanic audience. Bad timing, that. There's also the whiplash realization that 47% of the nation aren't all Obama zombies chanting "hoooope, chaaaange", and many of them actively resent being characterized as such. Rumors flying around that your running mate has taken to calling you "The Stench" don't help either, especially when coupled with the enormous pressure of party insiders shifting their support to candidates lower down on the ballot because your numbers look bad on paper. I'm sure the irony isn't lost on a venture capitalist.

And then there's plain old cabin pressure, which you'd think would be a familiar and comforting thing to someone who flies as often as Mitt does. But he has problems with that, too. High school physics must have been hell. I feel for the guy.

Underlying all of this, though, is the giant elephant in the middle of the room that has only lightly been touched on so far; Romney's tax exemptions include huge donations to a church that includes secret handshakes and sacred undergarments. Join now, become the God/Goddess of your own planet in the afterlife. Certain restrictions apply, must be married and in good standing with the church to see the face of God. What Mitt refers to as "service" in France during the Vietnam war, the rest of us call "sales".

I'm joking, of course, at the expense of good people who happen to be Mormons; I try not to do that too often, because it's a gross oversimplification of what churches do, for better or for worse. Walter Kirn has an excellent article which handles both his troubles with blind faith and his utter disdain for people who make jokes about magic underwear, even though he's not a Mormon anymore. Along the same lines, the carefully focused criticism leveled by Brigham Young's great-great granddaughter, who left the church when she was 50, is more compelling on every level than the obvious cheap shots about Native American Jews. Stories like these lend texture and perspective to an ex-Morman friend of mine's outrage over the way that the church stepped in on Proposition 8 to pit black voters against gay and lesbian couples, and to her ultimate take on the position of women in the church:

"I saw it as what it was - exclusion through exaltation. Motherhood is so wonderful you should be happy god gave it to you instead of the silly priesthood.... The power structure of the church is a huge problem. And the women feel it but it is kinda an "emperors new clothes" thing. No one wants to be the first to say they don't wake up filled with the glory of gods plan!...  The women are the enforcers of it on the other women as the culture is spread and reinforced."

The real question is how Mitt Romney's faith informs his vision for America. Is it one where women like my friend and Brigham Young's great-great granddaughter feel valued for more than just their skills in raising children? Or is it a vision that puts women on a pedestal and then tells them to stay home and clean the toilets? Is he a pluralist who believes in the inherent dignity of humanity, regardless of race, opinions about religion, gender, sexual attraction, or socioeconomic status? Or does he have blind faith in a single path to salvation that excludes 99% of the world? These questions stop being about "freedom of [read: to legislate in favor of a specific] religion" and start becoming terribly important when a President starts making recommendations to the Supreme Court. If you're going to be Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, I'm interested in whether or not you expect churches to provide lifelong care for severely wounded soldiers instead of the VA. I want to know if you're going to tell a woman who has five kids that she needs to keep that eight-week-old fetus even though there's a risk to her life and only a 50% chance of survival for the child. I probably won't vote for you if I know your interpretation of your role as a bishop involves trying to bully a single mother who used to take care of your kids with threats of excommunication if she doesn't put her soon-to-be-born second child up for adoption. These are, obviously, not random examples.

[edit for clarity] All that being said, I'm not opposed to a Mormon President any more than I am to a Christian one, so long as the person following the religion doesn't try to force their religious values on me. There's something inherently (at the risk of sounding like a zombie) hoooope-ful about a presidential race between a Mormon and an African-American. I wanted to see the Huntsman-Obama debates, and I wish the primary voters had picked the better man. Maybe next time around.

Yelling Fire in a Crowded Theater

Religion is back in the news in its all-too-familiar forms of expression: inflammatory rhetoric followed by violence. Enter Mitt Romney from the safety of the campaign trail, eager to score some political points, when events were still playing out in Benghazi and in Cairo. The fires were, quite literally, still burning when he released this statement:

I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

There's a slight problem with his analysis. The people carrying guns weren't the ones our Embassy in Cairo was reaching out to.

Diplomats don't plead with extremists, they work with moderates to try to keep them from gaining power. Make no mistake about it, these women are risking their lives to hold this vigil. Being reasonable is dangerous when armed extremists rise up in anger. 

While there has been plenty of bipartisan head-shaking surrounding Romney's decision to criticize the use of nuance in a climate where cartoons whipped up violent rage seven years ago, there has also been a strange reluctance to address the most glaring mistake he made in his assessment. In one sense, he was absolutely right; our deepest values affirm our freedom to ridicule religion in all public spaces. This is a fundamental principle of free speech in a secular society.  Where he went wrong (in the most diplomatically inept example of irony I've seen in a long time) is in his failure to recognize one simple truth; even in the land of the free and the home of the brave, freedom of speech is not without its limits.

You can't yell fire in a crowded theater, and you can't attack a religion safely in a land where armed and intolerant radicals who follow that religion hold political power. There is something awfully surreal about Romney's defense of the virtues of secular society while he simultaneously caters to the religious right's attempts to tear down the wall between church and state. We need that wall, and we need it to remain high, rigid, and impenetrable so we all can remain free to say what we want without the risk of violence.

Do I think Islam is a peaceful religion? No. September 11th is a day when the entire world is acutely aware of that fact. Do I think Christianity is a peaceful religion? No. The guy who put this video out was a member of a homegrown Christian sleeper cell of people who are paranoid in the extreme about a "New World [read: Secular] Order". They have guns at the ready to defend themselves against it. They want everyone who is frightened by Islamic extremism to rally behind the banner of Christian extremism. That sort of enemy of my enemy thinking can transform American society, and they know it.

What I sincerely hope people in this country who "don't follow politics" might take away from the events of the past week is that religious moderates, agnostics, and atheists absolutely must pay very close attention to what is happening in our own backyards. The roots of violent hatred for "the other" that developed into what happened in Benghazi find their expression at home, too. If you have never talked with someone who defends a warped utilitarian position for bombing abortion clinics, you might dismiss it. That would be a mistake. Remember Aikan? The guy who thinks that abortion should be illegal in the case of rape and incest because he simply cannot imagine that God would allow a baby to be conceived if it was a "real rape"? He's back to a dead heat in the Missouri senate race.

It might be difficult to imagine violent mobs of religious believers in our streets, especially if you lose sight of the fact that less than a century ago, "communist atheists" and their "sympathizers" had their lives destroyed over differences in religious and political philosophy. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of those "enemies", because he expressed sentiments like this.

If you can name a more lyrical and effective champion of the American Dream, I'm listening. The fact remains, the religious right didn't care for him. In white middle class America, it was largely the communists, the Jews, and the atheists who were rallying loudly behind him, and many of them suffered for it. Some lost their lives.

We must never lose sight of our past. The America that exists on the horizon if politicians who maintain the absurd notion that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim out to persecute Christians gain the House, the Senate, and the White House (and, in so doing, change the makeup of the Supreme Court in the hopes that they will construct an explicitly pro-Christian interpretation of the First Amendment) is a frightening one. When I vote this November, I'll be voting like my freedom of religion and yours depends on it. I hope you'll join me.

Conventional Wisdom

Ah, the conventions. That time of year when the parties reach out to their respective bases and fire up those boots on the ground. One thing you can always rely on in the wake of confetti and outrageous bar tabs that follow a convention; nothing of substance will have been said. So many crazy hats! So many convoluted twisty strings of earnest soundbytes and zingers! Such a very small chance that anyone will actually change their mind under the mind-numbing deluge of fluffy feel good slogans mixed with dire warnings about the evil that is the other side. After all, those people who are "undecided" at this point in the election cycle are just too busy to be bothered by politics or too fed up to care. Or at least, that's what conventional wisdom tells us. And who am I to argue with that?

Actually, as a skeptic, it's kind of a way of life. I also try to avoid generalizations about large groups of people precisely because large groups of people contain individuals. Some of those undecided and independent voters who research their choices carefully and cast purple ballots are pretty damned smart. You may be one of them. If you are, you might enjoy wonk-extraordinaire David Gewirtz's diary of an undecided voter (GOP version). (I'll tackle his equally amusing take on the DNC's dog and pony show next time out). Both of them are worth a read in full, but if you haven't got the time for that, I'll break down some of the highlights and my reactions to them.

On Paul Ryan:

He says the Romney ticket's goal is to create 12 million new jobs over the next four years. That's a high bar, but it's far from enough. We have about 23 million Americans out of work. Worse, about 2 million new workers enter the workforce each year. So, over the course of a 4-year term, of the 12 million jobs Ryan discussed, only about 4 million of those would be available for the current 23 million out of work. It's not nearly enough.

Given the fact that Paul Ryan draws inspiration from Ayn Rand's Utopian view of the free market, I think it's safe to assume he's not interested in adding to the federal payroll as any part of that jobs plan. Shrinking the public sector seems more likely, and that translates to less money going into the middle class. Those firefighters, teachers, police officers, and bureaucrats buy things. They have families to support. They stop buying things when they get "cut back", and start relying on government aid and student loans.

And yes, I know that the President forges a budget from the depths of his character, and the VP is just a tiebreaker in the Senate or a President-on-deck in the event of a national tragedy. Still, I operate under the informed conclusion that Romney's political convictions, even with all of his experience as a leader in the world of business, find their truest expression in the final line of Bohemian Rhapsody. The Romney that ran against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts and implemented the pilot program for Obamacare is a far cry from the guy flying around the country today. Ryan's potential influence in his administration is something I weigh a bit more heavily than I would have if Gingrich had won the primaries.

On Romney:

Romney described five steps to creating those jobs, but one thing he didn't mention was population. Romney has five kids and 18 grandchildren, and so, in this regard, he's contributing to the problem -- rather than helping it. My detailed mathematical models showed that without some attention paid to reducing population, the jobs situation will continue to grow worse.

Excellent point. Gewirtz fails to draw the logical followup here, and that's a shame. This is precisely the area where economics and social issues are joined at the hip. Or, more accurately, they're joined at the uterus. Both Romney and Ryan oppose abortion for any reason other than rape, incest, or the mother's health. Ryan opposes it even in the event of rape or incest.

I'm stopping for a moment to collect my rage and let it go. See, that Buddhist stuff really works! Moving forward, then.

Regardless of how you feel about limiting access to abortion from a moral standpoint, the pro-life platform in general presents some real problems for our economic stability as a nation. Pair it with opposition to birth control measures like the IUD and birth control pills, and we have a recipe for a government mandated population explosion here. (Unless, of course, people stop having sex for anything other than procreation. Think that's likely? Yeah, neither do I.) Nothing erodes the middle class and puts people who otherwise would have been just barely making it into a position where federal and state aid become necessary more than unexpected children. Nothing keeps them there like increasing the odds that they will have more. This is not how you grow a struggling economy.

On God:

....

This is somewhat surprising, because if you listened to any of the RNC at all, it was kind of hard to miss the fact that God was definitely speaking from the stage through the rhetoric of the people who know him best. He wasn't quite the keynote speaker, but everyone there sure did talk about Him a lot. They seemed quite focused on letting the American people know, once and for all, that the values of this nation are the values of the holy and most righteous among us; and if you don't agree with that, you are lacking the core guiding principle that makes our nation great. Psychology Today even did an article about it.

In the process, they alienated plenty of people whose number one voting issue is the separation of church and state. They contributed, once again, to the common misconception that the atheists among you are just about as trustworthy as rapists. Which is a shame, really. I don't eat babies, I don't worship Satan, and I don't appreciate it when people who want to run my government imply that my philosophical convictions are in any way shape or form stunted.

I won't vote for you if that's the way you feel about me, and I just hope my friends and family don't believe it when you tell those lies. E pluribus unum, bitches.